How You Can Stay Organized and Productive At Work

Top Tips For Staying Organized and Productive at Work

It doesn’t matter if you are an entrepreneur working from home or if you have a job. There are simple easy steps you can take on your daily life to stay organized and productive at work, all day, every day.

I am sure you have heard these tips before but maybe like myself in the past you didn’t adopt them for long enough to see the results.

Fortunately, I became more deliberate and intentional about my days and how I spend my time and by adopting this mindset alone, I was able to stick to these easy steps I share with you today. Here is a weekday schedule that you can print to help you map our your workday. You can also get instant access to the entire printables library by subscribing to the vault here. 

So how can you make sure that you stay organized and productive at work?

Clear The Clutter

It’s very hard to focus, be creative and productive at work in a cluttered space.

Before you start your next working day, take time off to declutter your office. If your office is taken by clutter it will be hard to organize it in one scoop, but you can at least declutter it by removing the following items:

1. anything that doesn’t belong to the office.

2. anything that’s broken beyond repair or that you know you won’t use anymore.

3. old mail

You will feel immediate relief by simply clearing the office from these things that are taking space not only on your desk and counters but also on your mind.

Remember these words when you tackle your clutter today ‘Clutter is nothing more than postponed decisions’ ~Barbara HemphillClick To Tweet

A simple thing you can do to help you keep your office decluttered, is to keep a good size trash bin and a shredder, close to your desk.

Process Your Emails

Emails are a huge time suck. Instead of just reading them or thinking you’ll read or act on them later take a more structured approach.

Set a specific time for dealing with emails each day. I like to process my inbox in the morning and give it another check in at the end of the day. I do my best to not check them in between.

Create folders to organize emails: junk/spam, trash, by project or client, personal and to do. Any emails that require you to take action and that cannot be completed at that moment can be put into the to-do folder.

Make it a habit to work through your to-do folder and empty it every day.

Delete junk, spam, and emails that aren’t important or needed for further action and empty those folders at the end of each day.

Schedule It

If you work for an organization, then you probably have set break times. However, if you work for yourself then it will be up to you to decide when to take a break. Make sure to schedule in regular breaks as these will keep you more focused and productive. this weekly chart can help you see what’s coming up.

A great way of staying on track with regular breaks which are proven to reduce stress and make you more productive is to use the Pomodoro technique.

This method is quite simple: you work for 25 minutes and take a short 5-minute break. After 4  25-minute time blocks, you take a longer break.

I like to use the longer breaks for a quick walk outside with Tuff. These short walks always lift my spirit, even more, when the weather is nice and sunny!

Stay Hydrated

In 2015 my sister who is a certified high-performance coach invited me to a Brendon Burchard event in San Diego. We spent 4 days together and learning about tools, strategies, and mindset on becoming a high performer.

The event was amazing, high energy and transformational to me. I embraced many new habits and one of them was something I always knew but had never consistently applied in my life: to keep my body and mind hydrated to achieve optimal performance.

Since then I became quite diligent about keeping myself hydrated by making sure I drink at least 8 glasses of water a day and by limiting caffeinated drinks such as tea and coffee.

If you are not yet in the habit of drinking water regularly and throughout the day, use this free printable to help you stay on course.

Don’t Skip Lunch

This was another great habit I changed and have been really diligent about. Around noon, no matter what I am doing, I will stop to have lunch.

I love Panera and their steak & arugula sandwich is one of my favorite things, but I don’t want to spend the time and money to go to their store every day for lunch. To create my own lunch menu, I started buying deli meats at my local deli, and keeping fresh greens like arugula and spinach at home, and started making my favorite bread using this bread machine (affiliate link).

Now I enjoy delicious lunches at home while I rest from work and catch up on with my mom or read a book. It’s a quiet time here at home as all the boys are at school. Tuff keeps me company and we take a walk and recharge before going back to work at my home office.

I know when we’re busy and pressed for time, we feel tempted to skip a meal (or two!) and keep working, but it’s a fact that we become less productive, sluggish and with time this will take a toll on us.

If you work out of the home, make sure you have all the ingredients for a meal to take to work with you. There are so many great lunch boxes and you can always pack a leftover portion of last night’s dinner for your lunch. On top of a good lunch, I like to keep healthy and yummy snacks, like sliced fruits, handy.

These simple tips will help you to stay organized and productive at work.