How To Be Organized At Work

We all like to think we’re organized at work but really when someone shows us a photo of their dog or the deadlines start coming thick and fast, we realize our organizational skills are sorely lacking. Don’t worry, we’ve all been there! Procrastination is a constant companion for all of us. 

However, it doesn’t need to be that way. Here are all my top tips for how to be organized at work. So whether you’re scatterbrained, need a little more structure to your day, or just want to kickstart those good habits, these are all here to help. Let’s dive in and find out more. 

Organize Your Space

First things first, you need to organize your space. With all the clutter and distractions, it’s going to be hard to find anything you need efficiently. And, as the old adage goes, time is money. So, here are some key things to consider when you’re trying to organize your space.

Keep Your Desk Tidy

This may sound like a no-brainer, but keeping your desk tidy is so crucial for organization at work. If you have two days’ worth of coffee mugs, crumbs everywhere, and paperwork all over the place, it’s not going to be conducive to work. 

A messy desk leads to a messy brain. Things don’t have their place and you can easily be distracted by toppling coffee mugs or flipping between notebooks. If it’s clean and tidy, there’s only one main focus point – your computer. 

Have Designated Areas for Different Things

Having designated areas for different things is part and parcel of keeping your desk area tidy, but it’s a little bit more specific. Consider getting desk tidies, lockable drawers for paperwork under your desk, and set coasters for mugs and water bottles.

With everything in its designated area, it’s clear to see if you’re missing something or if you’re ready for work. 

Declutter Your Desktop

Organizing your space also means taking care of your digital workspace. When it comes to your computer desktop, email inbox, or files and folders, make sure they’re in a logical order that works for you.

You want to be able to find documents and software easily and quickly if you need to. If you have 500 icons on your desktop in no kind of order, it’s going to take you a while to find what you need. 

Have Checklists and Notes at the Ready

I’m a big fan of a physical checklist and a notepad on my desk. It gives me something easy to glance at and see my progress for the day. Have your notes and lists somewhere that are easily visible so it serves as a reminder as much as a source of achievement when you get to cross a task off!

Tidy Your Desk at the End of the Day

Look, I get it – at the end of the day, all you want to do is grab your stuff and go home. However, if you want to do “future you” a favor, take five minutes to tidy up your desk.

Go and wash up your coffee mug, put things in your lockable desk, make sure it’s all tidy, and then head home. In the morning, it’ll feel way better coming into a tidy workspace and put you in the right mindset to start the day.  

Prioritize Your Tasks

Once you’ve organized your physical and digital spaces, next you need to prioritize your tasks and workloads. This is where a lot of us trip up when it comes to being organized at work.

With dozens of deadlines to juggle, colleagues chatting away at you, and collaborative projects where people aren’t on the same timeline or urgency, it can be a lot. Here’s how to successfully prioritize your tasks and get the most out of your day.

Use a Trello or Monday Board

Okay, there are dozens of great workplace organizational tools out there, but Monday and Trello are some of my favorites. Monday is ideal for team-based working as you can see what everyone’s doing at what stage they’re at. It also has some cool reminder features that keep you motivated. 

Trello is ideal because it’s free on an individual usage basis. This means you can line up all your tasks for the week, add notes to them, assign deadlines, and make columns such as “not started”,”working on”, “submitted for edits”, “edits”, and more. At a glance, you can see what you have coming down the pipeline and where all your projects are at if anyone else asks.

Organize by Deadline

When prioritizing your tasks, it’s always best to organize them by deadline, working on the earliest due date first. Again, this sounds like a no-brainer, but when we have a deadline looming that we’re not looking forward to and there’s an easier, smaller task that’s not as urgent, it’s easy to choose to do that one instead. However, you still have to do the looming task, so you might as well get it done out of the way first. 

This also helps when people drop things on your desk unexpectedly. Ask them what the deadline is and you can slot it in your list or you can advise them that you already have a few tasks with higher urgency ahead of them. It keeps everything clear and stops you from overwhelming yourself. 

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Dedicate Time to Emails

Emails are the ultimate time sponge. A lot of the time they’re spammy or just not useful at all. And don’t get me started on those mass “reply-all” offenders.  It’s probably one of the most poorly used communication tools we have and a key killer of efficiency at work. 

Instead of answering all of your emails the minute they come in to try and keep your inbox at zero, carve out an hour or so a day to work through them. After that, mute the notifications until your next email response session. 

To those of you who think you’ll miss something urgent, you won’t. If it’s so urgent that 3-4 hours of not looking at your emails is going to kill a project, then the person sending the email needs to sort their organizational skills out. You can always have 30 minutes of email time in the morning, and 30 in the afternoon so that you don’t go too long without checking.

When we dip in and out of our emails, it takes on average 10 minutes to get fully back into the task we were working on. Now, if you’re doing that even six times a day (which is conservative for most of us), you’ve already lost an hour of productivity. It’s times like these when we ultimately feel unorganized and get more stressed than we need to. 

Don’t Try and Multitask

Similarly to checking your email throughout the day, multitasking is going to suck your productivity and kill your organizational skills. Pick one task at a time, work on it, and box it off before moving on to the next one. This way your mind is clear and focused and you’re not haphazardly flipping between projects and mindsets. 

Make a Priority List Before You Go Home

Again, be nice to “future you” and write a priority list before you go home. This means when you come in the next day, you don’t have to think about what you need to do, the list is all there ready to go.

You can also leave yourself notes about your progress and any little things you need to remember that you might forget after an evening or weekend away from the office. 

