If you are generally an unorganised person, it can have a very negative effect on your work life and productivity (and many other areas in your life).   I must admit, I am generally not a very organised person and have seen the negative effect it can potentially have first hand. Now this isn’t to say that I have turned this around 100% but I have been making a conscious effort to do so recently and it has helped a lot.

You may do your job properly and complete everything fine, but that isn’t the point. The fact is you will do it better if you have good organisational skills. Employees with this skill are more productive on the job, make better impressions on bosses and receive more promotions than those who keep sloppy, inefficient work habits. You are also less likely to make silly mistakes or miss an important meeting which could potentially derail your career. You wouldn’t want that just because of a few careless mistakes now, would you?

Being more organised means being more time efficient. You lose time searching for lost files and documents or fishing through old emails to track down missing information.

You also waste time switching between devices to get different information from separate places. Be conscious of this and keep files and things you will need later organised and easily accessible now to make your life easier in the future. You can save hours during the week and significantly increase your productivity and decrease your stress level.

That last point is one of the best reasons to become more organised: you really will be less stressed.

A good example of this is something I used to do. After a long day I would arrive home and jump straight on the couch or in bed and watch TV. I would think “hmm I really need to iron my clothes for tomorrow.” Would I end up doing this? “Ah, its fine I’ll just do it really quickly in the morning, I’m too tired now.”

Come morning, I really would feel tired as apposed to just “lazy” like the night before, and it was a real pain the derrière having to rush round and get ready. Plus I would look really run down later when I still had creases in my clothes. (I’m not the best ironer in the world anyway, and definitely not at half 7 in the morning when I’m rushing not to miss the bus!)

Now it is the first thing I do when I get home every night. Then I lay my clothes out next to my bed and have everything I need for work that day on the side, so as soon as I wake up the time it takes me to get ready is significantly decreased, as are my stress levels. Plus a cheeky 10 minutes extra in bed (ah, bliss.)  Just little things like this ensure you have an easier, smoother day.

It can also raise morale in the workplace. A clean and well-kept workplace makes a strong impression on how employees view their jobs. Workers who take pride in their working environment will be more inclined to organise their own desks, clean up after themselves, maintain filing systems and work more effectively together. A clean, tidy working environment can make a positive change in employee morale.

The best way to make sure you stay organised is to make a “to do list” at the end of every work day ready on your desk for the next day.  Make it realistic and you could even put times on it, for example  “1pm – 2pm call back any phone messages.” This makes it easier to not procrastinate and get everything done when it needs to be.

Seriously, make a conscious attempt to become more organised over the next week and see how much more productive it will make you and how the quality of your life will improve. Once you notice this, you’ll never want to become disorganised again!!

Tom Duffy