Spring is here! Sun is shining, flowers are blooming – perfect time to have a fresh start at work! Spring cleaning your work space is crucial if you want to get productive. Ideally, spring cleaning shouldn’t be a once-a-year task (and a daunting one!). You should rather learn new habits to be organized – and ultimately turn it into a lifestyle. Here’s a few tips to get started.
Spring cleaning : do it daily
There’s no way around it: at some point, you have to roll up your sleeves and take time to reorganize your desk. First, get rid of items that are unnecessary: unused cables, post-its that are outdated, pens that you never use, ink refills… Secondly, empty those messy drawers where you throw out everything. Finally – worst task of all: sort out your paper documents!
Instead of doing this once a year, stop letting documents pile up. Try to put them in a small paper basket on the corner of your desk – for short term storage only. Add a small portable scanner next to it to easily scan those paper documents once or twice a week. This tip will help you do your spring clean on a daily basis and increase your productivity!
Scan your invoices, bills and forms
Invoices, bills, administrative forms… Your desk is probably piled up with dozens of paper stacks. Those are so disorganized, you’re probably having a hard time finding the information you need. These mountains of important paperwork are cluttering your desk and not helping you get focused. They might even be a source of daily stress & anxiety.
A good solution to end this vicious cycle is to do start digitizing your important paperwork. There are many different compact portable scanners, one for every scanning need. Small portable scanners save up space on your desk, and help you get the most out of any document. You will then easily archive and classify those in secure back-up folders.
Make all your meeting notes digital
Using a digital pen to take notes during meetings is the best way to avoid having notes clutter your desk. By making this an habit of your daily work life, you avoid the strain of eventually having to sort out those disorganized handwritten notes. You know the type of notes we’re talking about – the type you don’t even remember you took, which you never used after that particular meeting…What a waste of time and energy!
A digital pen, such as IRISNotes™ 3, converts your notes into editable digital text instantly. It recognizes any handwriting and recreates it very reliably. Digital notes are way more accessible than handwritten notes: these are easily shareable, editable, and retrievable.. All you have to do is upload those to a computer and click on ‘convert‘!
Manage documents in a smart way
We live in a digital era. That doesn’t mean we don’t use paper anymore – we all still use it everyday. That means we can now use software technology that helps us digitize paper documents and have clutter-free desk. Conversion softwares using optical character recognition can digitize any document and recreate its original text & layout.
Digitization is a crucial tool to achieve automatic document processing, which in turns improves productivity at work. An example of good conversion tool is Readiris, IRIS’ flagship software. It is compatible with any scanner, processes batches of documents and turn any type of paper sheet into a searchable and editable smart file.