Organizing and productivity

Apr 13

How to Clear Out Your Unfinished Projects

By Sherry Borsheim Blog, Business Organizing, Expert Articles, Free Articles, Home Office Organization, Home Organizing No Comments

Are you harboring emotional clutter? Look around your home and office. Is it full of unfinished projects? Then the answer is yes.

The unfinished projects tucked on shelves, in cabinets, and the bottom of your drawers are pulling you down and stopping you from being as organized and productive as you could be. Still not sure that these projects are really holding you back? Ask yourself these questions:

When people come into your home and office do the unfinished projects and clutter make you embarrassed?
Do you tell people they can’t come in because of the clutter- or make excuses for them not to visit.
Do you have articles and books marked to read, slips of paper, to-do lists piling up, small broken things waiting to be fixed?

Record Your Unfinished Projects

Make a list. Open up a word document or pull out a piece of paper. Start free writing and record every unfinished project you have lingering around. Don’t get overwhelmed, you are taking the first step! And you aren’t the only one with a big list.

Purging yourself of these unfinished projects will help you move forward and become more successful in your business and life.

Go through your list and choose only the projects that will move your forward goals in the upcoming year. These are your priorities. Now that you have your unfinished projects laid out in front of you create a schedule. You won’t finish them and reduce your emotional clutter if you don’t have a plan!

Remember moving forward clutter of every kind sucks your energy. It costs you time and money. Focusing on reducing the clutter in your life and preventing new clutter and unfinished projects from piling up in your life will allow you to have the best year in both your business and personal life!

What unfinished projects will you tackle this week?

Apr 12

Love0

Your Tax Preparation Checklist

By Sherry Borsheim Blog, Business Organizing, Free Articles No Comments

It’s that time of year again…tax time. It always feels so great when I send my tax papers off to my accountant. The first few years I was in business, this was a time-consuming and frustrating process. I procrastinated till the last minute because I didn’t have my systems in place.

In an effort to simplify, streamline and automate my business systems, I created a simple year end checklist of all the items I needed to send to my accountant at year end. What a relief it is every year and my system completely simplified my life and my husbands too. Now, tax time is a breeze!

Often times, this is one of the biggest frustrations for a lot of small business owners, stay-at-home moms and pretty much everyone else for that matter. I can think of a million other things I’d rather be doing than preparing my papers for tax time. How about you?

Gathering the necessary pieces of information to prepare their tax return is a project a lot of people procrastinate on. So, the first thing I do for my clients when I’m organizing their files and papers in their office and at home is to create an easy to use financial filing system. The following year, I always ask my clients how much time they spent preparing and gathering her papers for tax time. Last year, when I asked a client how much time she spent gathering everything for her accountant, she replied “it was a breeze, it only took me 15 minutes.” That was music to my ears. That tells me that the financial filing system is working for her AND the checklist saves time. This can happen for you too.

Tax Preparation Checklist

As you gather your papers for tax time this year, create your own “Tax Preparation Checklist” or “Year End Checklist.” On this list write down all the different types of documents and bits of information you need to have in preparation of your tax return. Type it up and save it on your computer in your finance or accounting folder. If you prefer, print it and keep it in a hanging file named “Year End Checklist” with all your other financial files.

A few other items I have on this year end checklist is car mileage from previous years square footage of my office space. Having a year end checklist has saved me a ton of time and reduced my stress and anxiety when it comes to tax time.

Here are some sample tax preparation checklists:

Tax Preparation Checklist Personal

https://www.simplyproductive.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Tax-Preparation-Checklist-Personal-Canada-IABO.pdf

Tax Preparation Checklist Self Employed

https://www.simplyproductive.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Tax-Preparation-Checklist-Self-Employed-Canada-IABO.pdf

Tax Preparation Checklist for USA from Intuit

http://images.turbotax.intuit.com/iqcms/marketing/lib/Tax%20Prep%20Checklist.pdf

Take the time now to simplify your life and next year at tax time, you’ll be glad you did.

Which checklist will you use next year?

Apr 05

Love0

Get Your Personal Productivity to a New Level

By Sherry Borsheim Blog, Business Organizing, Expert Articles, Free Articles No Comments

If you are surrounded by stacks of paper, unanswered emails, and half finished projects than what I’m about to tell you will not come as a shock. All of that STUFF is weighing you down. It is amping up your stress level and pulling down your personal productivity. There is no better time then the present to take stock of what you need to improve in your business life to increase your personal productivity and there by increase your success! Start here:

Take our personal productivity quiz to rate your level of satisfaction

On a scale of 1-10 how satisfied are you in these areas of productivity and effectiveness (1 being not satisfied and 10 very satisfied):

Retrieving your computer files
Managing your email files
Retrieving information from your paper-based files
Staying on top of follow-up
Using your electronic or paper calendar
Managing your project files
Organization on the top of your desk
Retrieving information from archives boxes or storage room
Juggling multiple roles and responsibilities
Regular exercise or recreational activities
Dealing with stress & overwhelm

Now it is time to focus in. Choose 3 areas to improve and be realistic about your goals. You won’t raise a score of 3 to a 10 overnight, but you can bring a 3 up to a 5 or 6. Then set another set of objectives to get you from 6 to 10!

Write down your objectives based on those 3 areas most affecting your personal productivity. This is where you will begin. Once you have written it down you may see opportunities to reach personal productivity goals you hadn’t seen before.

Share your goals for increasing your personal productivity!

Sharing goals makes you much more llikely to meet them. Want to learn more about personal productivity? Check it out here.