Take Action by Organizing Your Home Office

Even though tax season has thankfully come and gone, the remnants are probably still very apparent in your home office space. So how do you tackle the piling paperwork once and for all? Take these tips from Yahoo! Green:

Immediate Actions: Take a step to deal with any paperwork that requires immediate attention. That doesn’t mean you always have to drop everything to pay a bill or schedule an appointment, but you should take one of these steps:

• If it takes less than two minutes, do it. You’ll spend more than two minutes on the project if you just leave it in the pile and keep glancing at it.
  
• If it takes more than two minutes, put it in a “next actions” folder, and review the next actions folder daily. This should also include specific, small steps in ongoing projects. For example, “do taxes” is not a next action, but “contact bank for 1099 interest documents” might be a next action.
  
• Schedule it for action on a specific date, and put it in a dedicated folder for that date
  

Delayed actions: Other items may not require quick action, but aren’t worth throwing away. For example, as a freelance writer, I get plenty of press releases that aren’t going to immediately become part of an article, but provide interesting story ideas. These “someday” stories can go in a separate file.

Get your office organized once and for all by calling Life Uncluttered.