Being Organised Not Your Strongest Asset? This Article is for you

Keeping yourself organised when you branch out into business isn’t always an easy task, from your time to your digital assets – it all needs a system in place. No one is expecting you to be top of your game straight away, but eventually, it is something you should have handled. After all, if you can’t manage your stuff, how can you manage clients? Once you have this all implemented, schedule a day a month to keep it under control.

Set rules in emails, and stick to set times to check and reply to emails. 3 or 4 email checking periods per day, one in the morning, one mid-afternoon and one before you stop working for the evening. Set rules, so that emails go to a specific inbox and you can deal with them how you see fit. Unsubscribe from emails that you are getting but just not reading; those emails are more things to delete and take up space and time.

Get an HDD and backup all necessary files

Computers and laptops are an utter delight until they break down and leave you unable to access anything. You still have a business to run, and you need to be able to manage that. Get a quality hard disk drive, with a decent amount of storage, and copy over all the essential files and contacts to it. That way, if your laptop ever leaves you in the lurch, you can plug your HDD in elsewhere and get on with business.

Update all software

This one should be common sense, but many people leave updates to pile up then, usually at an inconvenient time, run a significant update that takes up a lot of time. Stay on top of it, update software once a week when required.

Digital Asset Management

You and your brand are one in the same; if you’ve expanded, you have more people using letterheads, digital files and using your brand daily. It pays to have a digital asset management tool in place to help you manage that. Simple but very effective.

Clean up your desktop. If you are the type of person who saves almost everything to the desktop, without proper file names, then has to spend 20 minutes or more looking for a file, then you need to fix it. Carve out some time to sit and adequately name each file, then place them in the appropriate folder. Place each folder in documents and a copy on your HDD. Keep the data you need instant access to on your desktop only.

Papers and Documents

While paper filing systems have a place in business, it is unlikely that they are in an excellent general order or that some of them couldn’t just be digitised. Organising paper filing systems is a time-consuming job if there isn’t a system in place, but it is a great time to pick up some files and folders. Colour coding, alphabetical or date range are all great ways to arrange paper files.

Properly maintained files, make your business run a little bit smoother and are always worth the time and/or cost associated with it.

Image sourced from Ivorymix.com

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