An organized work environment does a lot more than provide visual appeal. An organized office has been shown to reduce stress.
Clutter signals to your brain that there’s extra work to do. When your brain feels overwhelmed by all this work, it triggers a stress response. Organizing your work environment reduces the frequency of that stress response, and makes you feel more in control.
Being organized will help you become more efficient. Searching for files in a disorganized office wastes time and makes you less effective.
Go crazy with Labels
If you want to stay organized, your label maker is key!
Simple things like labeling cabinets will not only save you time and frustration but will limit the number of interruptions you get during the day.
People will stop asking you where the printer paper is everyday if you put a “PRINTER PAPER” label on the right cabinet or drawer.
Go Paperless
Get rid of all the clutter!! Save a few trees! Go paperless!
Apps like Evernote, Google Keep, and many others make cloud-based note taking super easy.
Evernote has note templates to fit every need, and they are fully customizable. You can scan documents, sync your notes to other devices and search your notes to find specific information.
Google Keep lets users create and store audio notes or voice-to-text dictated notes, memos, checklists and more.
Tools like Dropbox and Box are essential when it comes to reducing paper. Saving and sharing files in the cloud will help your office reduce paper waste.
Box is a cloud computing business which provides file-sharing, collaborating, and other tools for working with files that are uploaded to its servers. Users can determine how their content can be shared with other users. You can invite others to view and/or edit an account’s shared files, upload documents and photos to a shared files folder, and give others rights to view shared files.
Automate Recurring Tasks
There are a ton of tasks that you do on a regular basis that take up a huge amount of your time.
You might be in charge of restocking office supplies, scheduling meetings, or checking people in. Automating these tasks makes time for more important things.
Envoy – When a visitor arrives, they’ll enter their details and sign documents right on the iPad. Envoy automatically alerts your employee when their guest arrives saving you time and hassle.
Calend.ly – Allows your client to schedule their own appointments, it can automatically distribute meetings to your team based on availability, priority or equity. Send confirmation and reminder emails and texts to improve no-show rates, and add extra time before or after events
Staples Auto Restock – Allows you to shop for the essentials you purchase most like paper and ink. It is delivered to you on the schedule you set
Trello – Is a task management software that also makes it easy to automate a ton of other recurring functions. Trello has everything you need to organize projects of any size. Open a card and you can add comments, upload file attachments, create checklists, add labels and due dates, and more.
Organize Your Inbox
It’s crazy how much time we spend in email. Even if your physical desk is spic and span, a busy inbox can leave you feeling just as stressed.
If you use Gmail, switch your inbox to Priority mode, unsubscribe instead of deleting newsletter emails, and create filters for certain types of emails.
Instead of spending tons of time labeling everything, this person marks any email requiring action unread – everything else gets archived.
Slack is another useful tool. You can share channels with companies and businesses you regularly work with – like clients, vendors, and partners. Talk it out over voice or video calls directly from Slack. If you need to show your work, you can share your screen, too. Drag-and-drop PDFs, images, videos and other files directly into Slack. Get feedback on your work and create an archive of your progress.