Welcome to The Time Butler blog page, where you can learn about productivity & time management, office space planning, file systems, financial organizing, and business action plans. We provide a full range of business productivity, consulting and organizing services. Learn more about our business services here.
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There is little, if anything, more stressful than walking into your office and seeing a mountain of paper. Reducing the volume of paper will certainly help. Below are strategies to help reduce that mountain into a smaller, more manageable, system.
1. Start with a general sort. Resist the temptation to act on anything you touch. Make decisions as quickly as possible. Sort into:
Action: Items that require an action, such as making a phone call, doing research, sending an email or making a purchase. If like most of us, you have a stack of bills to pay, create a separate pile for these, using one large category labeled ‘To Pay.’
File: Items to access later or items that you need to keep that have no pending action steps.
Continue reading “3 Steps to Reduce Paper”If you’re like most busy professionals, your office has projects that need work: piles of papers, clutter on desk surfaces, perhaps even piles of items waiting for time where you can address them. This can be at odds with what most of us want: a clutter-free, calendar-clear, easily managed task list and space.
Below are ideas to help you decide whether you need to hire a professional to help get you from where you are to where you want to be.
- Schedule: Most of us have way more to do than time to do it. It can be challenging to carve out time to work on your space when there are so many other obligations on the calendar. How can a large project be incorporated successfully into a very full schedule? Ask yourself how much time you can devote to organizing. Is it possible to designate a day each week, or two afternoons a week, to tackling these projects? If not, perhaps it’s time to hire a pro.
