Kepping clean

In today’s competitive business world where achievement of tight targets and deadlines decides the survival and • growth of executives, every . executive is strapped for time. So he has to find time-savers and eliminate time stealers. One of the major time-stealers is the cluttered or disorganized desk. Opposite of the popular saying “out of sight, out of mind” is also true. When a clutter is in front of you, it will always remain in your thoughts. So every time your gaze falls on it, it will divert your attention from the job you are currently focusing on. Moreover to locate a piece of information in the clutter, you have to spend a lot of time. This is due to the way unrelated things have got mixed-up, creating the clutter. The effect of clutter is an unproductive use of your time in the work place. . It also impedes smooth Workflow. So do not allow clutter to gain control over you. How to unclutter your desk?

The best way to tackle any problem is not to allow it to happen in the first place. The easy way of tackling clutter is by not allowing it to form. Since unrelated things getting mixed up essentially form the clutter, categorizing papers subject-wise and having a folder for each subject can prevent it. So every piece of information goes to where it belongs. Maintain a list of folders for ready reference. Also assign place for keeping the folders in the desk drawer or filing cabinet and give colour tags to identify each folder.. Normally when you do not complete the action on any paper, you leave it on the desk so that you can pick it up anytime for continuing your work on that. So all papers of such uncompleted tasks get stacked up one over the other, making it difficult to locate things when required. So if you develop the habit of not leaving a task unfinished before dealing with the next, the need to keep pending papers on the desk will riot arise.

Clutter is the result of your indecisiveness. Though a paper is of no importance for you today, you are not able to decide if it will be required or not in future. Due to this inability to decide, you play safe and keep the paper for a possible future use and allow it to join the clutter. If you improve your ability to overcome fears associated with risks in such decision-making situations, this type of cluttering can be avoided.

The habit of stuffing anything in any space that is available contributes to clutter. This is mostly applicable to office supply items like ink-refills etc. Nominate specific areas in the storage space of your desk or almirah for such items. Discard those items including the boxes containing them when they are exhausted or their validity has expired. Unread

Magazines/Professional or Trade journals form a part of the workspace clutter. As soon as you receive them, either in office or home quickly browses them. If no article is found to be of any interest, return them to the circulation so that others can read .If you find a useful article, read it immediately or take a copy for later reading to facilitate return of the magazine. Keep the copy of the article in the designated folder.

Even with all the above clutter- preventing actions, some clutter can still raise its ugly head on your desk. You can easily deal with it by spending just a few minutes a week (preferably before the close of the office on the last working day of the week) by going through it and doing the sorting and weeding out operations.

source : by venkataraman

 

24.Aug.07 Uncategorized Comments (0)