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Breaking Through Your Bottlenecks: Part 2 - Managing Everything

Guest post by: Barbara Garro

Article Overview: Keeping yourself out of bottlenecks means managing yourself, your working spaces, your projects, your systems, your people, and, most importantly, your communications. Now I'm stopping, because that's really all you need to know about Part 2. Part 3 helps you create a current Mission Statement.

Breaking Through Your Bottlenecks: Part 2 - Managing Everything

As a Coach I have told a lot of people, If you cannot manage yourself, you become your own bottleneck.

Trying to be efficient and effective in a disorganized environment is like trying to swim in cold water with all your clothes on. No matter how hard you flail your arms and legs, you just can't seem to get any forward momentum. The going is slow and frustrating. You tire easily and disaster is imminent.

Disorganized people cannot find things. So many people are disorganized that, on average, business people spend about six weeks a year looking for things. If you remember from Part 1 that the average work week could be as high as sixty hours, that's 360 hours a year. And, you know while you are looking, you are getting more and more frustrated, translated that means more and more stressed. So, what good are you when you finally find what you are looking for, all stressed to the max? Stress distracts you. Until you can get yourself back in the flow, whatever you do isn't going to be much good. Not a pretty scene, is it?

It can get uglier. Your top client calls you unexpectedly and wants a status report on what's going on with the project. Without a good system, you can't put your hands or eyes on the information you need. The client is waiting. Do you ask the client to give you a few minutes to find the file? Do you ask the client to hang on while you get the information? Do you feel good while all this is going on? More importantly, does your client feel good while all this is going on? You never want this to be your reality.

One of the rules I have to prevent can't find scenarios is I file every day. No more File Box filled with a foot of papers. Avoid believing this is impossible. This has been my business and personal rule for years, 365 days a year for a lot of years.

Here's the Get Organized Garro Global Incentive Plan - Invest one day cleaning up and organizing your work space and save 30 minutes each workday, or 15.7 eight-hour workdays each year, or 124.2 hours, or just over three weeks.

Here's some help from author Kerry Gleeson who wrote The Personal Efficiency Program: How to Get Organized to Do More Work in Less time. Sound like something you'd like to know? Here are Gleeson's Action Steps to Get Your Personal Work Space Organized--

1. Take Everything Out of Your Office (and any other work spaces, like vehicles) and look at it. Then decide if you are ever going to do something with it. If you don't think you are, then throw it away. If you are, then ask yourself, If I need it, where could I get it? Gleeson says to ask yourself the right questions and think like a foot soldier. Be very careful about what you keep and how you maintain it. If something is in your immediate work space, it should be something you need or use frequently. And, it should work efficiently. Otherwise, get it out of your work space with good conscience.
2. Organize an Efficient Working Place - Everything you need with backup supplies should be within reach. Begin with three desktop work holders: 1-Incoming; 2-Outgoing; and 3-Delegate. Create and keep a Tickler System: a) One Year Tickler in the form of a 12-month expandable file or 12 monthly folders marked for each month of the year or b) a 31-day expandable current month folder. Garro recommends and uses both.
3. Keep a Time Log for Two Weeks. Look back at your actual productivity/work output as if you were an employee you were paying a salary. Yes, I know this is tedious. No one likes to do it. But, you'll never know where your time goes unless you watch it as you would watch any other employee's.

Here's some help from author Jeff Davidson who wrote Breathing Space, which includes Davidson's Ten Commandments of Deskmanship--

1. Thou shalt Clear thy desk every night. Yes, every night!
2. Thou shalt continually Refine what goes on thy desktop.
3. Thou shalt Not use thy desk top as a filing cabinet.
4. Thou shalt predetermine what belongs Inside thy desk.
5. Thou shalt keep 20% of thy drawer space Vacant.
6. Thou shalt furnish thy surrounding office to support thy desk.
7. Thou shalt take Comfort when at thy desk.
8. Thou shalt keep Clean thy desk and thy surrounding area.
9. Thou shalt Leave thy desk periodically.
10. Thou shalt Honor thy desk as thyself.

Clean up and organize your environment, track your productivity, and have a plan for what comes in, what goes out, and keep those two activities from piling up and causing bottlenecks.

Stay tuned for Part 3 - Creating Your Business Mission Statement.

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Article Tags: Clean Work Areas, Efficiency, Efficient Filing Systems, Efficient Working Spaces, Time Management, Work Management



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