Frances Cole Jones

Don’t Work in a Goat’s Stomach

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When I was working in the nine-to-five world, there was a gentleman down the hall whose office inevitably looked like it had been stirred up with a stick: a desk loaded with piles of paper, dirty cups, takeout containers, a Magic 8 Ball,¹ and a keyboard that looked like you’d be better off wearing a hazmat suit when you touched it, more piles of papers on the desk, on the floor, on the chairs; shelving that was loaded with books, photos, and (bizarrely) pieces of sporting equipment, various items of clothing tossed hither and yon: jackets, sweaters, socks, shoes, hats…. One day, our boss walked by and said, “That office looks like the inside of a goat’s stomach.”

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Not surprisingly, the occupant of the messy office wasn’t with the company much longer.

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What I’ve learned since then is that my colleague had created a petri dish of the three kinds of recognized office clutter. As identified by psychologist Sam Gosling, they are “identity clutter”: photos of family, friends, pets, etc. that are designed to remind us we have a life outside the office; “thought and feeling regulators,” which are chosen to change our mood: squeezable stress balls, miniature Zen gardens,² daily affirmation calendars;³ and “behavior residues” — old coffee cups, food wrappers, Post-its stuck to the keyboard, etc.

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The trouble with having a disproportionate number of these items in and around your office is that it sends a message to those around you that you are out of control. As one of my CEO clients said to me after we’d walked past his junior report’s disastrously messy office on the way to his company’s conference room, “Doesn’t she realize I notice — and care?”

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Now I’m not saying you can’t have a few personal items. And I am certainly not going to mandate, as one of my clients has done, what kinds of flowers you are allowed to receive. In that office, your loved ones can send you a white orchid. That’s it. But I am saying it’s important to choose carefully, cull frequently, and clean daily.

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In an effort to help you decide what stays and what goes, I have put together two lists: Remove Immediately and Keep Selectively. Given its urgency, let’s first look at those items I’d prefer you remove immediately.

Remove Immediately:

Keep Selectively:

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All this said, I do know that an office has to be worked in — and that worrying about keeping it pristine can, ultimately, detract from focusing on what you need to accomplish. For this reason, it can help to set aside fifteen minutes at the middle and end of each day to clear your desk/chairs/floor of any accumulated clutter. A principle applied by airlines and luxury bus lines, these intermittent sweeps help keep things from piling up.