Archive for Office Organizing

woman biting pencil staring at computer looking worried and frantic.

Top 5 Series – Indicators you’re Disorganized

Posted by Carolyn on
 May 1, 2023

woman biting pencil staring at computer looking worried and frantic.Think your office might be seriously disorganized?

Not sure if you are disorganized enough to need help?

You have your own business which you love.  It does ok.  Clients are happy – most of the time.  But you admit to yourself when no one else is looking that things aren’t as good as you think they should be. You are really afraid someone besides your accountant and CRA, or IRS is you are south of the 49th parallel, will find out your taxes were late last year….again. The assistant you hired reminded you that the last 10 client orders were late.  Meanwhile, you find yourself running from home to office to home to office, always late and always rushing.

You, and your office or business, may be disorganized and not be aware. Here are the top five indicators I find when clients call me for help.

1 Targets are missed.

This is the indicator that keeps you awake at night. As the fiscal year goes by, and performance targets get missed, you are already sweating. You didn’t meet your sales targets for last year and you don’t even know if you are on track for first quarter.  If fact, you are pretty sure your records aren’t up to date. Do you and your employees have a clear, strategic plan to accomplish those targets? Creating a step by step plan for everyone to follow will help keep everyone on the same page and the business on track.

2 Priorities are confused.

You know your ideal client.  You know your business mission and you have an awesome vision.  Should be enough right?  Then why is it you can’t meet performance goals. Employees don’t understand the mission and/or strategic goals.You have the mission memorized. You’ve agonized over your strategic goals. Every word is perfect. You’ve done the retreat and handed out copies. Why is it then, that no one remembers? Why don’t your employees remember what the company is trying to accomplish this year?

Maybe because words on a page don’t translate into happy customers. A perfect mission, vision and values statement is only helpful if there is an action plan to translate that into the satisfied client. How does you mission statement turn into sales? How does your mission statement become a product or service that removes your client pain point? Turn your attention to providing value to clients and your mission will come alive with sales.

3 Employees are unhappy.

You have a sense that there are just too many good bye lunch parties. Meanwhile you’re soaking up your training and development budget with new hire orientation rather than development of your existing and loyal employees. At the same time, you’ve hearing complaint after complaint from employees about this, that and the other thing. They never bring it up to the team meetings, (do you have them?) they just grumble.

Disorganization in an employer or boss can quickly lead to disgruntled employees. With clear expectations, timely projects and constructive feedback, employees will more likely enjoy making a contribution to your goals.

4 Offices, work spaces are cluttered and disorganized.clutter-free office shows what is possible with organizing support.

Starting with yours; do you, or your staff, keep asking for another copy of (name of latest report on the file share system) because they can’t find it? Do you, or your employees, spend too much time looking for things and not enough time acting on goals? Sure, you know exactly where that proposal is, right? If I said you had 10 seconds to find it, could you? What is under, behind or beside your desk? Your employees desks? Check it out.

Keeping a clutter free work space contribute to higher productivity and happier staff. Try putting aside a Friday afternoon for an office clean up – with everyone responsible for their own work area. Keep common work areas clutter free.

5 Someone is always at the office or online trying to work late – very late.

Someone, or ones, is (are) working longer hours than they should. Is there one person, maybe it’s you, that is always working later than everyone else, comes in on weekends, and probably still is not meeting their performance objectives? That extra work time without the work output to show for it, is a common sign of disorganization. That person may need some help to clarify their priorities and deadlines. Or they may need some support to create a more productive work environment.

My goal is to help you develop an awareness of what some of the indicators of disorganization.  With that awareness, you have the power to make changes. Even small changes can make a big difference.  Become a clutter free role model at your office and to your employees. Keep your work area clutter free. Small changes applied consistently over time amount to big results.

Business Organizing Declutter Office Organizing Productivity Top 5 Series
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colourful food bowls stacked on two shelves.

Excuses for Disorganization

Posted by Carolyn on
 April 24, 2023

Have you got Excuses for YOUR Disorganization?

disorganization around woman holding telephone in an office with piles of files and crumpled paper around

Always needing excuses for your disorganization can be exhausting. Maybe this isn’t you, but perhaps someone you know.  Are you chronically disorganized, overwhelmed and frustrated? Realizing that you are forever holding everyone else up.  You know you cause deadlines to be missed and you shrug off offers to help. You work hard to ignore complaints from colleagues but then go home discouraged yet again. Some people suggested you work with a professional organizer .  But this is just too scary. Chronic disorganization in an office is no laughing matter and no one knows it like you.

