In many cases organization can be very subjective. Everyone has their own way of organizing their home, and their desk at work. When it comes to staying organized with tasks and responsibilities there are best practices to follow that have proven to help you manage your time and increase productivity. It can be a challenge to stay ahead of your deadlines and prioritize your schedule without understanding the fundamentals of work place organization. For me, it boils down to three major categories; calendaring, prioritization, and fire drills. It is all about understanding what works best for you and committing to consistency. I have outlined some best practices that help me to be more efficient with my time at work.
Calendaring
The best way to stay ahead of deadlines and make sure that nothing falls through the cracks is to schedule your calendar a week in advance. Pin point your priority tasks and block out time in your schedule for the next week to make sure your deadlines are met. Every Friday before I leave for the weekend I take about 45 min to set up my calendar for the following week. It’s smart to schedule your more time consuming tasks like writing first and then fill in the holes with the more efficient tasks.
Prioritization: Q1 and Q2
Prioritizing your tasks is vital to completing all of your tasks with efficiency without sacrificing quality. The way we break these down at Revenue River Marketing is into two categories; Q1 and Q2. We prioritize high level client tasks with hard deadlines to Q1 and smaller projects that are non-client related or client related with loose deadlines to Q2. When you have the division of tasks completed it is much easier to schedule your week by adding Q1 projects to your calendar first and Q2 projects to your week second.
Fire Drills
This brings us to our last piece of the organization puzzle. We all know that you can need make a perfect schedule or anticipate everything that will happen in a given week. That is why you always need to leave time for fixes, last minute assignments, and changing deadlines (fire drills). You can never predict when a client will need a last minute fix done or cancel a meeting. For those that are unprepared, this can throw a wrench into their gears and bring productivity to a complete halt. Understanding that change is constant and being prepared to move appointments and re prioritize your calendar can be a life saver.
All in all it is important to stay consistent with your organization methods. What I have outlined above may not work for everyone. It is up to you to practice and try new methods to find out what works best for you. At Revenue River, these practices are consistent with the entire team; however everyone still prioritizes specific assignments differently. That comes down to different skill sets and efficiency. To ensure this consistency we have adopted an onboarding process that makes these best practices part of the curriculum. Check out our team page to find out more about our culture at Revenue River Marketing.
