Saturday, March 20, 2010

Getting organized - Secret 4

All I can say is getting organized takes time.

4. Make a decision and act on it.

Do you have a stack of mail sitting on your table, counter top or at the point of entry you’re your home? I do. Is that stack of clutter growing daily? That stack of mail is a result of the fact that I didn’t want to deal with the mail when I had it in my hand so I dumped it. Now I have more mail to deal with than if I had just made a decision, acted on it, and moved on to my next task for the day. Most of the clutter in our lives is directly related to the fact that we put off making a decision until later. If we want to get organized and stay organized we will have to make decisions, act on them and move on.

Let’s tackle the mail and paper clutter we have in our homes and offices. Are you ready?

We need to set up an inbox for all of our papers. Paper could be mail, phone messages, notes that we wrote to ourselves and laid down somewhere (we aren’t doing that anymore, because we are not collecting our thoughts in our notebook.) etc. You might like to have an inbox close to your point of entry and possibly another inbox in your home office if that suits your needs, but one at the point of entry should be enough.

Once you have your inbox in place you will want to put all of your incoming paper in that box. Then once a day, it will only take about 10 minutes, go through the inbox and do something with each piece of mail and/or paper. Make a decision. Pick up the top item in your inbox. Does this need to be filed? File it. Does this need to be thrown away? Toss it in the trash. Can someone else handle this task? Delegate it. Does this paper require you to take action? Put it on your to-do list in your planner, or do it now. Is this a bill? Write a check to be mailed and place it in the out portion of your box to be taken with you to the PO when you run errands, or pay the bill online now. Does it need to be shredded? Shred it. Continue this process until the inbox is empty. Make a decision, act on it NOW, not later, and move on.

Whew!!! I got it done. I feel better already! How about you?

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