Daniel Pink clears the hotel desk of clutter, then creates a personal inbox using a folded bathroom towel where he deposits his pen, notebook, passport, wallet, and room key each time he returns. This simple system keeps essentials findable and frees mental space.
Hi everyone, welcome to another PinkCast. I am here in a hotel room in Chicago with some tips on how to stay organized during your hotel stay. There are 2 things that I try to do every time I check in straight away that help keep me a little bit more organized than the usual discombobulation that is my life. So, first thing. You come in, you sit at the desk at a hotel like this, and there's all kinds of stuff on the desk. So what do we got here? We got a dinner coupon. We've got a water glass. Lovely. A water glass. A doily. A doily. We've got a pen. I'm going to keep that. I take all this stuff that's on the desk, all this stuff that's cluttering the desk, and I just stick it in a drawer or even on the floor. The rundown. I don't want that. The in-room dining menu. I don't want that either. And I clear the desk of all of the detritus. Then, second thing that I do, it's a little bit weird. I establish an inbox, my own inbox, and to do that I use a towel from the bathroom. I just take a simple towel like this and I fold it, put it down onto the table, onto the desk like this as you can see here. Okay, whoop, not a great shot. There you go. And then I use that as my hotel inbox. So when I come in, I empty my pockets and put everything in there. I put my pen in there. I put my— these notes in here. I put my notebook in here. What else do I got? I put my passport in there. In my back pocket, I've got a wallet. I put that in there. I've got my room key. I put that in there. And so what you see here is that in your hotel room, You have your own very special little inbox. And every time I come back in, I try to put something— I try to put everything back in that inbox. That way, I'm not always searching for my keys. I'm not always searching for my notebook. I'm not always searching for my passport. I find this is a great way to keep organized. So here are 2 tips. One, clear the desk. Get rid of all the crap. 2, establish your own inbox for your own things and be pretty rigorous about keeping your stuff there. For me, it's a pretty good way to stay a little bit more organized on the road when you can often get very disorganized. It also frees up time for other kinds of things like enjoying the beautiful artwork in your hotel room. Thanks for watching the PinkCast.
There's plenty of room at the Hotel California. Headed down. Anytime of year.
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