Desktop Zero - 4 compelling reasons to make this a good habit

Yes, this is mine. No I did not cheat, well maybe one folder... 

You don't need me to tell you that your environment affects your productivity. Since a great deal of our work is now done with a screen, it stands to reason that your desktop environment can play an important role in your productivity. Seriously can you really look me in the monitor and tell me that you'd rather work on a desktop that looks like, this?

Messy Desktop by RuthOrtiz

Five Reasons to Change

There are plenty of reasons for making the effort to aim for 'desktop zero':

It is Irresponsible. 

Desktop etiquette - every teacher is a role model, and as a teacher, every time you share your desktop with your students, you demonstrate to them the kinds of organisational and work habits you expect them to imitate. As it happens, one of the essential elements of our UWCSEA Profile, is self management, specifically:

Take responsibility for directing one's learning.
Related concepts: metacognition, independence, perseverance, diligence, organisation, responsibility
Aspects of being a self-manager:

• use metacognitive skills to define learning goals, monitor progress, reflect and adjust their approach to improve learning

• independently and safely work towards a goal without direct oversight

• organise and manage time and resources

Everytime we share a cluttered desktop with a class, or even with parents, we effectively also share our inability to self manage, our lack of organisation, perseverance, diligence, need I go on? The biggest problem is that all of these behaviours are built on bad habits, but these are bad habits I see teachers (and parents) passing on to their children every day.

It is Insecure.

Ironically one of the most common reasons I hear for storing files on the desktop, is their critical importance, 'those are files I need, and I can't afford to lose them...' Really? Because unless you are in the habit of fastidiously backing up your Mac with Time Machine, like every day (in which case you are probably already at Desktop Zero, or close enough), you run the risk of losing it all, one hard drive failure, and that's it, all gone. Desktop files, are the most common space/place where data is lost in my experience. If those files had been placed in a Google Drive folder (or DropBox) then they would have been safe. literally every edit, backed up, in real time—but nothing on your desktop (and your students, if they're imitating you) is being backed up to the cloud, nothing.

Top Tip -  on the Mac, you can create an Alias (right click, or command+option drag and drop) from any 'buried' folder/file so there is a shortcut or alias of it on the desktop, it acts just like the real thing (the parent folder) but with the advantage that it's really ensconced safely within a cloud backed up folder. 

It is Inefficient.

Your computer's desktop is a starting point for your entire computing experience, but—like anything else—if you let it get cluttered your productivity will take a dive, and your stress levels will rise; few things are as frustrating as you or our students not being able to find that file exactly when you/they need it, especially if that entails creating it again... and again... Next time you save a file to the desktop, wouldn't it be nice to be able to find it immediately, and not have to engage in an insanity inducing file hunting game of 'Where's Wally'.

Clean-desk-high-productivity-toblender.com [modified]

It literally impedes

Because of the way OS X's GUI (graphical user interface) works, the icons on your desktop take up a lot more of your resources than you may realise... Just remember that every single icon on your desktop is actually a small transparent window with graphics (the icon) inside, so if you have, say, 100 icons on your desktop you have 100 windows open, each one stealing memory. And no, dumping them all in folder doesn't really help much, the fact that there is 2764 files in ONE folder, still means that OS X will still have trouble handling one folder with that many files in it..

Computer Desktop & Table Desktop

When we work with students on this, we are attempting to inculcate good habits, habits that will last a lifetime, one such habit is to work from desktop zero, an analogy we find helpful is for them to treat their computer desktop the same as they treat their table desktop in their classroom, as busy as it can get in the course of a normal working day, every day before they go home they are expected to return that space to what is effectively desktop zero 'IRL' (in real life). Everything gets put in it's right place, whether they have finished with that project or not, it goes in the appropriate folder. The difference being with computers being that you can actually work in files while they are in the folder, there's no need to take it out, and so need to put it back, this is why Desktop zero on a computer is easier than desktop IRL. In the same way when you place a folder in the appropriate folder (in Google Drive in the Finder) you can leave it there, and work on it while it is in there.

So, with this in mind, you shift your conception of the role of the desktop, the desktop becomes a temporary, easy to locate, grab, upload, rename "I need it in ten minutes or so" dumping ground. I only use my desktop as a temporary holding place for files I'm working with. Nothing remains there past the end of the day.

Cluttered desk via abcnews.com (Getty Images)

Upgrade Your Workflow

In actual fact the desktop is a folder, it's just a folder that you start from, and while it can function as a storage folder, as so many people have unfortunately proven, that is not its purpose. It was only created as an allegory so people would have something analog to relate the new digital experience to, just like the trash can in the corner‚we don't really keep tiny trash cans on the corner of our table tops, but it functions as an approximate analogy. And like most analogies, it has it's limits. One way forward is to start working the way you do when you use an iPad or similar device. 

New OSes like iOS and Android have thankfully ditched the "file icon sandbox" idea. The only things you are presented with when you look at your device is a launchpad for apps and services. Your data is invisible and agnostic and available only when you are in a program that knows how to display or use it, and you know what? It works just fine, no desktop, no clutter. 

Become more app oriented and less file oriented

In iOS, if you're working on a file, you start by opening the App, then you locate the file from within that App, well the exact same method works on the desktop. Working on a Word document? Don't look for the file first, open Word, then you will easily find any recent files in the recent files view. All you need to is drop down the menu bar 2 spaces from Open, to Open Recent—there that's not so hard is it?

Open Recent, don't just Open.

You will find the same feature in any application you use. Trust me. These are conventions that are cross-platform, that means you will be able to take advantage of this workflow no matter what computer or platform you ever use. Invest in this skill now, and you will reap the rewards for the rest of your life.

File less, search and sort more

I've written about this in more detail, with illustrations here, spend less time creating and organising folders (although that is important too) and make sure you name your files with keywords you can search for. On all your devices now instant search is everywhere, and on your Mac, you can search in literally any folder you open, from 'All my Files' to 'Documents' if it's in there, somewhere, search will find it, regardless of the folder it's in, but that's no use if the file is called 'Untitled.doc' or "Screen Shot 2015-03-14 at 5.38.12 am". Rename it, then move it.

Sort out your Sorting

When you have a bunch of files on display in your finder, make sure you take advantage of the button which lets you 'change item arrangement' pick whatever option will make it easiest to move the files you want to the top - I personally find the 'Date modified' to be the most useful, but there are options there for everyone.

Illustration by Ben Wiseman via nytimes

Don't procrastinate you can do it today!

The solution is not to just create another folder (which is actually inside the folder which is the desktop) and dump them all in there, it just means you've buried the problem. By all means dump all the files in a (cloud connected) folder (or 3 or 4), just make sure you've deleted the files you won't need again (hold down command then press delete to speed this up), and give the ones you do need a name you can search for (this has never been easier, now that in Yosemite you can rename a load of files in one go, just using right click). Once you've done that you'll probably find there are 'themes' forming that lend themselves to folders, but don't let that be an excuse to procrastinate, as you can always change your mind later, computers are convenient like that... 

Clean desk[top] policy via awanbee.com