While a lot of businesses are going ‘green’ and paperless, we still live in a world where paper exists, especially in business. And the problem with paper, is it tends to multiply. Or, at least it feels that way.
If you are a completely paperless business than bravo to you! It is not easy to become 100% paperless and you probably won’t need this advice, however, if you do still have paper piles taking over your desk, then keep reading.
Taking care of the paper piles, will require a mindset shift and daily discipline, as remember, paper tends to keep coming in even after you set yourself up with a organization system. Here are three steps to start the process of managing your paper piles.
Examine the piles:
Before you can organize paper you’ve have to narrow down what needs to be organized. That’s because a lot of the paper you have in your office right now doesn’t need to be there. It’s simple just clutter. When going through your paperwork, think about the following questions:
Will you refer to it again?
Is it available somewhere electronically?
Do you need to keep it for tax purposes?
Will it be worth your time and energy to file?
Organize :
Once you have eliminated the clutter, you will need to organize what is left into a system that works for you.
File boxes, tabbed folders and/or file cabinets are all good solutions. Get yourself a label maker and start creating clearly labeled folders. But again, only keep those papers that have been determined to be essential or necessary to store. Shred and recycle the rest.
Set up a daily routine
The key to organization is consistency. Every day that you receive mail or if other paper finds its way into your office, you need to deal with it. You need to make a decision of where it will go in your new organization system, or if it needs to be tossed, passed onto someone else or if you need to take action with it.
So much of the paper you receive is probably useless. You’ll never look at it again, you’ll never need to reference it, it doesn’t bring you joy, and it takes up a lot of room. So strive to go paperless as much as you possibly can, and then declutter and organize the rest. It will free you from the piles of paper that can overtake your workspace and distract you from other more important tasks in your day.
Tag Archives: clarity
It’s the time of year when resolutions are made and goals are set. We evaluate our past wins and re-evaluate our losses. We determine what worked and what didn’t work in previous years, who helped us and who didn’t, and we review budgets and schedules to help us make intelligent decisions moving forward.
The goals and resolutions, the wins and losses, and the budgets and schedules involve ALL aspects of our lives -both business and personal. You can’t effectively be happy in one area, if the other is out of balance. Many people try but most do not succeed to have a REAL work/life balance. It is hard to do. We all have so many responsibilities, we are pulled in a million different directions, and everyone seems to be after a portion of our money and wants a large portion of our time. So, what can you do differently this year to help get that balance that most of us want and need? One simple solution would be to hire a virtual assistant to help you move towards that goal of a work/life balance.
Here are the top 3 reasons to work with a VA this year.
- You can’t afford not to. If time is money and you are stuck doing non-revenue producing tasks, then you need to outsource that work immediately! Find a VA that can do some of those tasks for you. The investment you make hiring a part-time VA (you can offer minimal hours to start) will give you back time that can be spent working on revenue generating activities or spending quality time with your family.
- Project completion. Look around your life and see how many “great ideas” were started but never finished because you didn’t have TIME to complete them. If any of these can be outsourced for completion, do it! Or again, outsource the activities that may be keeping you from completing your million dollar idea.
- Peace of mind. It would be hard to place a dollar amount on peace of mind. Hiring a VA could be that missing link that helps to lower your stress level and increase your productivity this year. Wouldn’t it be great to know that when you pass a project off to your VA, it will get done in a timely manner, with professional results? You can give a deadline and have it done when you need it, without having to do it yourself. Peace of mind can help you have better clarity which is essential for success in 2015 and getting you to live a more balanced life.