Whether your work is virtual or you are physically present in an office setting, being on time, on task and on target is key. Here are the most common excuses I’ve heard over the past 18 years and some solutions to help get beyond the chaos. My hope is there is a solution in here that speaks to your most common excuse so you can banish the overwhelm and exhaustion once and for all.

5 Most Common Excuses

1 “I don’t have time to worry about tidy piles of paper“.

Maybe it feels that way but meanwhile you don’t mind asking everyone else to wait while to try and find the report, letter or document that is now past due. In most business environments, and in the personal world, timing is important if not critical. So being on time is essential. 

Solution

In today’s world, most documents are digital. As a result our clutter tends to be on our computers. Computers file either by number of by letter. They don’t know any other way. Try to keep projects together in a file with the project name. It will be easy to find that report when you need it.

2 “I don’t need to be more organized; I can find anything I want in my office“.

Except that it takes you half an hour to find a file while everyone else is left waiting. Can you REALLY find anything in less than 30 seconds? If not, you need to find a solution. 

Solution

If it is digital, try filing by project as identified in #1 above. Another solution is to file by date. People think in different contexts. If you think by date, start each file name with the date you wrote it or the date it is due or the date of the event. If its paper and you need to see your paper out and about, try just labelling your piles.  Some people are pilers, some are filers.

3 “I’m not disorganized, I just like to keep things in case I might need them, someday“.Piles of paper and filed on a desk top.

Meanwhile you keep insisting you need twice as much filing space as everyone else, your office is a stack of boxes covered in dust, untouched in 5 years. Regular purging is an important part of being organized. try spending 15 minutes each day, at the beginning of the day while your mind is fresh, to purge and recycle or share unnecessary documents. Significant progress can be made in just 15 minutes and when done consistently every day for several weeks, magic can happen. Make it a habit and your world will transform. Literally.

Solution

4.”I am actually very organized. I know exactly where everything is“.

Have you noticed you are chronically late for meetings, supper dates, meeting the guys for pickup hockey? Do you find yourself rushing for completion of tasks at the last minute. You think you’re organized? Have you asked your friends and colleagues recently? 

Solution

You may think you are organized but the reality is that your friends and colleagues may think differently. Ever noticed that the time they give you to be together is half an hour earlier than everyone else? Time can not be managed. However, we can manage ourselves. Try using a timer or time-specific  playlist to keep yourself on task. Give yourself a false deadline – before the REAL deadline – and then play a game to see how close you can get to it.  Reward yourself as you get closer and closer to the deadline you set.

5 “I have my own style of organization. No one else would understand it“.

Keep your small business organized with these 5 key strategies.

You are absolutely correct that everyone has their own organizing personality. However, if you didn’t show up for work tomorrow no one else would be able to find any of your relevant work and your contributions to the company may be dismissed as meaningless. Still, your friends are frustrated waiting for you and partner is tired of the clutter hanging around.

Solution

Check out my blog post on organizing personality and see if you can figure out what your unique personality is.  Matching your organizing personality to specific strategies, tools and processes can make a world of difference.  Your boss and your friends will thank you. When we work for someone else, the work they pay us to do generally belongs to that company: files, paper, reports etc. Show them how important you are by creating organizing systems, processes and strategies that support you and your contributions to the world.

The world needs your unique talents. Find an organizing system that works for you and show us what you can do.  No more need for excuses for disorganization!

Declutter Office Organizing Organizing Challenges Organizing Strategies

Time Tamer Tuesday – 5 Steps to Time Management at the Office

Posted by Carolyn on
 March 14, 2017

Time Management at the Office

Time Management, The Illusive Goal

Wouldn’t it be nice to know that time management was actually possible? Do you wish you could get more done at the office?

Unfortunately, despite all attempts otherwise, none of us can manage Time; that is the reality.  It continues to tick away – 24 hours in each day, 60 minutes in each hour and 60 seconds in each minute – each and every day of the year.  We can, however, manage ourselves.  We can manage ourselves to do more with the time we have available. Manage your behaviour around getting things done, and time will seem way more friendly – almost like you did manage it. Here are 5 steps to get help you out.

Step 1 – Commit to Behaviour Change as a Time Management Strategy

Start by committing to managing yourself in order to get time management under control.  Set the intention to become more productive with  your time.  With a commitment to your own behaviour change, time management becomes less illusive.  Make a pact with yourself to take responsibility for doing more in less time.  While time is not to blame for what you can’t get done, only  you have control over what you CAN get done.  So take back control.

