How to Organize Yourself at Work

Your desk looks like a bomb exploded on it and your drawers are full of unsharpened pencils and half-used pens. You have a dozen or so pads of various size papers and notebooks jammed into every drawer. Face it--you are a workplace slob. Help is here.

Things You'll Need

• One notepad and a pen
• Date book
• File folders
• File cabinets
• Trash bin

Instructions

1. You need to keep a date book for your appointments, tasks and daily to do lists. Make a daily practice of using this every morning and every afternoon before leaving work.

2. Keep a daily to do list. If you do not complete it, take the uncompleted items to the next day. You will eventually tire of writing the same things down and you will get them done. One of the things you will have to accept if you want to remain organized is that you need to change your daily practices from now on. It will take some practice to do this every day, but once you get accustomed to it, life becomes easier, though more predictable.

3. Clean out your desk, file cabinets and every inch of your office space. Give away extra supplies you have been hoarding; pens, markers, sticky notes and other junk that is crowding you out of your work area. Reorganize your furniture and keep everything in the proper place.

4. Paperwork is a bear for some people. Put incoming stuff in a folder, stuff you are working on in another and completed in a third that you will later file away. Throw out anything that you know you have a copy of on the computer. Make sure your computer information is backed up by the company server, so you should not store it on your PC files, but in the server files for safekeeping.

5. Keep your filing system as simple as possible. Use an alphabetical file for important documents and things you will keep. Write details down on a notebook or in a computer file if this is easier for you. It is always best not to trust that you will remember. Even the act of writing something down may commit it to your memory.

6. Keep your email organized. Delete junk email without reading it. Be systematic about what you save in computer files. Keep a document that reminds you of where you filed which bits of information for your future reference.

7. Get rid of old manuals, outdated literature and things that you know you will never read or use. Most of us keep too much stuff and shuffle through the same papers over and over again.

Tips & Warnings

• Once you get organized, keep your stuff that way.

• Don't let yourself fall back into the same old pattern of messiness.