As I work with clients every week, I see what a person can do in the several hours we work together or in just one hour. It’ amazing what you can accomplish if you stop everything for one hour and focus on one thing.

This month, I challenge you to take one hour out of each work week and focus on just one organizing project. Protect this time so you can concentrate, uninterrupted. Don’t answer the phones, don’t look at email, don’t look at instant messaging, don’t visit the Internet and don’t entertain visitors.

This is your chance to clear away the clutter and make decisions on what you have. This is also a good opportunity to consolidate information or things that belong together or to create a new system – one to help you find what you need more quickly or use the information around you more often.

Make sure anything you keep has an easy to use, logical location – one where you can find things the same way every time.

Here are a few suggestions of what you can do in an hour. All of these suggestions involve making decisions about what you find and where it should go or be stored.

2. Clear away anything that’s under your desk

3. Review what you’re storing in your horizontal, vertical or wall sorters 

4. Clear off a few furniture surfaces: credenza, file cabinets, conference table or chairs

5. Organize a file drawer 

6. Clean out your briefcase or any other bags you carry around

7. Organize one or more of the smaller drawers in your desk… the ones for office supplies and other small items. 

8. Organize a book shelf

9. Organize your overhead bins or compartments if you have them above your desk

10. Go through everything you can find that represents an action you need to take and start creating an all-encompassing t-do list.

11. Organize your business cards – you know, the ones you’ve collected from dozens of people when you meet them at networking events, meetings and conferences. Which ones are useful and where will you store them?

12. Review your e-mail, starting with the oldest ones, and determine what can go, what can be archived, and which ones contain information you need to store in your hard drive and which ones have actions associated with them

I’d love to hear from those of you who have followed through on any of these suggestions or used your own ideas and have taken an hour to accomplish them. And don’t be surprised if you get really focused and keep going past the hour. It could happen! Focus on one area each week and in no time you could have new systems in place to support you in an office that’s so clutter-free, people will think you’re leaving.

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If you want to super-charge an hour of your day, spend it with Leslie Shreve and sign up for a Productive Day Power Hour. It’s a one-hour strategy session to help motivated professionals just like you get on the road to peak productivity faster and easier. You’ll get tips and strategies you can use right away! Don’t waste another hour – schedule yours today.