How do you keep yourself organized at work?

[Fedorgasm]

I work in management, which means that there's a bazillion things that I'm not directly involved in, but people send them to me or give me printouts just as an FYI. Because as a manager I kind of have to at least be aware of everything that's going on, even if I'm not directly involved in it.

So papers are constantly coming across my desk and my office is always a disaster. I've tried to file stuff, but in order to do that I have to create a file folder for each type of paper, which works for some things, but I'm finding that most of the papers I get don't really fit in any category, their just miscellaneous. I could make a folder for each one but then that one paper would literally be the only thing I ever put in there.

I tried to make a "misc" folder for these papers and I found that the misc folder quickly became insanely huge and overflowing, and if I needed something out of that folder, I had to sift through like 500 papers in that folder to find it.

So how do you guys do it? Is there any simple solution that I'm not thinking of?

 

[MASShole]

Do you need to keep all those files?

 

[thebluerider]

I put whatever I need to follow up on into my tasks in our database. if I need the paper that goes with it, I scan it and attach it to the task. Then I throw the paper out.

 

[John Stockton]

I used to admin assist. While the job sucked butthole, it taught me a lot about file organization.

Maybe just make copies of all the "misc" files and put them in any folder where they may be relevant?

Or maybe convert them to PDF, give them relevant names, and let your OS's search engine find it for you?

 

[tdluxon]

I put whatever I need to follow up on into my tasks in our database. if I need the paper that goes with it, I scan it and attach it to the task. Then I throw the paper out.

This is a good call... digitizing stuff will save a ton of space and can make them easier to find later. It's kinda a pain though if you don't have a good scanner but they're pretty cheap these days

 

[weed]

email yo

 

[SCADA]

I have people for that....

 

[Merlotte's]

I have my girl file things. Every office should have a girl who files things.

 

[j123]

And email.

 

[Nonsense]

Doc files on desktop or in email. This has saved me. My email inbox almost always has 0 emails in it, because I have folders and subfolders into which I sort things things. Including a *TO DO folder right at the top for priorities.

I can find everything in a jiffy no matter when it's needed and, at least in outlook, makes things easy as pie to archive too.

 

[DrBdan]

Last year my company switched to using Google mail. It's great because it allows me to use all of the Gmail functionality plus Google drive for documents. I've slowly been converting all of my old Office documents to Google docs. I have a notebook that I take notes in but I'm considering buying a tablet to replace that and then I would about 90% paperless.

I worked for a software company so the majority of the work I do is on a computer anyway (writing code, running tests, posting and updating bugs in our bug tracking software etc)

 

[markulous]

I work at a helpdesk and study in my spare time. So I'm never twiddling my fingers.

But anyway, everything I have is online, so I don't have papers of any kind.