One Way to Know that You are Wasting Time
Do you want to discover instantly if you need to reorganize any area in your office? Ask yourself the question, “Am I going through my work to get to my work?” Whenever I ask this question in my seminars, I get major groans from the audience. “That’s exactly what I am doing all day long” is their response. If you are going through your work to get to your work, then read on for ideas to overcome the stacking mentality.
In your office, do you move your papers from one location to another because you do not have enough workspace to do your work? Are you piling your work files and then having to unstack them in order to find the file you need? If you can say yes to any of the above, you are going through your work to get to your work, and thus, you are doubling your work.
Look at what this habit may be costing your company regarding its bottom line. Let’s say employee A grosses $60,000 a year. That translates into about 30 dollars an hour. If he spends precious time “going through his work to get to his work”, then he is probably losing, conservatively, 30 minutes a day. That means the time wasted in a year will cost his company about $15 dollars a day or about $3,600 in lost productivity per employee. All this because he is simply looking for his work.
What is “going through his work to get to his work” doing to his psyche? He stews because he constantly misplaces his files. His coworkers are negatively affected, because now both parties have to stop their normal routines to search for what was misplaced. He gets angry at himself once again and promises himself once again that he is going to get organized, but work swallows his time and off he goes, never stopping to address the real problem. Consequently, this dance is repeated over and over.
If this sounds familiar to you, take some time during your workday and notice if you are searching for your work. If you are, take some more time to reorganize and establish a system for your files, emails, paperwork, or whatever needs adjusting. You will feel better about yourself, save your company a lot of money, and save yourself a lot of energy.