Office Tips For Attracting Success

In recognition of Organize Your Home Office Day on March 11, Jen Sala shares her expertise and tips about how to do just that.

By: Jennifer Sala 

If you want to attract success, you need to create an organized environment so that it feels like a place where a successful person works.

Flow – Visualize yourself walking into your office. What is between the threshold and your chair? Do you have to step over a dog bed, walk around a pile of document boxes, and remind yourself not to trip over the shredder cord? You’ve got a veritable obstacle course between you and your success.

Life doesn’t need to be hard, and success doesn’t either. Create an energy of flow and ease as you move through your space by taking time to consider places where you find hitches and snags as you work. Fix it.

With time, you’ll notice once how much easier life feels. Cleaning this space up will help you set the tone for success and lower your baseline stress level starting the moment you walk into your office.

Clutter – Similarly, piles of clutter and chaos will create more chaos. You’re allowing yourself to lose control and setting that precedence in your life. Your brain is constantly getting the message that you are out of control, overwhelmed, and backlogged and to expect more of that. In turn, you allow that to be your reality. The mind is a powerful thing. It receives information and creates reality around that input.

You also are likely losing things and wasting as much time to find stuff as it would take you to simply clean it up.   

The bottom line is that you don’t need to fumble and struggle your way through the day or leave behind unfinished business every day.

A good rule of thumb is to make sure you don’t leave any work on your desk at night. When you’re done at the end of the day you put everything away in its home and tidy up. That way, when you start your day you feel organized, in control, and can focus on the task at hand without the distraction of everything else. Have designated places for absolutely everything and keep it orderly. Put things that are new or in-progress somewhere easily accessible and noticeable so they don’t get lost in the shuffle. When things are done, put them away and take a moment to pat yourself on the back for one more small victory on the path to success.

This idea is in line with the 80/20 rule. 80% of your results come from 20% of what you do. 80% of what you do only leads to 20% of your results. Add tidying, filing, and organizing to the list of things you only spend 20% of your time doing and see an 80% return on productivity, efficiency, and creativity.

Position – The biggest mistake I see in offices is the position of the desk. Organization truly begins with where you put yourself, so if you only take one piece of advice from this article let it be this – move your desk.

Think of the office of any powerful executive you’ve ever seen, or even the Oval Office. The desk is facing the door. Not a wall. Not a window. The door. There are a few reasons for this including that you are less able to focus, feel less safe and secure, and are less able to open your mind to ideas and opportunities if your range of perception of the world around you becomes limited for prolonged periods every day.

In fact, within minutes of sitting at a desk and facing a wall people begin to have stress markers, which aren’t inherently bad if it helps you solve a problem, but as it escalates it can inevitably become conducive to anxiety and all that comes with it. This makes sense because you can’t see if someone is coming up behind you and for many that in itself can ba stressful.

Conversely, when folks sit in the so-called power position facing a door they tend to be calm, strategic, and creative. Sitting where you can see the door and have your back to the wall helps you to feel more empowered, in control, safe, and aware. You will be able to take heed when people are coming into your realm both literally and figuratively.

Visuals – Consider for a moment what you can see from your desk. People have all kinds of funny things holed away in the corners of their office that do them no good. There’s no need to indefinitely display the box your printer came in six months ago. Recycle that thing or use it to store some unimportant or old things you don’t need in your way as you strive to tidy. Remember that piles of unorganized or un-filed paperwork send the wrong ideas.

Instead, really think about your goals and what you do want to look at. Maybe you’ve never been to Spain and would love to go. You’re going to need some success to get there, so remind yourself while you’re working toward the goal by hanging a picture of your dream destination. If there is an accolade of some sort, say the Nobel Peace Prize, that you’re after. Find a picture or recreation of the real deal and put it where you can see it. Hang pictures of someone in your field that you look up to. If you want to be internationally known, get a globe.

By replacing clutter and messes with things that symbolize whatever success means to you, you are creating a space where you can focus on your goals uninhibitedly. You are reminded why you do what you do so that you can see the bigger picture of your life unfolding rather than being stuck on the surface of the day-to-day.

All of this comes down to training your brain. Successful people work hard, but if you aren’t where you want to be I assure you it’s probably not because you aren’t working hard enough or aren’t good enough. It’s probably just that your environment is sending the wrong messages or mixed messages to your brain and creating a wonky, likely distressed, energy in your space so your mind and body can’t work in alignment with your goals.

About Jennifer Sala

Jennifer Sala is a former ghostwriter turned interior designer and feng shui consultant. She is involved in a multitude of arts and culture organizations and leadership roles around Ellsworth and Hancock County. Learn more about feng shui and Jen’s services at https://www.revivalinteriorsmaine.com/informed-by-feng-shui.