Spring Cleaning Your Digital Life
One key to working together as a virtual team is organization. Having things in good order not only makes you feel more confident, it saves time and frustration. It is the foundation for making sure you are working efficiently. It can also help in maintaining your client relationships.
So free yourself of the unnecessary mental energy to find things in your virtual world and commit to spring cleaning your digital life.
I’ll share a few ideas to try on your own work files and maybe you can discuss how you can carry out some of the ideas for your shared folders with your team.
There is usually room for even the most organized among us to be even better. Having things in good shape looks and feels so much better that you are likely to build some simple routines to keep it up in your daily schedule. Overtime, these routines become habits, and the habits will breed success and efficiency for your entire team.
If you have an abundance of folders saved to your desktop that you are done working on, consider starting there. No one else can access these from your desktop. If the latest version of a document is on your desktop and an old one is in Box, it could create problems.
Then, consider any times you have been sidetracked looking 10 minutes or more for a file that you should have been able to access in an instant. Sometimes it can feel like you are wasting time looking in the deepest, darkest folders on your files in your system. Even the search bar didn’t work because the file wasn’t in the folder you thought it would be or named what you thought.
Consider how it happened and how you might be able to avoid multiplying that unnecessary effort in the future:
Was it in the wrong folder?
Was it given the wrong label?
Do I need to be more familiar with our naming conventions?
Did it get accidentally deleted?
While this happens to the best of us, it is avoidable.
There are a few important things to remember:
1. NAMING CONVENTIONS
Make sure your folders and files are named appropriately. Give them relevant and easily-searchable names. This is important since most businesses work off of shared networks.
2. OLDER VERSIONS & OBSOLETE FILES
If some files and folders are obsolete, delete them. Yes, you can delete things, it is simply wasting space on your computer and adding to the clutter of other similar and updated files.
3. TOO MANY OR TOO FEW FOLDERS
When there are more than 10 items in a folder, consider subdividing them or, if there are only two documents in a folder, consider combining them.
4. BECOME A BETTER ONLINE DETECTIVE
It can still happen. When it does, you can become better at searching. Here is a quick training video for searching in Box.
5. REGULAR CLEANING SCHEDULE
Just like we periodically clean our physical space, we need to build in time to clean our digital space.
Over time, you will save yourself much heartache once those lost files can be easily found in their newly-organized digital home.
Want to spring clean your digital office? Contact your Project Manager to add it to your Project Plan.
About the Author
Bernie DeLaRosa, CFP®, ChFC®, CRPC®, CLU®, APMA®, CASL®, BFA™
Managing Business Consultant
- Mergers/Acquisitions/Practice Sales
- Legal Agreement Definition
- Advisor Leadership Skills
- Initial Practice Assessment