Cleaning: An organized way to achieve your goals

Whatever work you are doing will make you feel perpetually swamped, whether you are engaged as an entrepreneur, own a business, or work as a freelancer. However, working from home or working from a location, the work pressure is almost the same. As a result, the work pressure and the monotonous routine most likely would make you feel drab. 

Your daily monotone routine:

You might feel a bit damp and exhausted after the prolonged time and days of working. An entrepreneur, a business owner, a freelancer, or a full-time employee - you have to go through everyday pressure, which is full of essential tasks, including meeting deadlines, going through significant projects, and even running personal errands in-between. 

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The never-ending to-do list:

Now, no matter what your job profile says, you cannot put off all of your household chores or errands. Certain things are more like a necessity to you for your day-to-day life. You start from one corner and realize that it is just the initiation of your never-ending to-do list, and you feel exhausted even before you have created it. 

Start with minor improvements:

So, to make minor improvements, you can start with your work, and it is evident that your working desk is a mess. It can be tiring when you think about the long list of tasks you must complete after completing your office work. You need to start somewhere and get going with it as you have no time to waste. It would be best if you remembered that every situation is unique. 

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Getting on with the most basic task:

Various factors might play a significant role in how you start to organize your day. Firstly you need to form a timetable and follow a specific routine. However, there is a scientific argument behind going along with one of these tasks before you start with the others, namely, cleaning. Yes, you heard it right, cleaning has the most possibilities to be the detested work among all the list of tasks you could do in a day. 

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Start with cleaning first:

So, it would be best if you started by cleaning your desk. Your working desk gets on with the most trash from you in a day. So, it would be best if you started by cleaning your desk. Your mind is a place that might remain foggy until you start your day by cleaning your desk. If you initially think of cleaning your room, you might feel lethargic, so starting with your desk will give your mind the notion that you are starting small.

Your desk should come first:

So, to start your day on a positive note, you need to clean up your desk, whether in your office, a place beside your closet, or your study room. It would be best if you started working out by cleaning all the trash out of your desk. Few know that, but cleaning is a mysterious yet straightforward way to enhance your emotional intelligence. Cleaning has a direct connection with your ability to understand and manage emotions. 

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The emotional connection with cleaning:

Now, please do not confuse cleaning your desk with getting compulsive about cleaning anything in front of you. Cleaning directly connects with your emotional and mental health and helps your brain better organize things. Just like you keep your files in a specific folder on your personal computer so that it becomes easy to find in time of need, cleaning your desk helps your brain to organize and physically find those things you need on time.

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The long list of benefits:

The scientific case for cleaning up has a long list of mental benefits, which include mental healing and starting the day on a fresh note. According to recent psychologists and therapists, cleaning plays a pioneering role in my mental health growth. Nature is itself disordered, and the diversity of the disorder lies in beauty. 

Remove the obstacles from your life:

A famous quote states, "Landscapes cluttered by obstacles produce negative emotion." Natural landscapes are beautiful, but those uneven landscapes might vibrate negative thoughts and feelings if they enter our home. The tiny clutters in your workspace are enough to create obstacles in your mind. 

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Start from your home:

The superintendent instructs even a prisoner serving a long sentence to maintain their cell and clean their space. Cleaning your space keeps you mentally calm, peaceful, and even healthy. It’s more like keeping every obstacle in your way will make your upcoming tasks and life more complicated if you think and motivate yourself to accomplish something. 

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Find your purpose through cleaning:

We all have a purpose for filling in our lives, and the first purpose is to clean your room; that is the first obstacle you should start with every day. Sometimes cleaning your area helps you get your life in order. A person’s life sometimes comes in order with the right set of cleaning and organizing things. Start cleaning your personal space if you want to take the first step in getting your day in order.

The psychological effect of cleaning:

Science says that cleaning up a cluttered space and getting things organized are so practical that they can psychologically make you feel that you have successfully removed every obstacle out of your way. Cleaning and eliminating barriers help you to think more clearly and discretely. It also allows you to take life’s important decisions in a much more organized manner. 

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The additional benefits of cleaning:

There are additional benefits added to cleaning. Never consider cleaning and organizing a meager job as it is the greatest of all accomplishments with which you can start your day afresh. Moreover, cleaning gives you the self-confidence and sheer motivation you can easily carry forward when you start your day—a person who is cleaning leads themselves to higher emotional well-being.

