10 Easy Maintenance Tips vs Piling on the Chaos
10 Easy Maintenance Tips vs Piling on the Chaos By Eve Abbott,
Excerpted from her new book, How to Do Space Age Work with a
Stone Age Brain TM
Whether you are in your own business or an employee (or neither)
-- if you have a family and a home you are in the business of
having a life. I'm betting that none of you went into business
to become hot at shuffling papers and reams of e-mail.
Eighty percent of the clutter at work and at home is a result of
disorganization, not lack of space! So if it's going to keep
coming in and piling up, you've got to have an exit strategy.
Regular maintenance is the best way to keep your office tuned
up, same as your vehicle.
The key 'success' habit is deciding immediately where each piece
of paper or e-mail goes and what's the next action required from
you. Setting anything aside in the 'decide later pile' just
makes it worse. Every piece of clutter at work and at home is an
unmade decision.
Use my Daily, Monthly and Yearly Maintenance tips to keep ahead
of all that information --whether it's paper or computer. I
guarantee you can manage your information more easily and
successfully at work and at home when you do.
DAILY Unlike some wines, no piece of information improves with
age. Set a certain time each day to sort, toss and refile both
paper and e-mail. I do mine after lunch while I get through my
post meal 'slump'.
Daily maintenance, like brushing your teeth, keeps you from
collecting build-up in your systems.
Sort all your incoming materials daily; stand over the recycle
bins and get rid of all the junk first. Sort into Action
categories that make sense to you: to pay, to file, to review,
etc. The daily sort is crucial just to keep your filing separate
from Action items, and keep the discards moving.
At home, your 'To File' first sort can be separated into
personal and business filing (try a combination sorter:vertical
for action/ horizontal for filing).
At work, separate client or product materials from company
administrative files in your first sort. More filing category
help under Monthly tips.
Set up magazine files for Reference items (catalogs, magazines).
At home, make separate sort places to put receipts that refer to
warranties, personal property records, or that you need to
reconcile with monthly credit card and bank statements.
Use a compartment, or envelope in your briefcase or purse where
you can easily stuff any receipts (especially if you travel).
Then, use it. In the office, have a drop box or action file for
the day-to- day expensed receipts from your briefcase or
pockets.
MONTHLY Calendar definite times to do Maintenance and stick to
them.
At home, try doing your paper filing only when you pay bills. As
long as you schedule your maintenance every two weeks, you'll
never miss a payment and you'll be up on your filing, too. In
between bill paying time, simply do your daily sort: tossing,
and putting bills, receipts, project materials in your Action
area to be filed or paid when the time comes.
At work, try scheduling non-payday Fridays or before/after two
different monthly meetings to keep it regular. Here are two
suggestions on basic 'To File' systems you can use with your
'file piles' when you do your every day sort.
No matter how you schedule it, you can cut your filing time in
half by presorting your file piles into separate file trays in
the following categories.
Pre-Sorted File Categories: You can separate current business
filing into three domains: People; clients, staff, teams Things;
projects, programs, products Administration; the business of
doing business (financials, physical office).
You can separate current personal filing into three domains:
Personal/Family Household Finances/Insurance
If you don't have a 'business of having a life'filing system,
check out the cost-effective Home and Small Business File Kits
that I use in my own business, which makes it easy for me to
guarantee your satisfaction. (www.organize.com)
YEARLY Universal Archiving Rule: If they aren't this year's
files and you don't use them regularly -- get them out of your
office!
I recommend that every private individual and small business do
an Office Blitz in April after you've filed taxes. Pull all the
old financial, insurance and tax-related files out, and put them
in an archive box. Put in a back-up disk of your accounting
program and data for that tax year.
Pick up a retention schedule from your CPA or the Internal
Revenue Service.
I store my archives on shelves in the garage. Just remember to
label the paper archive or waterproof plastic file boxes on the
front, so you can keep a matching archive list in your file
drawer with an index of box contents. Then, if you need
something you can retrieve it easily.
For larger companies I recommend an Office Blitz at least twice
a year. Plan a Friday afternoon where everyone participates in
cleaning out their offices and cubicles. (Order extra
dumpsters.) If the finance year runs July to June do your
archiving blitz in end July for the prior year.
Archive administrative files, and completed project or program
files. Toss records for which you have already been reimbursed,
or which you no longer maintain as part of your job. Archive the
rest to off-site storage after making an index.
Separate essential records into current or archive storage: File
in current year filing system (by category) File into archival
filing system (by past year) OR Scan into electronic document
storage (both)
Now, that you know how to manage your information more
successfully at work and at home Peace of mind is just an Office
Blitz plus Daily, Weekly and Monthly Maintenance away!
For more free time-saving tips, see http://www.organize.com
Copyright 2005 Eve Abbott All Rights Reserved