Eight tips for getting organized and being efficient at the office at the start of the school year.
11 June 2014
Read by 2569 persons
Files are piling up on your desk and you don't know where to start to put things in order? Good news: becoming organized is a skill you can learn. Here are some tips from Laurence Einfalt, founder of the Jara agency, a personal organization consultant.
Laurence Einfalt is adamant: "you're not born organized like you're born with blue eyes". In fact, you become organized if you have no choice, because you have to comply with time constraints, space, objectives or budget. According to the founder of the Jara organizational consulting agency, everyone can achieve it. Provided you abandon your old techniques and habits, in favor of new, more efficient ones. Here are the basic principles.
Targeting the contours of your job to avoid wasting time
The first rule is to define your work environment and ask yourself a simple question: why are we paid? Sell, collect information, respond quickly...? Anything that helps you move forward on the core of your job is to be encouraged. "Starting your day by reading your emails is, except for exceptions, a waste of time. You know what time you start but never when you'll be finished. And while you're reacting to each email, your own work isn't progressing", estimates Laurence Einfalt. She advises only opening your inbox half an hour to an hour after arriving in the morning.
Meetings without an agenda or end time are also to be avoided.
Keeping a weekly schedule
To avoid navigating blindly, keeping a schedule is essential. Without being zealous, however. "It's better to plan as many things as possible, but only the real deadlines. There's no point overloading your schedule with "wishful thinking", while this file can be submitted later", explains Laurence Einfalt. She also recommends having only one calendar for all professional and personal appointments. "This avoids forgetting a parent-teacher meeting or a morning appointment", she specifies.
Distribute tasks according to your rhythm
It's normal to be less efficient at certain times of the day. Overall, we are "morning people" or "evening people". Reserve your periods of efficiency for your important files and keep the tasks that require little thought for the times when you are least fit. The periods when you are least efficient are not wasted time. "You can take advantage of this to tackle small tasks that you have put off, such as expense reports, entering business cards, reading the professional press, finalizing a presentation, tidying up your desk... These are the little things that will save time later", assures Laurence Einfalt. In general, alternate activities. This avoids mental fatigue and monotony.
Prioritize
Anything that takes less than two minutes should be done immediately. Anything that takes more than two minutes should "get out of your head" and be noted on your "to do list" so it won't be forgotten. It is also important to ask your supervisor what level of excellence is required for the handling of each file. The best is the enemy of good, your perfectionism can make you lose time.
Avoid interruptions
It takes an average of ten minutes to regain the level of concentration you had before being interrupted. It is therefore better to ensure that this does not happen too often. So start by deleting your email alert. "It's stronger than us, when it rings or flashes, we have to go and see!"
Take regular breaks
The coffee break, lunch break are not wasted time, but pleasant moments that should not be missed. We are not robots and we must know how to allow ourselves these, otherwise you will end up exhausted every evening.
Fight procrastination
To overcome this bad habit of putting everything off until tomorrow, there's a little trick: tell yourself "if I had to start now, I would start by...". According to Laurence Einfalt, this makes it possible to go from "I have to..." - which sounds like a frightening constraint - to "it's only that? I can still do it". The task then becomes more manageable.
Clean up
In your inbox, sort incoming information. If you are not an archivist, there is no point in keeping emails from 2007.
Taking 10 minutes each evening to tidy up your desk is not superfluous. Throw away the post-its that have become useless, group together the elements of the same file, highlight the priority for the next day... This will prevent you from spending 20 minutes looking for the slightest document, where 30 seconds should suffice. A tip: make two piles entitled "to do" and "to file". Make sure you are aware of the "to do" so you don't miss any deadlines. The other pile will wait until you feel like filing... or not. In any case, as long as it doesn't prevent your colleagues from working, so much the worse if you have a big pile on your desk. Finally, get in the habit of naming your documents clearly, and don't make duplicates of the same file, you might not know which is the final version.
Capital.fr
Posted online June 11, 2014.
Laurence Einfalt is adamant: "you're not born organized like you're born with blue eyes". In fact, you become organized if you have no choice, because you have to comply with time constraints, space, objectives or budget. According to the founder of the Jara organizational consulting agency, everyone can achieve it. Provided you abandon your old techniques and habits, in favor of new, more efficient ones. Here are the basic principles.
Targeting the contours of your job to avoid wasting time
The first rule is to define your work environment and ask yourself a simple question: why are we paid? Sell, collect information, respond quickly...? Anything that helps you move forward on the core of your job is to be encouraged. "Starting your day by reading your emails is, except for exceptions, a waste of time. You know what time you start but never when you'll be finished. And while you're reacting to each email, your own work isn't progressing", estimates Laurence Einfalt. She advises only opening your inbox half an hour to an hour after arriving in the morning.
Meetings without an agenda or end time are also to be avoided.
Keeping a weekly schedule
To avoid navigating blindly, keeping a schedule is essential. Without being zealous, however. "It's better to plan as many things as possible, but only the real deadlines. There's no point overloading your schedule with "wishful thinking", while this file can be submitted later", explains Laurence Einfalt. She also recommends having only one calendar for all professional and personal appointments. "This avoids forgetting a parent-teacher meeting or a morning appointment", she specifies.
Distribute tasks according to your rhythm
It's normal to be less efficient at certain times of the day. Overall, we are "morning people" or "evening people". Reserve your periods of efficiency for your important files and keep the tasks that require little thought for the times when you are least fit. The periods when you are least efficient are not wasted time. "You can take advantage of this to tackle small tasks that you have put off, such as expense reports, entering business cards, reading the professional press, finalizing a presentation, tidying up your desk... These are the little things that will save time later", assures Laurence Einfalt. In general, alternate activities. This avoids mental fatigue and monotony.
Prioritize
Anything that takes less than two minutes should be done immediately. Anything that takes more than two minutes should "get out of your head" and be noted on your "to do list" so it won't be forgotten. It is also important to ask your supervisor what level of excellence is required for the handling of each file. The best is the enemy of good, your perfectionism can make you lose time.
Avoid interruptions
It takes an average of ten minutes to regain the level of concentration you had before being interrupted. It is therefore better to ensure that this does not happen too often. So start by deleting your email alert. "It's stronger than us, when it rings or flashes, we have to go and see!"
Take regular breaks
The coffee break, lunch break are not wasted time, but pleasant moments that should not be missed. We are not robots and we must know how to allow ourselves these, otherwise you will end up exhausted every evening.
Fight procrastination
To overcome this bad habit of putting everything off until tomorrow, there's a little trick: tell yourself "if I had to start now, I would start by...". According to Laurence Einfalt, this makes it possible to go from "I have to..." - which sounds like a frightening constraint - to "it's only that? I can still do it". The task then becomes more manageable.
Clean up
In your inbox, sort incoming information. If you are not an archivist, there is no point in keeping emails from 2007.
Taking 10 minutes each evening to tidy up your desk is not superfluous. Throw away the post-its that have become useless, group together the elements of the same file, highlight the priority for the next day... This will prevent you from spending 20 minutes looking for the slightest document, where 30 seconds should suffice. A tip: make two piles entitled "to do" and "to file". Make sure you are aware of the "to do" so you don't miss any deadlines. The other pile will wait until you feel like filing... or not. In any case, as long as it doesn't prevent your colleagues from working, so much the worse if you have a big pile on your desk. Finally, get in the habit of naming your documents clearly, and don't make duplicates of the same file, you might not know which is the final version.
Capital.fr
Posted online June 11, 2014.
