To many people being organised comes naturally and yet to others ‘natural’ could not be further from the truth.  Personally, I love to be organised and believe I’m a bit of natural, as every corner of my life, not just at work is organised – it’s in my make up!

Do you ever hear people making excuses for their chaos?  Do they blame it on that fact there isn’t enough hours in the day?  Well believe it not, we all have the same amount of hours in our day and in my view, what we manage to achieve in those hours largely comes down to the way we organise ourselves.

So, how can you make the most of every second of your time at work and avoid getting yourself into a stressed out state?

1. Optimise your time

If you are constantly being interrupted whilst trying to finish something that’s urgent try lifting your head out of what you’re doing for a few minutes and no more, make a note of the request and deal with it later.  Keep focused on what you need to achieve.

 2. Think ahead and forward plan

Whatever your job, you’re going to have to deal with the unexpected and no one can afford to be blinkered to outside influences like calls to make, meetings to schedule, reports to write and everything else!  Of course there is going to be unplanned interruptions when your client, boss or colleague has a burning issue that needs your immediate attention and you need to divert.

So, how do you juggle what’s marked urgent, what’s a priority and what can be shunted further down your to-do-list?

By setting a deadline for tasks you can work out how long each specific task is going to take you, make an action plan with your top priorities showing first.  Then break tasks down, a little at a time in order to achieve them.  Yes, things will shift a little at times that’s to be expected as you will need to divert your attention to an emergency as it arises.  Should your focus be called away from a specific task it is vital that you keep those communication lines well and truly open between you and whoever is relying on you to complete that task.  Thus avoiding missed deadlines and further issues.

3. Use your diary effectively

The main objective of your diary is to remind you of the important things.  Only tasks with a predetermined deadline should go in your diary.  Be as specific as you possibly can be when it comes to adding appointments to your diary.  Include as much detail as you can including where the meeting is being held, who is attending, contact telephone numbers of those involved and copy the email confirmation into the diary entry itself.  Information at your fingertips should something go wrong and you need to access it quickly!    

For all other bits and pieces go with your preferred method of keeping track whether that’s a good old fashioned notebook (like me) or try an online system like Evernote which allows you to access your to do list and things to remember from wherever you are by using your computer, phone, tablet or the web.

I do hope you have enjoying reading and found Part 1 of “6 ways to get organised” useful, please do come back on Monday 25 February when I will be covering the remaining 3 ways to get organised.