Organizing and productivity

Aug 04

How to Get Organized at Work With a Tickler System

By Sherry Borsheim Business Organizing, Home Office Organization, Organizing Paper Files, Quick Organizing Tips No Comments

Are you looking for a tool that will show you how to get organized at work? The paperwork surrounding your day to day activities and follow ups can be a serious impediment to getting organized. A tickler system reminds you of your important follow-ups and other things that will require your attention at a future date. This is how you should use your tickler file system.

Set up Your Tickler System

Want to know how to get organized at work? Set up your tickler system. You will need to start by purchasing plastic tabs, hanging files and containers to store them in. Your tickler system should be set up in an accordion file. This file should have a tab for each day of the current month (1-31), and then tabs for each month of the year (January – December). The next part of the system is personalized to your specific needs. Your hanging files with tabs behind the accordion file can be tailored to the repetitive actions that best apply to your work. This could be calls to make, calls expected, bills to pay, data entry, expense reimbursement, read, to write, ect.

In my opinion there are two reasons that people stack up papers all around themselves instead of filing them in a system. The first is they are afraid they will never find them again. Customize a system just for you and you will never lose paperwork again. And second, they don’t want to act on the paperwork, they are avoiding it. A tickler system will make taking action simpler and easier. You will dread it less and have a clear idea what you need to accomplish each day.

It is important to get in the habit of checking your tickler file system every day. This is the only way it works! Here is what I recommend for developing a habit, make a daily appointment with yourself. Write it on your calendar, program an alert in your computer or phone. Just make sure you are reminded to check your tickler file daily, every day for a month. After that it will become an automatic habit. If you find yourself missing days put it back on your calendar. You’re making a commitment to get organized at work.

Choose a location for your tickler system that makes it easiest to check every day and to file things into it. This can be a desktop file frame or your desk drawer. Making your system easily accessible means no more papers stacking up all around you. You won’t put off the job of filing any longer. Now there will be a home for all the papers cluttering up your desk, even piled on the floor! A tickler file system will give you a home for phone messages, invitations, tickets, bill receipts, claim stubs, and anything that requires action by you in the future!

Want a plan for how to get organized a work? Start your plan with putting together a tickler file system. This will give you your daily to-dos right at your fingertips. A tickler system will give you a place to file those small slips of paper, phone messages to be returned, tickets for an event, ect. Don’t be afraid of losing a piece of paper again it will be filed on the exact day you need it again! Make it a daily habit to check this file system and you will be more organized at work.

Jul 29

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Overcoming Work Filing Problems

By Sherry Borsheim Business Organizing, Home Office Organization, Organizing Paper Files, Quick Organizing Tips No Comments

Many people struggle with how to be organized at work. A great deal of frustration, stress, and lost time surrounds bad filing habits. Or for that matter no filing habits! Filing is a low priority for a lot of people. It is a common struggle that the papers piling up around you simply don’t have an assigned home. This can be a big problem at the end of the year when it comes time to condense and archive your work files or complete your shredding for the year. There are two main components to the filing problem.

The first is that people don’t know how to set up a system. When learning how to be organized at work it is important to know you need a filing system! But you don’t know where to begin. You don’t know how to put together a system that will be effective and work for you. So you do nothing. Your papers are not in their homes because you haven’t given them homes! You are not the only one.

Think about how you would like to both file and retrieve your information. What are your preferences? People are afraid if they file their paperwork they will forget where it is. Or forget it exists at all. These out of sight, out of mind fears stop people from filing paperwork at all! Use color to make your filings system easy and fun. People in general are very visual that is why I use orange or yellow hanging files for bill pay files. The moment you open your drawer these files will jump out at you. So put aside fears of losing bill pay files by using color!

So to solve your first problem on your path of learning how to be organized at work use color, keep it simple, spend time thinking about and deciding on your preferences about filing and retrieving information, and then customize a system just for you.

