Andy Chase

On the occaisional day that I work from home, I usually sit at the kitchen table. The kitchen table, like every kitchen table in every place I've ever lived, also serves as the default horizontal space upon which to pile bills, junkmail, grocery receipts, spare change, paperclips, pens that no longer write, crumbs, dead batteries, and lord knows what else.

In other words, a huge mess. After half a day of low productivity and constant distraction, I took fifteen minutes to clean off the table. Junk mail ripped up and thrown out, bills neatly piled, random computer peripherals gathered and moved downstairs, nothing on the table but my laptop, and a cup of coffee.

I can feel my focus returning already. Every time I go through this pileup and purge cycle, one part of me thinks I should resolve to take a few minutes at the beginning or end of each day to maintain this pristine work space instead of letting it go so distracting... but another part of me thinks I would miss that sense of miraculous transformation.

I think my usual system will be fine, as long as the pileup phase doesn't get extreme.