People end up with a bunch of systems after a while, one conflicting with another, namely a system for emails, a system for research, a system for organizing paper, a system for organizing a week. Suddenly we face a clutter of systems.

What we need is not a quiver full of systems but a culture. A culture of organizing and staying organized. My industrial engineering background introduced me to the world of 5S. It is a Japanese culture marketed as a system. I introduced it in a manufacturing environment and was met with exponential success.

Bogged down by numerous co-worker derived systems of email and file management and Franklin Covey’s task management, I was facing a clutter at my office desk that may have looked organized to the untrained eye. That till I did a 5S sweep at my desk.

The five steps of 5S are:

• Seiri (Sorting)
• Seiton (Set in Order)
• Seiso (Sweeping/cleaning)
• Seiketsu (Standardizing)
• Shitsuke (Sustaining)

This creates a culture of clutter free productive work. After almost two years of implementing 5S, my desk is free of stuff I don’t use everyday, my PC desktop is clean of all but the three necessary icons, my documents folder is organized, my inbox is always clean, I still don’t take more than 2 hours to respond to an email etc.

In the course of the next few weeks, I will write about individual steps I took to clean up my work place. Hang Tight!