We bet you didn’t know that it was Clean Your Virtual Desktop Day! Yes, there is a day for that, and we’re here to share a few of our top tips in honour of this little known day!
If you’re a little embarrassed to open your laptop and let people see how overrun your desktop is, you may feel a bit overwhelmed at the thought of clearing it up, however we are here to help! We’ll share our three basic tips to help you get started, but if it’s really all a bit too much, then one of our experienced PA’s is only to keen to help you out! Not only is this an amazing way to save time, but you’ll also get a qualified professional to come in and ensure that your desktop is “spotless”.
- Create a hub that is not your desktop!
Whether you use an external hard drive, your computer’s hard drive or ideally a cloud storage solution such as Dropbox or Google Drive, make sure you have a hub to store all of your important information.
2. Think carefully about the folder system
One of the toughest issues that people face when it comes to their desktops is just organizing it in a coherent manner. Create a main folder for work related documents, and one for personal life admin. From there create sub folders around all the different key subject areas and try to group related material in subfolders that are clearly categorised by subject.
3. Label your folders clearly
There should be no doubt where a file goes – if it could belong in either of two folders, then something is wrong with your filing system. If you are grouping documents into folders by month, such as for invoices and bills, then make sure you use a number (ie 01 02 03) before the name of the month so that when the folders are automatically organised alphabetically, they are still in the right order.
4. Stay Organized
When things get busy, it can be hard to keep focussed and organised, that thirty seconds to file something away properly suddenly seems a burden, but it saves so much time in the long run trying to track critical documents later down the line! Take the time to make sure you keep your desktop clear and put everything in its right place when you receive it.
So there you go, key tips to get you started! If you don’t have time to get stuck into this right now, and you need to show colleagues or clients information on your laptop, we would suggest creating a folder and putting absolutely everything that litters your desktop in there, just to tide you over for that meeting – just make sure open it up and put those files where they belong (or get us to do it!)