How to Organize your Desktop to Boost Productivity
I’m a little late getting in on the Productivity Tips submission at the Instigator Blog, but better late than never. 
When I was thinking of ways to be more productive, I didn’t want to dwell on the typical “meditate and visualize” advice. I wanted to come up with and share something unique. Not only that, but I wanted to be as specific as possible. So, I decided to focus on computer work, since I love doing anything on the computer.
The Desktop
First of all, most people completely waste their desktop. There are neat little widgets and gadgets that you can put on it, and those can be helpful in some ways I suppose. I used to have the “Konfabulator Widgets” on my desktop before they were “Yahoo Widgets”. Anyway, when I’m sitting at the computer, the only time I minimize my windows and actually see the desktop is when I’m looking for something…….whether it be an application icon or a file. No matter how nice the photo I’m using, I really don’t look at it that much. This is the typical Windows XP desktop:
Why waste all that space on some picture you never really look at, and keep all your files in your Documents folder? Why not make everything more accessible? OK, maybe not everything, but the files and apps that you use most often. I’ve come up with a solution for this that makes everything much easier and quicker to get to. To my knowledge, this idea is original…….
How do you separate everything out like that? Well, I just created an image, using my favorite photo editor, for my desktop and separated it in six color-coded sections. Then I labeled each section with text. The image should be the same size as the screen resolution you use on your desktop. My screen resolution is set at 1280 x 1024, so that’s the size of my desktop image. Once the image is made and is set as your desktop background, just drag the icons and files on your desktop to the section you want them in.
So what are your best productivity tips? This is a meme that may actually give some great advice. Ben has already had well over 100 submissions on this project, so there are some great tips. Check it out at the Instigator Blog.
**Update: Here is a variation that may be a little easier on the eye. The point is to make a background image that works for you! I’m now offering several variations of these backgrounds for download if you don’t want to make your own!
What a great idea. Keep it up.
Brilliant idea. So simple but what a good point. Keep them coming!
Haha … I’ve got the same bg pic! I got it from Microsoft NZ or Australia when I was browsing around one time.
That’s a pretty smart idea for organizing your desktop with the bg image.
Thanks guys! Ben Yoskovitz from Instigator Blog really liked it too…..he submitted it to Digg for me!
How cool is that?
[…] Anthony of Antbag.com has written a wonderful piece on how to organise your desktop for productivity. […]
[…] How To Organize Your Desktop to Boost Productivity by Anthony […]
you should create a few of these that people could download for different resolutions for folks who can’t put this together themselves. that would be cool and probably bring you some more traffic.
AgentSully - You know, that very thought actually crossed my mind. Since you had the same thought, I think I may just do that! Thanks!
Let me know if you do!
I just love your idea of desktop arrangement, I believe there’s something in the air right now, - I’ve also described a desktop arrangement for increased productivity, over on my blog - http://www.hacktheday.com/turn-your-desktop-into-a-productivity-tool/ . Unlike you, though, my choice is towards minimalism - only having folders/shortcuts to folders, on the desktop, for easy dropping of my downloaded files.
What do you think?
Alex - very nice!
Hi there! Great idea and a fantastic topic - thanks! Just to bring some counter balance to the comments
I’d like to add that for me personally less is more, even with the desktop… the color-coded sections look really good I admit but I’m slightly taken back with this productivity hype.. Maybe it comes down to what your work is all about really? I’m much more “productive” with only the very few key files on my desktop and I prefer an interesting photo take over the space and I keep changing that photo quite often 
Cheers!
Yeah, It may not work for everybody. It just hit me that I, personally, never really spent time looking at my desktop photo, so decided to try and do something a little different…..not just for the sake of “productivity”, but just to make my stuff less clicks away. Anyway, thanks for the comment!
For someone who doesn’t know how to create this effect, how exactly does one going about doing it? It’s a great idea but I have no idea how to proceed.
Hi Jeanene,
I’ve just today put some of these backgrounds up for download right here. Just pick out the one you want and download the zip file. Once you download, just unzip it and choose the correct size that corresponds with your screen resolution, and set it as your background! It’s pretty simple.
Once you set it as your desktop background, you just arrange your desktop however you want by dragging your icons to whichever section you want them in.
