Two great ways to increase your productivity. One is to arrange your work space so that work flows around you, if not in a loop, at least in a semi-circle. This works for desks, kitchens, organizing a bathroom and for whole rooms, especially offices.

We’ll use an office as an example since so many of us have one, or at least a workspace that with good organization can help you speed your way through your tasks. A good arrangement for an office is to have anything incoming near the door, preferably into your inbox. There should be an empty space by your inbox for you to take something out of the box and place it on your work surface. Then, in a line, have your set-up to deal with paper. If it needs to be filed, either file it right away, or place it in a folder to be filed later. If it needs to be answered, like a letter, either answer it right away, or put in in another file folder. If it’s a bill, either pay it right away, or put it in a place you look at often. A red folder would work for this really well. If you want to read it later, have a box to put reading material into. A standing file holder on your desk will help you sort your inbox, then handle like tasks all at one time. Getting up to file a stack of papers, for example, or getting out the checkbook, envelopes and stamps for several bills can be more efficient than doing one at a time in a mixture.

Use this line-up for your bathroom. When you get up in the morning do you have to open five drawers and two cabinets to get everything out you need to deal with your face and hair? Put everything in a box and just pull it out every morning, then put it away. Simple. And easier to keep that one box clean inside than a bunch of drawers and cabinets. In your kitchen, put baking supplies and ingredients together, pots and pans near the stove, dishes close to the table where you eat, and so on. Remember the trick of creating a loop and see if it will help you arrange your workflow.

The second way to get loopy is to arrange your actual work into a mental loop. Get used to one thing following another. If you’re a writer, you write, then edit, then publish, then market. If you have written and published more than one book and plan to do more, it will help to get into a loop every day of doing each of those things. You might be writing a new book, editing an old one, getting yet another one ready to publish, including submitting, (either by yourself or with your publisher) and need to market everything you have going. So, when you’re fresh, you write new material. When you finish with that you always either edit, publish or market something else. Then pick the next thing and the next thing.

Most jobs can be broken down like this. Plan your days around the most important thing you have to do and work in the others in a special order that will work for you, mentally and physically. Do the hardest things when you are at your peak, and the easiest things when your energy lags.

Getting loopy gives your work and your day a sort of rhythm that eases stress (deciding what to do all the time and hunting for stuff or jumping from one thing to another is stressful) and helps you accomplish more.