There are a number of things that you can do to get more things done throughout the course of your normal workday. Foremost among these, however, is simply organising your workspace for greater efficiency. Eliminating a lot of unnecessary clutter and ensuring that essential items are always accessible can have a tremendous impact on your productivity. The tips that follow will help you get started.

* Purge your space of anything that is not essential. If you are keeping multiple hard copies of a single document, get rid of the extras and just keep one. In fact, you can save yourself a lot of desk space by simply opting to scan your documents in and keep these on the physical desktop or stored safely in virtual space.

* Get rid of any office decorations that are not serving essential functions. Items that might have added aesthetic value could be old, worn down and dusty. Clearing these out will not only give you more space, but it can also allow the overall work area to take on an entirely new energy.

* Call in professional cleaners. Whilst you are organising your workspaces is a great time to give everything a deep clean.

Can you imagine how everybody must have felt arriving for work the day after this was cleaned? For a few hundred pounds outlay the benefits in terms of staff goodwill and productivity would have been easily recouped.

* Redistribute items to their proper places. During the process of clearing out clutter, you may want to avoid throwing some things out. It could be that you simply have things on your desk that belong in communal areas or in the work spaces of your colleagues. Getting everything back where it belongs will give you more elbow room.

You also want to take some time to re-evaluate the items that you intend to keep. This includes all office furniture, work tools and technical resources. It could be time to upgrade these. Getting an ergonomic chair will give you increased comfort and support and can lead to significant increases in productivity. Although a current computer might be functioning, this does not mean that it is functioning as well or as efficiently as it should. It could be time for an office equipment upgrade.

Before blindly investing in items to boost the aesthetic appeal and functionality of the work space, take some time to determine which investments will produce the best returns. Be honest in your evaluations to ensure  the new tools you get are worth the extra spending.

* Identify areas that are prone to gathering clutter. There may be certain parts of your office or current work routine that cause you to become more frazzled than others. This results in items piling up or being haphazardly strewn about the cubicle or room. Once you know where various problem areas lie, you can purchase the right tools for organizing the resulting mess. For instance, if you find that you are constantly throwing binder clips into the corner of the desk space while reviewing files, you might want to have a small clip holder here in order to prevent this mess.

* Try creating special work zones in the space. For instance, if you have various duties that must be performed over the course of the day, you may want to have a special area for each of these. Creating these zones is a also a great strategy for keeping yourself focused. You can keep your mind targeted on each individual task by simply moving into a new zone. Having greater focus will invariably lead to greater levels of efficiency.

* Start taking advantage of the vertical space in your office. This is going to give you a lot more room. While you may not have the ability to expand an office or cubicle, you can start utilizing the vertical area instead. Use book shelves to build up. Also, if you have a need for special aesthetic additions like pictures of family members, flowers and decorative art, you can fill these upper spaces with these items. Vertical spaces are also great for hanging live plants. This will give you the best opportunity to create an impressive display and it will additionally allow you to take full advantage of all of the usable area in the room for working.

* Think about having more than one in-box. Some people divide their incoming work according to the number of clients they service or desks they support. Others divide this work according to its time sensitivity. This makes it easier for them to prioritize jobs that must be done right away, rather than taking on busy work and letting urgent matters get buried. With this system, you can make sure that you are focused, able to take tasks with minimal interruption and committed to handling jobs that merit the most attention.