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If You Work From Home In One Office, Keep Both Of Your Offices Tidy!
By Roger Davis
If you work from home you don't need me to remind you that
there is a price to pay for this luxury. You may save on rent
but you have to work hard to keep a balance. If your work
space starts to get mixed up with your living space then in the
worst case scenario 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 you also work online then you will know that sometimes
information is stored on paper (hard copy) and sometimes it is
stored on your PC and sometimes it is stored on both
mediums. But as your business grows, so does the amount of
information that you need to store.
What then becomes critical is the organisation of your
information. This article aims to highlight just how important it
is to be organised when managing your files and folders on
your PC.
I can't give you a script-like formula because every different
person will have different methods but the most important
thing that applies to everyone is to realise just how important
this part of the job is.
If you choose to learn the hard 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
seperate individual can use different wordings and
techniques (as long as you work alone) but you must
consistently use them throughout to organise your folders
and files on your PC and on your server. This is a good habit
which can be used throughout the different areas of your
work, such as on your websites.
2. If you don't know where to start, just remember that the
ideal system is based on logic. For example this is a quick
example of one of my folders -
Top folder - Work
1st level down - Folder1 - Work in progress, Folder2 -
Completed work
2nd level down in folder 1 - Folder 1 - Articles, Folder 2 -
eBooks
2nd level 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
to demonstrate the point. You're probably thinking, "So?
That's obvious" and it's meant to be. My point is that if you
look at your folders you will more than likely find that they
have 'lost the logic' somewhere along the line. Which leads
me nicely to point three......
3. Even the most organised person needs to regularly 'spring
clean' their folders and sweep away the 'dust'. It's a horrible
job but it's got to be done. When your physical office is untidy
it is somewhat easier to get around to doing the tidying up.
Once you can't find anything or can hardly open the door then
it is easy to decide that it's time for a tidy up. But it's not so
easy to get around to spring cleaning the PC and the effects
of an unruly 'virtual' filing system is much more destructive to
your 'work from home' business.
4. Don't be scared to create a system that seems to have too
many folders. For some reason the human brain is naturally
more likely to avoid having too many folders than it is to avoid
having unorganised and poorly named folders. But this is back
to front.
When you are managing your folders remember that when
you get to a point where you are about to split a folder and
create two from it, it is always preferable to do this than not.
If a little voice in your head says, "Don't split them, you'll have
too many folders if you carry on like this" - just ignore it and
split the folders! This is an example -
You have a folder called widgets which you have created to
contain any information that you find/create on widgets. You
swipe an article on widgets by someone else plus you write
your own article about widgets. You find some text that you
want to keep because it teaches you stuff that you need
about widgets and you also buy an eBook about widgets.
There are two important things to consider -
1. It is better to create four new folders in the widgets folder
than to just throw all four items in the folder. Why? Because it
might 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
thirty different items in there and the whole thing becomes a
mess. So go and create four folders which could be named -
a)other people'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
may have to make decisions. For example, using the above
widget example - after you have dealt with widgets you may
go on to do similar studies of a hundred other products. Then
you will end up with a hundred different folders, each
concerning a different product.
This may be OK, but it may also be better to have all the
articles by other people in one folder for all the different
products, all the swipe files in one folder etc. The point is
again that there is no hard and fast rule except for these two
golden rules of folder management -
1. Do allow the time for this organisational task. It is
important and it always takes twice as long to go backwards
and reorganise it once it descends into chaos.
2. Try to think ahead and design systems that will work at the
moment and will more than likely work in the future as your
business grows and changes.
Remember - being organised may be boring but it's possibly
the most vital but most undervalued hidden ingredient of
every successful online business.
About the Author
I'm not an internet marketing guru. I'm just an 'average Joe' who loves to write . To learn more about Roger Davis please visit my work from home website.
Article Source: http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/10963.html
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