An organizational overhaul can make everything feel disorienting and off. When an organizational overhaul occurs, there’s a ton of paperwork to complete. There are new processes to manage. And there are new ways you need to interact with coworkers, supervisors, and staff. What can you do to make it easier on yourself? How can you keep your office neat, when everything else feels so disorganized?
1. Focus on Doing One Thing at a Time
Part of the issue with organizational overhaul is that there’s so much going on at once. While you need to have a broad spectrum overview of everything that you’re doing, it’s best to actually concentrate on one thing at a time. Make a list of everything that needs to be organized, and focus on one thing at a time. You may not be able to figure out exactly what is a priority at any given time, but what you can do is start working on the generally more important things one by one.
2. Do a Complete Top Down Reorganization of Your Office
The other reason offices become disorganized is because you have competing needs. There were the needs that you had before your reorganization and the needs you have now. Right now, your inbox could be filled with things that were pertinent before the organizational overhaul, and things that are now obsolete.
It’s time to completely reorganize everything. Take your office area by area, pull everything out, sort it into order, and then put it back. This is something that you’re going to need to take your time with, but it’ll pay substantial dividends in the long run.
3. Get Rid of Everything You Don’t Need
Get out the shredder. It’s likely that there are things you don’t need anymore, whether it’s because processes changed, or because you’re going digital. Many organizational overhauls today involve some element of digital transformation, and it’s very likely that there are forms and other documents that you don’t need. Sort through everything and ditch the non-essentials, because it’ll make it a lot easier for you to continue to organize the things you actually do need.
At the same time, try to make space and find places for the new things: new forms, new documents, new folders. Think about how you’re going to be using your office and how you’re going to be adjusting to these new processes.
4. Schedule Time for Organization
When you’re being disrupted from your natural processes, it’s easy to feel a little scattered. Part of it is likely that you’re putting in more hours now, to compensate for the adjustment. But even though you may be working harder than before through this transitional time, you should still schedule time for organization. At the beginning of the day, setup everything you need throughout. At the end of the day, take the time to put things away.
It only takes a few days of not putting anything away for everything to fall into disarray. And you’ll find that it’s going to be difficult to get anything done when you don’t know where anything is. You can save yourself time by setting aside scheduled organizational hours.
5. Take Note of What Is and Isn’t Working
Since you’re now dealing with new processes and new systems, there may be things that just aren’t working. Maybe you find that some systems are actually redundant; you need to find documents multiple times for something to get done, or you’re really just duplicating work that someone else is doing. Take notes regarding what is and isn’t working in your organizational system, and make changes. Every system has to be optimized.
Your old system had probably been run for many years, or even decades, and consequently was more fine-tuned. There may be bumps on the road now, but ultimately it will be pay off.
An organizational overhaul can be a bit of a challenge to contend with, because you don’t always know how things are going to land at the other side. But if you keep your office neat throughout, you can at minimum improve your own productivity for the duration. For additional organizational tips, check out the blog at Get Organized Wizard.
Thank you for sharing, You are right, when the organization overhaul occurs, there will be a lot of work to do. But it’s necessary because after I did that, my working process becomes cleaner and effect.