One of the most common factor contributing to building your image and impression on others, is invariably the sight of your workplace. It is perhaps the first thing that would strike any person interacting with you at your workplace. General neatness and an organizes workplace goes a long way in reflecting your personal effectiveness.

While you may have different kinds of workplaces, most can be effectively organized and made functional. Some may have a state of the art modular workstation, while others may just have a table and chair to work on. Whatever be the situation, you can always customize it. The objective is to have a workspace which is functional, convenient and which would provide small but important things within your reach when you need it and also have the frequently used items in place.

The following are some guidelines to create an organized workspace:

- Divide your soft board (if you have one) into functional areas for pinning up, say, project related charts, schedulers like planners, calendars, phone list, etc. and some space for putting up pictures, messages, etc.

- Remove unwanted pin-ups, old messages, etc. periodically

- Have a “Mail Bag” or “While i am out” boxes or envelopes pinned on the soft boxes or envelops pinned on the soft board for mails, messages etc. to be put in while you are away

- Have a “Today’s Schedule” pinned up and mention the place and phone number where you could be contacted during the day, in case you are out meeting clients

- Reserve one of the table drawers or a corner spaces for keeping items like stapler, pins, punching machine, scale, pencil, eraser, visiting cards, stick-on pad, etc.

- If a stapler is kept for use by a group of people at a common place, say, next to a printer, fasten it to a string to avoid it being misplaced

- Keep a bunch of unused printouts or recycled papers for taking down messages, scribbling, etc.