work space

Spring into Spring : clean-up and organise your office filing system.

daffodilsThe recent weather has been very spring like, daffodils are brightening gardens, lambs are frolicking in the rural areas and everyone seems to have got some new energy after the winter.

It’s a great time to put some of that energy to work in your office, especially if it is looking a bit cluttered with papers that have piled up or if you have a desktop screen filled with icons for documents that haven’t been filed properly in your record-keeping structure.

It’s also timely from a business point of view, especially if you’re almost half way through your financial year like I am.  If you have a clean-up now you can:

  • sort out your invoices and receipts well before the time you need to get your financial information to your accountant for your annual accounts
  • find your business plan and review your progress so you can congratulate yourself on your achievements  or put in place some actions to improve your position.

Did you know that once you’ve got your business information organised and at your fingertips you will be able to save up to 15 minutes a day every day.   Think about how many non-productive hours that adds up to over one year.

before and after

If you think you don’t have time to do a clean-up then take a look at my 15 Minute Action Plan to tidy your desk.  It really works.  Jill and Sandie among others can vouch for that.

If you can’t find documents easily in your computer, then work through the 15 Minute Action Plan to organise your electronic documents.

When you have your filing system in order you will save time and reduce stress as well as increasing your productivity and profits.

You can read about more hints and tips to improve your business in my free eBook; and even more if you download the eWorkbook that gives you a full set of instructions on how to set up a filing system for your business.

For more than 20 years Judy Owen has been working with businesses of all sizes and complexities  to improve and streamline the access to their business information.  She and her team can show you how to reduce risk, improve productivity and increase profits with good business systems and processes in your business.

One minute at a time

Do you spend time each day standing waiting while your tea or coffee brews?

Is your desk covered with papers you don’t need today?

Do you spend time each day sitting waiting for your computer to respond or for a document to print?

Are your emails building up in your in box?

If you answered Yes to any or all of these questions, try this tactic to use your time productively with a one minute action plan to clean up your office or desk.

You can use this tactic to move towards having a tidy desk or office even when you’re really really busy.

  1. Next time you make a cup of coffee or tea, take it back to your desk and before you start work again, spend just 1 minute working on one part of your office that needs cleaning up.  It might be a pile of papers that has been building up, or you might delete some old emails.
  2. If you are brewing coffee or have to wait till the water boils, do the same – spend just 1 minute working on one part of your office that needs cleaning up.
  3. Remember to take just one minute to do one thing at a time.  If you don’t get finished in one minute, leave it till the next coffee break.
  4. At that next coffee break, spend one minute finishing off the task you started in your previous “One minute at a time.”
  5. Or start on a new area of your desk or office. If you’re sorting papers, make one pile of those that you need still (active files), and another pile of those papers that you no longer need or don’t need in the next day or two (inactive or dead – you can choose the label!).
    This might take several “one minutes” at different coffee breaks.  If you’re dealing with emails, select a date range and do a one minute job on that selection
  6. When you have sorted papers into an inactive pile, take them away from your desk. Anywhere will do – just get them off your desk!!  Dealing with them properly will be another one minute job another time.

You are to spend only one minute at a time on each of these actions. Each one minute adds up to a lot of minutes over the course of a day or a week. And you’ll be amazed at the difference it makes to your day and your increased level of efficiency in your work.   Try it!!

Feral paper in your office

Has paper gone feral in your office? You know what I mean, piles of papers on your desk, more on the floor, paper everywhere in fact.

It used to be organised and filed once, but then you got busy.

Now you’ve forgotten how you used to organise your paper files and you’ve started storing some of it electronically. But you don’t want to throw the paper away in case you can’t find the electronic version.

And so it goes on.

Help is at hand and you don’t need to be in a city to get that help.
First up let’s look at some hints and tips so you can start to tame those feral piles of papers.

  1. Clear a desk or table or even some space on the floor
  2. Get a large rubbish bag and put it beside your cleared space
  3. Decide on a 15 minute block of time to work on the feral paper
  4. Pick up one pile, no more than 20 cm high, and put it in the cleared space
  5. Pick up each piece of paper and decide if you still need to keep it. If you don’t need it, put it in the rubbish bag. If you do need it, put it in one corner of your cleared space.
  6. Repeat with the rest of this pile, sorting the papers into smaller piles with similar items, eg all bank statements in one pile, credit card statements in another, research articles in another etc, etc

Try not to get distracted by anything that looks particularly interesting.  Your 15 minutes will disappear in no time.  Put these interesting items in a separate pile and make a date with yourself to read them another time.

Next steps:

  1. Find a permanent home for those items you are going to keep so you don’t simply create new piles of paper
  2. Get a system in place to help you decide how long you need to keep certain items
  3. Decide if you need to keep a paper copy or if an electronic version will be sufficient
  4. Make a time to go through another pile tomorrow or in a few days.  Put the time in your diary.

If you need more help contact me. The Terrace Consulting file tamers can visit you in person, can Skype with you to talk and have a look at your paper and advise you, or we can simply talk to you on the phone and give you some ideas to tame your paper filing.

Your organised home office

One of the things I find really important when I’m working from home is that I have a space that is separated from the rest of the house.  My home office is upstairs in the attic.  To get to it I have to climb the stairs and walk through a room that has become a store room.  My mind set changes as I start to walk up the stairs. 

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