There's just something about a clean room that boosts your mood and improves your attitude. When you permit yourself the pleasure of living and working in an organized environment it sets the tone for everything you do. I advise my students to take just five minutes to clean and organize their rooms before hitting the hay. The simple practice of picking up your laundry, throwing out the trash, and straightening your books and papers on a nightly basis will do wonders for your productivity.

This isn't about being a hoity-toity little neat freak. It's about how you feel about yourself and how you present yourself to the world. Both are obviously critical to the quality of life you enjoy.

By the way, if you've got a car, don't let trash accumulate inside and at least run it through an inexpensive car wash every week or two. It just makes you feel better to have a clean ride.

Do some people take neatness to an extreme? Of course. Some students actually clean and organize as a form of procrastination. They may be trying to take comfort in exerting control over their personal surroundings because they feel out of control in other areas of their lives, such as their studies. That's why doing nightly cleaning for just a couple of minutes tends to ward off this kind of procrastination paralysis. If you want to take an hour on the weekend for more thorough cleaning and laundry, go for it. But don't ever let cleaning become the focus of your life.

In your future career, you'll want to act like, and appear as, a serious professional. You'll want to show up to work in a clean car. And you'll want to stride into your workplace dressed for the job you aspire to get, when you're promoted. Sorry folks, but image is important. But fortunately, it's easy to maintain a basically neat appearance. Why would you ever swim upstream by looking like a slob? This doesn't mean you must have a pricey car or a fancy wardrobe. It just means you make the most of what you have. That says a great deal about where you are going in life and quietly inspires the respect of your colleagues and supervisors.

By the way, a five-minute nightly room maintenance break is actually part of my recommended 15-minute pre-sleep regime, which also includes: five minutes for nightly goal-writing for the following day (so you'll have a jump-start the minute you wake up); and five minutes for dental health, including flossing.

Not to get too far afield but while we're on the subject of cleanliness... flossing is probably the best thing you can do to protect yourself from illness. Your dentist will confirm that a great deal of disease throughout the body―including serious disease―stems from poor dental hygiene. (And ask any vet and they'll tell you that animals who have periodic dental cleanings live longer because their overall health is improved.)

My students avoid illness through small acts of self-protection, like taking a minute to floss before bed, washing their hands after using the gym (and at other obviously appropriate times), and eating some decent food every day.