Ways to Stay Organised at Work
More often than not your work environment is going to be highly demanding and stressful. Being disorganised in the workplace will only create more stress for yourself, as well as make you less effective at your job.
Here’s a mix of ways for you to keep your work life organised.
Time management- There are only so many hours in a working day, so to make sure you get everything done you need to learn to properly organise your time. Start the day by planning out what work you’re going to do when and for how long. This kind of segmentation will make your work more efficient, and mean you have clear goals to strive for.
Lists- This goes hand-in-hand with time management. Making a checklist of what you need to do can be a useful visual tool to help boost your organisation and productivity. It allows you to track your day’s progress and see how much you have left to do, with the added bonus of the satisfaction of ticking off your completed tasks.
Calendar apps- To keep all of your events, meetings and due dates organised, you need to be able to arrange them all in one place. Calendar apps on your phone are more portable than physical ones, and can give you regular reminders on the go of when and where you need to be.
Declutter- The saying ‘tidy desk, tidy mind’, wasn’t just invented by your boss to make sure the workplace looks nice. Having a messy workstation can make it more difficult to concentrate as you’re just surrounded by clutter, as well as making it difficult to find anything. Spending half an hour once a week just throwing away all the useless paper that has built up on your desk can make a world of difference to your head space.
Desk storage- After decluttering it’s important that your workplace stays tidy, and an easy way to do this is by investing in some desk storage devices. Buying things as simple as a paper tray or a pot for your pens can immediately transform your desk into something much more efficient and neat. Plus, if everything has its proper place then it’s less likely to end up cluttered all over your workplace, and make things much easier to find.
Sort out your computer files- This is similar to decluttering, only online. Organising your documents into clearly labelled and ordered files can make life a lot easier when you need to track down a particular piece quickly. There’s also the added bonus that your desktop will look a lot nicer without a load of randomly named documents cluttering it up.
Cloud storage- There’s nothing worse than walking up to do an important presentation at a meeting and realising you’ve forgotten your memory stick that has all of your files on it. Having copies of work online makes it portable and easily accessible, and can help save storage space on your computer. There are lots of options out there, such as Outlook and Google Drive, where you can get online storage for free or very reasonably priced.