Organizing your workspace and your time can help reduce procrastination.

Space

If your workspace is cluttered and things are hard to locate, you will either spend mental energy remembering where things are or spend time and effort searching for them. This is as true for a digital workspace as it is for a physical one. An organized workspace frees time and mental energy to work on productive tasks.

• Clean and clear your workspace. Put all notes or reference material into its proper place. Process all the items in any paper or digital inbox and put them where needed.
• Improve your workspace so that everything you need is easy to access when you need them.
• Separate your workspace from your leisure space. Without that separation, you get conflicting cues each time you sit at your desk.
• If possible, separate your work computer from your home computer.

Time

The benefits of organization work for time as well as for space. If you plan out the tasks you need to do and the times you need to do them before you start working, you know exactly what you should be doing at any given time. If you don’t, you must decide what to do next whenever you finish a task or return from a break. This decision takes up mental energy and opens the door to procrastination. Making decisions on what to do when we are already tired makes it more likely we’ll choose to procrastinate.

You can organize your time by planning your day and using to-do lists. It can also help to eliminate distractions. If you find yourself constantly distracted by tasks, emails or documents that you need to deal with, it can help to create a backup memory system.