This is the toughest step.  Get firmly planted in this direction, and the rest will seem much easier.

Step 2 – Identify Your Top Priorities and Tasks for each Day, Week, Month and Year

Time Management at the Office, Set Goals

You likely already have annual priorities identified as part of your annual planning, goals, performance objectives or other performance measurement or company planning strategy.  Are you an entrepreneur?   Have you got your business objectives lined up for the year/quarter/month/week?  Great.  Now turn them into goals for the month, week and day.  What do you need to get done by the end of the day, week, month, and then the quarter, to accomplish your annual goals?  The priority tasks for today will feed into your priority goals for this week.  The same is true for the month.  By the end of this week, are you a quarter of your way to your priorities for the month?  What has to be finished to get there?

Daily tasks are the key to keeping the productivity up.  Keep your daily priority tasks simple and short.  Now write them down.  Start with a verb to direct your action.  Rather than writing “Managers’ Report” write “Collect data, analyze and write Managers’ Report”.   Writing down goals helps set the intention and for many of us, helps lodge those goals into our brains to help keep us focused and pointing in the right direction.

Step 3 – Book Time in your Calendar to accomplish the Tasks

For time management book tasks into your calendar.

Each task takes a certain amount of time.  Estimate this to the best of your ability and book the time to accomplish the task into your calendar.

There’s a funny thing about tasks we want/need/should get done, especially some of the tougher ones.  If we don’t book time and protect that time, everything else, on everyone else’s priority list, has the opportunity to get

Step 4 – Commit to the Time Scheduled – and Let Everyone Know

Your time is committed; tell the people around you.   Close your door.  Ask not to be disturbed.  Put your phone on silent.  Turn off your email alerts. Turn off all your alerts except for any related to risk management that require you to drop everything and respond (are you on the Code Blue Team?).  This often takes some practice.  With time, however, people will come to understand that you commit to your time and expect them to respect that.  And they will love that you get stuff done.  Your boss knows that managing these boundaries helps you to get stuff done for her/him.  Reports are on time.  Your staff recognize that you get stuff done for them.  Schedules are on  time.  You approve vacation requests quickly.

Nice.

Step 5 – Commit to Running Productive Meetings

You’ve got a meeting to run?  Set an Agenda.  Send it out ahead of time.  Be clear on what you are trying to accomplish.  Remember, other people struggle with time management as well.  When you are clear on the agenda, people you meet with are grateful.  Stick to it your agenda.  Finish the meeting just as soon as the agenda is accomplished.  While we are all interested in someone else’s successes, their celebrations and someone else’s venting their frustrations, if all that isn’t on your agenda, it will have to wait for some other time.  You run a focused and productive meeting.

 

With a commitment to managing yourself, identified priorities, time booked for your key tasks, protection of your time and productive meetings, time management at the office is no longer illusive.  At least it will feel like you managed time.

Office Organizing Organizing Time Time Tamer Tuesday
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Great things can happen in an organized home office.

The Organized Home Office: 3 Key Ingredients

Posted by Carolyn on
 November 9, 2015
sign spelling office in white letters on black background

Making sure you maintain an organized home office takes basic ingredients and your own spice.

So you’ve decided to work from home – congratulations!  Chances are you’re going to love working in your jeans and t-shirt, without a commute and with the flexibility that a home office provides.  It takes some work, however, to ensure your work space is functional, productive, has all the tools you need and  is available to you when you need it.  These are important criteria for an organized home office.  Here are some key ingredients that can help your office meet those criteria.

Basic Ingredient: An Organized Home Office is Separate from Home Functions

When setting up a home office, clients frequently start by taking over a small part of an existing space in their home.  This is a great way to see if working at home is feasible.  You know the place: the computer table in the kitchen; the family computer desk in the den; the craft corner in the basement rec room.  These areas are often already multi purpose space.  Its where home work, crafts and family organization and communication are happening.  Adding the additional pressure of a home office is sometimes more multi than these multi purpose spaces can manage.  Professional organizers  are brought in to  help organize the home office when clients find the geography project has exploded over the latest market research report and invoices ready to be mailed.  

