Everyday we want to stay organized. We all love the thought of being organized but its a lot easier said than done. We might be able to get away with being messy at home, but there’s no way that we can get away with it at work. As a Manhattan Beach PR firm we understand that there’s so much to keep track of, and lets be honest, we lose a lot of documents in the forbidden forest that is our desk. For all those who wish to be organized but can’t seem to get started, here’s our guide:
1. Clean up your desk: This is something that you may have tried to do before, but we all need a little bit of help. The first step is making a list, the key to making it work is where you store it. If you pile sticky notes all over the border of your computer, you’re bound to lose one or two, and then–oops, you forgot that important client meeting. Keep everything in a PDF so that before you go home for the night you can email it to yourself so that you see it the next day.
And just like that your desk is way cleaner than when you started!
2. Use a daily planner: In our world the planner is probably the best thing that has ever been created. It allows you to stay organized by writing down all of your tasks that you need to complete that day, and you have it all in one place. Now, why can we never just keep up with it? I don’t know about what the rest of the world does but we know that we can’t ever manage to keep up with our planners. In order to fix this reoccurring problem, we gave ourselves a goal to devote half an hour a day, right before lunch to fill out the next week in our planner.
3. Close your door: We are all aware of the “Open Door Policy,” but sometimes you have to say no to that policy. If you want to stay organized sometimes you need to close your door. It is almost impossible to get stuff done with people walking in all the time needing you for one thing or another. Being a Manhattan Beach PR firm we try to only have scheduled appointments, no walk-ins Its a good idea to set aside one hour everyday to meet all together, but once that hour is up shut your door and you will be surprised at all of the work that you can get done in one day.
4. Avoid Distractions: We may not all want to hear it but yes, your phone can keep you from doing a lot of work that needs to get done. When we are away from our phones we feel like we can diagnose ourselves with a minor case of separation anxiety, but after the first 20 minutes of not having it, we forget about it. However if you need social media for the workplace, consider setting up a service like IFTTT or Zapier, they can send invoices or create and post tweets to your blog if needed. Send all your loved ones the kiss face emoji and lock that thing up until 5pm rolls around. You will thank yourself later.
5. Use Your Clock: A lot of people take their clocks for granted. When referring back to the list that you made during step one, along with those other last minute tasks, give yourself a time frame to complete each one. Give yourself only 30 minutes to settle in and drink your coffee, and 1 hour at the beginning of the day to reply to all of the emails etc. If you feel rushed to complete the task in the given time frame, then spend more time on it and if you can, delegate the responsibilities to other people.
And in those short steps, you should feel a lot more comfortable to stay organized.
