In the ever evolving digital world, many businesses have traded in their filing cabinets for a computer and a cloud server. Just like our physical office spaces, disorganization and clutter in our digital space can impact productivity for you and your employees. But believe it or not, decluttering your desktop doesn’t have to be as challenging as it might sound. Although it’s one thing to clean out your filing cabinet, and another to organize folders, we’re here to help you get started. In this article, we’re putting down the disinfecting wipes and showing you how to effectively organize your digital office.
Naming Your Files
While it might be easier to assign random letters and numbers to files, it’s important to have a naming convention for any files and documents. This helps with not only keeping track of important documents you have saved on your business cloud (or your local system), but it also helps when files need to be shared amongst employees. Being able to keep a naming convention for files makes cleaning up and organizing your business cloud much easier, and saves the headache of having to click through folders to find what you need.
Prioritizing Folders
Don’t just dump your folders all over your desktop or downloads folder, prioritize them! It might seem more convenient to just keep all of your created folders on your desktop, that way everything will be in sight. Unfortunately, doing this can actually clutter up your desktop, and make things even more disorganized. Something that you can do to minimize the clutter and get your folders on track, is to prioritize their locations. Keeping the most important folders on your desktop, ones that you refer to daily or weekly, can help upkeep the clutter on your computer. Another way to do this is to make use of your documents folder. Any other folders that are important, but aren’t referred back to often, can stay here for whenever you need them.
Purge Your Downloads
You always want to remember that when you download something important to put it in its respective folder. But what about the rest? We’ve all been there, collecting a pile of screenshots, image downloads, PDFs, all of which go straight to your downloads folder. It’s easy to forget to check your downloads, and one day you might open it up and forget what the .pdf file titled “test-project1” was in there for. If left unchecked, this folder will eat away at your storage until your computer warns you that you’re about to run out. That’s why it’s important to purge this folder at least once a week, and to sort through anything that you might need.
These small tips can actually make a big difference in the workplace. Keeping your digital space clean and organized can reduce the amount of stress you have during the week, and boost your productivity. It’s just one click away.