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You might think that living in a sub-tropical tourist town on the coast has lots of advantages and hardly any bad points.

In the middle of summer there's a cool breeze blowing off the water and in the middle of winter while everyone else in the country is shivering we can sit back and enjoy yet another warm sunny day so what is there not to like about a place like this?

Of course there is quite a lot to like about this place ... except on days like today when it's raining. On wet days the sea is grey and uninviting ... it's overcast and gloomy ... and it's the sort of day you would rather stay in bed or maybe even go so far as to clean up your office.

No distractions
Yes I know ... cleaning up your office might be as exciting as cleaning the toilet but sometimes it just has to be done because a messy office or workspace is a total distraction for most of us. Of course it's a well-known fact that many brilliant people had offices that looked as though a tornado had ripped through it but ... well ... most of us aren't brilliant.

While brilliant people might be able to get things done in an office that's a total mess most of us need to free ourselves of as many distractions as we can so cleaning up your office might be very important if you want to work efficiently.

You could be like my partner Steve who seems to have the ability to look into the computer screens on his desk and become totally disconnected with the world around him but sooner or later the mess around you will begin to bug you and distract you. It must have begun to bother Steve because he's started to clean up his desk and the side of our home office that's his space.

Maybe spending time tidying your desk and office and putting things away doesn't sound like such a good use of the limited time that you have available but if the mess is distracting you then an hour or two spent tidying up will pay big dividends when the mess has gone and you're no longer distracted.

Multiple screens
I had a new client come in to the office yesterday and he commented on the three-screen display on my desk. He couldn't understand how I could possibly need three screens but after a little demonstration of how I work with three screens he began to see the sense in having multiple monitors.

So how many screens do you use when you're working? Please tell me that you're not trying to do everything on just one monitor because, if you are, then you're wasting so much valuable time.

Years ago Steve and I looked at how much time we wasted when we needed to access multiple sources on just one screen. We might be building a free site so we need to have the HTML editor open along with a folder containing the list of images we were using and something that displayed the affiliate codes we had to use.

The time taken to move between all those different points on one screen may not seem like much but when we measured it over a day ... a week ... and a year ... it was many hours of wasted time. The savings in time that came with a second monitor and then a third more than paid for the cost of multiple monitors ... and that was back in the days when monitors were very expensive.

These days when I'm building an online store I can have the site open on one screen ... a product spreadsheet open on another ... and the folder containing the images I need to use open on the third. I can combine all the information I need in far less time than I could if I only had one screen.

Have a filing system for your email.
Hmmm I feel really guilty when I talk about this because I don't have one. My emails come in and I just leave them all sitting in the inbox. Of course when I need to refer back to an email the search function often brings up the email I want to see ... but not always and that's when I waste a lot of time looking for the email I need.

On the other hand Steve has his incoming email set up so that very little actually goes into the inbox. Everything else is filtered into folders and that saves him a heap of time because he doesn't have to wade through a lot of emails to find one that's important and he knows where to look if he has to refer back to an old email.

Even if you don't get many emails a day it's still very worthwhile taking the time to set up a bunch of folders that incoming emails can be filtered into.

And there you have three simple ... and inexpensive ... tips that will save you time.