If You Work From Home In One Office, Keep Both Of Your Offices Tidy!
If you work from home you don't need me to remind you that thereis a price to pay for this luxury. You may save on rent but youhave to work hard to keep a balance. If your work space startsto get mixed up with your living space then in the worst casescenario you can end up unhappy at home and unhappy at work.Putting the problems with your physical work space to one side,what about your virtual work space, your virtual office? If youalso work online then you will know that som...
...etimes informationis stored on paper (hard copy) and sometimes it is stored onyour PC and sometimes it is stored on both mediums. But as yourbusiness grows, so does the amount of information that you needto store. What then becomes critical is the organisation of yourinformation. This article aims to highlight just how importantit is to be organised when managing your files and folders onyour PC. I can't give you a script-like formula because everydifferent person will have different methods but the mostimportant thing that applies to everyone is to realise just howimportant this part of the job is. If you choose to learn thehard way (as I did) then you will come to a complete dead end,struggle to make money online and you will realise that -1. You must use consistency when naming folders. Every seperateindividual can use different wordings and techniques (as long asyou work alone) but you must consistently use them throughout toorganise your folders and files on your PC and on your server.This is a good habit which can be used throughout the differentareas of your work, such as on your websites.2. If you don't know where to start, just remember that theideal system is based on logic. For example this is a quickexample of one of my folders - Top folder - Work 1st level down- Folder1 - Work in progress, Folder2 - Completed work 2nd leveldown in folder 1 - Folder 1 - Articles, Folder 2 - eBooks 2ndlevel down in folder 2 - Folder 1 - Articles, Folder 2 - eBooks This is just a quick example. You may have many more folders(branches) in the tree and I've made it a simple example just todemonstrate the point. You're probably thinking, "So? That'sobvious" and it's meant to be. My point is that if you look atyour folders you will more than likely find that they have 'lostthe logic' somewhere along the line. Which leads me nicely topoint three......3. Even the most organised person needs to regularly 'springclean' their folders and sweep away the 'dust'. It's a horriblejob but it's got to be done. When your physical office is untidyit is somewhat easier to get around to doing the tidying up.Once you can't find anything or can hardly open the door then itis easy to decide that it's time for a tidy up. But it's not soeasy to get around to spring cleaning the PC and the effects ofan unruly 'virtual' filing system is much more destructive toyour 'work from home' business.4. Don't be scared to create a system that seems to have toomany folders. For some reason the human brain is naturally morelikely to avoid having too many folders than it is to avoidhaving unorganised and poorly named folders. But this is back tofront. When you are managing your folders remember that when youget to a point where you are about to split a folder and createtwo from it, it is always preferable to do this than not. If alittle voice in your head says, "Don't split them, you'll havetoo many folders if you carry on like this" - just ignore it andsplit the folders! This is an example -You have a folder called widgets which you have created tocontain any information that you find/create on widgets. Youswipe an article on widgets by someone else plus you write yourown article about widgets. You find some text that you want tokeep because it teaches you stuff that you need about widgetsand you also buy an eBook about widgets. There are two importantthings to consider -1. It is better to create four new folders in the widgets folderthan to just throw all four items in the folder. Why? Because itmight seem when there is only four items that it doesn't matter,but you can be sure that in a short while you will have thirtydifferent items in there and the whole thing becomes a mess. Sogo and create four folders which could be named - a)otherpeople's (widget) articles b)my (widget) articles c)(widget)swipe file d)my widget study purchases (for the eBook)2. Sometimes before you create the new folder system, you mayhave to make decisions. For example, using the above widgetexample - after you have dealt with widgets you may go on to dosimilar studies of a hundred other products. Then you will endup with a hundred different folders, each concerning a differentproduct. This may be OK, but it may also be better to have allthe articles by other people in one folder for all the differentproducts, all the swipe files in one folder etc. The point isagain that there is no hard and fast rule except for these twogolden rules of folder management -1. Do allow the time for this organisational task. It isimportant and it always takes twice as long to go backwards andreorganise it once it descends into chaos.2. Try to think ahead and design systems that will work at themoment and will more than likely work in the future as yourbusiness grows and changes.Remember - being organised may be boring but it's possibly themost vital but most undervalued hidden ingredient of everysuccessful online business.I'm not an internet marketing guru. I'm just an 'average Joe'who loves to write . To learn more about RogerDavis please visit my work from home website.
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