Thursday, May 17, 2012

Is Your Desk a Disaster Zone Read This Now to Get Organised!


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Can you recognise this scenario? You're frantically searching for that slip of paper where you wrote that important phone number. Or you're working on a chapter of a novel, but the notes for the chapter you're writing are gone! Well, not really but these little notes are buried somewhere in the mini mountain of documents and office supplies that is supposedly your work desk. This is a nightmare that can slow down your productivity.

To make your work, well work, you need to organise your desk first and foremost. How do you even get started? Read on.

• Sort out your work desk in blocks of time. Don't try to get the whole enormous task done in a day, you will be overwhelmed and not get anything done. Be realistic. Straighten out clutter a few hours a day, preferably on a weekend when you have more free hours. Several days of this and you'll get the whole thing organised without going crazy.

• Have your tools nearby - a trash bin, a pen, file folders, labels and other things to help you sort things out.

• Clear the space (a desk surface, a drawer, etc.) you want to organise. Make a big pile out of all paper.

• Assess each item, categorise it and stash it in a desk drawer, a file or in a desk organiser. Throw out what you don't need any more.

• At some point, you'll feel weighed down by this huge task but carry on. Just continue sorting and classifying stuff. Devote enough time once a day and you will see your desk cleared of unnecessary clutter.

• Recruit someone - could be a partner, a spouse, a secretary or someone who's really a neat freak and into creating order out of chaos (yes, there are many of them out there). Someone who can push you to work harder and get going.

Any old lazybones can be trained to get organised. Sure, it can be quite difficult to break bad habits such as letting your paperwork pile up. Still, the key to getting your work space organised is to start with a few hours each day of decluttering. Investing a few hours each day or even on weekends to organising your work desk frees you from chaos. Getting organised is to be in charge of your life! Persistence and follow-through will keep you that way. Here are some useful tips to help you get organised and work better:

• Rule # 1: Refile things. You can set up a particular place (for example, a desktop standing file) for current projects, but keep the rest inside cabinets.

• Keep loose papers in files with clear labels (e.g. Tasks, To Read, To Edit, etc.) or colour-code them (e.g. blue is for medical files, green for financial, brown for legal).

• The planner is your best friend. It's very useful for jotting down ideas (a fresh marketing strategy, details of a phone conversation, a profitable idea, etc.) in the developing stages of a project. This is a better method than writing on scraps of paper that will get buried as documents pile up or worse, end up in the trash bin!

• Set aside time everyday to doing paperwork. Pick an hour when there are few distractions. At home, this could be early in the morning before every one else gets up. If at work, this could be the hour before staff logs in.

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