Monday, May 12, 2008

Tips For Organizing Your Office

When you take just a few moments to organize your office space, you'll save time every day, and you may even make more money as your business runs more efficiently and productively.

Here are six simple things you can do today to organize your office:

1. Keep your filing system simple. Everyone's ideal system will look different. Some people work better with tall file cabinets, which hold everything they need. Other people prefer labeled boxes that they can take with them to work with different colleagues and clients. The point is to find something that you feel comfortable with and that you will maintain.

If you are working with a filing cabinet, divide it into chronological or alphabetical groups. Some groups of projects, clients or invoices may require an entirely separate drawer. Many people successfully use a color coded system, which works as long as you don't have too many categories. (If your needs are limited to such categories as "expenses" "income" "projects" and "correspondence," for example).

2. When designing your filing system, make sure you give it enough room to grow. Try to leave at least 30 percent of each file or file drawer empty for additional documents that will need to be added. That way, you won't need to reorganize your system in a few days or weeks.

3. Routinely purge documents you don't need. Find out if you need to be hanging onto inactive files. If not, send them to the shredder or the recycling bin. If you aren't sure, stow them in the archives and not in your immediate office space.

4. Your filing system won't do you any good if you don't maintain it. Make sure to designate a particular part of your day or week to catch up on your filing. The easiest way to do this is often to have a "To Be Filed" folder in your desk or in your file cabinet for those items that you can't file right away. At least each week, make sure to file these items or ask an assistant for help. It won't be long before you find the system that works right for you. The important thing is to maintain your filing so the task doesn't grow out of hand.

5. Hang a simple corkboard near your desk for those items you need to refer to throughout the day, such as phone lists, to do lists, meeting agendas, price lists and so on.

6. Purchase any necessary containers you will need for small items, such as pens, paper clips, and extra staples. There are a number of innovative products on the market today to keep your small office items organized. Give yourself a small budget to make your office as streamlined and productive as it can be.

All of your efforts to organize your office will have a payoff. Your business will be more efficient and productive, and that will be your greatest reward as well as the greatest incentive for continuing to maintain your organized office system.

Multiple Income Streams

The best thing about having multiple streams of income is: you always have money coming in from somewhere. Having a steady stream of income produced by multiple sources can really keep you afloat. Especially, if you are just starting out. Everyone knows how discouraging it can be to make no money.

Don't count on making a million dollars overnight. Try to concentrate on building one thing at a time. Another words, take baby steps towards your multiple streams of income. Build each empire and get it going. Then start another empire, build it, and get it going. Start again. It's a very simple formula that works great.

Even if your multiple stream incomes right now are your 9-5 job and 1 small source online. That's a great start. Most people don't even have that much to start. That's a perfect foundation to build on. That shows that you already have online experience and are willing to take on extra. If you don't have any online experience in making money yet, your journey will be a bit longer. That should be pretty obvious. But you wouldn't believe how many people get a computer and think they can make a million dollars overnight.

A great advantage to having multiple streams of income is; You can help supply money to new projects from your other income sources. You don't have to take money out of your own pocket to start a business that might fail. Get it yet? In the business world, you want to always put money back into the business. So, as you make money and get used to your daily tasks; as with anything else, things become easier. You will probably want to take in more money and have the extra time. Your daily tasks are easier because they have become a habit. Your previous source of income should help to fund the new project you want to take on. If you keep this system going, you can have dozens of projects making money for you while one project pays for a new project.

Let's say you want to start a new project to start affiliate marketing now. You also have a full time job and ebay on the side. So, let your ebay income help the new project get going. When that new project starts bringing in money; Start using your ebay money as profit again, and make the new project fund another new project. Keep this cycle going to produce multiple streams of income.

You have to put money in to your business if you want it to grow. Most people just keep dumping money into the same business. The sad part is, the business is dead or close to dying. Spread yourself out. Some things that you wouldn't even guess bring in more money than others. You have to experiment and find out what works with you.