Come January 1st many of us have created New Year’s resolutions with the aim of improving our work or private lives, many people aim to be more organised. If this sounds like you and your resolve is starting to slip we have some top tips to help you stick with it.
Make to-do lists
Now this one will probably sound obvious but is actually overlooked by many people, making a to-do list is a great way to get started when you need to be more organised. Going hand in hand with this is blocking time in your diary for each activity and allocating a realistic time for each item, you may think that an hour each morning to reply to emails sounds too long but actually it can take this long! Once you get to the end of your allocated time move on to the next thing to stay on track, you can always come back to anything you had to leave.
Prioritise tasks
Once you’ve got your to-do list ready take a look at the list and use the Eisenhower Matrix to divide items between: important and urgent, important but not urgent, not important but urgent, and not important and not urgent. The important/urgent tasks should take precedence over everything else followed by important/not urgent, be sure to put these in your diary first. The following two boxes can either be delegated or scheduled for later in the week depending on how urgent they are. If you’re not sure how to use the matrix take a look at the diagram below, we promise it will save you time! Reassess your list at the end of every day to help get organised for tomorrow, it will be five minutes well spent.
Keep on top of filing
One of the first things to slip when things get busy is filing, it’s so easy for documents to end up piled on your desk waiting for a slow moment to be filed away or for them to end up in an unnamed box – a disaster waiting to happen! Be sure to take the extra couple of minutes to clearly name every file and every box, either setting aside time at the end of every day to do it or doing it there and then, whichever works best for you. Don’t forget that we can help with filing and storage through both our scan on demand service for when you need that document right now and our retrieval service for when you need the original document. These services save you the time of rifling through multiple boxes to find what you need, we stay organised so you don’t have to!
Set mini-milestones
Anyone who has tried to lose weight or get to the gym more knows that tackling it all in one go is not only unrealistic but also can be very demotivating. Be kind to yourself and break your big goal into easier to hit mini-milestones. This could be as simple as getting your desk organised by the end of the week, or doing all your filing at the end of each day. Successfully hitting a multitude of small milestones will keep you motivated and therefore more likely to reach your goal of being more organised. Plus, being more organised means many different things, by breaking it down you can easily visualise the steps you need to take to achieve your goal.
To find out how we can help you achieve your goal of being more organised, get in touch today at info@archive-vault.co.uk or give us a call on 01603 720722.
