Now, let’s turn our attention to the main space where you do writing: your desk.

The financial guru Dave Ramsey says that you must make your money behave. Why? Because our human nature is to let money get out of control.

The same is true for your desk. If you’re not careful, your desk can easily get out of control. Before you know it, your desk becomes a catch-all for mail, to-do lists, trinkets, pens, notebooks, your computer, and books to read.

I have a general rule that everything on my desk has to justify its existence. In other words, nothing goes on my desk unless it has a very good reason to be there. Every item on your desk is literally asking for your attention by virtue of its being there. So, if you want to clear your mind and free up mental space for writing, clean off your desk and put stuff away.

Some writers believe that a messy desk is a sign of brilliance or creative genius. It doesn’t mean any of those things. A messy desk just means that you’re disorganized.

When I taught college, one of my fellow professors had the messiest office I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen a lot of messy offices!). He had books piled all over the floor, and his desk looked like someone had literally taken a box of papers and dumped them all over the place.

I felt incredibly stressed just being in that environment. I had no idea how he concentrated or got any work done… much less found the papers he needed to grade!

When you’re cleaning your desk, don’t forget about the drawers. These can become black holes for all kinds of office supplies and junk. When cleaning out drawers, there are two important rules to follow:

1. The 6-month rule: If I haven’t used it in the last six months, and I probably won’t use it in the next 6 months, it needs to go.
2. The rule of two: You don’t need any more than two of an item. You don’t need 4 cheap plastic letter openers with insurance agents’ logos, you don’t need 85 dry-erase markers, and you don’t need those 4-gigabyte thumb drives from 2007… none of which probably work anyway.

Why do we keep stuff like this we don’t need? Because of fear. We’re afraid we will suddenly need 170 colored paper clips and they won’t be there. This comes from a scarcity mindset. Learn to let go of this clutter and junk that populates our desks and their drawers. It will free up a lot of mental space.

Your desk is a sacred space. If you’re a writer, your desk is your sanctuary. If you’re a person of faith, you wouldn’t walk into church and dump all the junk in your desk drawer onto the floor.

So, if you’re fulfilling your sacred calling as a writer, why would you treat your desk any differently? Come to your sanctuary each day with proper reverence and respect. Treat it like the holy place it is.

Today’s Challenge: Take ten minutes and clean off your desk. Organize your desk drawers and get rid of the junk. Use those extra letter openers to open all the checks that will be coming your way from your increased productivity and more mental space due to a clean desk!

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We all hang onto certain things longer than we should. I tend to hang onto cords, cables, technology, and sentimental items I no longer need. I’m the guy who still has Huey Lewis cassettes from 1985 in his closet… along with the broken Walkman to play them! I’ve always been a packrat.

The problem with being a packrat is that these items clutter your life… and your work area.

As I approach 50 in the next couple of years, I’m much less inclined to hang onto this stuff than I used to be. I’m downright ruthless these days when cleaning. I challenge you to go through your work area and get rid of any items that are no longer serving you.

For example, as I look around my office right now, I see several things that need to go. There’s a random stick of Chapstick on my bookcase someone gave me for Christmas. I never use Chapstick but I felt guilty throwing it away. I see a pencil sharpener I have used a grand total of one time.

I see a Kindle Paperwhite tablet that’s about 8 years old, and I never use it. I see a small drawstring bag that held a small gift. I thought I might use the bag but it’s sat on my shelf untouched for almost a year. I see a high-quality lanyard that has my old college’s logo on it. The lanyard held my college name tag, and I wore it around my neck every day for the last few years I worked there. I kept it for sentimental reasons, but there’s no reason for me to keep it.

You see a pattern here: I felt a tinge of guilt at the idea of throwing these items away. But here’s the problem with hanging onto things we don’t need anymore: each unwanted item contains just a bit of emotional energy that we could free up for things that are relevant to our lives right now.

I will either throw away each of these items or find a new home for them. You can probably identify lots of items in your work area also. Physical items are not neutral. Your relationship with those items either adds positive energy to your life because it’s helping you in some way now… or it’s draining your energy because you feel guilt for not removing it from your life.

As you can see, this exercise isn’t just about being “neat” and “organized.” It’s really about getting your emotional life in order. Writing requires a lot of emotional energy. If you can free up more energy by getting rid of random junk, knick-knacks, and other odds and ends from your physical space, you will have that much more energy to give to the things that matter to you.

Today’s Challenge: Take five minutes and get rid of random stuff in your work area. If you hesitate or feel ambivalent about keeping it, that’s a sign it should probably go.

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One of the perennial questions writers ask is, “Where do you get good ideas?” It’s a fair question because all of us have struggled with finding good ones for our writing.

The overriding feeling we have is that we need to do something more, or add some technique, in order to find great ideas. In fact, Stephen King wrote, “Let’s get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.”

So how do we put that into practice? It’s not a matter of doing something more, it’s actually a matter of doing something less. Less time on your phone, less commitments to things you don’t really want to do, less time watching mindless entertainment, less time filling every possible nook and cranny of your life with noise and distraction.

Recognizing good ideas is not a matter of addition, but subtraction. When you free up space in your mind, it’s much easier to recognize and cultivate those great ideas that are so critical to writers.

The post How to Recognize a Good Idea appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.