Sue Darby, MOS

I am a State of Alaska File Clerk and have found that my projects in the last  year has caused a HUGE backlog and for some things to get buried under the clutter and paper piles!

Clutter on your desk is a great distraction and time waster. It also buries the truly important items that might have to be dealt with sooner rather than later. Clearing your desk at least once a month or more and organizing your piles of papers and other items into some sort of folder system is a great way to increase productivity.

I’ve found over time that if it’s in a drawer it gets forgotten and the same goes for piles. Just today I cleared my desk and found some forgotten items that should have been taken care of and will be after lunch! In the meantime the piles of things to file or sort have been moved into some semblance of order and a basic plan to attack the months of back files that need to be made and placed in drawers has formed.

My basic plan….

Tackle part of the alphabet at a time so for this week and likely next I will be tackling A-L of the provider files that I handle. I have the simple to file paperwork already in alpha order in a nice rolling cart.  I have some new files I need to make and label to go with those and then I’ll spend the rest of the day, week and even month getting those files crammed into overstuffed drawers… although I have ideas for how to unstuff the drawers but that will be for another post.

The reason it’ll take so long to get everything into the drawers is that each drawer is so crammed that nothing more can fit and so files have to be repeatedly shifted to make space. This is a very slow process with only one clerk to do it all.

I’ll have to keep plugging away at this until all the files are in the drawer once more… the never ending battle except that about this time last year I had it nearly caught up and then various things started to blow up and my skills were needed for a lot of other projects. We shall see how well my plan works in the coming weeks!

Sue Darby, BS Business, MOS
Certificate in Fashion Design
Microsoft Office Master Certified
Alpha Beta Kappa Honors Society
Business Owner & Webmistress

I use many systems to try to keep everything straight in my life. I have my now 5 year old Palm Tungsten E, my Circa notebooks with custom pages, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Bookmarks, Power Point, OneNote and my precious Gmail. I use Outlook at work to organize my meetings and other to do’s that are specifically work related.

My Tungsten E is my “other brain” I put my to do’s, shopping lists and long term goal steps in it. Every week or so I bring it out and start checking stuff off and take pride in the shrinking of my list until I start adding to it again…. the Palm holds my “never ending to do list”. Without it I am lost.

For weekly and daily must dos that have deadlines I have my Circa notebooks. I have to give credit to my friend Stacy who got me hooked on the system which I used extensively in my last year of college to organize my term papers and project notes. The customization and expandability of the system is amazing. Unlike a 3 ring system where if a hole breaks or the paper wears out the Circa system can keep going without having to repair the paper. I have designed several pages and it took a while to get a daily and weekly planning page I really like and use. I have various size, shape and description pages and notebooks and the scrap paper that I tend to grab for a quick note can be put in a notebook too. While I like the Levenger site and the selection I found that Rollabind beats them for prices on some things. If you’re thinking of trying to find another system to use to organize I would recommend the Ring bound type system.

I am constantly on the go and using many computers and just love the portability of Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Bookmarks and Gmail. I have access to some of the most important things that normally reside on a flash drive which can be forgotten or lost or corrupt easily, right at my fingertips as long as I have internet. I normally have net access so there’s no problem with not getting to things. I use Docs & Spreadsheets to have access to many of my most common business files and specific to do lists or project plans even. I have PDFs of how to books and even copies of some of my non-sensitive financial information in Docs. I also used it for gathering research for term papers and keeping tabs on favorite sites for projects.

Google Bookmarks is incredibly useful to me as I use both Windows and Linux at home and FireFox, Opera, Safari & Crome on the same system. With Google Bookmarks I can get to my favorites from any of the browsers and in either OS. I am also on a couple different computers at work and can get to my work favorites from either system by using the single online system. Best part is that if my computer crashes.. any of them… I can get to my bookmark sites and continue working quickly.

My Gmail is my home… I love my Gmail. I have my incoming mail from several addresses filtered and forwarded to Gmail and then tagged so that I can find what I want. There have been days where I’ve needed a user ID for a site or a password and been able to search my mail… several years of mail using Gmail’s quick system. I’ve tried some of the plugins which have helped and discarded others but basic Gmail comes through. I also use the chat to talk to people discussing things with my out of state family and saving on phone bills or finding out what was needed at home for dinner to be made.

PowerPoint is my long term goal planner or as I aptly named one of my plans “Battle Plan”. I regularly create a “Battle Plan” for large goals everything form planning a website to buying a house to what I want to accomplish in X years. PowerPoint lets me break the mega goals down into the various areas of my life and then further break down those areas into mini goals and finally into baby steps that I can do on a daily basis. It’s great to say I accomplished everything on my original “Battle Plan” from 2006 just last month… the last thing was cross the stage and graduate college with honors. I’ve had to go on to modify my battle plans since and need to continue to do so.

Last but not least, is OneNote. I use OneNote to divide up a Master To Do List into bite size pieces also but it tracks resources needed for each project as well as what has to be done. I like this system but am not as consistent with it as I could be perhaps it’s because I use so many other systems.

I will explore and post more about how my systems work for me and even examples of some of my worksheets and ways of keeping it all straight. I may even at some point eliminate some of my systems in an effort to simplify.

Sue Darby, BS Business, MOS
Certificate in Fashion Design
Microsoft Office Master Certified
Alpha Beta Kappa Honors Society
Business Owner & Webmistress