Five Simple Steps to being Organised

Here are Jacqui’s tips.

Need to get organised? One of our clients says that now she is self employed the one person she really misses from her former life is her PA. Being disorganised puts you at a disadvantage. When you look at the most successful people in the world, they appear to be well organised. Mostly I suspect that this means they have someone organising them.



But there are simple things that you can do to become better organised:

Prioritise

Look first at your to do list, or the piles of things on your desk! Sort these into 4 categories: – Do now or pay the price, do as soon as possible, do if you can and nice to do if you find some time. Then dump the rest. Do not have it cluttering up your desk or your mind getting the way of important work.

Set deadlines

And mean them! It is no good setting yourself a deadline and then moving it because you haven’t got round to it yet. If you stick to your deadlines then you can prevent the drama that comes when you have left everything too late and are trying to prevent certain disaster. Make them achievable and realistic and do not be distracted from them unless something that absolutely must be done immediately comes up and must be slotted into your list.

Do not procrastinate

If you find that you have finished a task early, start the next one immediately. Don’t decide that you have made yourself a bit of free time and put it off until tomorrow. And don’t skip down your list because the highest priority is a task you hate!!

To meet or not to meet

These can be the biggest drain on your time; you need to make sure that any meeting is both necessary and efficient. Meetings can be a place for fathers/mothers to talk about their children, sailors to talk about their boats and golfers to talk about golf. In fact, people so often spend too much of the time allotted for the meeting, talking about anything but business. If you are in a position to do something about this try to keep the chitchat to a minimum, setting an end time for the meeting can help you focus.If you do not need to attend a meeting then do something more productive with your time; like driving your way down through your new list of priorities.

Delegate

If you employ people, then delegate some tasks to them; if you don’t perhaps its time to consider finding someone to delegate to. Business owners tend to try to do everything. Think of it this way, you do not want to be in the office working hard when you could be out playing golf or spending time with your family! Only do those jobs which you need to be doing!