Thursday, October 1, 2009

Organizing: Week 8

Organizing is this week's focus.
Read about the 13 weeks.

It's no surprise that Organizing would show up on a list of traits for personal and professional improvement. Most every person I know feels they would like to improve in this area. While there is probably such a thing as being too organized, it's pretty hard to imagine. Thus, I determined that some focus in this area would be of value for me too!

I listed 4 areas I wanted to address this week:

Processes- I looked at daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual processes for getting things done, mostly for my business, but I included some personal too. I am one of these people who can get really wrapped up in the details. If time was unlimited, I would enjoy detailed, complex planning and designing of processes. However, obviously I still have a business to run so I had to reign myself in and stick to what was really needed. It's worth noting here that we all need to work with our environments, finding ways to support our natural tendencies wherever possible, so that we can go with the flow. In other words, good processes should provide a supportive structure that allows greater productivity and creativity, using less energy.

Files- I organized my files, straightening some things up, putting some loose papers into folders, etc... I also organized the file and folder structure on my computer. This was mostly the kind of administrative work that office managers and assistants are so good at that makes offices run more smoothly. I also made some back-up files.

Financial- I not only installed and implemented new accounting software which was great(!), I also took a little time to determine what financial-related processes would work best.

Household- I identified several things I wanted to organize in our home, but beyond the basics, this category will wait for the next round of 13 weeks...

I feel that I accomplished some really good things in support of being more organized this week...now it's just a matter of maintaining it!