Space and More Space

Many people have talked about this before. There are entire YouTube videos on having an ‘aesthetically pleasing’ desk. Why is this so important though? 

1. It’s in your control

2. It gives you space to think clearly

Get rid of the crumbs from the food you had, the wrapper from the mussel bar, and the batch of papers that belong in the shredder. While none of this has anything do with ‘doing the work’, it’s the environment you’re in that determines how far you can go. Environment, will trump your willpower every time. If your desk is a place where anything is permitted and stays there forever until you move it, it’s not a place you look forward to being in. 

Speaking from my own experience, I look forward to working in a de-cluttered clean space. It’s usually a contrast from home where I’m not always in control of how clean it is. With your desk you have absolute control. Exercise it. 

You need very little discipline to spend 2 minutes to clear your desk. If you can’t muster that then how will you have the discipline to do the challenging things? How are you going to manage performance day to day? How will you stay up to date with all the reporting that you need to check daily? How will you give performance reports that are consistent and clear every time? 

Start small. 

Similar to the army routine of making your bed every morning, popularised by Admiral William H. McRaven’s speech. It doesn’t matter how horrible your day was or how little control you had over things, you’ll always come home to a bed that’s been made. Something that you controlled. 

Especially if you’re a leader that’s just started out, you might feel less in control of things than when you were working in a technical job. Control what you can. Start with your desk. Build that minimum expectation from yourself. Try it for a week and see how different you feel. See how your work changes. 

With all that empty space, see how open you feel to try new things. To grab a sheet of paper and draw your ideas, to build a mural of post-its of ideas that you want to work on. To have no distraction or limitation on surface area when you have a great thought or idea to put down on paper and test. What you’re really doing is building space for yourself, a space to think clearly. 

Right now, I’m seated in a 16 seat table in the boardroom of an office writing this. The only things on the table right now are my laptop, my water bottle, a kindle, and empty glasses (for when there’s an actual meeting here). I have miles of free surface area. It’s worth the drive in on a Sunday for this. I don’t feel this clarity sitting at the small desk in my bedroom. 

Your physical space determines your mental space. So get physical.

You got this.