Find a way to physically separate the business work from anything else that happens at that work station.  If you can’t  fully take over a space, and have to share with other household activity, use a cupboard, box or even just a shelf where your material can be collected and put away before the homework starts up.  Role model to other family members that you put away your material when not actively working at the common space; they are expected to put away their things when leaving the space.  It might take a bit of reminding at first but your material will be secure and the work station can continue to be used by the family while you enjoy the advantages working at home can bring.

House big enough you get your own corner office?  Lucky you. Just make sure that room has a door.  Opening the door is like stepping into a corporate setting.  It says “I’m at work”.  Same with the office-in-a-box approach.  When you empty the box onto the dining room table, you have arrived at work for the day.

Resist the temptation to use a corner of your bedroom for your home office.  The bedroom is a place for rest and relaxation, not work.

Binding Ingredient: An Organized Home Office is Mostly Self-Contained and Holds its own Tools.

Great things can happen in an organized home office.

Great things can happen in an organized home office.

Think of this as permission, resources permitting, to shop for the tools your office will need and to keep them in your office, even if it is just a box.  Often, we identify the space for our office space and then use tools from elsewhere in the house to stock it;  paper from the family computer station, stapler from the kitchen, pens from the junk drawer, hole punch from the craft boxes.  This can be an excellent use of extra tools around the house.  It can also mean, however, that your office is raided when that hole punch is needed for the science project.

You will need holders for those tools.  Use a decorated juice container from your 8 year old, or top of the line from the office supply store.  An organized home office has the tools there when you need them easily accessible.  The more self contained it is, the more likely your organized home office will stay organized.

Spice it Up: Add Your Unique Style

desk with flowers in vase

Add some spice to make your organized home office reflect your taste.

It might be a business office, but one of the advantages of a home office is the freedom to decorate to your own style and taste.  Go to town and have fun.  The more comfortable and personal you make the space, the more likely you are to keep it organized and functional. About to land the company’s next largest order?  Do it in style.  If your office is stored in a box while supper is on the table, add your own taste with a special picture, pencil holder or the coolest file folders you have ever seen.  Using a cupboard?  Try putting your special pictures on the inside of the cupboard and leave it open while you are at work.

A home office can be fun and flexible.  A home based business can be rewarding.  Keep yourself productive with an organized home office that reflects your business needs and your own personality.

 

Business Organizing Home Organizing Office Organizing Organizing Challenges Productivity
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Keep Small Business Organized: 5 Strategies

Posted by Carolyn on
 September 23, 2015
5 Strategies to keep a small business organized

Stay clutter free to keep a small business organized

Is Your Small Business Organized?

We live in a changing world where small businesses must stay nimble of foot and focused on their goals.  Sometimes those imperatives seem to contradict each other.  How can we stay flexible, nimble and organized as a small business while staying focused on goals and strategies for business growth.

Its probably easier than you think.  There is, however, no room for clutter in a successful small business; no room for extra stuff, tasks or costs.  Here are 5 strategies to help keep that business clutter to a minimum and your small business organized for success.

  1. Make “clutter free” a priority for the business.  By letting employees know this is important, you set the performance expectations for your staff.
  2. Be clear how you define clutter.  Unnecessary paper is one thing but unnecessary emails is equally distracting clutter.  The same goes for unnecessary meetings.
  3. Be a role model and set the standard for your employees.  If your office is a pile of disorganized papers, your employees will believe that’s an ok standard for your business organization.
  4. Give staff the tools they need to be organized.  Include shelves for vertical storage and  immediate access to a blue box for recycling.  If you aren’t sure what is missing or why an employee is so disorganized, consider having a professional organizer conduct an assessment of the work environment. There may be more complex organizational issues that the employee is struggling with.
  5. Schedule a semi-annual clear out day. The rules for the time are simple. Everyone participates in a clear out of their work space on this day. Order lunch.
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What to Know Before you Work at Home

Posted by Carolyn on
 March 29, 2014

In a recent article “What to know when you are work from home” in The Post, the author has identified staying focused, security of your work and maintaining a social and professional connections and key components of a successful workspace.  While these are very important, I would add a fourth key element of protecting your workspace.

When setting up a home office, client frequently decide to start by taking over a small part of an existing function space in their home in order to see if working at home will be feasible for their family or home life.  These multi function spaces frequently serve family tasks like home work as well as the new work tasks that have been added by a home office.  We then get called to help them out when they find the children’s homework is mixed in with the latest monthly or quarterly report or preparation of invoices.  

