I’m betting one of your New Year’s resolutions was to be better organized. Well, now that you’re nearly a full two months in, how’s your organizing going? Are you having a rough time? As we’ve discussed before in this blog, it can be difficult to remain consistent with new procedures but it is the most important key to being successful in any goals you may have.
This week, I want to share with you the procedures I use when organizing my computer files. Being in marketing means I have the privilege of a lot of information at my disposal, which also translates to being responsible for organizing it in such a way that makes it easily accessible! And if I don’t stay up on it, I am quickly buried and overwhelmed by the vast amount of all this content. Every day my department is collecting on average twenty to thirty items that need to be filed away, whether they are current projects, future plans, or completed tasks, each item that lands on my desk comes with its’ own “rich in quantity” background of content to support it 🙂
So here’s how I handle it all:
Consistency. Since I can’t tell you anything that you don’t already know about the importance of being consistent to make any game plan work, I’ll keep it short: I stay consistent. And if I fall of the wagon? I avoid getting discouraged about it and instead hop right back on, do the catch-up required to get back on track, and then stick with it. Again.
Keep it separated. Take care not to let a lot of different projects share the same locations. If something has been completed, put it far away from the projects that need work, and maintain sanity with your current projects by keeping them isolated from one another. When you allow multiple projects to share space, you are inviting inefficiency to step in and make a cluttered mess of your work day. Fight back! Take the time to setup folders in your computer storage for each project and its’ categories so that you can find items quickly. This will help you to manage your time better.
Delete! Don’t need it anymore? Get rid of it! I feel that we humans have a tendency to hang on to stuff that is not relevant to our lives or that serves no purpose to us anymore. While sentimental value is not to be scoffed at in my opinion, why am I hanging on to a goofy Pez dispenser when I do not eat Pez nor do I particularly love the character the dispenser is in the shape of? It does nothing but take up space that could be allowed to remain open for something significant to arrive. Which is what all your unnecessary files are doing on your computer. They take up space, not just on your time when you’re searching through them looking for something you actually need, but they’re also putting pointless strain on your computer housing all of them. If you find you can’t quite make yourself hit the permanent delete button, send this stuff to the cloud! Chances are you’re already saving some or all of your files there, so you might as well set up a special folder for items you never look at. And I bet once a few months have gone by and you see just how inapplicable this stuff is, that folder will hit the trash 😉
Three steps to keeping yourself a lean machine of productivity: stay consistent, separate/categorize, and delete! Repeat until it becomes second nature! Now go out there and fight those files!
Jessie Williams, Marketing Coordinator