Five Ways To Be More Organized At Work
Five Tips for Improving Organization Strategies
1. Clean and organize your workspace. This is the first step because if your workspace is cluttered and messy, it will be hard to organize anything else. Start with overstuffed drawers and file cabinets — go through them and throw away or shred any papers and files that you no longer need. Do the same thing with files and papers that may be stashed on bookshelves or simply stacked in the corner.
2. Use to-do lists, a daily planner and/or a computerized calendar. These are the best ways to prioritize your work projects and keep track of meetings and other appointments. Different people have different preferences when it comes to using to-do lists — some prefer an old-fashioned legal pad and pencil or pen, while others would rather create and manage their list on the computer. Use whatever system works best for you.
3. Set daily and weekly priorities based on your to-do list and deadlines. With an up-to-date to-do list in hand, you can now prioritize your work projects and tasks based on their deadlines. Priorities can be divided into three different categories: short-term (daily), medium-term (weekly) and long-term (monthly or quarterly). This will help you stay focused on multiple tasks with different timeframes and adjust your priorities each day based on what tasks are most pressing now, while still keeping your eye on the long term.
4. Divide your time and energy between small, short-term projects, and larger, longer-term projects. Setting priorities based on different time horizons will enable you to spend time working on both short-term and long-term projects. This can provide variation in the different types of work you do during the day, as well as satisfaction in being able to cross short-term projects off your to-do list while making progress toward longer-term projects with deadlines that are weeks or months out.
5. Stay focused on the task at hand. This can be especially challenging in the fast-paced, hectic work environment most of us experience every day. You might have multiple priorities screaming for your attention all day long, as well as interruptions like meetings to attend, phone messages to return and emails to reply to.
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