We all know it can be a tough job staying organised when you have nearly 8 hours of your day taken up by a mountain of work, then you come home to a household of chores and/or hungry children to feed and clean up after. Let alone have you seen the mound of washing that keeps getting bigger that you keep forgetting to do, oh and don’t forget if you want food in the house you better go shopping this weekend. And as you’re trying to sleep that list somehow tends to get bigger and bigger and the sleep gets smaller and smaller. You tend to be running on small amounts of sleep, loads of coffee and you are just keeping up with your tasks but not accomplishing anywhere close to 50% of that list.
Wouldn’t it be nice to change this? This is where we can help, if not just in the workplace but in your everyday life to help things become a lot more manageable. So, let’s get started with some tips and tricks we use to keep organised and on top of our tasks and everyday work to-do lists and chores.
1. Our number one most important tip is to keep a DIARY! You need to keep a diary in order to keep track of your dates and what you have to do. It helps not only so you can block out some time for tasks and even block out time for yourself but so you don’t double book or overbook yourself. You can keep a physical or digital diary, it’s whatever suits you but there are so many choices out there!
2. Have a specific place for all your important documents and belongings. Having a specific place laid out will ensure your environment is never left in a mess as you have a well thought out home for all your valuables and you are most likely to never lose important belongings or documents as you know where everything is.
3. Don’t multitask! We know this may sound strange but try and stick on one project or task at a time as it will get done quicker, more efficiently and at a greater standard. When we multitask, we get distracted, leave tasks and never finish them and they tend to never be our best work but sometimes multitasking is something we can’t avoid.
4. Write a to-do list for that day and prioritize your to-do list into what is most important to least important to complete within that day. This will help you not only focus on one task at a time and have an order to it but helps you to destress as you complete the most stressful important asks first within the day.
5. Always set a deadline and stick to it. Don’t let yourself fall into the habit of breaking your deadlines as once you do it once or twice, you start to do it more and more before deadlines become meaningless. Deadlines are important to have so we push ourselves to complete tasks, whether we like them or not, to get them done and not procrastinate them any more than we already do and we always feel good once they get completed
6. Always clean out your inbox! A clean inbox makes everyone feel good, start unsubscribing from newsletters and other companies that you always go ahead and delete anyway. If you want to keep emails, make folders and file them away so your inbox can stay fresh and clean for incoming emails or current email tasks that you are working on or needing to respond to.
7. If you continually have annual, monthly or just repetitive tasks, start using checklists to reduce the number of errors made and to keep you on track.
8. Lastly, don’t forget to take constant breaks, you always need to refresh your mind and get some fresh air, food and drink and just hit the reset button a few times a day.
These are just a few of the many organisation habits and tools we use, not only in our office but in everyday life to keep us organized and on top of tasks and deadlines.
We hope we can help some of you out there to become more organised and find more time in the day for some much needed ‘Me Time’ that we all deserve.