Conquering The Challenge of Organizing Your Work Space
Professional Organizer Regina Leeds, author of “One Year To An Organized Work Life” explains how fear of success and fear of making a mistake are often the hidden reasons behind a disorganized work space.
Commitment: What are your best five tips for people who feel overwhelmed with paperwork?
Regina Leeds:
1. Take a deep breath and remember that 'the whole of anything' is overwhelming. You need to break any project down into manageable chunks. So it isn't all the papers on your desk that are calling to you, it's just one stack. And within that world, you are simply going one paper at a time.
Soon you are making progress and you are empowered by the shift in the visual. You are also gaining organizing experience. Self esteem rises. There is power in taking that first step!
2. Try a speed elimination if your entire space is a disaster. Eliminate as much as you can. This means tossing items in the trash, setting aside items to be shredded, returning things to others, creating archive boxes and perhaps selecting items to go home with you or be walked to the central supply area for your company. Elimination is a creative step in the process. Embrace it.
3. As you eliminate, you naturally make decisions about what items are to stay. Group related items together. In the physical space you will have automatic 'inventory control.' (Do you really need all those pens and staples?) With your papers, you will be gathering the items that belong to specific projects. This is very powerful and will boost your creativity.
4. Once you have your categories you can start organizing. You might need to call in a professional organizer or buy a book like mine or perhaps tap the expertise of a loving, organized friend or co-worker. Your completed projects need to be beautiful to look at, completely functional and easy to maintain based on how you think and relate to space. For products, I love the Container Store. They carry good quality items and they keep them in stock over time.
5. Eliminate, categorize and organize are the steps I call 'The Magic Formula' because you can use them to bring order to any project from a clothes closet to a file system, from packing for a trip to organizing your next meeting at work.
At the end of the day, we have to face reality: whatever systems (organizing is about systems not tidying up) you create must be maintained. This is a part of life. What happens after a diet and exercise program? You have to maintain what you created. It's the same with organizing.
Remember this: you won't be exerting extra effort; you will be redirecting the same energy you have been using...and saving it in the long run. How? Here's a great example: you walk in the door and your keys land wherever they can. There's no rhyme or reason.
When you need to leave, nine times out of ten a drama ensues. I like to say that THE most popular soap opera in America is not General Hospital but Where Are my Keys?! Once you are organized, the minute you enter your home or office, your keys have one spot in which to land. It's the same energy to fling them as it is to place them. And you avoid a drama thus saving time as well as physical and emotional energy. Pretty neat, huh? (Pun intended!)
Commitment: Why did you write this book?
Regina: In my previous book One Year to an Organized Life I dealt extensively with basic organizing concepts that will bring order to the home environment. I wanted readers to experience how these same techniques can be applied to their work lives.
There is an old Zen proverb: 'The way a man does one thing is the way he does everything.' Why be organized at home and then face unnecessary chaos at work? The world is waiting for your unique contribution!
Commitment: As a professional organizer, what do you see as the biggest challenges to an organized work life?
Regina: First of all we are human beings. We need to take care of ourselves. You can have a team of professional organizers living with you, however, if you are depressed, not exercising, eating junk food and lack adequate sleep, guess what? Productivity will elude you...or be achieved at high personal cost.
Next I would say is cultivating the ability to say 'no.' We toss our agenda (aka our To Do list) to the wind the minute someone asks us to do something for them. These requests are most commonly made in person, via e-mail and voice mail. You need to set priorities and stick to them. The easiest way to manage this is to use a calendar. It can be paper, Outlook or Entourage at Mac. The form isn't important. Your dedication to using it is!
Finally set yourself up to win. Make time to organize your physical space and set up a working file system. A few hours dedicated to these pursuits will reap enormous benefits over the course of a year....and beyond.
Commitment: What are some of the underlying emotional and psychological reasons for a disorganized work life?
Regina: Fear is behind most of the chaos. It's a creative master appearing under many guises: fear of success, fear of failure, fear of making a mistake and so on. I have lots of workbook questions in every chapter to help you find the root cause of whatever fear is driving you. When you know the cause you are empowered to set a new one in its place and reap a more positive result.
Very often there are physical or emotional challenges that go unrecognized. For example, I suggest if you suffer from chronic fatigue, it may not be because you aren't organized. A simple blood test might reveal you are anemic. What if you have suffered a loss recently? Say the death of a parent, spouse or dear friend? Your depression must be acknowledged and dealt with before your productivity at work can once again soar. Take your whole life experience into account.
I have an exercise in the book where I ask people to monitor their thoughts for a day. What is the 'story' you are telling? Did well meaning parents set you up to be a perfectionist? Did someone make you believe you were a chronic failure? These messages need to be 'deleted' and replaced with positive ones.
Commitment: What do you see as the biggest time wasters in the workplace?
Regina: People are unfocused and taken off course by technological tools that are meant to help us but get twisted into literal blocks to our productivity. High on that list would be e-mail and instant messaging. I call these 'technological crack' because they can become so addictive.
And then of course there are those who work best under pressure so they dawdle all day and interrupt everyone else with extended visits. 'Boundaries' are key to great relationships and they are invaluable in the workplace was well. There is always a polite way to express that you can't stop to chat.
Commitment: How is being able to make a decision connected to being organized?
Regina: It's key! Every stack of papers, every over-crowded in-box stuffed with hundreds (for some, thousands!) of e-mails is nothing more than a collection of unmade decisions. We side step making them when in truth decision making is where all the power is.
About the Author: Regina Leeds, known as the Zen Organizer, is the founder of Get Organized! by Regina. She is the author of several books, including the New York Times bestseller "One Year to an Organized Life" and "The Zen of Organizing." She lives outside of Los Angeles. Visit www.organizewithregina.com
To purchase One Year to An Organized Work Life click here.
