be more organized at work

I should work on this again. Something about being in a new place makes you want to do it right.

Maybe I should stop everything right this minute and organize the pile of stuff on my desk and work on clearing out my e-mail box.

I googled up some advice on how to organize e-mail and didn’t really find anything I liked, so I improvised.

I have the inbox for intake of e-mails and a few things that need to keep my attention.

Then I have a follow-up folder I need to look at periodically and work through.

Then I have a few categories like “Admin/Supervisory” and “Training” and “Personnel” for things that don’t need to keep my attention, but I’ll need to refer back to.

Everything else goes into an archive folder that I can sort and search.

It felt like a pretty good system by the end of today, so we’ll see how it goes.

My desk is clean. It’s a joy to arrive at work now. I don’t know if it will last, but I’m going to try. I started putting the paper from my current projects and assignments into individual folders that I can stow away at the end of the day. I started putting meeting notes into a meeting notes folder.

My biggest clutter weakness is e-mail. My inbox is bombarded with tons of e-mails all day long. Project stuff, management stuff, administrative stuff, search engine reports, etc. I haven’t wrapped my head around how to organize that e-mail. I hope to have some time this week to work on it. I doubt I will, though, because it looks like it’s meeting and training hell Tuesday through Thursday. Then Friday is catch up day. Mmmmm… catsup.