Lost items at work or home

I’m a Type A personality. I’m obsessive-compulsive when it comes to keeping my stuff where it belongs. As a result, I rarely lose things at work or home. Yes, it’s slightly more work putting my keys and wallet in the exact same place every night, but for me it beats the alternative. Placing items down in random places throughout the house (slippers, keys, etc) makes finding them that much more difficult. If you spend one to two minutes searching for your keys every time you leave the house plus the same amount of time at work that adds up to twenty or more hours per year just searching for your keys. Do you know how many books you can read in twenty hours?

The bottom line cost: losing track of your belongings causes you to waste hours of time looking for those belongings. This time can be better spent elsewhere if you were more organized.

Failure to keep a calendar or datebook

Have you ever sent a gift to a loved one with an added overnight or expedited shipping cost due to you forgetting their important date? If you have relatives out of town and you send them gifts on their birthdays or Christmas this is something should know about every year. It should come as no surprise to you each year that Mother’s Day occurs in the middle of May. If you find yourself shipping Mom her gift via FedEx overnight each year then you are wasting your money. Set up a Google Calendar reminder email or use an old-fashioned FranklinCovey planner to let you know well enough in advance each year that this date is coming.

The bottom line cost: procrastinating or forgetting important dates costs you wasted time, money and effort than can be avoided by a little calendar planning.

Late fees on payments

How many of us put the day’s mail on a desk or table once it’s opened and read? Have you ever amassed a pile so large that bills get buried under the stack? I’m guilty of this lack of organization now and then. I’ve even paid a late fee on a utility bill as a result of this. If your system for paying bills is place them somewhere and then come back to them hopefully before the due date then your system stinks. Put them in a visible place that reminds you daily or weekly to get this done. Paying a fee for late bills is essentially a “slob tax” for not finding them in time.

The bottom line cost: losing bills and other important documents with deadlines causes you to spend extra money on late fees and finance charges. Get a system for finding and remembering bill due dates.

The time “black hole” known as your email inbox

Have you ever wanted to find an important email at work or home? Have you ever spent more than twenty minutes looking for it? And then did you get distracted reading another email you had not seen in a while. It has happened to me. Also, tt never ceases to amaze me how folks have hundreds or thousands of emails in their inbox. How can these people find anything in a pile of 500 items? Create some email folders to separate the categories and find items easier. Or do what most time management experts recommend. Do, delegate or delete. In theory, practicing this principle will keep your inbox nearly empty each day. Do – an action item for you. Delegate - someone needs to do this. Delete - this does not apply to me or it’s information that useless to me.

The bottom line cost: an unorganized email inbox costs you extra time to find, respond and act on items sent to you.

Is being organized an innate talent or can it be learned? Or we all wired one way or the other? If you are an unorganized person take a self-assessment of the true cost of how much this character trait costs you each week in lost money, time and effort. If you are already an organized person, I’m sure you can attest to the peace of mind knowing how simple like becomes when you get organized.