by Katherine Macey
Workplace productivity. We all want it. There are days when you’re on: you get so much done, you fly through your to do list, life feels good. And then there are days when you’re not: your day seems like one big interruption, you take one step forwards to go three back, nothing seems to go right.
This is about having more days when you’re on, and fewer off days. More days when your productivity is through the roof, not out the window.
People who are consistently productive have mastery in these five key areas:
- Priorities
- Planning
- Focus
- Action
- Accountability
Mastering these 5 keys will increase your productivity each day and have it be more consistent. Let’s dive to each one individually.
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by Katherine Macey
Having an organized closet means it’s much easier to get dressed for the day or a special event. No rummaging for that top that goes especially well with those pants. No double (or triple) buying of the same type of outfit. No taking 30 minutes to put the perfect outfit together (unless you can’t make up your mind about what to wear!)
The six keys to an organized closet are simple.
Key 1. Decide your style
Keep your style simple so you can mix and match items in your closet. Wear clothing that suits your body type, your profession, and your hobbies/ personal activities. If you are not attracting the right clients/significant other/friends and you think your wardrobe could be to blame, consider hire an image consultant (we know a great one!).
Key 2. Purge
Donate or sell clothes you don’t wear, no longer fit into, or are worn out. Rule of thumb for everyday clothes is if you haven’t worn them during the season they are appropriate for, then it’s time to let them go. At the end of a season is the perfect time to purge clothes you haven’t worn that season. If you haven’t worn them this year, you’re even less likely to wear them next year. You have a few options for selling clothes, but it’s usually only worthwhile for designer clothes that are lightly worn. Search for your nearest consignment store, or donate items to Goodwill, or other charities. (We use Clothes the Deal to donate no longer needed business clothes to those in need).
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by Katherine Macey
Effective filing systems, whether they are paper or digital, are critical to a business’ success. Proper records facilitate business transactions and track the success or failure of the business.
Easy access to documents ensures employees can spend their time working on the projects at hand rather than looking for a piece of paper. Estimates of the time that the average employee spends looking for documents range between 2 and 8 hours per week (statistics gathered by the National Association of Professional Organizers) or 100 to 400 hours per year.
We all know time = $, let’s look at the breakdown. According to Gartner Group, Coopers and Lybrabd, Ernst & Young, the average time to retrieve and refile a paper document is 10 minutes. An average of 3% of documents are lost or misfiled, and have to be recovered at a cost of $120 per document. This equates to a cost of $2,160 to $8,640 per year.
An effective paper filing system will reduce the amount of time people have to look for documents and reduce the number of documents that are lost or misfiled, therefore reducing cost. It’s a win-win-win.
Keys to effective paper filing systems:
- Label files clearly
- Have some order to the filing. You may use different types of systems for docent categories of files.
- Alphabetical – useful for client files
- Categorical – can separate different categories such as vendor files, client files, financial files, etc.
- Chronological – useful for financial files
- Frequency of use – can keep documents that are referred to frequently at the front of a file cabinet.
- Priority based – particularly useful for active projects.
- Create rules for where each type of document should be filled.
- Only have one home for each type of document.
- Create naming conventions for files that everyone uses.
- Have a system for quickly identifying where a document or file folder should be returned to if it is removed from the filing system.
- Keep active files separate from files that need archiving.
Organize to Excel has been working with client files since 2007. We have experience setting up files for a range of small businesses as well as home based businesses and personal files. If you are a busy mom with more kid papers and family bills than you know what to do with, or a real estate agent with closing documents, licenses, and brochures piling up your office, we can help.
by Katherine Macey
The first thing to do when organizing your garage, or any space for that matter, is to decide what you want to use the space for. This might depend on how large the space is. If you have room for 3 cars, but only have 2 cars, of course you will want to use that extra space for something.
The garage used to be the place to park your car, but more and more frequently, the car is being parked in the driveway and the garage has just essentially become another room of the house. They are turned into playrooms, entertainment rooms, exercise rooms, or just a place for storage. Some people use their garage for a hybrid of uses – parking their car, storage and a kids craft area for instance.
However you use your garage, you do want it to be functional and not just a catch-all area for stuff you can’t decide what to do with or will never actually use. All too often, it becomes a mess of old furniture, boxes of who know’s what, children’s toys, and extra supplies. The trouble with that is, if it is such a mess, or has so much stuff in it, the useful things get overshadowed and forgotten.
Typical uses:
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Parking your car
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Storing seasonal decorations
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Storing gardening supplies
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Storing household repair items and tools
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Archiving files
Items to avoid storing outside:
- Vinyl records
- Video cassette tapes
- Other electronic media
- Photos
- Clothes
- Bedding
- Wine
Anything that will be affected by damp or large temperature changes really should be stored in the house.
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by Katherine Macey
Summer time is a great time to spend outdoors. There’s the beach, sports, walks in the mountains, or gardening in your back yard. And probably most of the gear you need for your summer outdoor activities is stored in the garage. Why not make it easy to access so you spend as little time there as possible and more time out doing the activities you want to do?
Here are 6 tips to help organize your belongings in the garage.
- Keep all the things you use for one activity together
- It’s much faster to get out the door when all your gear for an activity is together. Let’s take going camping. It used to take us a couple of hours to get everything together from various places around the house and garage. Now we can have our car packed with all our camping gear for a weekend in about 20 minutes. We all have “camping clothes” that we can quickly throw in a bag. We have a separate box that we keep all our camping cutlery, dishes and kitchen supplies in that stays in the garage ready to go. All our camping gear is in one section of shelving within the garage, so we literally just have to back up our car and load everything straight in.
- Use the vertical space in your garage effectively
- Use cabinets, shelving and overhead racks if you have the vertical space.
- Tackle a big garage organizing project in stages
- If your garage has been a dumping ground for some time, you may need to approach the garage in stages. Perhaps tackle one wall first, perhaps one corner, or perhaps the gear for one activity that you do. Organize the items that you use most often first. That way, you’ll be able to spend more time doing your favorite activities, rather than organizing (which I know is one of OUR favorite activities, but probably not yours!)
by Katherine Macey
People always ask me how I do so much. There are many reasons for this, and the one I’m going to focus on today is energy management. I get the most out of my day when I effectively manage my energy.
Effective energy management is a life style. It’s a choice about how I live my life. I choose what and when to eat, whether or not to exercise, what time I go to bed and the quality of my sleep. And in my experience, the effects compound. So it’s not that I only make choices today that support high energy, I make choices that support high energy on an ongoing basis.
I find it be very helpful to have an accountability partner. This person can be a friend, a family member, a coach, or a group that you report to. This person or people will help you stay on track and encourage you to make smart choices.
The key to maintaining those high energy choices is to not keep making them; the real key is to embed them so they become habits. When they become habits, you need to use your willpower to keep making those choices.
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