The second common filing issue, most people keep their bills in separate file folders. A file folder is created for each paid bill by supplier. This takes up so much of your time! You have to go through the process of setting up the files each year and then having to file one paid bill into the respective folder. If you are like most people you hate to file. So you will start collecting these single sheets of paper until you get around to it. Unfortunately most people don’t ever actually make time for it. Before you know it twelve months have passed. Your file cabinet is empty, but you have stacks and stacks of paper everywhere! Your desk, the top of your file cabinet, every surface in your office has a mountain of paper on it. There are receipts, statements, and paid bills scattered far and wide.

The solution? Simplify. Use an expanding plastic hanging file labeled for each month from January to December. This way when you pay your bill you can file all your paid bills for the month behind that months tab. At the end of the year it is a simple one step process. Pull out your plastic hanging file and put it in your archive box. Then restart by labeling a new plastic hanging file for the next year. This system is straightforward and easy to maintain for twelve months. Eliminate the unruly stacks of paper.

Many people struggle with how to be organized at work. Creating a simple functional filing system will help you immensely. Remember you are not alone in your struggles. Take the first steps in winning the paper battle today!

Want to learn more about how to create filing systems for work or home? Click here.

Jul 08

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Keep Stress at Bay by Learning How to Get Organized at Work

By Sherry Borsheim Business Organizing, Home Office Organization, Organizing Paper Files, Quick Organizing Tips No Comments

Stress is quickly becoming an epidemic in North America. Today, 75 – 90 percent of all doctor visits are stress related! Conditions like high blood pressure, allergies, migraines, ulcers, bowel and skin problems and more have all been related to stress. That’s not to mention the fact that stress has been linked to all the leading causes of death, including heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents, cirrhosis and suicide.

In addition to causing all sorts of health problems, stress also affects businesses of all sizes in lost revenue. That’s because over 60 percent of employee absences are due to psychological problems such as stress, resulting in an estimated 1 million workers that are absent on an average workday. With this in mind, job stress is estimated to cost U.S. industry $300 billion annually, as assessed by absenteeism, diminished productivity, employee turnover, direct medical, legal and insurance fees and more.

With all this in mind, now, more than ever, is the time to protect your health and business by dealing with stress effectively. One way to do that is through organization.

Sitting down at a cluttered desk can immediately increase your stress level before the workday has even begun. And we all know that this is not the time of the day to start taking on additional stress. That will happen easily enough throughout the course of your day. The start of each day is the time to feel fresh and confident in your ability to make progress on your daily tasks. This feeling of purpose comes easily with an organized workspace. Clutter, on the other hand, washes all good intentions away in confusion and stress, and sets the tone for the rest of the workday.

How is it that a few stacks of disorganized paper can create a mass of stress in just minutes? It’s because clutter is actually postponed decisions. Each piece of paper on your desk represents something that you haven’t taken care of yet, which adds to your level of stress. Going unchecked, these paper molehills can become mountains of stress, leaving you completely overwhelmed. By this point, you may not even know where to start the organizing process.

Worse yet, the greater the stacks of paper, the greater chance there is for you to miss something important. Perhaps you misplaced a critical document that is needed for a meeting just minutes away, or you forgot about a bill that is past-due, or, you could even lose track of where you are on a significant project with an immediate completion deadline looming.

Here are a few tips for reducing stress by learning how to get organized at work:

1. Reduce clutter using the FAST System (There are only 4 options when it comes to paper – File, Act, Schedule, Toss).
2. Delegate tasks when appropriate – you don’t have to do everything
3. Don’t over schedule. Leave time free in your calendar for the unexpected and perhaps for a break now and then.

When you learn how to get organized at work, you can put an end to the stress caused by clutter and lack of organization. Each piece of paper is dealt with once and then filed, scheduled or acted on accordingly. You are left with more free time, because you’re able to get things done in less time. You are also able to focus on your goals and priorities, delegate projects clearly and effectively, and generally be on top of your game. This will relieve a great deal of stress, while creating a real feeling of empowerment and pride in your accomplishments.

If you are interested in learning more ways we can help you get organized at work, click here now.!