How to Stay Organized – Even on the Messiest of Days
Being organized is something that’s essential for you, the sales person, business owner, or entrepreneur. Days can be long, hard and not go as planned. After a long day out in the field, organizing the events from the day is not appealing. So to prepare you for those crazy days, I’ve come up with a few ways to keep you organized throughout your day.
Reminder Apps
Things can come up in an instant throughout your day so have a reminder app on hand. There are many apps to choose from, but I like this one I found, To Do Reminder app for androids. It’s quick and easy. Scheduled a call with a lead for later in the day and don’t want to forget, bring this app up and without typing, voice the activity you need to remember, and set the other features to your liking and it’s done! For the Apple users, try Alarmed – Reminders – Timers. This app has a lot of great features, especially the “Nag-Me” feature which allows for your reminder to go off at regular intervals for a fixed period of time! Now call me old fashioned, but I prefer to have a regular ‘ol paper and pen daily agenda with me, but do whatever works best for you!
De-Clutter On a Regular Basis
Every day we’re bombarded with “stuff.” That stuff could be emails, items in our mailboxes, voicemails, or paper on our desks. It’s important to keep up with the “junk” that comes our way, instead of letting old emails clutter up your inbox, create sub-folders in your inbox for difference subjects then move the emails over that pertain to the different subjects and voila! Your inbox becomes just that less crowded. How about the junk mail that arrives in your mailbox? Invest in a nice cross-cut shredder and keep it plugged in and ready to go! Instead of letting it pile up on your table or desk, discard it immediately. Not fond of de-cluttering daily, look at your schedule and find a time to organize. You must be intentional otherwise it will accumulate quickly.
Do Not Procrastinate
Part of staying organized is not procrastinating. Because life is fast-paced, the longer you put something off the more difficult it will be to get it done. Organize as soon as you can. As soon as emails come in, click and drag them under the appropriate sub-folder you created in your mailbox. I know Outlook has rules and filters you can apply to emails to have them appear directly in sub-folders. Get those filters in place now! If you put in the effort to get things done as soon as possible, you will be less stressed and life won’t feel like it’s a snowball growing and gaining speed down a hill! Putting in the effort now will lift the weight off of you from doing it later. So get busy!
*Article as appeared in Christine Harrington’s Sales Pearls Newsletter.