4 tips to help you achieve more with your paperwork and filing

Heather Townsend — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 07:12:01 +0000

I have saved myself up a lovely job for today – sorting out my admin and all my paperwork. This is not an ideal state of affairs… as research has suggested that a piece of paper on your desk will distract you up to five times. Although this does assume that you can find the piece of paper on your desk in the first place…

I have been looking into how I can (and you can) efficiently manage your paperwork, and free up your time and save money on printing and paper costs.

1. Set time aside every day to focus on your paperwork

Set time aside to deal with your paperwork, for example your post. When you are dealing with your post and paperwork act on it immediately, rather than procrastinating. Think about it, how much time have you wasted sifting through your pile of paperwork to file?

2. Do you need to print it?

How much do you need to print out the document? If you don’t print it you don’t need to file it… Then, you can be all smug about how much you are doing your bit to help save the environment.

3. Recycle

Challenge yourself whether you actually need to keep this piece of paper. Remember that 85% of documents are never looked at again. How much space would you free up if you recycled all the paperwork you have never looked at? Remember that you may need to keep all your client paperwork as a condition of practicing.

4. Delegate

If you have the luxury of a personal assistant, delegate as much as possible – e.g. sorting, screening and disposal of the post.

4 questions you need to answer to delegate successfully

Heather Townsend — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 11:21:08 +0000

I’ve just engaged the services of a Virtual Assistant – Romany Thresher of Direct Assist On-line. The plan is that Romany and her team will keep my website updated, and help me with all my social media activities. This will free me up to do the stuff I love which is helping my clients achieve more for less effort, i.e. helping their business or them personally become more efficient. Along with Emma Fryer and the team at www.answer-it.co.uk, I am now starting to build up a team around me that I can delegate tasks to.

In the process of helping Romany understand my website, I realised that since I had been my own boss I had got out of the habit of delegating. I nearly fell into the classic trap of thinking that it was quicker to do it myself than explain it to Romany… how else is Romany (who is a very capable & a quick learner) going to learn how I do things & want things done?

So, here is The Efficiency Coach’s guide to delegation:

Before deciding to delegate you need to ask yourself four questions:

1. What should I delegate?

This should be any task that can be done by someone else better, quicker or more cheaply. Or any task which is stopping you achieving your main priorities.

2. What should I not delegate?

Simply, the following tasks should still be done by you (however, much you may or may not enjoy them)

Anything that your team does not have the capability to do. For example, until proved otherwise, I wouldn’t be delegating the writing of copy for my website to either Emma or Romany.
Anything that is confidential or sensitive best dealt with by you. For example, a previous client of mine told me in confidence about some mental health issues she was suffering from. I was aware of a support group that could help her, and connected her to the group. This is not something I should delegate.
Anything that needs your judgment & specialist knowledge. For example, deciding on overall company strategy for The Efficiency Coach, is my responsibility and mine only.

3. Who should I delegate to?

Very simply, think about:

Who in your team is able to do the task, or wants to develop the skills to do the task
Who has the time to do the task?

4. When should I delegate?

The foundations for successful delegation are laid by yourself when you decide to release control and trust your team to take over the task. Delegation should happen all the time – as it is rarely successful if only completed on a few crisis occasions.

If you would like to free more of your time up, why not give us a call, and see how we can help.

The Thoughts And Ideas Of The Efficiency Coach » delegation

4 tips to help you achieve more with your paperwork and filing

4 questions you need to answer to delegate successfully