Offices
Whether you're running your business from home or an outside location, the office can be one of the most challenging areas to keep tidy.
We suffer from information overload - there's so much information rushing at us from so many different sources - texts, phonecalls, voice messages, email, social media, and on and on.
Even if you're cutting down on paper as fast as you can, the paper just keeps on coming - bills, junk mail, newspapers, magazines, letters, appointment reminders, newsletters, receipts, tax forms, instructions, mail to be redirected, reminders you've written to yourself....
You may have tried to get organised. You did your best with the knowledge you had, and it got a bit better for a while, but then it reverted to chaos. Or maybe you moved some piles around, got overwhelmed and gave up.
Your piles and stacks of paper grow faster than you'd believe possible. It becomes very difficult to find anything, and you may be unwilling to risk being buried in an avalanche of paper.
With all that stuff clamouring for your attention and cluttering up your space, your mind gets cluttered too. You feel confused, stuck, overwhelmed, and stressed out, and you despair of ever getting out from under it.
When this happens, it's just too hard to work effectively or make good decisions. You find yourself on Facebook or YouTube, waffling off to find something to eat, reading or watching tv, or playing mindless games to escape from it.
Or just working harder and longer, in the hope that if you keep working hard enough for long enough, it will sort itself out eventually. (Yeah, right! I tried that one, too. It didn't work for me, either.)
You've heard about the concept of working smarter. That's all good and well - if you were smarter, of course you would work smarter. But because you don't know what you need to know in order to work smarter, it's pretty hard to implement!
So here's a clue: one way to work smarter is to stop muddling about in a mess, and clean it up. Working smarter is about systems.
Make the time to sort it out. Yes, you'll lose some time in the short
term, but you'll soon recoup the time you invested because you'll feel
more relaxed, think more clearly, work more effectively.
You'll end up with:
- A good, workable office setup, with a home for all your supplies and equipment.
- Simple, clear, effective, easy-to-maintain systems to handle all your paperwork.
- A home for every single piece of paper that comes in.
You'll be able to:
- Find what you need to do what you need to do.
- Quickly and easily put things away in the right place.
- Think more clearly and keep a sense of perspective and control.
- Work more productively - get more done in less time.
- Enjoy a better quality of life.