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Time
CAN be on Your Side with "Make Time for Success!" Discover
the 39 essential tools needed to map out your goals, maximize
your effectiveness, and win control of your time and your life.
Have you ever sat there while your boss stands
over you, desperately searching for that missing document he or
she needs RIGHT NOW? Or have you kept a client waiting on the
phone for several minutes while you've searched for a status
report?
If you have, then however organized and effective you are in your
day-to-day work, your boss and your client may have a less than
perfect opinion of you, because in a key encounter, you've let
them down. And if it's your job to help people, how much of other
people's time are you wasting if you can't find the information
you need when you need it?
You owe it to yourself to file effectively, however boring this
may seem. Imagine how much more impressive it would have been if -
when asked - you'd smiled, accessed a well-organized filing
system, immediately found the document, and quickly given the
answer!
Managing Time
On a typical work day, we deal with many documents, presentations,
graphics, and other files. There's a flurry of data pouring in
from all directions that we need to process and, usually, store to
retrieve later. We want to be able to lay our hands on the
information we need - at the right moment, when we need it - so it
can be used for further analysis or report writing, or perhaps for
creating a presentation.
All too often, though, we waste our own time
(and often the time of other people) searching for data that's
sitting on the very computer we're using! This adds to our stress,
and makes the task of putting the data to use more difficult than
it ought to be. So we need to get more organized and efficient
with our file management if we're going to get our work done in
a timely manner.
Managing Information Efficiently
When you receive a file in an e-mail from a co-worker, vendor, or
customer, it's tempting to "just put it away" in some folder for
the time being. "Hmm. looks interesting, but I'll take a closer
look at this later, when I've got more time." Sound familiar? Or,
worse still, perhaps you just leave the message and its attachment
sitting in your Inbox. After a while, many such documents build
up, leading to a lot of clutter. It's highly unlikely that you'll
ever find time to go back and get all of that information
organized, especially considering that you're usually under
pressure with other things and have hectic work schedules to meet.
You can spend hours of precious time searching
for data you've filed away somewhere, because it's easy to forget
the filename - or even to forget that such information is on your
computer in the first place. How can you go about simplifying
your work? Get better at managing files.
Effective File Management
Managing files on your computer isn't much different from the way
you've always stored and managed your paper files. It boils down
to this: Store the information in folders - by category, and in a
sequence that makes sense to you.
Here are some tips to help manage your files:
Avoid saving unnecessary documents.
Don't make a habit of saving just about everything that finds
its way into your Inbox. Take a few seconds to glance through
the content, and save a file only if it's relevant to your work
activity. Having too much data on your computer adds to the
clutter that makes it harder to find things in the future -
and it may, over time, slow down your computer's performance
too - so be selective about what you keep.
Follow a consistent method for naming
your files and folders. For instance, divide a main folder
into subfolders for customers, vendors, and co-workers. Give
shortened names to identify what or whom the folders relate
to. What's more, you can even give a different appearance or
look to different categories of folders - this can make it easy
to tell them apart at first glance.
Store related documents together, whatever
their type. For example, store Word documents, presentations,
spreadsheets, and graphics related to a particular project in
a single folder - rather than having one folder for presentations
for all projects, another folder for spreadsheets for all projects,
and so forth. This way, it's much quicker to find, open, and
attach documents for a particular project.
Separate ongoing work from completed work.
Some people prefer to save current or ongoing work on their
computer's desktop until a job is completed. Then, once it's
done, they move it to the appropriate location, where files
of the same category are stored. At periodic intervals (for
example, weekly or every two weeks), move files you're no longer
working on to the folders where your completed work is stored.
Avoid overfilling folders. If you
have a large number of files in one folder, or a large number
of subfolders in a main folder - so many that you can't see
the entire list on your screen without scrolling down - break
them into smaller groups (subfolders or sub-subfolders). Think
of creating a sequential menu, arranged either in chronological
or alphabetical order, to make retrieval easy. For instance,
you can divide a folder called "Business Plan" into
subfolders called "BP2005," "BP2006," and
"BP2007." Likewise, you can divide a folder for a
client named Delta Traders into subfolders named "Delta
Traders sales presentations" and "Delta Traders contracts."
The idea is to place every file into a logical folder or subfolder,
rather than have one huge list of files.
Having said this, there is usually little point in creating
a folder for fewer than about five documents. If you do, the
time you spend clicking through subfolders to get to the documents
you need may not be outweighed by the greater ease of finding
them.
Install Google Desktop on your PC.
If you can (sometimes IT departments don't permit this), install
Google Desktop on your PC - you can find this at http://desktop.google.com.
This neat tool creates a desktop search engine that indexes
all of your files and emails, meaning that you can search for
them quickly and easily. This can be invaluable when you need
to answer offbeat questions!
Make sure your filing system is backed
up. Again, this is a bit tedious, but it's so important,
as anyone who's had a failed disk drive will testify! Make sure,
firstly, that your PC is backed up regularly and, secondly,
that the backup includes the directories where you file information.
Prioritizing Your Files for Action
Take these approaches further by customizing your file management.
This can help you prioritize your work, which can lead to better
efficiency.
Organize files by dates. Incorporate
a date into the file name. This will help you determine which
is the most recent document in the folder, without having to
open the file and read through the content. For example, a file
named "Guidelines 12Oct07" would indicate a version
of the Guidelines file dated October 12, 2007. (If you're working
internationally, be aware that in some countries this date can
be presented as 101207, while in other countries, this same
date can be shown as 121007. This can be very confusing!)
Some people use version numbers to
distinguish between documents that have been reworked or changed.
Examples would be "Delta Traders contract v1" and
"Delta Traders contract v2." This also makes it easier
to pick out the most current file.
Tip:
If your document is going to be looked at, used, or amended
by several people, you need to be particularly careful about
version control: People quite rightly can get very annoyed
if versions are mixed up and their work on the document is
lost.
Make sure you put the version number in the file name here,
and also consider having a version control table at the
beginning of the document showing the version number, the
date of the version, the person making changes, and,
perhaps, the nature of changes made.
Use "Tickler" files. Tickler
files, also known as the "43 folders" method,
are a unique system that's used by many people for organizing
files. Create 12 folders (one for each month of the year) and
an additional 31 subfolders (for each day of the month). Fill
each folder with the documents that you need to work with on
that day. At the beginning of each day, open the folder for
that day. Take all the items out of the folder and move them
into a "today" folder or onto your desktop. Then move
the empty folder into the corresponding slot for the next month.
If you can't complete some work items by the end of the day,
transfer them to the folder for the next convenient day. This
system of file management helps you keep track of everything
you need to do, and it also doubles as a diary.
For any system to be useful and effective, it must also be
convenient for you. To some extent, this depends on the nature of
your business or the work that you do. So, although there's no
"one size fits all" solution to file management, you will likely
profit by using some of these file management tips, and by
customizing them in a way that best serves your own needs.
Key Points
Are you losing too much time searching through the clutter on your
computer for files that you need? And when you're under pressure,
can you retrieve information quickly and easily?
Spending precious time looking for data can take the pleasure out
of any kind of creative work you might be doing - and it adds to
your stress levels as well. Simple tips on file management can
show you how to get organized with your information storage and
retrieval.
Making This Part of Your Life:
We know this is boring, but you know you
need to do it!
Clear an hour in your schedule somewhere
in the next 7 days, and set your filing system up!
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Time
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