The Liability on Your Desk

Your desk is real estate. You’re the developer. You arrange things onto the plot that will yield the most productivity:

• The computer helps you connect with the outside world.
• The notepad gives you a place to jot down your thoughts when you take a call.
• And that sticky note reminds you to call the babysitter.

But there is a liability on your desk—a toxic dump where your business development opportunities sit and rot. It’s that stack of business cards you add to every few days. And you haven’t cleared it out in months.

Walk into any professional’s office and you’re likely to spot the dump. Sometimes the cards are stacked neatly by the phone, sometimes they’re hidden in a desk drawer, but they’re there. And they represent the follow-ups that are still waiting for your follow-through. The longer you let them sit, the more irrelevant they become. And when you finally thumb through them, you’re likely to have one of two reactions…

1. Who the hell is this guy?
2. I can’t follow up with her now – it’s been too long.

The liability is significant when you add the time you invested in forming these relationships with the opportunity cost of letting them stagnate.

So, do what any developer would do with a liability. Clear it out. Start by relocating the stack of cards to a more premium area of your desk: directly in front of you or in your in-box so that it’s not so easy to keep ignoring it. Then schedule 5 minutes to go through the first few cards. You don’t have to clear out the whole stack now. Just begin the habit of addressing a few follow-ups every day so that the liability on your desk starts to become the asset it was meant to be.