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Goal-Setting By Organizing Your Home Office

by Bridget Wright on January 7th, 2008

build a bigger clientele list…

call warm leads and qualify them…

organize my home office…

revamp my website to include more content…

expand and rewrite my business plan…

These are some of the ”to-do’s” from my business list of goals for 2008. I’m proud to report that I’ve nixed them. Well, not really nixed them, but I’ve reset my goals, so to speak. Now, I don’t want you to think that I’ve already given up on my 2008 resolutions (which by now, I’m sure some have), but rather, I’m refocusing my efforts to get one thing done at a time.

Sometimes, when we have A LOT to do, it can be so overwhelming that we want to toss it all…and end up doing nothing. So, instead of that, let me offer you one solid piece of advice that can help you accomplish more goal-meeting this year.

Take your to-do list, goals, resolutions or whatever, and break them down into manageable steps.

Now, you’ve got something more practical to work with and you’ll feel more accomplished and productive when you begin. Let me give you one of my own examples:

My office here at home is horrendous! I mean, it’s a mess. So, when My Organized Biz joined our blogging community, I was excited because I thought, “finally, some tips on how to get this office together.” Then, when Kelly made this post about email organization and this one about home office organization, I thought that it must be a sign for me to really get it together. It would be a great application for me to make concerning my mess home office.

The first thing that I did was to clean out file cabinets and drawers and put EVERYTHING on my work table. I then went through each piece of paper, piece by piece, handling each one carefully and assessing whether they were “file”, “action” or “round storage.” That’s trash. Then, I appropriated each one accordingly.

Then, I got an organizing system of shelves, color-coded file folders, a rolling cabinet (for pens, pencils, scissors, tape, small items) and placed everything where it needed to be. Piece of cake! So now, I’m pretty much organized, right? Not! The key to effective organization is consistency. That means out of 8 years of paperwork accumulation and mountains of files, I would have to come up with a system that will help me avoid getting back to this place again. In order to avoid that avalanche happening again, I vowed to only handle each piece of paper once, file the item away immediatley after assessing its action and purge files much more often than necessary. Hoila! Organization meets chaos and my home office world is a better place. And getting there.

Would you like to see my before/after pictures? Would you really? First, send me a comment about what your home office organization challenge is.

I’l see if I can find that picture. It’s around here somewhere…

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• Organizing Your Office
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POSTED IN: Business Advice, Goals & Goal Setting, Scheduling & Organizing