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Mental and emotional growth:

Multiple scientific pieces of research have found that cleaning has led to mental and emotional growth. Various studies have been done on cleaning and experimenting with a group of subjects. The scientists monetized these groups of subjects through techniques like brain imaging. The scientists at Princeton University demonstrated at a conference that a person's visual cortex becomes overwhelmed and clogged by the clutter in front of their eyes. 

Extensive cleaning brings in productivity:

The clutters in actual life act as various obstacles, which makes bringing in focus for work very difficult. Scientists had placed evidence that showed that when the group of participants went on with their extensive cleaning and uncluttered their work environment, their brain functioning automatically changed. The scientists jotted down the behaviors of these participants and saw that they were less irritable and less distracted, and overall their productivity increased over time.

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Clutter forms procrastination:

Scientists have put various subjects to various measures of cluttered spaces and have seen that it has interfered with their strong quality of life. Another study by DePaul University's psychology department reflected the same results from their groups of subjects. The scientists found that the members found the clutter a significant obstacle in reaching their goals so much that the chaos was the best predictor and reason for the formation of procrastination.

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Cleaning is correlated to motivation:

Cleaning and keeping things tidy are vital in maintaining the mental growth and strength of understanding things. A cluttered room can demotivate a person to work any longer in front of a digital screen. Sometimes, it can also make the person feel despair and reclusive to any form of response towards a given task or an important project.

Cluttered space increases stress:

It was back in 2009 that some psychologists at UCLA did find that a group of subjects who felt that their homes and workplace were very much cluttered went through troubling experiences and even felt an increased level of depression. These psychologists have also measured them to have increased stress hormone cortisol levels in cluttered work environments. 

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Adverse health effects:

These researchers even said these chaotic environments could lead to adverse health conditions. There you can go with tidying yourself up as it can positively influence your thought patterns, and even your emotions, along with your decision-making capabilities. Cleaning and tidying up help form the significant learnings of life, but you need to go with baby steps.

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Firstly start small:

If you are new to this game of cleaning and organizing, then go for small tasks. Start every day by just taking a few minutes to organize your desk space. Don’t think about cleaning your whole room at first, or else you will feel like walking through a scorching desert. So, the start should be small portions; it is also better if you clean your room after your day of work ends; like shutting down your system, you can take a duster and clean the space near your work. 

Go for small tasks:

You can keep a duster handy to make it easy to do the cleaning task every day after work ends. Permanently remove food plates, dinner plates, or coffee cups from your table so that it does not seem used repeatedly. If you work on flexible times, keep a scheduler to remind yourself to clean your desk after finishing your daily projects. This one decision at the end of the day will make you start the next day fresh. 

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Clean your computer system

A new desk with a fresh mind is always the best place to focus on your work. If possible, do the same for your bed and your computer desktop. Clean your desktop and keyboard with some spirit solution and wipe it to keep yourself hygienic. This cleaning will make you feel fresh, and your mind will restart every morning when you sit in front of your system. Once you are done cleaning, take as much time as you want to do your work at your office or home. 

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Go for simple tasks of cleaning:

Do not procrastinate; if possible, keep a daily reminder to clean your space. Sometimes you might have a bad day, and taking on a more important job, like organizing your room in your office or even cleaning your workspace at your house, may make you feel overwhelmed. So always start small and only go with those pieces you can handle on the first go. For example, you are keeping your books in stacks on your desk and putting back the pen and pencil on the stand beside your piles of books. 

Go cleaning one by one:

Always start with simple and easy tasks; for example, focus on the parts of the work areas you use the most. Do not go for something too big for you to handle at one time. If you find your room a mess, go for the desks, the bed, and the side tables one by one. Refill your water bottle and keep it beside your table and check with your bed sheets whether they are clean or not.

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Use the five-minute rule:

Starting small can also make you feel tired and exhausted at first so use the five-minute rule to get going with a tiny task at a time. If you find it difficult, then promise yourself that you will do this cleaning for just five minutes every day and then quit if you feel like not doing it. Do not stress yourself, as you won’t be reaching your primary goal on the first day itself. 

