All good career advice starts with the fundamental premise that for the
purpose of the advice, everything else IS equal. It may not always be
able to be purely applied (YES, brilliant geniuses can have AWFUL
desks), but it is the best way to advise your charges (because they are
likely NOT brilliant geniuses for whom standards of culture don’t
apply.)

I recommend to anyone who is a manager or wants to manage themselves, get over to Manager Tools. There are great tools and resources there. Some are text, some are audio, all are priceless. Priceless in there value and price less as in FREE! I still can’t believe this stuff is free.

In the above picture of my desk we can see my home made bleacher for my hipsterPDA (link and link) with my custom vi key bindings card in the front. I still use the evil 3M Sticky Notes. Next to my eye glass case is a fun little retro PDA tool called pocketMOD. It is a PDA made out of a single sheet of paper. I haven’t used it but it is cute and my appeal to some. I’d like to figure out how to put callouts on pictures like this ala Flicker so that this things in the photo can be identified.