11 years of working for the same employer can do that to you. Especially if you're one of those people who are afraid to throw things away (What if I need that later?). My office seems to be mostly reference material. Some of which isn't even mine. It's just stuff that needs to be digitized and stored or destroyed. But with about 11 roles on my plate, it's hard to find the time to keep things organized and tidy. Sometimes I have a hard time remembering my own name!
So I decided, "ok, the real work is going to have to wait a little bit until I get my s***t together," and I created a plan to tackle it then got to work. Here's what I did:
1. Get rid of obsolete stuff. Starting with the binders, I went through each and every one. If it was training material and was from prior to 2016, it got scanned and canned (in the recycling bin, of course). This is taking a while, of course, because there's so much and adobe is not very fast at optimizing scanned documents. Binders went to another room with a sign on it saying "free to a good home." Old magazines I never got around to reading also got canned. I didn't even flip through them. I know it's a waste, but the information is already old and with the wonders of internet searching, if I really need to know, I'll find it.
2. Categorize and organize. Some of what I do is technology related, some are admin related, some are science related, and some are just in a category of their own. That's why I tell people I'm a "Jane of all trades, master of none." To keep all my cats herded and my ducks in a row, I decided I need to keep them categorized and separated so that I can manage my time better. I can maybe dedicate equal amounts of time to each category so I can be productive in all aspects of my job instead of really great at one area and not so great in another.
3. Figure out exactly what I use and get rid of the rest. I admit, there are things in my office that are there "just in case" they're needed. They ARE needed on occasion, but it could be months in between. Those items can be relocated to a storage area, out of the way, so they're not constantly out and taking up space in my office. Other items that are not needed at all anymore can be given to a co-worker who could use them, or just simply discarded. Yeah, it's contributing again to the landfills, but hopefully once this is finished I won't be getting them anymore in the first place. So, I moved some stuff into the warehouse and others into the admin office for others to use if they need them.
4. Clean out email. My... email... is... a MESS. I have 10,000 total emails right now in my inbox. Probably only 15% are actually ones I need to keep. Part of the problem is, a lot of sites that I visit when researching something require you to put in your email and create an account to dive into their site. Or to look at documents. Even though you check that little box about correspondence, I still find I get a lot of junk from them or their affiliates. Also, all-hands emails tend to pile up on me. Being stationed in a remote location means most of the all-hands announcements are junk. I see the subject line, I see it doesn't apply, and I ignore instead of delete. Then they pile up. Next thing I know, important emails get lost in the mess or I forget to follow-up on others. First step is to clean out all the junk. Something that helps is the clean-up feature in Outlook. It looks at all the emails and takes out those that are in a string, keeping the most recent one. One trick I used was searching for the word "unsubscribe." This brought out most of the junk from companies and sites. I then blocked the senders that offended the most. I also made folders for subject matter categories and created rules to automatically move emails pertaining to that subject into the appropriate folder. I'm still working on it, so I'll let you know how far I whittle it down.
5. Consolidate, consolidate, consolidate... I had a box of black pens that was probably 2/3 full, and a box with blue pens that only had 2 left, and a box of red pens that was about half full. And I kept them in separate boxes.... Why? I guess I thought I needed to, so I don't grab the wrong color? I dunno. Now they're all in the same place and I only have a couple, instead of a gazillion.
More to come as it goes on....
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