Time Management: You Can Organize Your Desk With These Easy Steps!
An Organized Desk Will Save You Time Starting Today
by Nancy F. Clark (Follow her on Twitter)
Named one of Forbes: Thirty Women Entrepreneurs To Follow On Twitter
(Listen to it here.)
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Visual this: You have a clean desk, no clutter. Ahhh. Every drawer you open has tidy compartments. Nice. You know exactly where to go to find the most important To Do’s and where to go to find the most pressing Urgent To Do’s —they’re rarely the same items! How true.
I’m going to assume you have file drawers with labeled file folders in them. We’ll talk about that another time.
We probably all agree that this would be great. How do we get there? Things that used to be recommended, such as an accordion file for things on hold, don’t make sense to me in an information-heavy environment. Also, forget about the advice of having an Input Tray that rapidly accumulates tons of paper. It gives me the feeling of having a non-specific, hard to look at file folder on my computer. We can do better than that!
I recommend you handle every piece of paper as soon as it comes in. If it’s junk, make it invisible immediately—it goes into the trash. If it’s an item to deal with, make a note on your To Do List—and that list better be on the computer with its own desktop icon because it’s that important. Now, put the piece of paper into a file folder with associated items and into your file drawer in your office. If you don’t have an appropriate folder, now’s the time to label one. If you’re worried about memory lapses, put the name of the new folder next to the item on your To Do List. Now you can avoid that nagging But-I-May-Lose-It feeling. If the piece of paper could be dealt with by someone else, give it to them. If he or she is the type of person who may not take action soon enough, you can have an item on your To Do List, such as “Things I gave to Karen’s assistant” and put a date next to it. If she forgets to handle it, let her know you keep a list of things you give her with the date, and she may start doing your things first.
Wouldn’t you feel more efficient if you could file some of these papers in your computer? And wouldn’t it be even better if you threw away the now obsolete papers? Bask in that great feeling ‘cause that’s what you’re going to do. Scan that piece of paper and save it as a PDF file, or run it through an OCR program (optical character recognition) so it’s now a regular document. Save it on your computer in an easy to find file. Throw away the piece of paper. Pat yourself on the back!
I used to have a problem with Post-Its. I’d write a search phrase or the URL of a site I wanted to look up. These colorful bits of paper made my desk look archaic. Now, I stick the related bits onto one piece of typing paper. I should (and I will) put this into a file folder that stays near my computer. But there’s always something to work on. I haven’t done that yet.
My Business Tip of the Week covers another type of clutter that probably haunts your desk.
Also, be sure to visit our website, www.WomensMedia.com, for Expert Advice for Working Women.
Now here’s my Business Tip of the Week:
There’s one type of desk clutter I have that I haven’t mentioned, and it’s a biggie for me. There are a number of business books that publishers send to me to review, and there are a number of journals I receive that I like to read, and I should read. I can’t stuff them in a file drawer or pass them off to Karen’s assistant. I’ve decided they cannot reside on my clutter-free desk. I put a chair next to the desk, somewhat out of site, and that’s where the books wait for me. The journals go next to my purse, also out of site, where I can easily pick them up on my way out of the office. The ones that stay on the bottom too long are ready to be tossed.
Listen to today’s podcast here.
On our website, WomensMedia Expert Advice for Business Women you should read these excellent articles:
Organize Your Filing Systems: A Four-Step Formula That Really Works by Sally Allen
Five Cures for Busyness: Are You Constantly On The Go? by Ali Hale
For quick updates for Business Women you should follow NancyFClark on twitter here.
