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Getting Organized

One trait of an effective manager is the ability to stay organized, both with personal as well as team projects.  Good organization, the ability to properly track tasks and manage work load are all important skills.  If you are not a master at these yet, don't worry: these can be learned!  Below are a variety of topics, tools and advice on how to improve your organizational skills:

Filing 

Good, ole simple manila folders stored in a filing cabinet can work wonders.  Creating a simple, alphabetical filing system is easy.  Start to label with folders alphabetically with names that make sense according to the information you need to file.  All you will need are plenty of manilla folders, a cabinet, and a good pen or labeller.  Here are some tips that may help you to file better:

  • track your files online with a simple excel sheet.  Two columns are all that's needed: file name, and file contents.  Update this document periodically.  Sometimes, after filing something (once your filing system is large enough), you might have trouble recalling where you filed a particular document.  This excel sheet can help find what you need.
  • buy a decent filing cabinet
  • labelling is key; think of specific rather than vague categories for labels
  • create subcategories by starting to label with a specific noun, and coupling it with another word (ie. "Sloan: 15.990", "Sloan: 15.390", etc.)
  • Some people like to seperate personal files from work files.  This is a matter of personal preference, but as this filing system is meant to be your "personal library," to keep things as simple as possible, it makes sense to build one, integrated filing system.
  • the same principle can be applied to your digital life.  You can also create a hierarchical folder structure to store and file your digital docs.
  • install Google search to quickly find and retrieve documents stored on your computer 

GTD: Getting Things Done

Getting Things Done, or GTD, is a popular organization method created by David Allen, and popularized in his book "Getting Things Done."   

Email - Inbox control 

Is your inbox out of control?  Do you feel like you are always trying to keep up with email?  Here's an idea: try to challenge yourself to maintain your email inbox to zero emails.  Practical advice on how to do this:

  • file incoming emails immediately
  • learn to aggresively delete - many emails are not really needed - read/skim them and delete!
  • reply immediately if you can reply quickly
  • stop checking email every 2 minutes.  This is quite unproductive; limit to once every 30 minutes if possible.
  • have good spam filters - go over your spam inbox once a week to make sure no real emails were mistakenly classified as spam 

Gmail

Consider centralizing all your mail accounts with Gmail.  The best thing about Gmail is its search function...you can archive all your emails and search for them quickly and easily.  Of course, Gmail can also be coupled with GTD methodology - in fact, there's a firefox extension built to layer on top of Gmail a complete GTD filing system.  (see: http://www.gtdgmail.com)

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