15 minutes action plan : tidy your desk

Although many people tend to work in the electronic environment, there are times when desks get covered in paper. If your desk frequently gets messy, my 15 minute action plan may be of help.

It will help you to clear your desk of unnecessary papers with the minimum of fuss and in a short space of time.

The benefit to you is that you will be able to find information quickly because you don’t have to rifle through the piles of paper every time you want one piece of paper.

You can download my 15 minute action plan to tidy your desk  and clear your desk fast now.

How to keep track of your documents

If you’ve been following my blog you will know that I am keen to help businesses and government organizations to manage their business documents so they can find the one document they need when they need it. Now! Not half an hour after a crucial business meeting starts, or

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Digital exhaust, digital footprint

Do you realise that everywhere you go you leave your digital footprint, i.e. the trail you leave about your activities on the Internet?

Some is content you actively produce—like your Facebook profile.

However you may not be aware of the cookies a site stores in your browser

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Electronic filing is crucially about “levels of access”

Sarah recently gave some advice to a couple of clients and asked me for my thoughts.  She suggested that electronic filing is CRUCIALLY about “levels of access” – designing your folder structure around “security clearance levels” works best. So you start by working out what is “confidential inner-management ONLY” (e.g. Strategy & Planning), what is

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Email Management – love it or hate it

When I gave this presentation recently I started by saying that the email experience is different for everyone – some people get maybe 10 emails a day while others get 100 or more. Each situation needs a different approach to managing email.

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Do you check your e-mail first thing in the morning? Big mistake

Do you check your e-mail first thing in the morning? Big mistake

Here’s what Tim Ferris has to say in the Huffington Post  in an article entitled “9 Things You Should Never Do At Work“

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Save time, reduce stress, increase productivity – save your documents before you start

One of the biggest issues I find when I’m setting up systems and processes for small businesses is that no matter how well the systems and processes are designed, no matter how easy it is to use them, we still get people who save their my work to “My Documents” or the “Desktop”.

Why do they do this?  Well I figure it’s because its the easy and lazy way out; that when people create a new document or spreadsheet they start working in it straight away and only think to save it at the end of the day or when they have to run for a train or bus to go home or at some other time when they need to leave their desks – for a meeting say or to go to lunch.

At that time they look at the clock and think “Oh *<#^! where should I save this work. Oh I don’t have time to think about that.” So the item being worked on gets dumped in a hurry on to the desktop or in My Documents because that is the quickest thing they can think of.

Next time they go to look for that item, it’s not in the proper place in the directory structure or file plan. So they waste searching for it, and get frustrated along the way.

We all do that at some time. But there is a better way.

You need to learn a new habit.  OK  – I know! But don’t turn off and leave this page right now because the new habit I want you to create is actually quite easy.

When you create a new document save it straight away to the proper place in your directory structure.  Do this before you start putting any content into it.

Then next time you want to edit it or add to it, you can find it right away because its saved in the correct place.

Remember it takes time to create a new habit so you might have to do this a number of times before it comes naturally.  But it will be worth it and I can guarantee that it will save you time.  You’ll no longer waste time searching for documents you’ve saved “somewhere” and either ruining your eyesight peering at your desktop screen trying to find the title of the document you’re working on or scrolling up and down your My Documents folder searching for that document ( What did I call that document?)

Using standardised titles for naming your documents will help – that’s another story for another day.

Meantime the time you save by not searching for those stray documents so you increase your productivity and cut your stress levels

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Business lessons from Paradise

On 23 May 2014 an historic homestead in Central Otago was burnt to the ground, apparently due to an electrical fault following a lightning strike. The homestead was at Paradise, beyond Queenstown, beyond Glenorchy, beyond the top of Lake Wakatipu, .  It’s a fantastic place and lots of people go there to get away from it all.  No mobile coverage, no tech toys.  Just nature at its best amongst the mountains.

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My email has stopped working. Grrrr!

All my email messages are still there and I can still see them.  But the little line at the top of the screen says “not responding” and I’m getting tired of trying to make it respond.

I can get by though because I have a backup email system that contains all my email.  I also have important messages saved in my directory structure. So I can find most of the emails I need.

Does that sound a bit like Little Goody Two-Shoes? Maybe so but to me it’s simply good business practice.

What I am missing is the folder structure I had set up in my usual email (MS Outlook).  In particular my “Action Required” folder where I saved anything that needed some action from me..  I don’t have that same folder structure in my backup system (Gmail). Now if I had only set that up before this happened …

Anyway, now it’s off to my IT support team to sort me out  in Outlook so I don’t waste any more time searching for emails that require me to take some action. And when they’ve done their bit, I’ll set up a mirrored folder system in Gmail so I won’t have the same frustration next time. Maybe I’ll use the Gmail Priority Inbox system.

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Ticking all the boxes

If you’re responsible for managing risk, improving productivity, increasing profits in your business then I have a solution that ticks all these boxes.  Yet it’s not a solution that will be front of mind when you’re thinking of these things.

I’m talking about a filing system so you can keep track of the information you need to run your business efficiently.

If you’re scratching your head wondering what I’m on about then read on.  Here are some examples of how a good filing system will tick your boxes.

Managing Risk   You know you can rely on the information you are using to make business decisions. You know you have the latest financial report, the most recent price list from your suppliers.You maintain your good business reputation because clients and suppliers know they can rely on the information you give them.
Improving productivity You don’t waste time searching for reports or tender documents; then when you don’t find what you want you recreate it. Your key information is easy to find when you need it.
Increasing profits Good business decisions plus less wasted time = Improved productivity = more revenue = bigger profits.  It’s that simple!

How many of these boxes can you tick?