Whether you work in a home-based office or corporate business environment, it’s important to establish streamlined spaces, systems and routines that enable you to work constructively to establish maximum productivity levels and meet those all-important deadlines.

The main problem? Too many varied systems and not enough structure within the environment or daily schedules.

As individuals, we often over complicate things in our attempts to be more organised. My advice? Keep it simple…

Zone your Home: Our minds all work differently, so, although for the creative mind, a messy environment still holds a form of system, to the more visual mind it’s necessary to have a place for everything.  So, keep in tune with your own mindset.  

Distractions: In any office environment we want to be proactive and time efficient.  In order to achieve this, it’s important that you remove any distractions that interfere with your peripheral vision or any unnecessary clutter from your desk or deck top.

Minimalism: Keep family photos to a minimum.  Have just one space for stationery – be it in a top drawer or in a single container on your desk.  Objects that clutter up your desk are an easy distraction from keeping you focused on the task at hand.  Even consider your screen saver.

Be Proactive: Too often, my clients are more re-active than pro-active in their daily work life.  In some ways, this reflects on the environmental structure or systems they have in place; however, it also comes back to the routines and habits we have around our systems that can truly allow us to more constructive within our workplace.

Choose One System: Whether you’re into filing systems, binders or the good old toaster rack, it’s important to work with just one system for your incoming and outgoing paperwork.  Many clients take up valuable time trying to source information from multiple numbers of resources.  So, keep it simple and choose a paper flow system that works best for you.  Stick with just one system.  

Establish a Schedule or To Do List that is achievable. Itemise projects in accordance with their need for urgency.  Rather than cramming to complete tasks at the last minute to establish a timeline working backwards from the deadline, consider all the steps and time required to complete individual steps/tasks to reach the desired outcome.

Block out spaces of time throughout the day to attend to emails vs projects vs meetings, etc. Address emails first thing in the morning to establish your daily/weekly workflow and priorities.

Action items as they come to hand.  Ask yourself what action is required and complete it there and then, rather than putting on the later pile.  I suggest removing out trays, in particular. Once you’ve completed a task, decide whether you need to store it or not.

Complete set tasks/projects prior to reacting to new information. Putting too much on the NOW list is simply not achievable, so you need to prioritise.

At the End of the Day:  Complete as many items from your day’s ‘to do’ list and clear your desk at the end of each day. You’ll feel a lot more pro-active at the start of each day, without feeling like you’re playing catch-up from the previous workday.

What to Keep: It’s important, also, to consider the amount of paperwork that actually needs to be kept for future reference.  Approximately 80% of the paperwork (emails, digital files included) we never reference again.  So, once you have completed all the actions required for a set job or task ask yourself if you actually need to store this information or send it to the delete file/trash.

Be Consistent:  It’s easy to become complacent with the routines around our systems.  Repetition is the key.  The more often we perform a task the more habitual it becomes, until the point where we don’t even think about what we need to do, we just do it.  Repeat, repeat, repeat and it won’t be a task or an item for your ‘to do’ list anymore.

Robyn Amott from Bless this Mess is an expert professional organiser, motivational speaker, workshop facilitator and business systems trainer. You can contact Robyn Arnott on LinkedIn.