How To Organize Your Work Life
It’s never abnormal while organizing someone’s home that they make a quick, but telling statement regarding their office. It might take only a session or two until we hear 5 sweet words: you should see my office. To some this might mean that their office is completely organized to a T which does not reflect their disorganized home, while to many others it means the opposite. Know that if you have a disorganized office/desk space you’re not alone. Ready to get your work life organized? Check out these tips below.
1. Desk Sweep: Kind of like a supermarket sweep where you sweep the shelves of what they have? Do the same to your desk. Take absolutely everything off of it and get rid of old thank you notes, print outs from three meetings ago, etc. Only keep the necessities on your desk. If there are papers that you still need a copy of, scan them and add them to Google Drive or dropbox. If your office space contains more than a desk, conquer one area at a time so you do not get distracted hopping from zone to zone. This is a practice that you should try to maintain weekly.
2. Inbox: Whether it’s your email or paper inbox, this is a commonly disorganized area of our work life that is amongst the most critical of how you function. When organizing your inbox digitally or IRL, it’s important to keep your labels consistent. We like to suggest having different inboxes for To Read, To Do, To Respond, To File.
3. Email: Emails get easily cluttered on a daily basis. We recommend tending to your email as soon as you can. Immediately get rid of junk mail or messages that you do not need so that they do not fill up your inbox. Do not open your emails and let them stay there. We also suggest creating folders within your inbox so that you have your emails sorted and organized similarly like you would for your paper files. In fact, have the names of your email folders match your paper files to remain consistent. That way you know where to find what you’re looking for.
4. Calendar: commit to having one work calendar. Having everything in one place will greatly reduce the amount of missed meetings or conflicting events. If you’re tech-savvy, we suggest having the calendar digital so you can see it amongst many platforms (phone or computer).
5. Asana: If you’re feeling totally overwhelmed and disorganized by your task list, check out Asana for online task management. It can be used solo or amongst an entire team of employees. Features include assigning yourself tasks, due dates and commenting in live time.
Did you know that we organize for companies too? Talk to your H.R. and set up a consultation to get your whole team organized or if you just want your own space done that’s fine too! Whether you’re working from home or in the office, all of these tips apply! Now get to it!