5 Tools Every Entrepreneur with ADHD Should Be Using to Get — and Stay — Organized…
By Vernestine Laughinghouse, CPO and Shane Perrault, PhD
Many people think that getting organized is cleaning up, but that actually couldn’t be farther from the truth. In fact, people who are truly organized never need to clean up, because they have a defined method for managing every item they handle. Sound confusing?
Luckily, it’s really not.
Simply stated, being organized means that you have a defined process for dealing with everything that you encounter in life. At the office, this most often applies to pieces of paper, e-mails, voice mails, and any other information that is passed to you physically in some way. If you don’t have a defined process for managing this information (especially in paper form), then you probably do one of four things:
1. Stack it in a pile
2. Stuff it in a drawer
3. Spread it across your desk
4. A combination of all three
Chances are, taking the above actions works all right for you most of the time. You can probably usually find what you need. You probably feel as if, for the most part, you have a handle on where everything is.
That may be true, but the fact is that your desk is still cluttered, which contributes to feelings of being overwhelmed and overworked, and who needs that?
Barbara Hemphill, author of Taming the Paper Tiger at Home, says that “clutter is postponed decisions,” and she is right. Because even if you think that you like your piles of paperwork, the fact is that you will ultimately need to sort through them and make all of the associated decisions.
Instead of wasting time chasing paper around your desk, end the cycle before it starts by creating a decision-making process for every time that you encounter something new:
Five Great Rules for Getting (and Staying) Organized:
1. If you are never going to need it again, then Discard or Recycle it
2. If you need to ask someone for help with it, then Delegate it
3. If there is something you need to do about it, then Take Immediate Action
4. If there is something you need to do about it, but it can wait for later, then File it for Follow-Up
5. If you may need it later, then Put it in a Reference File
Taking one of these five steps will help you to get more organized!
