Happy Tuesday!
The long Memorial Day holiday weekend that just wrapped up threw off my normal routine, so I have another "zero progress" report for you all. I didn't touch my archive cleanup project this week.
However, I did accomplish a few other important tasks that have been repeatedly postponed. One of those tasks inspired today's topic.
If you're reading this, you probably struggle at some level to keep your digital life organized. After all, addressing that challenge is the whole point of Tidy Bytes. Now, if you're honest, how closely would you say your physical space mirrors your digital space?
As you might have realized, I'm someone who deeply appreciates organization. This applies both in the digital world and the physical one. That isn't to say I'm always organized--far from it. But I like to be. It's something I always try to move toward when possible, and when I accomplish some project that brings me noticeably closer, I feel accomplished. I've fought back the universe's entropy for another day.
But in additional to the sense of accomplishment, I also feel calmer and better able to focus. The nagging psychological I-really-should-clean-this-up weight disappears, and my attention is free for other things, whether productive or fun or relaxing.
I believe this isn't quite universal, since some people seem--somehow--to thrive creatively in the middle of what I'd consider to be a mess. These people must have a different brain type. Most often, people comment on a cluttered, disorganized, or messy environment in a negative way. I'd bet that for everyone following Tidy Bytes, disorder is something we tolerate, not something we embrace.
This weekend, I tackled the installation of a large network cabinet (sometimes called a server cabinet or server rack) to clean up the collection of network, internet, routing, security, and server equipment that has grown slowly in our storage area for the last few years. I got the cabinet on Facebook Marketplace a couple of months ago and just didn't make an opportunity to put it in until this past weekend.
Now, behold the result!
This is an interesting blend of physical and digital organization, since the physical objects are the actual devices that store my data. But what I did on Saturday and Sunday was 100% in the real world; there was no data organization involved (hence the big zero I reported earlier in this post).
But you know what? Having this done is really motivating. Every time I look at the result of the physical organization, it makes me want to continue pushing forward on the digital side of things. I want my data to look as nice as my network cabinet.
The same thing is true of the desk in my office where I do most of my work, both software-related (on computers) and hardware-related (with a soldering iron and wires everywhere). It gets pretty cluttered at times, so much so that it's hard to find what I'm looking for. More often than I'd like to admit, I've had to spend at least an hour repeatedly combing through my entire office space trying to find something that should have been in exactly one obvious place. It's frustrating and distracting, knowing every minute you spend looking is a minute you could have saved with a cleaner space.
When (or if?) you finally get to clean up the physical space around you, it improves everything: mental state, focus, and stress levels especially. Even joy sometimes. I've noticed it enough times that I treat it like my own little productivity hack: if I can't focus on a digital task very well, I'll clean off my desk, or the space around my desk, or wherever there's obvious mess. Of course, sometimes I don't have time to do that, but I still try whenever I can squeeze it in.
One of the companies I worked for a decade ago realized the power of a clean space for improved productivity, and they actually had a company-wide "clean your desk" day where that was the only task people had to do for the entire day. They even gave a little bonus if your desk was actually clean by the end of the day. (Yay, accountability!) It was especially helpful for the hardware engineers, with cables and components galore.
Anyway...
What do you think? Are you someone who appreciates a clean physical space even (or especially) when trying to do digital work? Does your digital life mirror your physical one, or is one generally much more organized than the other? I'd love to know.
Until next week, happy space-cleaning AND data-taming!