The Office Gal

Hey, is that you behind that monstrous assortment of stuff cluttering your desk? Most people don’t even realize it, but a disorganized desk can cause tremendous frustration and lost productivity that can mean staying late at the office. Fact is, a messy desk makes it extremely difficult to go about your daily routine.

To follow are some practical suggestions for avoiding desktop distractions:

1) File immediately. Anyone who visits our news articles section regularly knows that we cannot say this enough: avoid pile-ups! We know it can be difficult to keep up with your filing when you get really busy, but to keep your desk neat and orderly, its imperative that you don’t allow paperwork to grow into unmanageable stacks.

2) Use the tops of credenzas and lateral file cabinets. These pieces of organizing furniture can be found in almost every office. And even if you work in a cubicle, there’s probably a flat-top credenza or cabinet nearby, providing space where you can store such things as binders and catalogs…rather than letting them clutter your desktop.

3) Utilize shelves. This is another smart location for storing things that might otherwise cause confusion by taking up space on your desk. A shelf, not your desk, is the proper place for items such as phone books, magazines and videos.

4) Create drop spots. Perhaps a basket designed to hang on your wall, or some other kind of receptacle to temporarily drop memos, notes and other small papers…keeping those kinds of easy-to-lose documents off your desk until you have time to look at them.

5) Try not to get too personal. Minimize the urge to clutter your desk with an excessive amount of personal items, such as photographs and knick-knacks. Of course, its great to have some of these in your workspace, just don’t overdo it so that your desk is covered with them.

6) Accessorize. Office organizers, such as file sorters with different compartments, and plastic bins that can hold almost anything, are ideal for storing a wide array of office materials that might instead accumulate on your desk.

Do you have a tip or suggestion when it comes to cleaning the desktop? Then share it with the readers of The Office Gal. Leave a comment or contact me and I will add it to our list!

This article was originally posted at and written by Jane Servenio of American Folder Company and has been re-printed at The Office Gal with permission.

What comes to mind when you think about office distractions? The most common ones cited are the telephone, email, and paper. Of themselves, those are enough to overwhelm a person each day. However there are other distractions causing you to lose valuable, productive minutes every day. Some of these you may not think of as a distraction at first. Yet anything that takes your focus away from your work at hand can be a problem. Consider how your office setting ranks for each of the following to assess whether they might be issues in your day:

1. Email. There are two main problems that pop up. One is the constant alert for new messages, which you can choose to turn off. The second is if your inbox is never emptied. You will continually scroll through all of the items because you are fearful of overlooking something. You need to find a system of folders that let you clear out the general inbox and prioritize your action items.

2. Telephone. Do you feel you have to answer every call right when it comes in? Set aside time blocks to deal with non-urgent calls, and let your voice mail tell callers when they can expect to hear from you.

3. Paper. If you have stacks of papers around your desk, you will shift through them frequently to find the urgent items of the day. Instead set up Daily Action folders, make a decision on the needed action the first time you look at it, and keep your desk cleared of distracting stacks.

4. Visitors. Clients may drop by without notice or a colleague may have a break and decide to take it in your space. Get to the point quickly if someone comes by and interrupts your work.

5. Environment. This can include heating and lighting. If you are too cold or too hot, you are constantly reflecting on how uncomfortable you are. The lighting in an office can create glare, leading to headaches and tired eyes, causing you to stop frequently. There is no one answer for the right temperature or light situation. You need to find the correct level for yourself.

6. Noise. Overhearing colleagues’ discussions, one-sided telephone conversations, or outside activities diverts your concentration. If you are easily distracted, close your door, use a small white noise machines, or try headphones.

7. Meetings. In a work environment where meetings are frequent, it becomes difficult to set aside an uninterrupted block of time for detailed projects. You end up coming in early or staying late so that you can finally get things done. Make sure that you have scheduled time to focus on projects during the day. It needs to be written on your calendar.

8. Lists. Working from lengthy lists, whether ToDos, a book of voice mail messages, or an email inbox, causes you to look at the same items again and again. You have to make decisions every time you scan through the items. Your mind keeps jumping around and planning ahead instead of focusing on one item in front of you. Write down tasks on single sheets of paper so that you can easily prioritize your work.

9. Expectations. What response time has unofficially developed with regard to returning phone calls and email messages? When you feel you have to immediately respond to a call, you allow yourself to constantly be interrupted. Could a 3-minute response time be changed, letting people know you will respond within two hours or four hours?

10. You. Often you may become bored with your activity and decide to check email for a few minutes; or you have several projects in view and your mind keeps jumping from one to the other. Work with only one project on your desk at a time. If you momentarily lose focus, do not give up, just try to get back on track.

The first step in limiting distractions is to be aware of them. You may be able to add more things to this beginning list. Once you recognize what interferes with your work, then you can begin to make the changes that will add to your daily productivity.

© 2008 Denise Landers, Key Organization Systems, Inc.

Do you work harder every day just to keep up with an ever increasing workload? Denise Landers shows you how simple it is to work smarter and stop stress overload in her time management seminars at http://www.KeyOrganization.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Denise_Landers

Anybody who files in a busy office knows that papers are constantly coming across their desk, and if those papers are not organized on a regular basis, messy piles can accumulate…resulting is misfiles, or even worse, lost documents.

An easy and smart way to keep constant track of paperwork as it mounts, particularly documents that relate to ongoing projects, is to create what’s called a tickler file. In addition to making it easy for you to manage the continual stream of papers you have to deal with, a tickler file helps simplify the process of determining what to save and what to throw out by allowing you to temporarily store papers for future use.

To set up your own tickler file, here’s all you do: Just place a hanging folder in your drawer with five interior folders inside the hanging folder. Label each interior folder with a different day of the week. As the week progresses, drop papers for review into the respective interior folders and review at each days end. When Friday rolls around, sort through the entire file for the whole weeks worth of papers and you’ll be able to easily decide what to save and what to
discard…or, what to transfer into a more permanent file.

Tickler files are perfect for projects that you work on over long periods of time. Indeed, many projects tend to take on a life of their own, accumulating mountains of papers some of which are not needed right away. Its those papers that can clog up your days and weeks and rob you of filing efficiency as well as productivity.

Using a tickler file can alleviate the challenges of paperwork build-up, making your entire office and your life more organized every day!

This article was originally posted at and written by Leslie Servenio of American Folder Company.

From formally replying to complaints from clients, to preparing deadlines for work that will fit your schedule and meet your clients timeline, our days can be time consuming, giving us the sense of drowning under a mountain of work.

Hopefully this weeks links will help you prepare and stay focused during your daily routine for a more successful work week. Of course, I did add one link in to give us a little more humor. We do need to lighten up a bit.

• Advice to New Managers @ Blue Suit Mom. 61
• Three Low Cost Ways to Advertise Your Small Office @ Office Stuffer.
• How To Get Fired From Your Management Job @ Slacker Manager.
• Handling Complaints Without Making Things Worse @ Daily Biz Solutions.
• How To Create Good Work Habits @ Daily Career Connection.
• How to Set Deadlines (& 7 Common Mistakes to Avoid) @ Pick the Brain.

Do you have a link that you feel would be great to share with readers of The Office Gal? Then contact me and I will include it in the next link love post.

This is an original The Office Gal post.