Take a day or two to clean up whatever is cluttering your work area. OK, so you have always had a messy work area, but don't you have days where you’ve said to yourself that you can’t take it anymore, that it’s a drain on you mentally and you want to clean it up. But it’s pretty out of control, so where do you start?
 
Take a look around and decide what doesn’t permanently belong in your work area. If it doesn’t belong, then it belongs in your inbox, because you’re going to have to apply some action to it to deal with it. A good way to go about making all these decisions is to decide what definitely does not go into the inbox. In other words, you don’t have to do anything with them, you don’t have to process them, but you need or want them in your workspace.
 
Try categorizing each item into one of the following four areas, if it doesn’t go into one of them, then it goes in the inbox.

Supplies-These are things you need on a regular basis.You know, pens, paper, paper clips, etc. You may also have personal supplies, Kleenex, dental floss, etc.

Reference material-Anything you need to keep around to look up information from falls into this category.
 
Decoration-pictures, artwork, something meant for inspiration.

Equipment-Phone, computer, wastebasket, etc. If you need to update anything to make it the way it should be, that item also goes into your inbox.

Once the big stuff is cleared up, congratulate yourself for a job well done!