Thank you - the downloads are great! However, I feel dumb because I still can’t arrange the icons in sections. Now I just have a new background but the icons still stay in a bunch over on the left hand side of the screen. If I drag them to one of the “sections” they just bounce back. How do you actually make the icons stay in the sections?
Jeanene,
What you do is “right-click” anywhere on your desktop and go to “Arrange Icons By”. This will give you a drop down menu, which will give you several options. There are two options which you want to make sure do not have a check-mark by them - “Auto Arrange” and “Lock Items”. Make sure those aren’t checked, and you should be able to drag your Icons around wherever you want them. Hope that helps. If you have any more trouble, let me know.
Learn something new every day! Thanks very much. Works like a charm.
Cool! I’m glad you got it working.
[…] How To Organize Your Desktop to Boost Productivity by Anthony […]
[…] How To Organize Your Desktop to Boost Productivity by Anthony […]
[…] has a different approach on How to Organize your Desktop to Boost Productivity. Ideas: simple wallpapers that identify colored “zones” according to the type of the […]
Thank you!
This is a great idea! I’m actually looking for a program that kind of does the same thing but scrolls up out-of-sight when not called for (e.g. a tab on the page?) because then it doesn’t obstruct the view of my pretty background. So far, no luck, but this is a great alternative! 
Oh neuuu! The downloads don’t seem to be working for me >__
Hey Mosey, I’ve got my download links updated now…….so sorry!
Hi Anthony: Thank you for fixing the download links so quickly!
Yay!
Hey Anthony u are the man! Such a brilliant thought. I am proud of you, you know. And how wonderful is that u create those wallpapers for free. For free, that’s great man. Sure it was AgentSully ideas but incredible smart as you proved u are, you realized that u had the same idea in the same time with him, or even little bit earlier. I bet u can sell this idea to Microsoft® and they can create, for their next brilliant release of Windows®, some of these wallpapers and in the right-down corner it will be, with a very artistic effect, written “Anthony”. Now tell me, how cool is that?
Thanks you again for the free download and keep up the good work! I’ll keep an eye on you to see what goodies u’ll bring up in the future.
This is a great idea. You have to do a little hack in regedit to add a save and restore icon arrangement feature to make the most of it, otherwise you end up with autoarrange undoing all your hard work.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,600479,00.asp
and the actual download
http://www.pcnineoneone.com/tweaks/layout.zip
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Thanks David. I haven’t had any problems with that so far, but thanks for the links.
Icon Restore does the same thing as well
I’m using it with XP (Home) without any problems.
http://users.rcn.com/taylotr/icon_restore.html
[…] How To Organize Your Desktop to Boost Productivity by Anthony […]
This is certainly worth trying. I just have to figure out what I’m willing to put out there for all to see. Lots of people visit my computer! Thanks for a great idea.
Anthony,
Thats an awesome post. Great duude !
Nice Orgainzation, Itried it out but it only works when use it. Here’s a link to a screenshot of my desktop. The reflections of my most often used icons reminds me where they belong and reminds me to put them there.
http://wcb1.com/MyDesktop.jpg
Debbie, I keep a HTML file in My Documents with local links to frequently used files I don’t wish to keep on my desktop for all the world to see.
Thanks for that tip, Bill…how do you do that?
About the desktop stuff; I paste the directory location of my files in a html file kind of like this
C:\Documents and Settings\customer\My Documents\wcb1.com\files\hidden
it is the handiest way for me to remember where I put stuff, and I can copy and paste it in the address bar of any open directory to get there. It’s a screwery way to do it but for me I’d never find anything without it.
I had this idea many years ago, and developed quite a few wallpapers experimenting with the concept. Meanwhile, I’ve been trolling the internet trying to find out if anyone else had done this too. I couldn’t believe that this wasn’t a common idea, and was thinking of coming out with a website devoted to bringing out these wallpapers.
As far as choosing between pretty pictures and organization, there really isn’t a need to choose. With photoshop, I can very quickly turned pretty pictures into Desktop organizers, and can explore geometric figures and desktop “real estate” using layer effects and filters.
When I get my broken web page up and running, I’ll start posting examples. For now, if you would like to post one or two, get back to me and I could email them.