How to control stress by creating a Productive Environment™?

How often do you feel stressed looking at papers piled on your desk, browsing through hundreds (and for many people, thousands!) of emails, or searching for your glasses, a book, a form, or a piece of equipment?

Your ability to accomplish any task or goal is directly related to your ability to find what you need when you need it – and that ability is essential to any organization in order to accomplish its mission, serve its customers, minimize legal risks, and reduce overhead costs. In other words, good business requires what I call a “Productive Environment™." – an intentional setting in which everyone can accomplish their work and enjoy their lives.

While current economic conditions require organizations to do “more with less." and technology rushes forward, individuals are overwhelmed with “too much." – of everything – email, paper, projects, meetings, and interruptions. So what can you do to overcome these obstacles? The first step is eliminating physical, digital, and “systems." clutter.

While offices are cluttered with paper, and our computers with electronic files, other types of clutter, such as unused office supplies and outdated equipment, also cost money and take up precious real estate. And then there are those unidentified business cards you collected at networking events months, even years ago, and the mustard packets from the take-out that are how old?

Because most people have never been given a process for eliminating the clutter in their lives, and unless they are “born organized,." were brought up in a family where it was role-modeled, or worked with someone who taught them, they are left to their own devices – which rarely works.