An increasing
number of our clientele are solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, and those with network
marketing businesses.
These clients have unique
challenges. The bulk of their time is
spent managing the day-to-day reality of building their client lists, serving
their client needs and managing their case loads. These small business owners often have little
or no office support, as a result, the paperwork often backs up and over time
things often become unmanageable. The
age-old organizing question arises “where do I start”?
Here are 3 simple strategies to
help you manage your information your time.
1.
Start by
dealing with today’s mail.
Get a handle on
the plethora of papers by dealing with the incoming of today. As Barbara Hemphill of, Taming The Paper Tiger, fame often states “Today’s mail is tomorrow’s
pile”
A simple way to
begin to get your paperwork a.k.a. “Today’s Mail” under control is to start
with a 3 folder system,
- Mark Folder One: “To File”,
- Mark Folder Two: “To Pay”,
- Mark Folder Three: “To Do”
There is very
little that would fall outside these three categories and if they do, the
recycle bin would likely be the appropriate file folder for them.
2.
Stay off your email and social media sites for
the first hour of your day.
Set your agenda
for the day and control your time. By
responding to email and Facebook posts as soon as you start the day, you are allowing
other people’s agendas to run and control your day and you will get side-tracked.
Consider
setting your email auto responder to read something like “emails are checked at
11 and 3 each day and we give you our full attention at that time”.
3.
Have a
planner and use it!
The number one absolute
to having an organized business life, home life, student life, is having and
using a good planner. It does not
matter if you use a paper planner or a digital planner but whatever the choice, use it
to it’s fullest function. Hundreds of
Post-It it notes all over the monitor get forgotten and become part of the
background noise – put those notes into your planner or use programs like Evernote, or Workflowy
and keep all your information in one place.
For more productivity strategies or information on how we can help with your paperwork management strategies, please contact Jennifer at Adventures In Organizing.
Can you find anything in your home or office in 5 minutes or less? If
you can, you are definitely on the organized track and likely are taking
this course to fine tune your skills and get some new ideas to make
your life more streamlined.
Many others, however, struggle to find papers, bills, glasses, keys
and a myriad of other items. Many of us have things in our homes, in our
closets, on our desks that have not been used in the past 12 months. Of
all our belongings, we use 20% of them 80% of the time! Can we consider
during this course to let go of some of the 80% of the stuff that we
seldom if ever use? This 80% adds substantially to the disorganization
in our lives. This 20/80 formula can be applied to the papers in our
homes, the files in our drawers, the gadgets in our kitchens, and the
clothes in our closets. If we follow this line of thinking further, then
we can extrapolate from that that approximately 50% of the items we are
storing in our homes are merely clutter!