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Make yourself the promise:

Mind a tricky place, and you must play along to make it work your way. A five-minute task is a psychological device that makes your mind believe that it is just around the corner, so you will get into that headspace of getting started with cleaning. Two minutes before work felt like climbing Mount Everest, which will 

change into an easy task with one single promise to yourself. 

The rule is effective in the long term:

A mind is a funny place; if you give it a small time limit for monotonous tasks, it gets over excited to complete them as soon as possible. Saying yourselves that you will contribute only five minutes to cleaning will make the study look manageable. Researchers have found that this five-mind rule excites the mind so much that it often leads the person to get many more jobs done than they had anticipated when they started.

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Maintain a clear schedule:

Well, repetition of the same statement - maintain a schedule. There is a thin borderline between getting organized and staying organized over time. Consistency is the second challenge here; if you can be consistent with your cleaning every day, then it becomes easy to form a pattern of mental stability and development.

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Without a schedule, it isn’t effortless:

If you notice, in prison, in school, in college, in a hostel, in boardings, in the military, in the navy, or the airforce, they maintain a schedule to keep on with their daily routine. This maintenance plan helps them understand things better in life and work. A person without a program is like someone walking down a path but does not know where the destination is.

A particular routine for longterm:

So you need to schedule a time to organize your stuff and maintain it daily. Planning your time of cleaning will help you to form a pattern. You will find that cleaning for just ten to fifteen minutes a day will create magic in your life and increase your overall productivity and mental health. It would help if you got into a particular routine to make things work for you in the long run. 

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It makes it easier for you:

If you are into this daily maintenance of your schedule, it will make your cleanup process much more accessible and more manageable. If you maintain the same five to seven minutes of cleaning daily, time will not suddenly challenge you with a massive cleaning project. So, do not go for a vast project; instead, note down the time in your log book you have to spend on your cleaning. 

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Maintain the schedule accordingly:

It would help if you gave your mind the comfort of starting small and without a schedule one day; all of this cleaning the clutter might seem too overwhelming and exhausting to create all of a sudden. So, maintain a schedule where you can jot down the exact time you are spending daily on cleaning stuff in your room. Moreover, you could find a pattern and, even if possible, customize your timing according to your work schedule. 

Do not make cleaning a tedious task:

It is recommended for teams and organizations, from Bond Business School Professor Libby Sander, to establish a routine of a spring cleaning day for departments or groups. When you start small and schedule your cleaning task, add a little spice to it. Put on some music when you begin cleaning or sipping tea to give you the energy and enthusiasm to work while satiating your thirst. After completing the tasks, treat yourself to pizza.

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Cleaning is socially helpful:

These types of tasks will help form an organized community. According to Professor Libby Sander, "one can create social interaction and support around a task most people don't enjoy." One should not feel monotone to complete the cleaning task, so enjoying them in groups is one of the best ways to break the monotony. Professor Libby Sanders also recommends a clean-desk policy which will help to maintain a shared workspace tidiness. 

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Set up a clean-desk policy:

However, if you prefer to be on your own, you can also use the same policy for yourself, or if you are the head of your team at work, then you can apply the policy to them, and if you prefer to use it at your home, you can use this policy including your family. An organized desk getting maintained every day with or without a team’s help might go on to be the best in your life and accomplish your goals steadily. 

Choose which suits you best:

There are various options, so choose and do what you can to improve your future, but take one step at a time. Each action you do, each choice you make, and every step you take is getting your efforts forward. Remember, if you are moving forward, that is progress, and you can be proud of it. Do not aim high; start from little tasks and go on to achieve the most.

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Organize your space:

You might feel anxious some days and despair on others; if so, find an effective way to beat your overwhelming feeling. You can take a few minutes any time of the day and organize your space. Being diligent and consistent will even make monotonous work appear acceptable and achievable.

Keep your mind in discipline:

It is typical science - the less cluttered your working desk is, the less dirty your mind is. Every time you are cleaning and organizing and maintaining it, you are removing all the obstacles on your way. Not only that, but you also end up removing the negative emotions in your life. You are keeping your life organized and putting your mind in a positive state. In turn, you are preparing yourself in a better state of mind to handle the upcoming hurdles.