Organization Does A Lot For You and Your Business
by Kim Eyer

Do you feel busy, rushed, and sometimes discouraged at the end of your day? Review these benefits and tips for being organized.

In the hustle and bustle of everyday business activity, it can be easy to forget office organization. We get busy, we have a tendency to make piles of papers, toss down a few things. The next thing you know, disarray has been created.

Being organized does a lot for your business. Even if you have a home office, organization skills are an important part of success.

Let's take a look at the benefits of sound organizational skills:

First, organization presents the image you want your customers and associates to have of you. Several years ago, an employee said to me, "Boss, you're the most organized person I know." Bingo! I knew I had set the right stage and was presenting the professional image I wanted to have. And even better, I realized this employee admired that quality and felt motivated to be just as organized.

Surely, you do not want your customers and clients to look around your office and see disarray. It makes them wonder how well their services will be handled if you can't even keep your own affairs in order! When clients visit our web development and business services office, they look around and say (with a smile), "This is a really nice office." It isn't that the office is huge or expensively furnished. No, it's the fact that things are neat and organized which draws this comment. Our clients enjoy their visit and the business discussion, then leave with that extra subtle thought in the back of their mind, "They take care of things, I don't have to worry."

Second, it reduces frustration. Do you find it annoying when you can't find things? Nothing is worse than needing something. perhaps a file, a book, a disk, or some tool.right now, and yet you can't find it among the piles of "stuff." Learn to file, not make piles. This makes it easier to locate the things you need immediately and saves wasted time. Don't pile things up, costing yourself daily "digging" time. Instead, file things neatly, use your bookshelves, cd rack, or your toolbox, put things away when you're finished with them, etc.  

Third, you feel better because you have control. This one factor makes the difference between feeling haggled at the end of a busy day vs. feeling a bit tired but having a sense of accomplishment. A busy day goes by a whole lot better when you have no trouble finding what you need. You handle one task, then move onto the next quickly, efficiently. Now just picture that mentally for a few seconds. Not that picture of yourself a bit frantic, trying to sort through your  busy day; but instead you are in control, smoothly moving from task to task, making the work of two people look like a breeze. Yes, you look confident, cool, calm, and collected to yourself and the people around you. 

Fourth, you can accomplish so much more when your office, supplies, tools or paperwork are in order. Many times I have received comments like, "I don't know how you do it all. You seem to accomplish so much." Well, it's easy if you know where everything is!  Being organized can even get you out of the office an hour early on a given day, having accomplished more than some people do in two or three days.

This article would not be complete without some final tips on how to get and/or stay organized:

1) Setup a decent filing system. People have all kinds of ways to file. Some do everything A, B, C and so on. Others file by Vendor, Employee, Projects, perhaps with folders in each category. The most important thing is to setup a system that fits your needs with a style or layout you can handle.

2) Use desk organizers and clean off your desk, everyday. Make time for this, set aside the last 20 minutes of the day or stay an extra 20 if that's what it takes. File away invoices, information materials, put up the disks, pens and pencils, arrange the stapler and whatnots. This makes tomorrow morning start out a lot better. You have a whole different outlook when you walk into that clean, fresh desktop, ready to start your day. You start tomorrow morning off 
already in control!

3) Keep a Rolodex or other system for all those contact business cards. When someone hands you their card, file it right then. No stacking here! It only takes a second right now. If you pile up 10 or 15 of them, then you have that much more to catch up later. And NO contact phone numbers scratched here and there on bits of paper. Write the contact information on a card, and file it now. Next time you want to call "John Blue," you'll have his information at your fingertips, not buried in some pile of scrap paper.

4) Clean up your messy storage closet and/or desk drawers. It doesn't do any good to move the piles and the mess into a closet or drawer. You only have to dig in those too. Hey, I bet you'll find things you didn't even know you had and could actually use. If you can't use them, give them to someone who can and rid yourself of the clutter.

5) Have discipline. Sure, I'm tempted to "just go" at the end of the day too. Or I think, I can set this aside now while I'm busy and put it away later. But I have learned not to do those things. Force yourself to handle small organizing tasks as they come along. Nothing is worse than a half-day or whole day spent catching up the mess we've left pile around ourselves for a week or a month.  Now THAT is a waste of time, and it is so very hard to make time to "catch up". It may take awhile to develop discipline, it may seem like a chore. But, try it, even if only for one month. You'll find out things go so much smoother that you'd never go back to those bad habits you once had. 

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