The Desk ought to be a wonderfully powerful productivity engine. It is the most common office standard. Whether Executive corner office or lowly boiler room cubicle, nearly every white collar workplace, and most blue collar places, have a desk of some sort. Unfortunately, the desk fails to live up to its promise. It seems to promote the appearance of work much more than it promotes the actual accomplishment of tasks.
In a world of cellphones that do much more than just allow us to talk on the phone, and laptops with wireless connections, I’m starting to wonder if it’s time to kick my desk to the curb. Here’s why:
- Well, that would certainly make things more interesting.
Nothing good ever happens here. No decision is made, no process is created or improved, no issue is addressed, nothing is built or designed right here. Consequently, I don’t really know what all those tings I just mentioned actually look like. I might get a lot of emails telling me about it, but I never get to experience things as they happen.
The scenery never changes. Unless I put my desk on the back of a trailer and get someone to drive me around, I’m pretty much staring at the same thing day in, day out. That lack of stimulation leads to a lot of mental stagnation.
It’s a paper magnet. If Parkinson’s law is correct and work expands to fill the time available, then we ought to create a corollary: Paperwork expands to fill the desk space available. If there’s a flat surface sitting still someplace, the reams of paper will find it, one sheet at a time. The same goes for bookcases and binders.
It is not unique. My desk has very little personality. It’s the same as just about every other desk, everywhere. It doesn’t really reflect anything about me or my work, it’s just a big box with a notch cut into it for my legs. If it wasn’t pushed up against a wall, I could at least wear clown shoes so that people who come to see me would have something interesting to look at.
It is a barrier. If people want to talk to me, there’s this big box in the way. It separates them from me, and creates a very strong statement about who belongs where. We don’t carry such things around when we want to talk to people casually and comfortably, so why do we have to have this thing here? More things get accomplished by talking in the hallway where we don’t have this desk to keep each other at a distance.
It is an anchor. This is where my phone rings, my mail is delivered, my assigned assets are stored. Since I have a desk, I am expected to use it. It is my “home base.” It’s very existence requires that I sit still for long periods of time. If I didn’t have the desk, I’d be expected to move around, see more, interact more and understand more. I suppose I could just take my desk with me, however, it’s rather heavy to haul around.
I can’t throw it. Both tangible and intangible things are often made better when they can are made smaller and can be easily moved around. Making something permanent tends to lead to behaviors that embrace the obstacle, simply because it was made permanent. My personal test: If I can pick it up and throw it, it’s the right size. My desk is too heavy for me to throw, so I either need to eliminate it, invest in space-age materials that make it light as a feather, or grow my muscles. One of those solutions is easy, the others are very hard and time consuming.
