Staying Organized for 2011

By Aaron Garcia

Keeping organized can be among the most difficult tasks on the planet for some of us – especially when it comes to email, task lists, and notes.  This year, make it your resolution to keep your professional and personal life organized.

Staying organized isn’t just about making a promise and leaving it be, it’s a commitment to change your way of thinking.  If every year you find yourself promising to stay more organized, but ever year you fail to meet that promise, then you need to try something different.  Spending money on organizational tools is a good way to get ahead, but you need to be smart about how you spend your money.  Here are three tips to staying organized this upcoming year.

1. Invest in a Task Management System

Do you feel like tasks literally and figuratively get lost on your desk?  Well you need a better system.  Post-it notes and chicken scratch aren’t going to keep your processes running smoothly – what you need is digital reform.  There are a few online programs, such as LiquidPlanner, which will help you get and stay organized from an individual task to a broad picture approach.  Keeping your tasks digitally organized is a great way to reduce oversight and better predict your future capabilities for handling new projects.  Marking tasks off digitally allows you to keep a precise log of when items were completed, how long it took, and who (if at all) they were delegated to.  Even the best task management system is only as good as you make it, so be sure to find one that fits your style and habits to increase its success rate.

2. Reduce Physical Clutter

If you are anything like me, you find it hard to even get your brain moving forward if your workspace is cluttered.  Investing in a filing system, cabinets, shelves, etc. can be a worthwhile investment if properly utilized.  Make sure you refrain from using the extra organizational space to pack with more clutter, however.  Make the new space accessible and come up with a system to file the clutter away.  Try this simple rule – if you aren’t going to use something within the next 2 weeks, it needs to be thrown out or put in long term storage.  Coupons and junk mail are usually the guilty parties when it comes to home and office clutter – ask yourself when (if ever) you will utilize the coupon or ad and proceed accordingly.  If you have more than 5 papers on your desk, you’re doing it wrong.  If you are an IT Manager, consider investing in some server racks with cable managers to keep your IT room organized a little better. Take 2 minutes out of your day to properly file the pieces away because everyone knows you aren’t working on 5 different things at once.  Clearing away clutter can clear your mind and provide a more organized, productive work or living environment.

3. Be Picky

This one is probably the hardest thing to do for some people, but in order to stay organized, you cannot say “Yes” to everything.  This is kind of a catch-22 because staying organized allows you to easily know what you can and can’t say yes to, but start off slow.  If your friends ask you to pick up their kid from school or meet them out for dinner, unless it’s a spur of the moment deal, genuinely let them know that you will have to get back to them.  A lot of times, disorganization comes from having too much on our plate to handle.  In today’s go- go-go world, it’s hard to say no lest we look lazy and uninterested, but trust me, it will pay dividends in the long run.  If you are unsure of your current workload or list of responsibilities, it is impractical to take anything else on until you are sure.

Let 2011 be the year of organization and progress for you.  Reducing stress is sometimes as simple as saying no to clutter, arbitrary requests, and outdated solutions.  Get organized today and stay organized all year.

Author Information

Aaron Garcia is a project manager for MorePro Marketing. His duties involve organizing and delegating work requests, projecting future resource availability and developing project delivery timelines.

Photo Credit: Amy Burton

You Can Work Better, Faster and Smarter Without Feeling Overburdened

Do you curl up in a ball and cry in a corner when your workload becomes too burdensome? All right, maybe you don’t take the actual steps to run away from your work, but that doesn’t mean you don’t find yourself stressed, harassed, pressed down, wrung out, or otherwise overwhelmed by your work.

Whenever I take on a new project, I carefully examine how that task will impact everything else I do. Some projects look quite daunting, but if it is something I really want to do, I’ll find a way to get it done. Hell, high water, and hassles cannot stop me!

Those Deadly Time Wasters!

Time wasters are efficiency killers and the only way to work better, faster, and smarter is to control those things which take up too much of your time. I bet you can name a few, but I’ll kick things off by listing the following:

Email: Many people praise the reality that email has essentially replaced snail mail. It has also brought junk mail from the mailbox to the inbox.

To avoid excess solicitations, I do not share my email addresses as readily as I once did. I ignore the majority of the messages and I only respond to those inquiries which are of interest to me.

Social Media: I am active with a handful of social communities, but I do maintain accounts with many other ones. I’ll take a decent free link where I can get it, but I won’t waste my time where little benefit can be derived through my participation. I tend to ignore people on social sites who are overly zealous with their sphinn and/or stumble requests.

Phone Calls: Before I conference over the phone, I strongly prefer to make an appointment via email to arrange a mutually convenient time to hold our discussion. Brevity is essential, though a lengthy conversation can be beneficial when multiple points must be covered.

Customers: Customers who are a good fit, I keep close to my side.

I know what they want and I respond in a timely manner with work that meets or exceeds their expectations. These are people who trust my professional expertise and are confident that I am a man of my word. Penny pinchers, doubters, and people who aren’t trusting are one time customers.

Personal Marketing: I don’t mean social media (mentioned earlier), rather the marketing of my personal brand as noted by me yesterday. As a freelance writer, I can spend hours on a daily basis soliciting new business, writing proposals, and doing whatever it takes to bring in new work. Blogging is part of my personal marketing strategy as this blog is usually the first page my future customers land on when they visit my site.

I do not engage in memes, respond to tagging, or write special “blog day” articles just because everyone else does. On the other hand, I am generous with my outbound linking and blog commenting. Guess which method takes up the least amount of my time?

Control Your Time and You Control Your Financial Picture

When you are the master of your time you work better, earn more money, and you can chase other pursuits. Burdens sap you of your energy, steal your peace, and make you highly unproductive. The choice is yours — how well do you manage your time?