Creating Office System’s into 2010 Issue VI
“If I had my life to live over…..I’d dare to make more mistakes next time.”
Nadine Stair
Happy Valentines Day! A wonderful day to remind us to tell the people we care for most, how you truly feel. Yea! for the Vancouver Winter Games, I’m enjoying watching these amazing athletes enjoying themselves competing for their country.
Recently I have been organizing a client using the iPEP Business Edition. This is a collaborative cloud computing system that is helping her retrieve physical documents as well as her electronic documents via a web based Office Organizing system. Scroll down to Featured Service to read more about it.
The following is Step 6 of creating an Office System. To recap on Steps 1-5 please go to Archived Productivity Tips.
Step 6. The Magic 6: Tools 3 & 4 in detail.
We have found that 40% of the paper received gets tossed in the wastebasket, 40% goes to the file cabinet, and the remaining 20% requires action. How you handle this remaining 20% has a significant impact on your productivity. Most of your action items have a due date and a task associated with it. Now your ready to act or pass the information on to whomever you have assigned the task, and your ready to use one of the most important organizing tools in your life—your calendar.
Tool 3) Calendar. You can eliminate a surprising amount of paper and computer files by using your calendar. The key is to extract the information you need from the paper or document and enter it in your calendar then recycle the document. Here are some of the ways you can eliminate clutter by using the calendar.
Meeting notices: Let’s say you receive a meeting notice in your in-box or in your email. Enter the information–time, place, telephone number and email address–directly into your calendar. If there’s more essential information on the notice than will fit in your calendar, place the notice in your Outbox, Swiftfile or Action File (Tool 5; next issue)
Follow-up: If you’ve written a letter and need a reply in two weeks, make a note in your calendar on the due date “Heard from John?” This way, you use your calendar not only for appointments, but also for effective follow-up.
Appointments With Ourselves: Many of us are great about using our calendar to make appointments with others, but rarely make appointments with ourselves. That’s unfortunate, because the people Ive found who are most successful in managing their time and reaching their goals are those who make appointments with themselves to complete specific tasks and check on specific issues.
Tool 4) Database Management. Whether you use Act, Outlook, Send Out Cards, keeping an updated and clean database with your contacts is crucial in staying in touch with your marketing base. I meet so many people who have stacks of business cards that need to be entered in their database. Here are some ideas to tackle that project.
-Hire a Personal Assistant. You can easily get this project done with-in one day at a cost of $100 or less, with a priceless feeling of relief.
-This is one project I love doing in front of the television. At commercial breaks, I use that time to enter my contacts, try it, it works!
-If you have a laptop and your going on a road trip, this is a great time to work on this project.
-If you have teenagers, this is a very easy project to delegate.
-Don’t have this flexibility with a desktop, don’t want to spend money on a PA, then block out time on your calendar and make it a priority to get them entered.
Step 7. Next issue: The Magic 6: Tool 5 “Action Files” in detail.