Remove Distractions

You can be the most organized person in the world and still get nothing done if you get distracted easily. Removing distractions as much as you can is important if you want to get organized at work.

While it’s a fine line between removing distractions and being completely unsociable, it’s best to pick a few of these options throughout the day. If you have a big deadline and need to focus, these tips are going to be your best friend.

Turn Off Notifications

This is a super simple way to remove distractions and get your work done. Phone, Slack, and email notifications can ping and jolt us out of whatever we’re doing. Even if we don’t check them immediately, a part of us has been distracted and, if you’re like me, you’ll be thinking about what the notification says until you can actually check it. 

The easiest way to avoid this is by muting your notifications. You can get systems that will mute all notifications from all sites, or you can do it on an individual channel-by-channel basis. I’d do this for your personal and business accounts at least for a couple of hours to get through some major deadlines or get a load of little tasks boxed off. 

Use Headphones or Side Rooms

If your organization allows it, put in your headphones or work in a breakout room for a couple of hours. With your motivational playlist or distraction-free instrumental music on, you won’t be distracted by Sheila in Marketing talking about her weekend or Andy from Finance moaning about the coffee again. This allows you to really hone in on the task at hand and get down to business.

Block Out Your Time in Your Calendar

Find that you’re always getting scheduled into unnecessary meetings or just struggle to manage your time throughout the day. Block out your day in your calendar. If you’re working on one project for two hours, stick it in your calendar.

This will show you as busy or away on Google Meet or Slack and people are less likely to annoy you over chat. It also helps chunk up your day and gives you a more organized structure. 

Move Away from the Chatter

If side rooms and headphones aren’t an option, move away from the chatty Kathys in the office. Calmly explain that you have some tight deadlines and you need a quiet space with no distractions and move away. Some people don’t even realize they’re distracting you, they think they’re just thinking out loud – all the time. 

Face Your Phone Down

Even if you put your notifications off, your phone might occasionally light up or do something to attract attention. Put your phone face down on the desk so you’re not tempted to tap the screen and see if you have notifications or if people have messaged you.

We’re all guilty of it – it’s a reflex at this point. However the “I’m checking the time” excuse only works if you don’t have a clock in the corner of your computer screen like the rest of us! 

Top Ways to Stay Organized and Stress-free at Work

So, now that we’ve covered physical and digital organization and the art of removing distractions, let’s dive into how to stay mentally organized and stress-free at work. When we’re unorganized, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the potential workload and spiral. We don’t want that.

Here are some top tips to help you stay mellow and balanced at work, even when the deadlines are hitting. 

Take Regular Breaks

This may sound counterintuitive if you have a tight deadline on the horizon, but our brain is only working at its best in relatively short bursts. After a while of working on the same project without a break, everything tends to meld together and your output starts to get worse. Take regular breaks to refresh your mind and eyes.

They don’t have to be super long – 5-10 minutes here and there with longer breaks for lunch and snacks are key. If you work without breaks, the quality of work suffers and so does your mental health. You’ll come in the next day, rest, and read your old work and realize it’s nonsense and have to start again. It’s not worth the added stress later down the line – just take a break.

Don’t be Too Regimented

Plans change, deadlines and client requests alter, and new projects appear on your desk. You need to be a little flexible in order to stay organized and stress-free at work. While having a list of tasks for the day and a rough schedule for the day can help you stay on track, don’t be married to it. 

Chances are at least one of your planned things for the day will change. Whether that’s a certain system being down, new client briefs, or a colleague going off sick, you need to be adaptable and have backup plans and tasks to fall back on if something doesn’t go your way. You can’t control everything!

Use Checklists for a Dopamine Hit

I mentioned I’m a big fan of checklists and there are a few reasons why. Not only are they great for keeping you organized and on track, but they also boost your mood throughout the day when you get to check things off. I put so many little tasks on my list just so I can check them off.

The reason behind this is our dopamine loop. Most of us know that dopamine is a neurochemical that helps us feel good. We get a burst of it when we achieve something, so checklists are a great source of dopamine. However, some people may not know that you actually get two hits of dopamine: one in anticipation of an event and one when you achieve it.

So if you’re looking forward to finishing a task and you’re almost there, there’s one hit. When it’s done and you can check it off the list, there’s another. 

Dopamine helps us feel good and keeps stress at bay. If you can find simple ways to boost your dopamine loops at work – like using a to-do list – it can make work more enjoyable, keep you motivated, and make staying organized that much easier.

Use a Work Timer to Break Your Day Up

If you’re not sure how to break up your day into manageable chunks that you can either schedule or use as a guideline for planning out your day, use a work timer. There are a few of these kicking around, with the Pomodoro method of 30-minute work bursts being one of the favorites of the LinkedIn crowd. 

Personally, I just use a regular Google timer to see how long it takes me to perform certain tasks. Then, I can make a note of it and use it to help me plan my time moving forward.

For example, if you have to write 1000 words on becoming a digital nomad, time how long it take you including research and editing? Don’t rush the process, get a realistic guideline. This way you can see how many pieces you can realistically write and research in a day instead of overloading your day. 

Of course, this works with any daily task that you might have to deal with. Staying organized at work is so much more than just tidying your desk and ignoring the office gossip. It’s as much about expectations, boundaries, and mindset as anything else. Know your own boundaries and realistic daily limitations and the rest will just fall into a stress-free, fully-organized state of being.

What are your favorite tips and tricks for staying organized at work? Share them below and I’ll try them out.

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