How to Stay Organized at Work
If you know how to stay organized at work, you’re definitely ahead of the game. Staying on top of your tasks and keeping organized helps you increase productivity at work, and get more things done than most people would think is humanly possible. Fortunately, learning how to stay organized at work is easy. It just takes a little discipline, and for some it’s an exercise in letting go. Ultimately, everything in your life will benefit from it – including your stress level.
Stay organized at work tip #1: Time Management
Managing your time is incredibly important for staying organized and increasing productivity. If you know what you need to accomplish, you can allocate a certain amount of time to it and get it into your schedule. Here are some handy time management tips to get you started:
- Make a list each morning of what you need to accomplish that day, and allocate some time to each item. See how your day stacks up once you figure out how much time it will take to get everything done.
- Make note of things you don’t absolutely have to do yourself
- Assign priority to each item and get the high priority items out of the way first
- Don’t get distracted by social media, co-workers or other sundry interferences
- Remove all chairs from your office so people aren’t tempted to stay too long and distract you
- Close your office door if you are under a deadline
- Have the receptionist hold all but your most important calls
Stay organized at work tip #2: Delegate
Once you’ve made your list and prioritized the things that only you can handle, you will be left with a laundry list of tasks that you can then hand off. If you have a receptionist, assistant or secretary, have them field and return your emails and phone calls, go to the post office, make the coffee, order lunch, and send out invoices. If you work in a shared office space such as Liberty Office Suites, you have a good support system – make use of it! If you don’t, consider hiring a VA (virtual assistant). There are many freelancing sites out there to help: Fiverr, Upwork, and Freelancer are just a few places that you can find a good, on-demand VA to get through that stack of basket-weaving.
Stay organized at work tip #3: File Management
There is nothing like knowing exactly where something is when you need it. That is what good file management is all about. Whether your files are on paper on your computer, the concept is the same. File management is absolutely essential to helping you stay organized at work, as it gives you the freedom to continue working without the frustration of having to search for what you need. The down side is that it will take some time to get properly organized, and some diligence on your part to stay that way. Here’s how to stay organized at work with file management:
- Set aside an afternoon specifically for file management
- Organize your files into categories that pertain to their subject matter, client or project
- Create sub-files within those files, such as invoices, vendor files that pertain to their project, or correspondence
Once you have these file systems set up, it should be relatively easy to locate files when you need them and stay organized at work.
Stay organized at work tip #4: use productivity apps
There are hundreds of great productivity applications that will help you stay organized and productive at work. If you are a Microsoft Office aficionado, try OneNote – it’s a great way to stay organized at work, as it allows you to take meeting notes, sketch, doodle or write things in by hand. You can take photos of things and turn them into searchable PDF’s, and then turn around and share them with the rest of your workgroup. Every item you save is searchable, so you can call it up at any time, and since it’s cloud-based, you can access your notes on any device or computer, no matter where you are. This is only one of many productivity apps you can choose from, but it’s one of the most useful – and it’s free, even if you aren’t an Office subscriber.
Liberty Office Suites: helping you stay organized at work
If you are an entrepreneur, solopreneur, or freelancer, you know how valuable your time is. Liberty Office Suites is dedicated to helping you stay organized, because the more productive you are, the better we are together. What are your ideas for staying organized at work? Drop us a line and let us know – we are always looking for new ways to stay organized at work, and we’d love to help. Call today or come by for a tour, and find out how Liberty Office Suites can help you increase your productivity.
