Time to Clean Up Your Work Life and Your Task List
/If you are like me, you have been making the most of the slower business activity currently taking place. These last two months have been as slow as the week between Christmas and New Years. While frustrating from a sales perspective, it is helpful to get caught up.
If you have not cleaned up the tasks that have been hanging around and are wondering where to start, here’s 5 tips to get you started.
Start With Your Inbox - In my experience people use their email inbox in one of two ways. Either it is a mess with emails going back years, or it acts as a to-do list of sorts. Regardless of what you use it for, it is time to clean it out. Clutter and old issues that stay in your inbox can cause you to miss new important items that may come in. Furthermore, a cluttered inbox can also cause an increase in the odds of you not responding back to a pressing issue. Take this time as an opportunity to work through each issue and get them clean out. A nice clean inbox will give you energy to start new items when the times comes and prevent you from feeling overworked and overwhelmed.
Clean Off Your Desk - This may sound like old school, but it is still an issue that hangs around. Much like the inbox, items left on a desk are things that should be filed away, thrown away, or needs your attention. So, put on a great business podcast and start working on the physical items on your desk. Keeping a clear desk means keeping your mind clear. We will need your brain power to pull ourselves up out of this!
Get Your Expenses Caught Up - We often let our expenses go without documentation, reimbursed, or even cleaned up on the books. Take some time this week and go through your accounting and expenses; make sure they are all caught up and current. We are already 1/3 of the way through the year, and you and I both know there are things that need cleaned up. Get this going now so you don’t have to mess with it later.
Make Sure All Required Legal and Tax Fillings are Done - Many government agencies have given extensions to file the necessary reports. That does not mean you should take all the time given! Get these reports and fillings done. Make sure everything is up to date and ready to go. When the economy bounces back, do you want to spend time doing nonsense that should and could have been done? Get these filled and done today. You need to be ready to go when business comes calling.
Fix a Broken Process – Since the start of the economic shutdown, on average, I have fixed one broken or outdated process per week. I am wearing my team out, but I am using this time to sharpen our tools. As business owners we often get so caught up in the day-to-day of business, causing us to slack in fixing broken processes. We just look for the tape and glue and keep going. This is the time to fix it. And while things are slower it is much easier to test to see how it works. So far we have fixed our quoting template process, developed an in house communication system, reworked our expense report approval process, fixed a cash flow process, and moved our IT management, just to name a few! All of these things needed to be done but when you are so busy running, we didn’t stop to tie our shoes.
Looking at a slower period as a way to start fresh and clean up tasks is a much more positive way to deal with the shutdown. Don’t waste this time on pointless TV shows or wasting time online. Sharpen your tools and clean up what’s been hanging around. This will put you in a much more competitive position when things rebound in very short term.