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Stephanie Winston's Best Organizing Tips: Quick, Simple Ways to Get Organized and Get on with Your Life - Softcover

Winston, Stephanie

 
9780684818245: Stephanie Winston's Best Organizing Tips: Quick, Simple Ways to Get Organized and Get on with Your Life
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0684818248 ISBN 13: 9780684818245
Verlag: Touchstone, 1996

Inhaltsangabe

60-second solutions to help you get organized -- and get on with your life
Are you overwhelmed by the clutter in your files and on your desk? Are you tired of being clobbered by clothes and hangers every time you open the closet door? Do household chores take twice as long as they should? Does the very thought of getting organized intimidate you -- because you don't know how, it takes too long, and you'd rather be doing anything else? Then this is the book for you.
Featuring clear, quick-to-read lists and a meticulously detailed index, Stephanie Winston's Best Organizing Tips pinpoints how to:
* Do away with disarray in closets, cupboards, and cabinets
* Lighten the load of household chores
* Eliminate desk mess and paperwork pileups
* Make short work of bill paying and taxes
* Take maximum advantage of precious "found time"
For perfectionist and procrastinator alike, Stephanie Winston's Best Organizing Tips will prove indispensable.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Stephanie Winston is a bestselling author, professional organizer, and the founder of The Organizing Principle, a time-management consulting firm.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1

Conquering Paperwork Gridlock

Pat is a stringer for her local newspaper and can write authoritatively about anything from Thanksgiving chestnut stuffing to theater reviews. She also manages to make her deadlines. However, Pat has yet to file her health insurance claim from six months ago. Her desk is covered with story ideas and research for articles, unanswered letters, unpaid bills, and other hard-to-identify papers. And to the side of her desk is a large stack of unread magazines and newspapers, probably dating back six months.

Pat is caught in the paper trap.

Paper is perhaps the bane of our organizational existence, because paper is ubiquitous. Every day we are bombarded with, surrounded by, and submerged in an ever-increasing influx of printed material, from important things like the estimate on your gutter replacement to coupon Val-U-Paks. And every day we all do something with this paper -- even if, like Pat, we only push it aside and say, in what I call the "Scarlett O'Hara syndrome," 'I'll think about it tomorrow." But we seldom do. When this happens, the problem of paper becomes not a problem of neatness, but a problem of decision making.

If you are also prone to "push it aside," ask yourself this question whenever you come across a bill, catalog, bank statement, or coupon book: "What's the worst thing that could happen if this didn't exist?" If nothing would happen, toss it. If you think you might need it someday, can you find a duplicate if someday comes? If so, get rid of it.

Regardless of your response, a decision must be made, and the good news is there are only four possibilities:

T Toss. As we've seen, you can throw it away.

R Refer. It ain't your job, it's somebody else's. Pass it along to someone who might be interested in it or who is responsible for it.

A Act. No getting around it, it is your job. Act on it personally: Reply to that letter, examine that report, sign that expense voucher.

F File. Your only job is to find a place for it so you can find it again. Name it anti file it.

I call this the TRAF system, and it is the fundamental rule of paperwork. Stick with this formula for decision making, and the wealth of handy TRAF tips in this section, and you can be sure you won't be tripped up or trapped by paper again.

For starters -- highlight

* Read mail with a highlighter or pen in hand. Mark or highlight any actions required -- due dates on bills, expiration dates, appointments, invitation dates -- and put the items in your action box.

* If you are setting aside a paper to keep -- for example, an article you want to save -- highlight the section that interests you so you won't have to read it all over again.

The TRAF System: Toss, Refer, Act, and File

TOSS: Getting Rid of It

* Open your mail over the wastebasket, tossing as you go. In an apartment house, sort mail in the mailroom, bringing upstairs only materials you will be acting on. This reduces the paper load both literally and psychologically.

* For those papers you are unsure about: time to bite the bullet. For each piece of paper ask yourself, "What's the worst thing that could happen if it didn't exist?" If the answer is "nothing," toss. It your answer is, "Maybe I'll need it someday," ask yourself, "Can I find a duplicate if someday comes?" If so, get rid of it.

* Set up a "holding pen" -- a special drawer -- for papers you think you might need but probably won't, and check it weekly. For example, you might want to keep tracking slips from packages you mail by Federal Express, Express Mail, or UPS. (Hint: It's usually a good idea to call the recipient on the designated day of arrival just to make sure the package arrived on time and in one piece.) If ali's well, you can toss the tracking slips when you check the drawer. One client called this her "Friday drawer" because she found when she checked it every Friday that most papers she had saved could be thrown away.

REFER: Keeping the Paper Moving

* Create individual "referral folders" for the handful of people you talk to most regularly -- your boss, staff, "team" colleagues, etc. -- into which you drop things to discuss with that person. Then, at a convenient time, say, "Jim, there are a few things I'd like to go over with you." After you've asked a coworker to get back to you on something, drop a reminder note into his/her folder.

Your referral folders should be especially accessible; either stand them up in a vertical file holder on your desk or put them at the front of your desk file drawer. You can use colored folders to distinguish your referral folders from other files.

* Or head notebook pages with the names of those same key people and jot down ideas to discuss as they occur to you. Then catch each person at a convenient moment and go over your list.

* Using the referral folder principle, create automatic agendas for your regular meetings. For example, drop materials to be discussed at Monday's staff meeting into a folder headed "Monday Staff Meeting," and add to it as things come up. By Monday you've collected an instant agenda!

* At home, create a "spouse basket": Put all papers to discuss with your spouse -- an invitation, your child's report card, a message from your insurance agent -- into a single basket. Talk things over daily and clean the basket out. Try discussion baskets with your kids too.

ACT: Getting Things Done

A key obstacle to action is getting caught in the "low-priority trap" -- you push aside a piece of paper such as an alumni bulletin, thinking, "This isn't pressing, I'll just look at it tomorrow..." Before you know it, "tomorrow" is three weeks later, and those seemingly unimportant pieces of paper have accumulated into a dark, dense thicket of daunting decisions. What to do? Deal with it! If a piece of paper is worth saving, it's worth acting on -- and soon.

The five keys to getting through your action stack

1. Set a regular half hour every day for TRAFing and working through your action stack. Stick to the time limit. Some people prefer to hold paperwork (except for urgent matters) until late in the day or early the next morning so they can deal with it while the phones are quiet.

2. Thumb through the stack quickly and take note of those tasks that require a substantial time commitment. Then pick a realistic time to work on them and enter it into your calendar. For example, you know it will take an hour or two to go over the new newsletter layout, so pencil in an hour at 3:00 this afternoon, and an hour tomorrow at 11:00.

3. Riffle quickly through your action stack a second time and pull out two or three top priorities. Act on those tasks first, then work through the rest of the stack in the order that it falls. And if everything seems like a priority? Then work through the stack in order. Don't shuffle pieces of paper around.

4. You are about halfway through your action stack and already you are in a paper panic. Perhaps there's one item that's really bugging you -- you know you need to make a decision, but you just can't think about it now. Decide to think about it later -- don't just push it aside. Mark it with a red dot and move on. If any document gathers three red dots, that means you've passed it by for three days and it automatically gets pushed into red alert. It should be dealt with at once.

5. When your TRAFing time runs out, stop, even if you haven't gotten through your action stack. Start tomorrow's session at the bottom of the stack and work up, so old business gets cleared up first.

Two-Step TRAFing

Perhaps you've received a letter which would...

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Verlag
Touchstone
Erscheinungsdatum
1996
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0684818248
ISBN 13 
9780684818245
Einband
Taschenbuch
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
224
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande