Imagine this scenario. You are working in your home office. A client had sent you a contract worth $100,000 to sign and the deadline to send it back is today. You have to read the contract, verify and send it back or lose this biggest contract you will sign for the year. Unfortunately, you just cannot find the contract anywhere. You are trying to call the client to send a duplicate, but he is out on vacation and cannot be reached. What do you do?
For many people who are not organized this scenario plays all too often leading to lost documents and missed opportunities. Good news is it doesn’t take long or much effort to organize your office and be able to find anything you need in a quick second. All you have to do is spend some initial time to get everything in place and then keep at it on a daily basis. Here are some tips on how to organize your office to improve your productivity.
Remove clutter in the office
You don’t have to be a disciple of Feng Shui to know that clearing the clutter and keeping pathways in your office clear from unnecessary junk will help you to work better and smarter.
Make sure you only have the furniture that you need to work effectively. Your office is not the place to store unneeded furniture or extra files. Take a step back and have a quick look around the office. What items have you used in the last month? If you have not used it for some time chances are you are not going to use it in the future. Remove it from the office and make room for important items so that you can move around without bumping into anything.
Magazines, newspaper and promotion mails are the biggest contributor of junk in any office. Buy a nice magazine rack and keep all the magazines and newspapers neatly in one place. Get rid of promotional mails and other brochures soon after you take a look. If you do need to keep the promotional mails file them separately in one place so that they don’t get in the way.
Clear your desk
Does your desk look so neat and tidy that it appears no one has sit on it for a while or does it look like a storm has just passed through and has blown everything around? Research shows that a neat desk can improve the productivity by 10-20%. Think about the scenario I just described in the beginning.
Clearing your desk of all clutter can be a liberating experience, so take time and remove all the junk from your desk on a regular basis. The best way to do this is to get some filing trays and create a filing system with labels to store various documents and papers in a well organized fashion such that you can find them with your eyes closed.
You can buy a Dymo label from a supplier like labelcity.com to help you label everything before filing them. Putting labels on all the files and keeping them organized in the filing cabinets is the most effective way to organize your desk.
Manage your gadgets
Most people these days have a Smartphone, tablet, laptop, printer and several other gadgets lying around in the office. All of these come with their own wires and chargers. These tangled wires and scattered gadgets are another contributor to cluttered office. Make sure you keep the wires tied up and organized in one place so that they don’t get in the way every time you are moving around. Even better, buy wireless chargers and headphones so that there is no need for wires at all.
A well organized office can improve your productivity and efficiency. While it may take initial effort to get there it is worth spending time and effort to reap the benefits for a long time afterwards.
Do you have any other tips and tricks to contribute? Let us know in the comments below.
John Young is an experienced entrepreneur. He enjoys blogging about his successful tricks along the way to a productive business.
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