Workplace Detoxification

“When in doubt, throw it out” is what Peter Clarke says on Stickyminds.com whose company has embarked on a “lean office” initiative.

Peter stresses on workplace cleanup by cleaning up junk periodically. Sure, we can be more effective if the physical desk and desktop are cleaner. Things become easy to access leading to greater efficiency.

Peter says,

Nowadays, I practice the same clean up at work. My team and I had several training sessions, where we learned about the “five Ss”: Sorting, Storing, Shining, Standardizing, and Sticking to the Rules. I was enraptured to learn that Sorting involved looking through all of our stuff and figuring out what to keep, what to store, and what to throw away. Here was the leverage I needed to finally get people to throw away the cruft that accumulates around the office like toenail fungus.

I would like to extend this theory to personal clean up as well. When we work, we subconsciously keep on stuffing our brain with a lot of unnecessary junk. Over a period of time, our conduct gets limited by our prejudices and preconceived notions. These are the same toxics to our brain as the piles of papers are for our workplace and these need to be cleaned up too. Taking a break (sabbatical), reading interesting stuff, attending events of our interest or by just being home and spending time with family are good ways to detoxify ourselves and this should be done periodically to ensure that our brain remains open to new ideas, new perspectives and new ways of doing things.

My comments on Peters article goes here.

Hi Peter, I like to call this “detoxification exercise”. While we work, a lot of toxic elements (thoughts and things) keep piling in our mind and workplace on a daily basis affecting our efficiency to a certain extent. It helps to “detox” periodically by taking sabbaticals, doing routine cleanups, sorting, re-organizing and throwing out as you rightly mention. Thanks for your article. ~ Tanmay Vora