With January around the corner we start to look forward to that new fresh start feeling. Maybe you getting excited about thinking about the prospects of new opportunities in the new year? Which I’m also doing too, but before we get ahead of ourselves by looking forward. First we need to clean up the aftermath of December to start 2023 off right. Today I’ll be going through 3 things you can do in your business to get organised and return to your desk in the new year feeling 100% ready.
The Big Clean
Firstly, I want to talk about your physical space. I know this is a pretty obvious area to start getting organised and should therefore be the easiest place to start. A cluttered work space is the last thing you’ll want to come back to after holidays trust me it will muddy that fresh new year feeling you had. So to prevent this from happening, get stuck in tidying and I don’t mean the type of tidying where you shove those papers in your bottom draw. I mean a real deep-clean, taking everything out of it’s place logical categorising items and finding everything an appropriate home. Then there are other things you’ll need to take sometime going through like papers, physical folders and notes. Paper is my main source of clutter I usually collect a forest of trees in my bottom drawn over the year. I do that typical think where I say I’ll get round to it, and for me it’s well and truly time to pay the piper and go through each piece of paper. If your like me that gets scared to through paper incase it had something important you missed on it. I’ll maybe take a quick picture of it and making it easier to say adios to it.
Once you’ve gone through the tidying everything phase some people leave it just there but it’s now time to re-thinking your whole workspace. I know some of you listening may not just have a desk space and may have more of a creative studio space or office. Either way it’s still important to evaluate what’s working and what isn’t working so you can improve productivity and reduce friction. This might include swapping out your swoon-worthy swivel chair for one with more lumbar support.
Introducing a grounding matt underneath your desk or simple replacing anything that’s on it’s last leg or completely broken. I know I have three pens and only one of them works so remember to check and replenish all your supplies too. Plus take restock on location of all the tools that you reach for daily to occasional, to help you best organise your things.Then lastly my favourite part adding in some finishing touches to make your space warm and inviting, a scent work candle, rug or even bring the outside in with a low maintenance plant. If you don’t organise anything else in your business make you workspace feel special for you to come back to in 2023.
It’s also now a good time to clear out your digital space. You’re probably thinking digital files don’t really make any physical clutter so is it necessary? My answer is yes! I did a big clear out of all my digital files this time last year, I’m so glad I did I found it way easier to find everything that I needed until 4 months in and I let it get messy again. As as brand designer I’ve realised my digital space gets clutter pretty quickly and therefore organising might be something that I do everything 3 to 6 months. Either way doing it once a year is better than never! So the areas to digital clear out and dust off is your dreaded inbox, organised your files, hard drives and any client management systems you may use.
Time To Reflect & Get Closure
In life and business 12 months can go by pretty fast, that’s why I like to mentally get organised and stop to take a moment at the end of each year. To really look back over and reflect on the 12 month just passed. To help gain a better understanding of event that you’ve accounted. Whether they were good or bad, and seeing however grown and changed. I believe there aren’t really any specific rules when it comes to reflect so really use any techniques that works best for you. I’ll probably do a series of journalling exercises and lists, this helps me gain closure on different areas in the last year. If you’re a little unsure about how to journal I recommend listening to Muchelleb 9 Easy Journaling Ideas for Change and Growth. I don’t have a structured journal technique for reflecting. But journaling technique I like in general that have helped me locus of control, start and stop list and The Anti-vision basically writing out
A vision of what your life and business will look like in 3 to 5 five years if you continue to behaves that aren’t serving you that you know you made last last year. When reflecting there should be a element to being honest and open to take an observational approach to understanding the habits, mistakes and areas that we need to work on and or do differently next year. We can become our harshest critics and reviewing performance can quickly spiral into a bad place. Remember reflecting shouldn’t become this process on betting yourself up on everything little thing did you did wrong in the last year. It’s about observing and also highlight all the wonderful and positive things you accomplished that you maybe forgotten about. Then don’t remember to give yourself some time also reset as a nice ending the last year and start afresh.
Tying Up The Last Little Bits
Time to get organised and take care of all those little things you put off. Some of these things may be fairly small and even fun like make some update to your website. Take a bit more time like re-evaluate your systems in business, sending over all your last invoices, tying up last year projects. Maybe researching into that helpful productivity apps and programs you saw. Or investing into a CMS system to save time. Either way this is a time to solve, fix, research and implement anything you need to start the new year off smoothly. There are usually a few things that have been bugging us throughout the year and either we r just never found the time to solve them or it become the norm to live it.
Well now is the time, if you’re unsure on how to go about this. Start of by making a list of things of little annoying tasks you want off your list before 2023. Then add all the thing that have been bugging you or causing you friction thought-out the year. Simple take some time to find solutions that may solve and or reduce this issues before you sit back at your desk in 2023.
I hope you enjoyed today episode on how to get organised and feel inspire to start 2023 off with a clean slate, well organised and inviting workspace, got some much need perspective on the last year and come back for a deserved well reset break, as well ticking off all those last little things we put off and implement tools etc to start the year off smoothly. If you enjoyed this episode you love listening to episode 53 How To Deal With Control In Unpredictable Moments a good one to listen to before the new year.