Time for Spring Cleaning

CELEBRATION news"E"letter

Number 3, April 1999

by Laura M. Stack, MBA (new married name!)

Published by Celebration Presentations

…your Personal and Professional Development Resource

The CELEBRATION news"E"letter is a monthly electronic newsletter distributed to our clients, human resource personnel, and colleagues. Celebration Presentations works with organizations that want to maximize their greatest asset---people---and create more effective employees and members. Our programs provide the personal productivity, communication, and professional development skills needed to improve performance on the job and create organizational growth.

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IN THIS ISSUE:

* Article: Time for Spring-Cleaning

* Time Tips and Traps

* Words of Wisdom

* Featured Program

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ARTICLE:

Spring-Cleaning for Your Office: Eliminate Piles with a Simple 6-Step System

Spring! It’s time again for—Spring-Cleaning! Being cooped up all winter has given you an excuse to hibernate with your junk. Are you drowning in a sea of paper? Do you have a “someday” pile, a “decide later” pile, an “action” pile, and a “just for a while” pile? Do you manage with a “stack” system or keep all your “to-do’s” in your in-basket? If these questions ring true, you can realize a significant increase in productivity by organizing the mounds of paper on your desk.

We should actually call it “Spring Organizing” rather than “Spring Cleaning.” Why? Are organization and cleanliness the same thing? Absolutely not! Case in point—you could get a box, sweep everything on your desk into it, and shove the box in your credenza or supply cabinet. You’d brush your hands together and say, “There, I cleaned off my desk.” Well, that’s true—the desk is now clean—but it certainly isn’t organized. Being organized means that you can find what you want when you want it.

Why is organization so important? Here are some startling statistics from the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO):

· between 1969 and 1987, Americans added 163 hours, or an extra month to the working year

· there are 150,000 books and 10,000 periodicals published in the U.S. each year

· stress-related illness costs the nation $300 billion per year

· 89% of women and 79% of men admit to buying more than they need

· we wear 20% of our clothes 80% of the time

· 80% of papers that are filed are never referenced again

So no more excuses! A little advance planning this spring will allow you to emerge from your office this summer clutter-free. Once you’ve gotten your environment under control, you’ll have more time for yourself to play.

Indecision, by its very nature, causes clutter. Many of the piles on your desk represent postponed decisions. The keys to successful paper management are: (1) have a “home” for each category of paper, and (2) decide immediately where each paper belongs (don’t shuffle papers). To help put these principles in action, I teach my workshop participants a system I’ve developed called the “6 D” method. When you pick up a piece of paper for the first time from your in-box, you decide which of the 6 actions is appropriate and put it in its proper place.

The 6-D’s are:

1. Ditch—Put the paper in a trashcan, recycling bin, and/or shredder. Many people have “the fear of dumping.” Ask yourself the tough questions—do you really have the time to read it? What’s the worst that could happen if you throw it away? Can you get another copy if necessary? You must be ruthless in this stage! Remember we only look for 20% of all the paper we insisted on saving.

2. Delegate—Refer the item to someone else. Immediately put it in an envelope or attach a routing label. Get it going out the door to that person right away. We cannot “manage by doing” in the Information Age, so give away as much as possible.

3. Do—If you have the time, complete, review, sign, or reply to the item immediately. Then get it going back out the door to the requester. This step is generally for action items that will only require two to five minutes to complete. Investing the time now will save time in the long run because you won’t have to shuffle the paper around.

4. Decide—For papers you can’t work on immediately, determine when you need to see the item again and file in your Tickler (pop-up, calendar, bring-up) file for paper. Or designate an action file for each item, such as a “to be read” file, “to be copied” file, “to be faxed” file, “computer” file, or appropriate Project file.

5. Dungeon—File items you can’t toss, delegate, and that don’t require any action. Temporarily put these papers in a “to be filed” bin or folder or a “to create a file for” folder. File at least once a week.

6. Delete—Halt the paper; keep it from coming across your desk again. Make a quick phone call to get off the routing list for reports, memos, letters, minutes, catalogues, magazines, and junk mail that you don’t need or have time to read.

So get your organizing equipment ready! Surround yourself with the trashcan, recycling bin, envelopes, routing labels, tickler file, “to be filed” folder, phone, and pen. Then attack your piles. Put one stack of paper before you, square it up, pick up each piece of paper, and apply the 6-D system. (Hint: take out the big pieces first, and throw away piles older than 6 months.) Do not put a paper down until you have made a decision about where it goes. It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to do it, just put it away. Work through all your piles in this manner.

