If You Work From Home In One Office,
Keep Both Of Your Offices Tidy!
By Roger Davis
If you work from home you don't need me to remind you that there is
a price to pay for this luxury. You may save on rent but you have to work
hard to keep a balance. If your work space starts to get mixed up with
your living space then in the worst case scenario you can end up unhappy
at home and unhappy at work.
Putting the problems with your physical work space to one side, what
about your virtual work space, your virtual office? If you also work online
then you will know that sometimes information is stored on paper (hard
copy) and sometimes it is stored on your PC and sometimes it is stored
on both mediums. But as your business grows, so does the amount of information
that you need to store.
What then becomes critical is the organisation of your information.
This article aims to highlight just how important it is to be organised
when managing your files and folders on your PC.
I can't give you a script-like formula because every different person
will have different methods but the most important thing that applies to
everyone is to realise just how important this part of the job is.
If you choose to learn the hard way (as I did) then you will come to
a complete dead end, struggle to make money online and you will realise
that -
1. You must use consistency when naming folders. Every seperate individual
can use different wordings and techniques (as long as you work alone) but
you must consistently use them throughout to organise your folders and
files on your PC and on your server. This is a good habit which can be
used throughout the different areas of your work, such as on your websites.
2. If you don't know where to start, just remember that the ideal system
is based on logic. For example this is a quick example of one of my folders
- Top folder - Work 1st level down - Folder1 - Work in progress, Folder2
- Completed work 2nd level down in folder 1 - Folder 1 - Articles, Folder
2 - eBooks 2nd level down in folder 2 - Folder 1 - Articles, Folder 2 -
eBooks
This is just a quick example. You may have many more folders (branches)
in the tree and I've made it a simple example just to demonstrate the point.
You're probably thinking, "So? That's obvious" and it's meant to be. My
point is that if you look at your folders you will more than likely find
that they have 'lost the logic' somewhere along the line. Which leads me
nicely to point three......
3. Even the most organised person needs to regularly 'spring clean'
their folders and sweep away the 'dust'. It's a horrible job but it's got
to be done. When your physical office is untidy it is somewhat easier to
get around to doing the tidying up. Once you can't find anything or can
hardly open the door then it is easy to decide that it's time for a tidy
up. But it's not so easy to get around to spring cleaning the PC and the
effects of an unruly 'virtual' filing system is much more destructive to
your 'work from home' business.
4. Don't be scared to create a system that seems to have too many folders.
For some reason the human brain is naturally more likely to avoid having
too many folders than it is to avoid having unorganised and poorly named
folders. But this is back to front. When you are managing your folders
remember that when you get to a point where you are about to split a folder
and create two from it, it is always preferable to do this than not. If
a little voice in your head says, "Don't split them, you'll have too many
folders if you carry on like this" - just ignore it and split the folders!
This is an example -
You have a folder called widgets which you have created to contain any
information that you find/create on widgets. You swipe an article on widgets
by someone else plus you write your own article about widgets. You find
some text that you want to keep because it teaches you stuff that you need
about widgets and you also buy an eBook about widgets. There are two important
things to consider -
1. It is better to create four new folders in the widgets folder than
to just throw all four items in the folder. Why? Because it might seem
when there is only four items that it doesn't matter, but you can be sure
that in a short while you will have thirty different items in there and
the whole thing becomes a mess. So go and create four folders which could
be named -
a) other people's (widget) articles
b) my (widget) articles
c) (widget) swipe file
d) my widget study purchases (for the eBook)
2. Sometimes before you create the new folder system, you may have to
make decisions. For example, using the above widget example - after you
have dealt with widgets you may go on to do similar studies of a hundred
other products. Then you will end up with a hundred different folders,
each concerning a different product.
This may be OK, but it may also be better to have all the articles by
other people in one folder for all the different products, all the swipe
files in one folder etc. The point is again that there is no hard and fast
rule except for these two golden rules of folder management -
1. Do allow the time for this organisational task. It is important and
it always takes twice as long to go backwards and reorganise it once it
descends into chaos.
2. Try to think ahead and design systems that will work at the moment
and will more than likely work in the future as your business grows and
changes.
Remember - being organised may be boring but it's possibly the most
vital but most undervalued hidden ingredient of every successful online
business.
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