No matter how chaotic your work life feels during the last quarter, the end of the current year and the start of a new year is the perfect opportunity to organize your office and regain control of your schedule. Here are some simple tips to getting you organized for the year-end!
Clean out your files
Closets and folders can easily become cluttered with outdated documents, so it's important to take the time once a year to empty the old and make room for the new. Start with your reference, client, and financial file. Consider whether or not these documents will be relevant to your work next year - completed projects and last year's receipts should not be in your active files! If you need to refer to these documents again in the future (for legal, tax, or other reasons), move these items to an offsite file for permanent storage. But outdated journal articles and dissertations with no real long-term purpose can be discarded or destroyed. And if you find documents that don't have a logical place in your filing system, create a new folder with the appropriate category. When January 1 rolls around, you'll be able to archive new documents in seconds!
Take a look at your office.
Desk clutter can last all year: you're busy, make a few piles here, a pile there, and suddenly you can't even see a single horizontal surface! Walk around the room and collect all the homeless items you find, creating a fixed location for each:
Supplies and equipment: only keep what you regularly use on your desk; then store the "extras" in a closet or cabinet.
Books and periodicals: Store magazines in a magazine rack grouped by title or subject.
Reference manuals: Keep pamphlets and sets of loose-leaf documents in expandable folders or 3-ring folders with index dividers between subjects.
Multimedia: To save space, remove Flash drives, CDs and DVDs from their cases and store them in file folders with self-adhesive CD/DVD sleeves.
Empty stationery items: neatly stored in stackable bins or briefcases.
To-do files: Configure a desktop file or hanging file classifier with categories for each type of action: "to call," "to pay," "to archive," "to read," etc.
With dedicated storage space for everything, it's easy to get organized before year-end and the beginning of the first day of the year. Just take a few seconds at the end of each working day to put things away (it's not hard when you know where they end up!)
Make Some Plans
If you want to end this year wishing you had accomplished more, now is the time to look at what is happening to you. Endless interruptions during the working day? Or did you just struggle to start those bigger, more important projects? Decide now what you want to accomplish in the coming year, then schedule uninterrupted time in your calendar to work toward those goals. Tell your boss you'd like a day (or half a day) a week to work on acquiring a major account, implementing a major marketing strategy, or completing major project research for the company. . You may have to close the door, hang up, ignore your email, or even work from home all day. Still, your boss will likely be so excited about your initiative that he'll do whatever he can to help you get there!
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