Would you say you’re an organized person? Maybe you have a calendar on the wall and a tub to keep all your pens in, but otherwise there’s wires all over the floor and papers all over the desk? If that sounds a bit like you, or you’re a little bit worse than what it describes, it’s time to make sure you’re not hampering yourself as you try to move on with your business goals.
Organization is very important in the business world, especially if you’re a small or micro business aiming to expand your reach by the end of the year. The better the internal operations, the more successful the external operations, and that means you need to get organized!
Starting Zoning Your Office
It’s been long established that our brains get used to different activities happening in different places, such as the bedroom for sleeping or the kitchen for cooking and eating, and trying to merge any of these kinds of activities together can get you very confused. So the same kind of rule should apply to your workspace, and how you work within it. At the same time, you’re going to want everything you need on a regular basis to be within easy reach, and most of the time, you’re not even going to want to leave your desk in order to access them.
So, you’ve got a desk in front of you – what happens there? It’s where you write out press releases and send off emails to network contacts. You don’t move the printer over there and start filling up your workspace with sheets of paper and old ink cartridges! You’ve got the printer and the scanner behind you – what happens there? Not chatting and taking a break, that’s for sure! All in all, just make sure each part of your office has a use, and use it for that purpose alone.
Know What Documents are Important (and get a filing system!)
You’re going to have a lot of official documents to keep track of when you’re running an office, and you’re going to need a good filing system to make sure they’re all kept in a safe place that you can easily access again. And when you lay it out like that, it seems such a simple process! But in reality it can be overwhelming, and seriously bog down your work days.
And that feeling is one you need to focus on – maybe you have too many documents on hand, and too much capacity to store them in? Maybe you need to cut down, and digitalise things to make sure every signed form or excess contract is in one place? Block out a day, get yourself some USBs or the help of a company like PaperSave, and start scanning in your files to keep them out of the way. Once that’s all done, you can even destroy the physical copies to give yourself some better breathing room!
Your workspace could do with a better organization rota!
