I used to say, “If you want to know your worst habits, hang out with a two-year old.” They will replay your behavior right back to you as though you are looking in a mirror. Now, I realize if you want to know your worst habits, start creating videos on best practices to share on your website.
My business partner, Bill, and I started recording short video clips on business skills to help others be more effective at work called BS Broadcast. The intention of these videos is to share tips and tricks we have learned over the years with employees to help them have the knowledge and tools they need to control their own destiny. It’s a great project and I love it EXCEPT I am realizing I am like the hairdresser who needs a haircut, which I actually do since I’ve been under stay at home orders during the pandemic and haven’t had a haircut in over two months! But seriously, as I record these videos, I feel like we’re sharing great information that I’m NOT following.
Bill, who some days is my lifeline back to connecting with anyone outside of my children, is very organized and likes things organized and easy to access. I’m more like the absent-minded professor who has things piled up, duplicated, cluttered, and stacked up everywhere. For the most part, I think I know where everything is, but I have spent many hours searching for something that I just had in my hands. Unfortunately, that doesn’t usually bother me, but for some reason when I was recording the videos, it did. I thought, “if I think this is such good advice, why don’t I follow it?”
That question stuck with me throughout the night and this morning I woke up and decided that I would start following it and I would write about my progress. I decided to start with Working at Home Effectively because that will give me the foundation to do everything else. This sounded like a much better idea until I got to my desk and saw what a mess it really was. I don’t have the luxury of having an office in a separate room in my house, but I am fortunate enough to have a desk cabinet that I can work at every day. It is located in my living room, so I really need to be able to close it up at the end of the day as a signal my workday is over. I am terrible about continuing to work until late in the evening instead of pacing myself. After a few days of doing that, I get burnt out and then have to rest up to do it again. It’s not a good habit.
I decided to start with my file structure instead of my physical space, which I’ll share (picture below) is a train wreck. This what I’m working with here! When I do close up the desk, I just shove everything in it and close the doors. The rest of my house doesn’t look like this. I get up everyday and make my bed and straighten up my room first thing. I make sure my living is picked up and everything is in its place, my kitchen is cleaned up with the counters wiped down and my children don’t have any personal belongings in our shared space, but my desk… it is always a train wreck! My desktop matches this description and my documents follow suit.
This morning I started with organizing just one project. I have a software program I used called ComNexus and it allows me to put all of my documents in a stored location since I’m a consultant and don’t have the luxury of having an intranet or network drive that I can share. The advantage to ComNexus is I can share projects with outside individuals whom I’m working with and they only have access to the documents and information for that project. This way my clients and I can share information freely, always accessing the latest version of documents and sharable information. Since ComNexus is cloud based, and I can download anything I need from it, it ensures all of my data is backed up and I have complete control over who has access to it. That means I can delete the information from my computer, freeing up space, which I desperately need to do because it’s almost full.
Today, I uploaded all of my BS Broadcast videos, organizing them and storing the links, mp4 files, and downloads in one location where Bill and I can access it. I think he’ll be quite happy that I took his suggestion and actually did it.
If you’re anything like me and have the ‘absent minded professor syndrome’, I’d love to hear your tips and tricks as I continue to build a more organized work environment! I’ll tackle the physical space for 5-10 minutes each night as I finish my workday. Eventually that will allow me to get setup for the next day when I turn off my computer and close my cabinet.