No matter what you do for a living, you spend most of your day at a workspace. Keeping organized can be challenging but if mastered will greatly improve your productivity and reduce stress.
This month we’ll review five of our top ten recommendations:
- Optimize Your Workspace – Most workspaces have evolved into their current configuration without any conscious thought what so ever. Take a step back and consider why things are organized the way they are and what can be done to improve upon them. Do you have enough clear desk space to work comfortably? Do you have access to everything you ‘need’ as opposed to what you ‘might need’ within arm’s reach? Proximity should be based on frequency of use.
- The Right Technology – We all know that having the right tool for the right job is essential. When reviewing your current technology determine if it’s meeting your requirements or if it causing a bottleneck. Would the right upgrade speed things up? All our staff have dual monitors on their computers. On the surface this may seem like an extravagance but the ability to have multiple files open and readily accessible has proven to be a huge time saver.
- Digitize – Paper hard copy is both wasteful and inefficient technology. Saving files digitally, assuming you use clear naming conventions, allows them to be readily at hand and easy to look up. Think about how much time it takes you to find a file and then read through it until find what you need. Imagine the benefit of having the files back-up in the ‘Cloud’, accessible where ever you are through your mobile devices, and finding what you need quickly just by searching using keywords.
- Template Repetitive Tasks – We all have tasks that we repeat daily, weekly or monthly and using common software such as Microsoft Outlook we can perform them faster and with more accuracy. Using autocorrect you can develop short cuts to commonly used words, phrases and sentences. In the WOLFwatch department typing ‘WW’ in any document will autocorrect to WOLFwatch which ensure both the correct spelling and capitalization. In Outlook frequently sent emails have been saved as templates and areas that must be updated are highlighted in red font so they are not missed.
- Straighten Up – Schedule five – ten minutes at the end of each day to put things away. File both hard copy and digital copies away in their correct places. This is doubly important when dealing with digital files. If you don’t take the time to properly save and close your digital files at the end of the day you run the risk of your computer rebooting or shutting down over night and losing everything. Make it a habit of shutting down your computer every night to ensure this never happens to you.
Look forward to our remaining Five More Ways to Organize & Streamline your Workspace in next month’s blog post!
Do you have some tips worth sharing? Let us know in the comments below.
