Organizing at Work

This is something I've been meaning to write about for a while and I figured with back to school, it was the perfect time. 

I always find it fascinating how people organize things. I feel like its a look into how their mind works and I am also wildly curious/nosy. 

I have been in my current position for almost 3 years now (my co-current position for almost 9 years) and I have been with the same company for almost 11 years now. I have had some systems in place for a long time and they seem to be tried and true. As you can tell, once I find a place, I like to stay in it for a while. 

There is no extra special way on how I [try] to keep myself organized at work but there are two things I have been doing consistently that help me out tremendously and do not require any extra thinking or planning. 

One is using a planner and two is color coding my days. Lets dive in!

Using a planner. As a type Aish, kind of person,  this makes the most sense for me. Its a starting point for me for each day. I have what needs to get done, what meetings I have and any other notes that I might need to remember on a specific day. 

I have tried a few different planners over the years and by trial and error, I have found the one that has been working the best for me. Between daily planners, week only planners and a Monthly calendar with a weekly view the best one I found for my use is a Monthly Calendar view with a Weekly view. This way I can see both the week I am in and the month at a glance.

The other planners I tried were really great too but they didn't fit my needs perfectly. My very first planner in 2014 was just a week only view without a monthly calendar. I think I used it for a month then I started using a legal pad to keep my to do lists on it (bottom left of the above photo) I was still feeling out how I want to use my planner. 

The daily planner in 2015, 2016 and 2017 was a great idea in theory but I was consistently flipping back and forth and writing then re-writing my to do lists each day. I found that time consuming and after a while, I just started writing my lists on lined paper and stapling them in to the planner. At the end of the year, they end up looking like this:

They are messy and they weren't being used to their full potential. I tried for three consecutive years and I knew I needed something different. The next year, 2018, I tried a customizable planner from staples using the rings and a "hard cover" binder. It was okay but I still was using a legal pad for things. 

2019, I found a really pretty planner. I blame wandering the aisles of HomeGoods/Marshalls/TJ Maxx for this one. I was drawn to the color of it. By the end of the year, I think I was getting closer to what I was truly looking for. I liked the size, the layout and of course the color BUT I didn't like how it wasn't laying flat. I think I utilized this pretty well but still stuffing and stapling papers in certain weeks by the end of the year. 

Okay, who am I kidding, it was every week, I was stapling something into this planner and in the same place which ended up making it hard for it to stay closed by December  August. 

At the end of 2019, I took over a new position and I was essentially handling two parts of the office. I needed to keep things in Order while still learning the new position. WOAH! I settled on the Weekly and Monthly Calendar aka the Planning Calendar. It was plain looking and boring compared to last years planner. 

I didn't have high hopes but to my surprise, the 2020 planner was the most used and well kept of all my planners. I impressed myself with this one.  I also implemented the second part of how I stay organized in 2020 too! 

I noticed when I took a phone message, more times than none, I would forget to write the date down on a generic yellow sticky and then when I would refer back to that generic yellow sticky, I had NO idea when I wrote it. I started to think how can I fix this problem. I came up with the following solution:

I color code the days of the week. I know what you all are thinking, "girl! you are crazy!". Slightly but hear me out. I don't color code EVERYTHING (that would be too extreme, for me), I use the same color highlighter and post it note on the same day of each week. That way when I am writing a note, I know I wrote it on a Monday if its blue or Thursday if its yellow. It can give me a better idea of when and perhaps it can jog my memory. 

Each day, I pull out the coordinating post it note pad and highlighter and put it next to my keyboard and I am set for the day. I am SO thankful for this system and it has been easy to remember to use and I have been consistently been using it since mid- 2020. I am SO proud of myself for this practice. It has helped me significantly cut down on wondering when I spoke to someone and it gives me an idea what I did when. I keep a cheat sheet in front of my planner just in case I forget. 

2020, 2021, 2022

I use the highlighter to cross of things on my to do list in my planner. That way I can track when I did what throughout a week. I don't have a formal productivity quota but I like to see what I did and on what certain days of a specific week. I also think at the end of the week, seeing all the different colors looks pretty. 

How it all started?

Mom bought me this box of post it notes in the summer of 2020 and the colors of the post it notes coordinated with the highlighters I had and one day it just clicked. It was a cute little gift that has turned into a really great organizational tool for me at work. 

Another way I organize myself at work is using colored hanging folders in my file drawer of things I used almost every day. When I need to find labels or the calendar for today's hearing I know exactly what color folder I need to look for. This system didn't happen over night and it took a lot of trial and error and labeling early on. Once I found out what colors worked best for what things, it became a lot easier for me to work smarter. 

This drawer is opened multiple times a day and by color coding it, it has helped me access things more quickly. I can also tell my co-worker, if I am out sick, where to find something quickly.

One of my favorite colored folders that I keep in that drawer, is in the very front and its bright yellow. Its my  "Happy File". Do you have one of these? I keep all things that I have received over the years from clients, co-workers and friends in this file and sometimes, if I am having a hard day, I take it out and I look at it. Some of the things, I have found in the office that are silly and just make me smile. My favorite thing in that file is my stamp collection. YUP! I have an envelope full of cancelled stamps that I took off of various envelopes through my time working at my office. 

Thanks for letting me share how I kinda stay organized at work. Let's be real, if I am able to have a cup of coffee in the morning and finish it before it gets cold, its an organized day. HA!

Do you keep a happy file? How do you organize your work stuffs? Let me know in the comments!

[[You were made to do hard things]]