Improve My Business

Being more organized - isn’t that the holy grail for many of us?

• Finding something within a minute of starting the search for it
• Laying your hands on a document you need - when you need it
• having everything ready for the next client interaction, staff meeting, or group get-together
• being able to sail through your day like the character from The Wedding Planner - ready for any emergency or curve ball thrown at you, breezing through crisis after crisis with aplomb

In reality, organization is not rocket surgery - it’s pretty straightforward.  here are some key points to being more organized:

1)  Give yourself the time to do so. If you are rushing around and unable to put things back where they belong, file them where they should live, etc. then you will be even more disorganized the next time you need that stuff.  So, take a few minutes at the end of the day, the shift, the week - and put things back in their ‘home’.

2)  Adopt the regiment to do so. It amazes me how many people say “they don’t have time to do xyz”, yet their faceback page proudly announces that they’ve reached a new level on some game.  Here’s a strategy (from someone who enjoys a game also) - every time you reach a new goal on your game, look at how much time it took you to get there.  And then devote that much time instead to being organized FIRST, then play the game as a reward.  So, if it took you 1 hour and 20 minutes to pulverize the evil forces, or unlock a new crop, or whatever - spend that amount of time on being organized before you allow yourself to play that game again.

Not a game player?  This technique works equally well if you’re a runner, watch sports or sitcoms, etc. - organize prior to enjoying your down time.  [And if you're saying, "Hey Mary, I can't POSSIBLY devote that much time to organizing or I'd have no down time!"  -- perhaps you need to look at where your time is going...]

Remember - if you can organize how, you WILL get more time later - time you’re not spending redoing, searching, fixing, etc.

Technorati Tags: being organized, prioritization

I’ve been culling my email while home sick with a head cold (don’t want to be around folks and get them sick, and periodically lose my voice/cough my head off).  One of the things I’m noticing is that I’m reticent to put some ‘gems/jewels’ into the archive pile without noting things down.

I also  noted that I needed to get some blog posts up.

Voila!  It’s two, two, two tasks in one! (reference to an old Certs commercial… about 1:30 in)

Get Organized

Some of my favorite links:  to Charles Gilkey of Productive Flourishing (original post by Michael Bungay Stanier) for his downloadable planners and calendars; they will help you to remember the things you need to be doing, and also provide a record of what you got done for a given month.

Get Productive

Michael Bungay Stanier for his “one two punch” - he says, ” At the start of each day, I pick the one key thing that I must accomplish, and then two additional things I’d love to accomplish.”

[Try this simple technique for focusing your workday, and you'll be amazed at how much more you can accomplish every day!]

Don’t let e-mail rule you

Instead of culling through my emails, Fred Wilson suggests email bankruptcy:  I’m not quite there yet (and I LIKE some of the old stuff I’ve got, per these posts - Fred’s post was from 2007, for Pete’s sake and I still have it!) but I do see the allure of it all…

and for those of you who email me regularly, you know that you may get an autoresponder if I’ve got a ‘no face time’ week, saying something like “I’m out of the office on business and do not have access to email and voice mail during the day.  I will return from my trip on [date] and will try and answer all emails by [date +2] but if you need something urgent, please resend with ‘urgent’ in the title.”  This allows folks to reset their expectations of when they can reasonably expect an answer back from me if needed.

Sure, there are techniques galore for handling email - have someone else sort through your email, set up folders automatically, etc.  but my favorite technique remains - click on ‘unsubscribe’ for valid emails I no longer wish to read on a regular basis.  Why deal with it if I can just stop getting them instead?!

One of the things we spend time on here at McDonald Consulting when we first engage with a client is to help them get organized, so we can work more efficiently together.  For some clients this is more of a challenge than others.. 

Although these tips and tricks are for businesses, they can work equally well for your home life also.

1. Determine what you need to keep, and put it away.
2. Determine what you can get rid of, and do it - now.
3. Don’t let things build up once you get it organized.

Let’s look at them one at a time:

1.  Determine what you need to keep, and put it away. Is your desk a pile of papers, files, books, receipts, post-it notes, etc?   Do you shuffle through things to find what you need, knowing it might be ‘1/2 way down that pile on the right’?  Instead, as you touch a piece of paper, TAF it - Toss it, take Action on it, or File it away.  You shouldn’t be touching a piece of paper more than once (toss) or twice (action and file).

2.  Determine what you can get rid of, and do it - now. If getting rid of things all at once is too overwhelming, do it in small doses.  For example, the thought of cleaning out my supply closet may be overwhelming as a huge task, but if I identify something I no longer need (downlevel versions of software, an older style keyboard, etc.) I can easily get rid of those things now.  I use freecycle (freecycle.org) to let someone else use these things that are working but no longer needed (and got rid of several things that were broken - someone scooped ‘em up for spare parts) which is an environmental alternative to throwing them in the trash.  That way, I can do it at my pace, and not be overwhelmed.  However, if you DO decide to do this method, schedule yourself to identify x things per week, or clear off y shelves per week, to ensure it gets done.  If you don’t have freecycle in your local area, get a box, put these things in them as you identify them, then when the box is full, donate the box.

Another thing you can easily do is recycle old magazines and trade journals.  I used to have a stack of magazines that I was going to cull ’some day’; now, every time I’m on hold on the phone, or my computer is frozen, I’ll flip through the magazine and rip it apart - articles that I want to file or read I put in one file folder, and articles and ads I have no interest in go in the recycling bin.  I carry the folder around with me when I know I might have time to read the articles; and then when I’m flying, or in a waiting room, I can read and annotate articles without having to carry around the bulk of the magazine.

3.  Don’t let things build up once you get it organized. OK, now that you may be a bit more organized, you can see the top of your desk, your supply cabinet or storage cabinet (or junk drawer, or closet) is getting pared down to what you need vs. what you had — you gotta keep it up.  It does little good to have a clean-out, a tidy-up, etc. only to get back in the junk habit right away.   So set aside a few minutes at the end of the day (or at least the end of the week) and go through the TAF exercise again - toss, action, or file.  and again.  and again, until you do this by habit.  Once you have that down, take a few extra seconds to TAF it as you do it - toss right away, or take action and set aside for filing as you go.  You’ll be amazed at how quickly you become organized, without ever being overwhelmed!