The key to maintaining your organized office is to have an empty in-box and a clear desk before you leave each day. The old adage “a place for everything and everything in its proper place” is indeed true. You usually can’t drop everything and work on the item, but if you put it on your desk, you will create piles. The 6-D System determines where the paper should go and makes maintenance a breeze. Spring is the perfect reason to commit to clearing the decks and getting a jump on the summer!

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TIME TIPS AND TRAPS

1. Hire It Out—I used to say to myself, “I will never hire anyone to clean my house for me; I’m perfectly capable of doing it myself; what a waste of money!” Until I starting tracking how much time I spent cleaning—5 hours a week on average! That’s 20 hours per month and approximately 250 hours per year! I now have a woman who comes into my home every other week. She cleans the entire house in two hours and charges me $25. Is it worth it? For 250 hours of “want-to” time per year...you bet! Think about hiring out your yard work, paperwork and filing, laundry, errands, and gardening. Let others practice their specialties, you practice yours.

2. Have It Delivered—I used to have an 80-pound mutt named Damien who plowed through 50-pound bags of dog food in no time. I remember thinking that I lived at the pet store on the weekends. I had a company deliver huge plastic drums of wet and dry dog food right to my door when I ran out! It’s cheaper than the store brands, and better quality. And the convenience of delivery too? Wow! Think about having groceries, diapers, stamps, milk, office supplies, and dry cleaning delivered. In most cases cheaper than doing it yourself, if you factor in the value of your time. Look at every non-negotiable in your life, and ask if there’s another way to get that task done.

3. Reduce Your Standards—What could I possibly mean by that? Often you delegate a task then act surprised when it you’re suddenly in charge of it again. How does this happen? Let’s say (pretend) you get your significant other to go to the grocery store for you, then you berate him when he arrives home with the wrong kind of peanut butter. What happens? He never goes again. Congratulations, that non-negotiable lands right back in your lap! Why? Your expectations were too high. Ask yourself, “Is it good enough?” You have peanut butter, so who cares! So let me suggest that one way to reduce “non-negotiable” time in your life is to get rid of your picky-picky standards. If a secretary makes the occasional blooper on an internal memo that’s not even going outside the company, or has a writing style that you don’t prefer, do you have to “fix” it if it’s technically correct? Of course, if it’s a seven-million-dollar proposal, you cross every “T” and dot every “I.” But if it’s good enough, let it go.

4. Barter—You may also have someone in your life who is open to an exchange of their services for yours. They may LOVE doing what you are completely resistant about and vice versa. For example, if you hate to wash windows, trade it with your neighbor to steam clean their carpet. Trade baby-sitting services. I know two women that have a wonderful trade going. One loves to do crafts, and the other loves to bake. So, at holiday time, one wraps the other’s presents and decorates her home, and the second woman bakes all the holiday goodies for the other and prepares her holiday meals. What a great exchange!

5. Refuse—Some of you have a jam-packed life because you just can’t say, “NO”! First, you must be realistic. The world will not stop revolving if you don’t chair the PR committee. Your friend won’t hate you if you don’t go shopping on Saturday. Second, think of other ways to accommodate requests made by others. Instead of baking homemade brownies for the Girl Scout meeting, offer to buy some during your next shopping trip instead. If it’s not good enough, the planner will ask someone else. Great! If your boss is overloading you, say “I’ll be glad to handle that for you. However, I can’t get to it until I finish the XYZ project. That will be...” Or, ask her or him what the priorities are for the different pieces of work on your plate and negotiate a due date. That’s a reasonable way to call the existing workload to you boss’s attention, and you won’t be fired for pointing out that you can only do one task at a time.

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WORDS OF WISDOM

“Time is the scarcest resource, and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.”---Peter Drucker

“Waste neither time, nor money, but make the best use of both.” ---Benjamin Franklin

“If you knew Time as well as I do, you wouldn’t think about wasting it,” said the Mad Hatter. --- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

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FEATURED PROGRAM

Receive a 20% discount on the following program by mentioning this newsletter through 1999:

"Handling Information Overload"

Program Description: Does technology improve human productivity? Undoubtedly. But if we don't use technology wisely, it can make us less productive rather than more so. Does the sight of your messy office frustrate you? Do you feel like you're slowly drowning in a sea of paper? Information is so readily available, and it's difficult to manage the daily onslaught. After attending this workshop, you will be able to:

Course Objectives

· Avoid The Organizational And Interpersonal Challenges Of Technology (Internet, Voice Mail, Email, Cell Phone)

· Implement An Effective Paper Management System

· Handle E-Mail Messages With Ease

· Manage The Flood Of Information-Paper, Magazines, Journals, Phone Calls, Vendor Information, and Books

· De-Clutter Your Computer

For more information about "Managing Time and Multiple Priorities," please call 303-471-7401.

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