Category Archive

Office Clearing

The clearing process is not restricted to the home or cottage during the summer. It needs to be done in your workplace to give you that renewed sense of balance in all areas of your life. Here is a process to help you get started….

Define the areas that you need to clear:

1. your paper backlog – desk and surrounding area
2. paper files
3. e-mail inbox and sub-folders
4. electronic files on your personal drive
5. electronic files on your shared drive

Then:

1. prioritize the areas above
2. select your top priority
3. block off time in your calendar – create one hour to three hour chunks of time
4. set-up a reward at the end of the “clearing sessions” – heading out for lunch with a friend, take-out food pre-ordered or a glass of your favourite
5. make sure you have any supplies or tools you will need organized ahead of time
6. develop a system/structure for your paper and electronic records
7. make a commitment to yourself and reinforce this commitment by telling someone else who will not let you procrastinate
8. Now – DO IT!

See how great you feel, now apply this process to the next area.

Share your experiences. If you are having trouble getting started, email us, we will give you a boost!

The Most Important Question

Are you tired of looking for items you need? Starting today, begin asking yourself “Where will I find this?” instead of “Where shall I put this? This question works great for papers to be filed as well as for other items in the home or office.  Words of wisdom from Marlo Nikkila that I totally agree with and have always put in practice for my clients to create their own unique organizational systems based on the way they think, not on the way I think!

Paper and email overwhelm!

While you put away the last few remnants from the holidays, remembering time with your family and friends with a smile on your face or perhaps a sense of relief that it is all over, you turn your mind to what’s next.  Yikes….dealing with all of the paper, email and voicemail that have accumulated at work over the holidays. Overwhelm kicks in and the re-energizing you did over the holidays is draining away.  Don’t despair, it can’t all be done in a day and if you try to do everything all at once you will get even more overwhelmed and end up not  doing anything well.

Take a few minutes, a couple of deep breathes, and develop your “Fresh Start” plan. Identify what it is you need to deal with to get back on top of things. There are probably four categories – voicemail, email, paper and projects.  Decide which category is the most important as not everything can be a priority one!  Start working through each category systematically until you have dealt with all the high priority items in each group, then circle back and start the process again until you have caught up in each area.

As you work through all the items, you may not be able to do them right then and there.  So you don’t get bogged down, and lose your momentum, set up a reminder so that you can forget about that item until the appropriate time and then immediately move on to the next item.  There are three reminder systems that you could use. Choose the one that works best with your behaviour style:

1. Task it in Outlook or other similar software.  Don’t forget the reminder date and time, so you can forget about it until you need to deal with it.  This option is great because you can drag and drop emails into tasks in seconds;
2. Create a Pending folder (electronic or paper) and drop the paper or email into the folder.  Don’t forget to revisit that Pending folder first thing each morning or at the end of each day to make sure you stay on top of your pending items;
3. Create a “To Do List” either electronic or hard copy.  This is my least favourite as “To Do” lists have to be re-written to keep them current. Consider moving to the electronic option referred to in 1. above.

Watch for more blog posts for more ideas on a “Fresh Start” for the New Year.  We will be talking about managing email, setting up paper task files, procrastination and more.  Interested in one on one or group training in email and/or paper management or managing effective meetings, contact me at jane@productivitysquared.com for more information about our in-person or on-line services.  Happy New Year!

A few email guidelines for the office….

In attempt to try and reduce the number of emails in your inbox and perhaps others, try following a few of these quidelines:

Don’t break the thread - When creating messages, be sure to include meaningful data in the subject line.  Be precise, yet informative, as to the nature of your message. This then means that you only need to save the most recent email in the series and delete the rest.

 Reply All Button - Before using the Reply All button, ask yourself “Does everyone really need to see this e-mail?”  When replying to e-mail messages that have been sent to large groups, it may be more appropriate to reply only to the author and let them disseminate this information to the entire group, if necessary.

 Most important information first - Messages should be concise and to the point leading with the most important information.  Some people only briefly scan the first few paragraphs of their messages and your request could get missed or deleted.  Tell the recipient early on what you need them to do.

Visit www.productivitysquared.com or contact us jane@productivitysquared.com to learn about our services and in particular our training programs for managing email, organizing electronic documents as well as records management.