If you frequently feel a sense of despair when looking around your disorganised office, you are not alone. Chaotic offices are common, but they are very inefficient, increasing your stress and wasting your time searching for missing paperwork. It’s almost frightening how much paperwork can take over your life. But where should you start when you feel brave enough to start sorting it out?
Clear your desk
Keep your desk clear of things you aren’t working on at the moment. Fit enough drawers to cope with whatever you need to keep handy, and fit a filing unit beside, or underneath it. Position frequently used stationery where you can reach it from a sitting down position, and consider having a shelf fitted above the desk where you can place things that need to be done in the near future. Keep your stapler, pens, printer ink and other paraphernalia into a drawer, so they are not crowding your working space. Keep clutter minimal – items that are gathering dust have no place on your desk.
Make your office a productive one
Think about the type of person you are, and the environment that is right for you to be most productive in. If you are a right-brained person, you will need some visual stimulation in order to produce your best work. You could try colourful containers, photos of your family or an attractive pot plant, which will increase your sense of wellbeing.
Get rid of any interruptions
If you are busy, don’t answer the phone. If you are really busy, unplug it. Ask not to be disturbed. Wear headphones to block out background noise. Do whatever it takes to get the job done.
Delegate
No one can manage to do everything without any help. Give more to the people that you trust to do the job properly, and leave yourself with less to do overall. If you like to remain in control at all times, think of it as removing some of the high priority tasks from your list.
Divide your paperwork
Loosely speaking, you should have three different sets of paperwork. The first is the work that you need right now and want at your fingertips, which you can file close to your desk. The second is items you want to be accessible, but not in the way so that they will distract you from your current projects. And the third is paperwork that needs stored away in a filing cabinet, for future reference, that can quickly and easily be located if need be.
Organise your filing cabinet
You need a system, or your filing cabinet is basically just another pile of paper to sort out. Alphabetical filing is easy to manage and time saving. Without a system, you waste valuable time looking for documents that should be easy to find. Fire filing cabinets are ideal for protecting critical paperwork and give you peace of mind, reducing your stress levels. By maintaining a cool inside temperature in the event of a fire, fire filing cabinets are specially designed to protect your documents for long enough for the fire service to arrive and extinguish any fire.
Robert Phillips runs a successful ecommerce business selling office safes - www.safeoptions.co.uk
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