When setting up a work at home location, establish a means of separating the business work you do physically from anything else that might happen at that work station.  This can be accomplished through a cupboard, box or even just a shelf where you material can be collected and put away before the homework research starts up.  You can teach other members of the family that you put away your material when not actively working at the work station and that they are expected to put away their things when leaving the work station.  It might take a bit of reminding at first but your material will be secure and the work station can continue to be used by the family while you enjoy the advantages working at home can bring.

Office Organizing
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Honouring your Filing Preference

Posted by Carolyn on
 November 5, 2013
file cabinet with organized files

Organized Files Again

We recently moved.  Not far, mind you; but just far enough to require a truck, a moving company, many boxes and complete upheaval of our orderly lives.

You’d think a professional organizer could handle her own move with ease.  Suffice it to say, I’m as normal and human as the next person when it comes to sorting, purging and packing 18 years of life and a family of four, plus a cat and fish.

One evening after the move, in an attempt to get some boxes out of our office, my SO and I emptied the contents of the file boxes into the filing cabinets.  Now we don’t do alot of paper filing anymore but we still had alot of paper files.  We had already done a purge prior to packing  – no need to pay to move your garbage.  On this particular evening we were more concerned with freeing up floor space than ordering files so we simply emptied the boxes as they were stacked on the floor and promised ourselves to sort the files later.

That was a mistake.  Fast forward four weeks and I still haven’t sorted those files.  Until tonight.  At some point over the past month I realized we had put the files in backward.  I’m very visual and use an alpha filing system.  With backward files that weren’t even in the right order, I had been completely disoriented and unable to find anything in the file drawers for many weeks.

The style of filing you use is less important than whether it works for you, it helps you store and retrieve material and you can maintain the system.  My files have some colour coding and are alpha labelled and ordered.  They have been like that for years and without that order I find I can’t use the system at all.  The result?  I have a huge pile of filing sitting in the filing bin.

I’m pleased to report that with one hour of focussed time and attention, my filing system is now back in order, sorted in the correct direction and ready for use.  I’m no longer disoriented and I’m looking forward to getting the pile of filing into the cabinet where it belongs.  Meanwhile, I’ve also learned that there is much, much more purging to be done.  The purging will have to wait for another day.

Office Organizing

Tax Time Loomith

Posted by Carolyn on
 January 31, 2012

Many of us are planning for the holidays and looking forward to some downtime after a busy fall.  Great idea.  What’s top of your list when you get back to the office in January?

With a little forward planning, by the time you get to April, you’ll be focussed on those new clients having signed off and sent off your annual tax return.  If you are still working on a paper-based system, consider booking time with yourself in your 2012 calendar, before it gets booked with client appointments, to sort the receipts.

An accordion file makes a great receptacle.  With 13 pockets it can stand on a shelf, in a file drawer and be labelled by month to receive receipts, invoices and any other relevant paperwork.

Office Organizing
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Tax Prep in the SOHO

Posted by Carolyn on
 January 19, 2011

Are you staring at a shoe  box of receipts?  Here’s a quick and inexpensive way to get those receipts tamed.  Pick up an accordion folder at the local office supply store with 12 sections, one for each month.  Label the sections.  Start by filing the receipts by date into the appropriate section.

Some people prefer to file by category.  Date or category, it doesn’t matter.  They all have to be accounted for at tax time and how you group them is up to you and based on the volume of receipts.

If it seems overwhelming, consider contacting a local high school student whom you trust and offer to pay the them to file the shoebox of receipts for you according to month.  This is a great opportunity for the student to learn the benefits of organization and practise some basic filing skills.  In addition, what you will need to pay the student is tax deductible and much less than your accountant is likely to charge you to accomplish the same thing.

Office Organizing
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Office Annual Review

Posted by Carolyn on
 December 8, 2010

Before working as a professional organizer, I spent several decades in a corporate environment.  Those of us who have ever worked for someone are familiar with the annual review process.  But have you ever considered applying this concept to the organization of your office?  If you were giving your office an annual review, how would it fare?

  • Are the position description and expectations clear and understood?
  • Are there annual goals and objectives that are in line with the company’s (yours) strategic objectives for the year?
  • Do the annual goals and objectives meet the SMART criteria (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time limited)?
  • Did your office meet all its performance targets for the year?
  • Did you office meet all its goals and objectives for the year?
  • What recommendations do you have to offer?

Try this out on your office space whether your run a home office or a corporate environment.  And remember – there should be no surprises at performance review time.  Regular feedback on adjustment to performance of your office will ensure that those goals are met by the end of the year.

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