Now that all of our New Year’s Resolutions have been broken, it’s time to get our acts together. Don’t bother with mourning some half-hearted New Years Resolutions - we’re going to streamline our systems to make this the best work year ever. Here’s a framework that’s worked for me:

1. A Simple To-Do List

A To-Do list doesn’t need to be overly complicated. A simple Excel spreadsheet will enable you to list the beginning and ending dates of your emergent and recurring tasks. The To-Do list also can serve as a list of small accomplishments for the year, which will come in handy during your annual performance review. At a minimum, include columns for beginning-, ending- and due dates, and a place for comments. This will help the entries make sense when you have to reference them for your review. Take a few minutes each day to update the list, it will be well worth it.

2. Ditch the Paper - Go Electronic

Our copying machines in the office double as scanners. This allows us to scan paper documents into a pdf format, which then gets forwarded to our shared network folder. You can then move the pdf file into whatever folder it belongs. No need to keep the paper copy now.

3. Save a Tree - Don’t Print Your Emails

My company puts a size limitation on our email accounts, meaning you can only store a certain amount before you get a nastygram from the IT department. To counteract this, when my inbox got too close to the limit, I was forced to print out my emails, and then delete them. As you can tell, I hate dealing with paper. I have Adobe installed on my computer, which allows me to print any emails worth saving to a pdf format, which I then file in the appropriate electronic folder on my computer.

4. Keep that Inbox Empty, or Close To It

Now that you don’t have to save every email in your inbox “just in case you may need it”, make it a habit to empty it every day. I only keep the emails that are relative to my open tasks, and as soon as these tasks are completed, I either print them to a pdf to file them, or I simply delete them. If you’ve followed Steps 1 and 3, your simple To-Do list will already have a record of when you worked on the task, and you’ve saved the email via pdf. Leave a note with a file location on your To-Do list next to the appropriate task.

What are some of the things that you do to keep organized?

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