There’s nothing employers love more than an organized employee. Organizational skills can help you stand out in the job market. Employers are more likely to hire candidates with strong organizational skills over someone who doesn’t have those listed on their resumes.
A disorganized employee sets off warning flags to bosses everywhere. Disorganization can mean mistakes, poor quality work, and a lack of work ethic. Believe it or not, disorganization is a career killer.
If your organizational skills could use some work, that’s okay. Creating organizational skills is super easy. If you want to know how CEOs stay organized and moved up the corporate ladder, this article is for you.
Hopefully, you’ll learn a few techniques that can help you feel like you’re in better control of your schedule and your work. Take a look at some of these organizational techniques that can help you destress.
Clean your workspace
This is a pretty big one that you have to follow if you want to be successful with your organizational skills. If your workstation has a lot of papers, files, trash, and writing instruments scattered around you’re setting yourself up for failure. You can’t work if you don’t know where things are and if you’re surrounded by mess.
It’s time you declutter and organize your workstation. File that paperwork that’s been having out all over your desk. Shred the stuff you don’t need. Create a system that works for you. Decluttering your workspace will help you be more productive. You won’t spend hours trying to find an important document under all your mess. Once your workspace is clean, tidy, and organized with a system that works best for you, you’ll be amazed at how much work you’re able to finish. For tips on how to keep your workspace clean, click here.
Learn to give your work away
Delegation is an important skill to learn. It will help you lighten your workload, which will ultimately help the quality of your work. It will help with your planning skills and teach you how to prioritize your tasks.
I always recommend giving tasks away that are less important or smaller in scale. Keep the most important or difficult tasks for yourself. Ask for help with the little things because they can add up and take away some of the added workload.
Keep a list and add it to your schedule
Memories fail all the time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve forgotten when homework was due in college, when projects were coming up at work, or when I had certain meetings. I usually remembered I had these events minutes or hours before they happened, but I spent that time scrambling to prepare.
I learned to make lists. Now I make a list every week of all the important tasks I need to accomplish in that time. That way, I can visualize which task is going to take more time, which ones are most important, and narrow my priorities. Once I’ve created my list and figured out the options, it’s time I put them in my planner.
I start by putting down all the events of that week. These are things that aren’t movable to flexible, things that I can’t opt-out of later on or reschedule. Once I have the events down, I start to add the tasks that are on my list, accounting for the time and importance of each one. Now I’ve made a schedule for the week that will help me stay organized, remember tasks, and manage my time.
If you’d prefer a digital planner, that’s fine too! Either one works. You can use this link to help you determine which one is better for you. https://www.becomingwhoyouare.net/paper-versus-digital-journaling-which-one-is-better/
Remove distractions
This brings me to my next organizational best practice. You’ve just spent all that time organizing your desk and schedule. If you’re allowing yourself to become distracted by other things, the whole system will be thrown off. I recommend turning off your phone, closing your office door, and reducing noise.
When you make a schedule, try to stick to it. Don’t get distracted or procrastinate. This will through things off balance later on. It’s okay if things happen that are out of your control and you’re forced to rearrange your schedule. If a meeting is postponed or canceled, then that’s not your fault and it’s okay to alter. But if you’ve missed working on a task in favor of playing on your phone instead, then that’s defeating the purpose of a schedule.
Practice good communication
Communication is a big part of organizational skills. You have to be able to work with other members of your team to come up with strategies, plans, and projects. If you’re unable to do that because you don’t know how to organize your thoughts, workspace, and time, employers won’t hire you.
I always recommend getting everything in writing. That way if something goes wrong, you know where you did or didn’t fail or where communication dropped off. Don’t rely on your memory of the conversation. Memories can change, become altered, and conflict with others. You can avoid this by being organized and putting everything down in writing.
Ask them to email you everything, write it down in your planner, a notebook, or anything so you can refer to it later. This will help you practice good communication and your organizational skills at the same time. I also recommend that you communicate with your team regularly so you can update your schedule and task lists too.
Learn what helps you
This is my last piece of advice. What may work for me, doesn’t necessarily mean it will work for you. Some people hate having a written planner and prefer to use a digital one. Others prefer notepads, journals, or a whiteboard. It doesn’t matter as long as you’re using something to keep track of all your dates and tasks.
Secondly, some people recommend daily office purges or cleaning to help you keep up with your organization. But maybe you do pretty well with keeping things tidy and want to declutter once a week. That’s ok. As long as you’re finding ways that work for you to stay organized, you’re doing it right!
