Seven Simple Organization Tricks

Do you mislay things? Then you are like most of the population.

Disorganization is the crude condition of order. It takes time to clean up the chaos you have.

I like making accounting websites for a living. Time spent organizing can feel like it's taking away from your work, but this really isn't true. Organizing allows you to get more done in less time in the long run, and that's good.

Hiring an assistant is, I suppose, the standard solution. If your business is like most, however, hiring someone just to keep you organized is a waste of money. There are a number of basic changes you can make to your work day that will help you keep everything in it's place.

- For everything that you own, designate a place for it. You can label those places, so it's easier for you to remember. Whenever you use something, you'll know exactly where they belong because of the labels. Down the road you'll grow accustomed to it, and soon you won't need the labels anymore.

- In order for everything to have a place, everything NEEDS a place. Make sure you have enough shelf and file space for all your stuff. If you don't have enough storage space organization becomes impossible. Once you run out of shelf space there's not much you can do except pile stuff up on your desk and (gulp) floor. Take some time to buy the stuff you need, and while you're at it, get a place for temporary storage. Do you have a tray near the front door of your home where you can hang house keys and place outgoing mail? Most of us do. It just makes it easier to gather our stuff before leaving the house. You can do the same thing in your office. If you're going to have a meeting or important task that day go ahead and pull the stuff you'll need and put it on this desk!

- Don't try to organize everything at once. Your job will be much easier if you tackle one thing at a time. Fix it. Then all you need to do is maintain it as you move on to the next thing.

- Remember when your mom used to tell you to wash the dishes as you use them? Apply this discipline to your office, too. Don't let things pile up. Put them away when you're done and you'll have a much easier time getting out of the office at the end of the day.

- Constantly forgetting and resetting passwords and login information can become a vicious time sink. In some cases login recovery is impossible and you need to set up all new accounts at a cost of time AND money. Information like this can easily be consolidated into a single text document.

- Use a good, old-fashioned inbox. If you make it a point not to leave for the weekend until it's empty you'll never miss a task suffer a loose piece of paper again. You may need to use multiple inboxes. You might want one for home and one for work, or have separate boxes for sales, product development, and employee issues.

- Missing or being late for appointments can REALLY hurt your professional relationships. Use a calendar to keep track of events. I use the Google Calendar Application, but there a a score of online or desktop calendar apps that do the same things. It provides many features and anyone you allow can view it, it keeps track of personal events, and it reminds you of upcoming events by email and with on-screen pop-ups. This keeps all your scheduling in one place and makes it much easier to keep your tasks straight.

There are scores of ways to get and stay organized. The best pointer I've given you is to put things back whenever you're done with them.

Brian O'Connell is the CEO and founder of CPA Site Solutions, one of the country's most successful web companies oriented entirely to accounting websites.