Nothing helps get our business in shape better than doing a little house cleaning around the ol’ home office. Clearing away clutter and shaping up your work environment helps you focus much better on your clients and projects. So here are some helpful tips on how to get your home office in top shape:
Administrative Area and Tasks
Get systems in place to handle everyday and other regular tasks. For example, every business has its money handling tasks like bills to pay, stats to monitor, communications to go through and reply to, etc.
– Set up an organizer in your office area for filing your paper work, financial documents, client project files, note tablets, phone scripts and other assorted work materials.
– Set up places for work tools: pencils, pens, erasers, sticky notes, ruler, tape, stapler, zip drive, backup drive, egg timer for client work, eye drops, computer info to call for help as needed, phonebook, cell phone and charger, etc.
– Set up folders on your computer where you can save emails and other electronic documents about your accounts, clients, project work, websites, etc. Get and stay organized using folders, online and off.
Regular Daily Tasks
Tackle those everyday issues with more ease once you get systems in place here, too, online and off. You can use folders, file cabinets on wheels, drawers, shelves and various other office organizing tools from hardware stores and office supply stores. Shop online for ideas, too.
– Create and use folders in your email account, deleting junk on contact.
– Do the same for postal mail, tossing out trash ruthlessly.
– Delegate regularly via outsourcing, hiring part time help, temporary help or employees. Then follow up regularly to make sure everyone is on task and work gets completed. Keep blueprints of projects along with mind maps showing how the projects are broken down (like with old high school sentence diagramming). The plan and organize your tasks by priority and the workers handling them.
– Learn a little about your niche(s) and industry(ies) of focus everyday. You can check out popular media (newspapers, TV, radio shows), ezine, articles, magazines, trade publications, videos, audio files, etc. Keep folders for these clips, links and copies, both online and off.
– Focus a little on growth everyday and have a folder for this, too, with progress and updates, all password / user name info, etc. Refer to the Small Business Administration for help at SBA(dot)gov.
Word count: 411