This is part one of a five part series on how to clean up, prettify and streamline the usage of your desktop. You can also start with the introduction.

We’ll assume you’re starting out with a messy desktop. If this is not the case, congratulations and you can skip this step after doing a little dance of exultation. Extra credit if you film and submit the dance with a shot of your desktop.

I’ve mentioned that there are two basic reasons that your desktop becomes cluttered:

  1. user bad habits (not filing things right away, believing that they will clean up later)
  2. application bad habits (e.g. browsers using the desktop as a dumping ground for everything by default)

The desktop is just one big box. We get tricked into thinking it is somehow different from the rest of the folders on the computer by the fact that it’s in front of us all the time but, just like any other folder, it’s a bad idea to just dump everything you have into it without structure.

So we have an undifferentiated mass of stuff on the desktop. This is the point at which a lot of organization self-help tells you to sort through it file by file. I am not going to tell you this. Why? Because I am lazy and realistic. You are just not going to clean up your desktop right now. Why? It’s overwhelming. So we’ll use a trick I call the “No Mercy Cleanup”:

The No-Mercy Cleanup

  1. Get rid of your hard disks, CDs, and network shares. you can bring these back later, but for now we want an empty desktop.
  2. Make a folder called “To Delete on Monday March 7” (using a date one week from today)
  3. Select all items on your desktop (Command-A), command-click unselecting the “To Delete” folder.
  4. Drag and drop everything on your desktop into this new folder.
  5. Brush hands together, lean back, bask in the glory of your new clean desktop.

“But! I have! stuff! I need! in there!” I hear you say with too many exclamation points. Yes, you do. You are going to delete it in a week. So between now and one week from now, what do you do?

  • Every time you really need something from that folder…
  • You are going to go in to the “To Delete” folder…
  • and re-file it to your main document storage folder

You must not just open the file from that folder. You must not just drag it back onto the desktop. You must file it in your long term documents storage (e.g. your documents folder). Then…

  • At the end of one week, hold a ceremony with incense and delete anything that remains.

Ok, I’ll admit that the No-Mercy Cleanup is a bit harsh. I’ve done it myself with no regrets (and no actual incense) but before actually deleting that folder you may want to:

  • Go through and scan for documents you wish to re-file into your main documents storage and do so
  • Burn the “to delete” folder to a CD and then delete it
  • Save it to an archived directory (I don’t like this because it is just moving the mess…)

Regardless of which of these steps you take, by no means should you just leave that folder on your desktop!

The key to making this all work is, counter to generally agreed upon good GTD practice, to not triage the old desktop items now. By making the to-delete folder, you are giving yourself a week to see what you really need from it. And the answer will probably be: not much.

Finally, here’s a screencast of the process:

Kinkless Desktop Part 1 - No Mercy - Screencast

Continue with Part 2. Fight Desktop Entropy