Do you have home office? Does your desk look like a nuclear bomb hit it, scattering paper everywhere? Is very surface covered with paper? Does the paper work spill out from your desk drawers and on to the floor? Can you even find your desk to use it?
If you answered yes or even maybe or a little bit to any of those questions you have to sit down (probably after you have dragged in a chair from another room, the office chair being covered with papers), and prepare a plan to organize your office desk.
Grab the papers littered on your desk and begin to sort them into piles. First organize them according to type. All the same type of paper should be placed in the same pile e.g. circulars, letters, replies (copies) and brochures. Next, sort within these items for date relevancy. Place the most current at the top of the pile and the oldest at the bottom. Discard, immediately, those who are in the wrong room and have nothing to do with your office work.
Once you have done this, begin to discard. Toss out those circulars and brochures that are not current or applicable. Throw away items long past their due or expiry date. Anything that has nothing to do with your actual work or future projects and plans should be junked.
Place these orderly piles aside, unless your filing cabinet and both in and out boxes are free, and move on to the desk drawers, applying the same method.
Once you are through sorting the paper work, you will have considerably reduced the amount of excess paper on your desk. It now is up to you to decide how to file them.
Current work, immediate projects should be near at hand. They are best left in a file on your desk in a to-do, current or in box. Other projects, correspondence, brochures and material should be placed in a filing cabinet. These do not have to be situated directly next to you. They can be across the room or down the hall. As long as all that excess paper is not on your desk.
