Look in your house, your yard and your garage. Ask, “What kind of a person
would live that way?”
Would you entrust that person with an important task? Why or why not?
Honestly evaluate yourself through the eyes of a neutral third party. What do
you see?
In a series of interviews with senior executives, 50 out of 52 of the
respondents said that they would not promote a person with a messy desk or
a cluttered work environment. Even if that person was producing good work,
these executives said that they would not trust a position of responsibility to
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a person who could not get himself or herself organized. Don’t let this
happen to you.
3. Refuse to Make Excuses
Many people work in a messy environment use their intelligence against
themselves. They use their cleverness to justify and excuse themselves for
the messiness of their workspaces. They say things like, “I know where
everything is.” Or they say non-humorous things like, “A clean desk is a
sign of a sick mind.”
However, every time and motion study of efficiency in the workplace
concludes that these are really exercises in self-delusion. A person who says
he or she knows where everything is turns out to be using a large amount of
their mental capacity and creative energies remembering where they placed
things, rather than doing the job.
People who say they work well in a cluttered environment are usually
wrong. If they worked in a neat, well-organized environment for any length
of time, they would be surprised at how much more effective and productive
they were. If you or a person you know has a tendency to justify and attempt
to explain a cluttered desk or work area, challenge yourself, or the other
person, to work with a clean desk for an entire day. The result will amaze
you.
4. Work from a Clean Desk
Time Power
Direct mail entrepreneur Joe Sugarman once wrote a book explaining his
five rules for success. One of his five principles was, “End every day with a
clean desk.” He made this a rule throughout his organization. This policy
forced everyone to work more efficiently and complete his or her work by
the end of each day. It made a major contribution to his success.
When I learned this, I introduced it into my own company. I told everyone
that they would be expected to clean up their desks and leave them neat and
orderly at the end of each day. When they argued with me, I told them that if
they didn’t follow this rule, after they left I would go from office to office
and throw everything on their desks into the wastebasket to be taken away
by the night time janitors. I only had to follow through on this threat once
before everyone realized how serious I was.
One manager, probably the messiest executive in my company, gave me
every excuse possible for working in a cluttered and chaotic environment.
But I refused to listen or compromise. He had no choice but to clean
everything up and put it away before leaving at the end of each day. Within
one week, he came to me and apologized. He said, “All my life, I have
thought that I worked better in a messy environment. In the last week, I have
accomplished two and three times as much as I ever accomplished at work
before. I am absolutely astonished at how much more I get done when
everything is put in its proper place throughout the day.”
Three Steps to Organizing Your Workspace
Time Power
Here are three things you can do to organize your workspace:
1. Clear Your Desk
Begin your process of getting organized by clearing your desk of everything
but the one thing that you are working on at the moment. If necessary, place
things in drawers, on the credenza behind you, in the wastebasket, in
cupboards or even on the floor. Do whatever is necessary to turn your desk
into a clear, clean, uncluttered work area, with just one thing, the most
important thing before you, when you begin.
2. Assemble Everything You Need
Arrange to have everything you need at hand before you begin any task.
Like a good cook gets out all the ingredients necessary to prepare a dish
before he or she begins, or a master craftsman arranges all of his tools, as a
professional, you should assemble all the tools of your trade as well before
you start on a particular job.
Get all the information and files you will need. Get pens, notepaper, stick-it
notes, calculator, rule, Dictaphone, file folders, and everything else you can
think of before you commence work. The rule is that you should be able to
reach out and touch everything you need to do the job.
3. Handle Each Piece of Paper Only Once
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Resolve to handle every piece of paper only once. Make a decision to do
something with it when you pick it up, and don’t pick it up unless you are
ready to act on it. It is better to stack it up and put it aside for appropriate
action later than to continually shuffle it and reshuffle it on your desk.
How to Handle Paperwork
There are four things you can do with any piece of paper:
1. Throw it away.
One of the best time management tools at home or office is the wastebasket.
The fastest way to save time in reading anything is to simply throw it away
and not read it at all. This applies to junk mail, unwanted subscriptions to
catalogs, sales circulars and everything else that is not relevant to your goals.
Use the wastebasket to get rid of reading materials that have been hanging
around for months. Ask yourself, “If I did not read this, would there be any
negative consequences?” If the answer is no, then throw it away as fast as
you can. You can also ask yourself, “If I ever needed this information, could
I get it somewhere else?” If the answer is yes, throw it away.
My rule for keeping my workplace clean is, “When in doubt, throw it out!”
2. Delegate It to Someone Else
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You can refer or delegate the piece of paper to someone else. When you pick
up a piece of paper, ask yourself if there someone else who should be acting
on this. Is there someone else who can do it better than you? Is there anyone
else to whom you can delegate this to? One of the keys to success in
personal management is for you to delegate everything that can possibly be
done by anyone else who earns less than you do. This is the only way that
you can free up your time to do more of the things that are most important to
you and to your job.
3. Take Personal Action
You can take action on the piece of paper. These are the pieces of paper,
letters, proposals and messages that you must personally do something
about. Get a file folder and put the word “Action” on the tab. Even better,
get a red file folder where you put all of your action items and which you
can see clearly.
