One of the most under-appreciated instruments of academic life is working space. I specifically think that desk spaces are fundamental to our scholarly work. Whenever I travel, what I appreciate the most is a hotel whose rooms have roomy, ample desks for me to write. The room size is somewhat irrelevant as long as I get enough working surface for everything I carry when I travel, and for me to comfortably write.
As I said on Twitter, sometimes I write about things that some people find “too basic”. But truth be told, what some people consider “low level” may not be for someone else. I regularly get asked about how I organize my work (schedule, desk, workflow) on an everyday basis. That’s why I write about these topics on my blog (Planning, Workflow, Organization).
My basic rules for desk organization are as follows:
- arrive to and leave a clean desk (on campus).
- make piles of work in priority order (to my left).
- review project/task prioritization on a regular basis.
- when working from home, leave what I’m going to process in the morning already prepared the night before.
- coffee, lots of coffee. And water.
This is my campus office:
This is a sequence that shows how I arrived to campus to a clean desk and then laid out everything I had to work on and started working. As the day progresses my desk gets more cluttered. At the end of the day I clean and reorganize. pic.twitter.com/Kt4YXgDlL9
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) August 29, 2019
My students, colleagues and campus visitors always tell me: “professor, you have the nicest office of all of CIDE!”. Which is a nice compliment to hear. But truth be told, I have made my working space welcoming because I spend so much of my life there!
You may notice motivational drawings and so on. That element has always been key for me. I keep stuff and photos of people who motivates me, and my work. Photos of my nieces and nephews, rare bottles of water, miniature toilets and trash can coffee cups, mini-water wells. pic.twitter.com/jrfAWUAO6Y
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) August 29, 2019
You’ll notice motivational magnets here. And the hummingbird is my spirit animal/bird. And a First Nations-themed Canadian flag because 🇨🇦 (the Spanish language one says “treat everyone the way you would like to be treated”) pic.twitter.com/vvteYLOcNy
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) August 29, 2019
This is my home office at my Mom’s:
I do something similar with my home offices (whose desks may or may not have as generous of a space allocation as my campus office one does!) to my left, piles of work I have queued, right next to my laptop what I’m working on, to my right Everything Notebook and stationery. pic.twitter.com/aGa4iUVXbY
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) August 29, 2019
This is my home office at my own house:
My third office and second home office (the one I have at my own house here in Aguascalientes). Same arrangement: clear desk, only the stuff I need, I move things from left to right. Note my Project Box is on a different bookcase, to the left, to leave my desk clear. pic.twitter.com/ILue1p4tgi
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) August 30, 2019
Again, my suggestions on desk arrangement:
- Keep only the stuff that you need as you write on a particular task/work packet
- At the end of the day, leave an organized/cleared/uncluttered desk for you to arrive the next day.
- Clear stuff in one direction (I usually clear stuff to the right and I maintain materials that support the work I’m doing to my left. I’m right handed)
- Make your desk space, your office space and your routines, your own.
Hopefully this blog post will be of use to some people who like discussing organization!
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