What It Takes To Be An Entrepreneur
Do You Run Your Office The Way You Run Your Home? - Part One
Written by Jay Shapiro for Gaebler Ventures
A messy desk is a sign of genius, or so they say. Actually it might just be a sign of a messy person. Disorder in the home often means there's disorder in the workplace. Not good!
There are exceptions to it but as a rule business owners tend to run their companies the way they run their households. That can work well for those with an organized attitude to life in general, but if your home is chaotic, it might just be that your business is too.
What's Under Your Cookie Jar?
If the filing system for your personal paperwork involves nothing more than shoving the latest bills under the cookie jar for a week or so, or maybe longer, then chances are your office could do with an admin shake up. It's all to do with personality types. It's often said that those with an extreme creative bent find it hard to focus or remain consistent when it comes to the organization of things, like the filing of paperwork. If you think you fit into this bracket then it's likely that your flair and genius for creativity will be a benefit to your business. However, your propensity to leave the perfunctory things unattended could be disadvantageous.
Is Your Creative Brain Addled by The Prospect of Organization?
These are basic psychological principles involved here. The creative brain often sees things in a wide variety of ways. So where a more practical thinker might file an electric bill under E the creative will look at a number of possibilities.
Do I file under E for Electric or do I file under the company name? Should I file by date or by status, as in paid or unpaid? Thinking in these wider reaching terms can be a boon when it comes to designing new products or devising wow factor marketing campaigns. But when it comes to the more perfunctory matters it seems that the creative type will often get so addled by the number of choices that he or she will opt for none of them. That's how the putting things under the cookie jar syndrome begins.
Surprise, Surprise - You Can't Find The Stapler?
If your laundry is piled up and you're tripping over old bicycle parts and unfinished oil paintings in your home, it's likely that you don't know where the stapler is in your office or that you can't locate the accounts ledger when you need it.
You need to shake things up! They say charity begins at home, in this instance organization does. If you are serious about trading your shambolic way of operating for something that actually works, consider the following.
Could A Stranger Understand Your Idiosyncratic Ways?
Your esoteric way of doing things might work for you, but would a stranger be able to comprehend your methods? Asking yourself this question can really help you to look at things from another perspective. Ok, you know that you left the latest order forms next to the coffee maker under a box of paperclips, but would anyone else be able to second guess your idiosyncratic ways? No, and that's why they're not good practice. For now though they work for you and you don't want to bring the operation of your business to a standstill while you sort everything out. That's why getting your house in order, your actual house, not your metaphoric one, is a great starting place.
Start small when you are reorganizing your home and your workplace. That way you'll be sure to do a thorough job. One well organized drawer is more valuable in the long term than a quick surface fix where mess just gets shoved out of sight.
Jay Shapiro is a freelance writer based in the UK. Jay has a particular interest in the emotive aspects of the entrepreneur's character. "Alongside the nuts and bolts of business, the character of the person is often the ingredient responsible for success."
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