Organize Your Notes

My goal is to help people achieve the status of working in an organized office space.  Along my journey to do so, I've noticed several habits that those who are less organized share.  One of these habits is the over abundance of notes scribbled on scraps of paper, backs of envelopes, paper napkins from lunch, sticky notes, etc.  It's no wonder that important info is lost or forgotten!  Suggestions:

• if you take notes in meetings, use one pad of paper for this (use a different sheet for each meeting) and at the end of the day read over the notes, keep the important info you need, and toss the rest
• keep a notepad on your desk to take phone messages on or use it to take notes when you're on the phone
• lots of the scattered pieces of paper I've encountered on desks have names and phone numbers on them, so maintain a list of these people so that when you have time you can add them into your contact manager and input many all at once

Be aware of how you're gathering your information and try not to write notes in several different places.  This complicates finding it again, thus making your life harder than it has to be.  Give it a try!