A desk is not meant to be a junk heap or a remnant counter for accumulating every imaginable kind of commercial material. It is a business work bench, and every inch, corner and crevice of its space should be devoted to holding just those things needed in the day's routine - to these solely and wholly - and to nothing more.

A carpenter would have a pretty time getting at his working utensils speedily and conveniently if he buried them every day under the chips and shavings of his work. Clear away the debris of the day's campaign after it is finished. Don't allow the waste products - the chips and shavings of your labor - to pile up in desk drawers and pigeon-holes. Don't let the matters that are "dead and gone" cover up and blot out the live active material you have to refer to constantly. Make your desk an orderly workshop, with every tool in its own proper place - and nothing else within its compartments that has no everyday working purpose. This may seem very simple and commonplace advice to the hardened desk-pioneer. Condensed, it says simply "Be Neat." Yet it is the one great heart-secret of system, and we must begin to observe it right here and now, if we are ever to possess and master a complete and perfect desk system.

Sweeping Out the Rubbish, and Beginning Anew with a Clean Desk

Let us begin this system-installation then, with a first-class house cleaning. Let us sweep out the old order before we put in the new one. We will begin with the lower deep drawer, for that is the drawer foremost in ''dusty uncertainties.'' Have you had any use for those dog-eared paper bundles piled knee high in its "bottomless depths?" Suppose you had to locate instantly, the contract you placed in this drawer a week ago, could you put your hand down into the unclassified junk heap and immediately extract the desired document? And take the drawer on the opposite side, - how many times have you had occasion to consult a single one of the countless catalogs and price-lists you have tossed into it carelessly and thoughtlessly day after day during the past year? Once? Twice? Then clear them out and put them somewhere else.

Get a special file for them if necessary, but don't let matters which you will refer to, at best, but once a month, interfere with data you must consult perhaps once a day. Now then, with a clean desk at the start, the problem is to keep it clean - to make it as orderly as a puritanical copy book, with a place and a system for taking care of every kind of material that comes within the desk domain. For we want no back-sliding desks, no relapses to the old disordered order. No signing the system pledge only to break it when the test of rush work comes.

The first great law of system is classification - a right place for the right thing. Classification is almost a synonym of systematization. It is bringing order out of chaos, having one definite everlasting location for each definite kind of material - and keeping that material always there. A bookkeeper with a million accounts can always turn to each one, because there is only one place to look for it, and it is always in that place. Classification, and an index, do the trick. It is these that enable you to put a thousand subjects in an encyclopedia, or a thousand kinds of merchandise in a stock room, and yet find in a flash any particular subject or article you may demand.

Indexing the Workshop, and Establishing a Desk System - Four Kinds of Materials

A business man should divide up his desk, its compartments and its contents as a bookkeeper does his accounts, - one place for this kind of material, another place for that kind, and so on through all the classifications of his work and papers, - each place arranged judiciously and conveniently, to best facilitate the day's routine.

There are four kinds of material that should remain in the office man's desk, after it has been stripped of the dead wood.

1. The unfinished matters - letters and papers he is now working on.

2. The matters pending or papers held up for attention at a future date.

3. The completed matters - letters and data - that have had attention and are ready to file or to go to some one else.

4. The business working tools; stationery, letterheads, pen and ink, ruler, shears, etc. There are two divisions to the first classification. Some of our unfinished work will brook no delay, we must do it today, if ever. The rest of the unfinished work, while it demands early attention, does not necessarily require immediate completion. The work to be completed today should not be placed in the desk drawers at all; it should be kept on top, staring us in the face, right beneath our hands and our eyes, silently urging attention. For work of this immediate classification, we need a "Day's Work" portfolio (Form I), which may consist of four or five folders tied together with a string, each folder holding a special classification of today's work. These classifications may be labeled to suit the character and needs of your own work, but generally a compartment should be devoted to "Letters Ready to Dictate," another one to "Matters to Do Today," another to "Things to Take up With A," etc. The balance of our unfinished work, though it should not be kept on the working surface of the desk, should be kept as near to it as possible. For as soon as we clean up the duties in the Day's Work portfolio, we want to attack the remainder of our uncompleted labor. So we will secure another portfolio (one of the same kind will do), label it the "Unfinished Work" portfolio, and place it in the upper right hand drawer of the desk, get-at-able with but a single movement of the right hand.

More tips on how to plan and organize your daily work at http://SystemizeWork.FunHowToBooks.com/