Keep this action folder handy. When you come across something that you
need to do something about, simply put it in your action file to work on later.
If it is something to be done immediately, take action quickly and put it
behind you.
4. File It for Future Reference
You can file it away. But before you file anything, remember that 80% of
papers filed are never needed, used or seen again. Designating something to
file creates work. Before you decide to put something in your files, ask
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yourself, “What would happen if I couldn’t find this piece of paper?” What
would be the negative consequences of not having this information
available?
If there are no negative consequences, or very little would happen, or if you
could get the information somewhere else, then throw the piece of paper
away. Keep your desk clear, and keep your files clear as well.
When I first began using the wastebasket to clear off my excess papers,
publications and reading material, I found it difficult. But with experience, I
found that very little that I have thrown away has ever been needed again.
The habit of throwing things away rather than saving and filing them has
been a big saver for me, as it has been for many others.
The most important thing is that you take some kind of action on a piece of
paper when you pick it up. Do something, do anything with the piece of
paper. Move it along at least one step. One of the greatest time wasters of all
is continually picking up the same piece of paper, reading it, putting it down
and having to come back to it, over and over again.
Put Things Away
When you are finished with something, put it away. Complete your
transactions. Finish your jobs. Discipline yourself to stay at it until the job is
100% complete. Start with a clean workspace and end with a clean
workspace.
Time Power
There is something deeply satisfying and psychologically rewarding about
task completion. Your brain is structured in such a way that you get an
“endorphin rush” every time you complete a task of any kind, large or small.
The larger or more important the task is to you, the greater will be the
feeling of happiness and exhilaration you experience when you complete it.
Each time you complete a task, you condition yourself to complete
subsequent tasks. In no time at all, you find yourself internally driven and
motivated to start and complete more and more important tasks and
responsibilities.
Make a habit of finishing what you start. Teach and encourage others to
finish their work and put it away, as well. Especially, teach your children to
complete their tasks by setting a good example, and by rewarding them
when they do finish something important. One of the hardest behaviors for
people to learn is the habit of completing tasks and putting things away, but
this is a habit that serves them all their lives.
Time Management Tools and Techniques
There are five time management tools and techniques that you should
practice for maximum productivity and good personal organization. Each of
them takes a little time to learn and master, but then pays you back in greater
efficiency and effectiveness for the rest of your life.
As Goethe said, “Everything is hard before it is easy.” Good habits are hard
to form but easy to live with. Once you have developed them, they become
automatic and easy. They serve you for the rest of your career.
Time Power
1. Use a Time Planner
The first time management tool that you need is a time planning system that
contains everything you need to plan and organize your life. The best time
planners, whether written, computer based or Palm Pilot versions, enable
you to plan for the year, the month, the week and for each day. A good time
planner will contain a master list where you can capture every task, goal and
required action as it comes up. This master list then becomes the core of
your time planning system.
From this master list, you allocate individual tasks to various months, weeks
and days.
The second part of the time planning system is a calendar that enables you to
organize your time, and plan several months ahead. With the right system,
you will be able to transfer individual items from your master list to the
exact day when you intend to complete them.
The next part of your time planning system is a daily list. This daily list is
perhaps the single most important planning tool you can have. Some people
call it a “To-Do List.” Winston Churchill headed his daily list with the
words, “Actions this Day.”
2. Always Work From a List
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Every effective executive works from a daily list. It is the most powerful
tool ever discovered for maximum productivity.
Ineffective executives, those who felt overwhelmed with too many things to
do and too little time, either do not use a list or did not refer to a list if they
had one in the first place. They often resist the idea of writing everything
down. As a result, they find themselves continually distracted by ringing
phones, interruptions, unexpected emergencies, and email or newspapers.
When you create your daily list, you begin by writing down every single
task that you intend to complete over the course of the day. The rule is that
you will increase your efficiency by 25% the very first day that you start
using a list. This means that you will get two extra hours of productive time
in an eight hour day from the simple act of making a list of everything you
have to do before you start work. You can bring order out of chaos faster
with a list than with any other time management tool.
If ever you feel overwhelmed with too many tasks, you can immediately
impose order on your list by writing down every single thing you have to do
for the foreseeable future. The very act of making a list of 10, 20 or 30 items
enables you to exert control over your time and your life. You immediately
feel more relaxed and confident. You feel back in charge of your work.
Once you have written up your daily lists, and begun work, new tasks and
responsibilities will come up. Telephone calls will have to be returned.
Correspondence will have to be dealt with. In every case, write it down on
the list before you do it.
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Sometimes a task or demand on your time will seem urgent when it comes
up. But something that might distract you from your other work regains its
true importance when you write it down. An item that is written down on the
list next to all your other tasks and responsibilities often doesn’t seem so
important after all.
3. Organize Your List by Priority
Once you have a list for your day’s activities, the next step is for you to
organize this list in order of priority. We will dedicate Chapter Four to the
different ways that you can determine your top priorities.
Once your list is organized, it becomes a map to guide you from morning to
evening in the most effective and efficient way. This guide tells you what
you have to do, and what is more or less important. You will soon develop
the habit of using your list as a blueprint for the day. Refuse to do anything
until you have written it down on the list and organized it relative to its value
