Organizing Your Office By Task
LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION FILES!
Your desk is the most important part
of your office. It is a work space, however many people make
the mistake of using the desk as a storage space! In order
for you to be focused on the task at hand, the desk should
be clear and free of distractions, such as piles of paper,
books, notes, bills, etc. How can you manage these items
without losing them, find the information you need to work
on, and still have a clear work space?
Action files! Action
files are merely temporary homes where papers live until
they either end up filed away permanently or thrown away.
Your action files may sit on the far corner of your desktop,
they might be in your file drawer, or in baskets on the
credenza. Whichever method works for you is fine. Label them
according to what actions fit best with your industry. (ex:
CALL BACK, TO FILE, TO READ, TO MAIL, TO PAY, etc) Clearly
label your files so you will always know what is in them,
and just as importantly, the labels will remind you what not
to put in them.
An important add-on to your action
files is a HOLDING file. This will be a key
player in the organization of your office space, as it will
hold all the information that requires an action some time
in the future, rather than immediately. For example, if you
get an invitation and map to a seminar you'd like to attend
in a few months, how do you keep that information without
losing it or forgetting about the event entirely? This is
precisely where the "Holding file" comes into play.
You simply mark in your calendar the
date you wish to take action and what the action will be
(ex: September 5, Marketing Seminar at the Hilton) then you
make an "H" next to what you've written, which is a visual
indicator that the information pertaining to this event is
living in your Holding file. The key to using your Holding
file effectively is that you must use it in conjunction with
your calendar. It's a dual system: the note in the calendar
reminds you of the action you need to take, and the "H" next
to the note reminds you of where the details of the
information are being stored. Once the action is taken,
remove the physical information from the Holding file and
either file it or throw it away.
Some examples of what to keep in a
Holding file:
In short, your Holding file is a temporary home for anything
with an action deadline either in the near or distant
future. The system gives you a way to safely put things out
of your mind until it's necessary to think of them again,
thereby freeing your mind up to focus on your i mmediate
priorities.
Monica Ricci has been an organizing and productivity
specialist since 1999. She offers onsite consulting, as well
as motivational seminars and workshops, which teach
effective organizing and simplifying and effectiveness
strategies for home and work. Reach Monica at
www.Catalyst Organizing.com
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