Improving organisational skills at work

Simplest solution, without using more software, is to create a folder for each customer and project, with sub-folders if needed. Put your documents in the correct folder as you do them. Make sure they have meaningful and accurate names. If necessary split the docs up to smaller docs so the name tells you what they contain, so put financial data in one, background info in another, deliverables in another, etc.

You can then find the deliverables for may 2025 project2 for customer Abc just using file manager in a few clicks.

A flat file structure, or piles of paper, rapidly become unmanageable. Realise that you will forget stuff after a few months as things move on, so make your life easier with a logical structure and good naming. It takes a few minutes longer at the start, but saves hours later, so is completely worth the overhead.

If you use SharePoint or other system they can often be organised in a similar way, allowing drag and drop, sharing and backups.

If you mean you have trouble remembering what is on each file, then either split up as I suggested into smaller docs so the name means something, or create an excel index. I use this too, but only to keep links, names, dates and minimal info about quotes, plus a few words about what the project is (like 10 words).

The last few companies I worked for use Document Management Systems for storing their data as they used to have large teams generating lots of content on many different projects so there were literally millions of documents floating around and finding the correct, current version (without someone actively updating it) was a bit of a nightmare.

Document Management Systems are pretty much a database of the documents / spreadsheets / presentations / data sets that you store in it and the files are stored in a structured way but the the key thing is using metadata to be able to identify the category of file you want. If this discussion thread was saved as a file in the DMS then the tags for the discussion would be the metadata used to let you search for it.

This approach means you need to "tag" the file with the appropriate metadata for best effect so there is some training for all users required.

When you search for the file you want you can put in criteria such as the tags for the metadata, the author, date produced and keywords and it will have the contents already indexed in such a way as to give you a fast result. From the results you pick the one you want and it will tell you if someone is working on it (like a library book they have to "check it out" before updating then "check it back in" when finished).

This way you can check in with them for the latest info.

If you need to edit it then you need to get them to finish their edits and check it in so you can do the process yourself.

The real advantage here is that every edit to the file is tracked and can be looked over to prevent data being lost, changed / corrupted or added incorrectly which is great in companied with regulatory requirements, or the US Government <cough>.

If your company has this sort of system them ask for a quick training course - it is really quite straightforward once you see it in operation a few times and is very powerful.

If your company does not have this then I hope they have something like SharePoint implemented for their file storage which has a much more basic version of DMS (at least for version control).

kayaker said:

I write detailed lists and end up with a document for each  chunky project / task. The information is so detailed I sometimes can't find what I need as it's hidden.

I would suggest using a system where you have your files stored (on a server so they are backed up) in a structured way - perhaps by project title, phase of project and by whatever way the work is structured under that. I imagine you already do something similar to this.

The next step is to have version control of the documents so as you work on them, add a page at the start of the document with the revision information. Don't worry about what went before but all docs need to have it from now on. Add a table with a column for the revision number (1st digit is project phase, 2nd for major steps and 3rd for smaller steps), a brief note on the change (eg weekly report minutes) and maybe a field for who supplied the info to you.

So if you are using Prince2 project methodology and are in the directing a project stage, working on stage 3 and are on weekly report 5 then a revision of 2.3.5 would be right. If you have to tweak it with an update then call it 2.3.5.1.

I would also add a bit below the version notes to have tags to make for easier searching. You could have the name of the project as one, the stage, the peoples surnames and any major components of that phase (software being implemented, supplier names etc) so you can search on those keywords.

You only really need to do this once and glance over it when amending the version notes.

Consistency is essential - you need to do it every time you update a file and check it is saved to the server successfully.

That was a lot of info - I hope something is of use to you.

Try structuring documents, putting information into paragraphs with bold headings to help find what you need later. Create folders and save documents into them that all relate to a particular project, giving each folder the name of the project. Save the folders all on the same secure drive, not on your desktop.