Is this the biggest time waster in your business?
Hi, it is Sarah here from The Den Company with a video on time management techniques.
So I am a massive fan of time management techniques. However, have you ever wondered what the biggest time-waster is in your business? Well, in today’s video, I’m going to be talking about that. So my name is Sarah from The Den Company, and I support dance and theatre school owners to grow their businesses on their terms. Now, we always talk about having this balance between life and work. I mean, what is a work-life balance, right?
Who knows? So when I think about time management techniques and when I use all the different techniques that I use, this is one of the biggest ones that I always come across, that even I have a problem with, and the reason I hit a problem with it. And probably you do is I robotically because of time and what is this problem? Then it’s filing how on earth? Okay. That was like a big comedown, right? We were expecting some massive transition, like, oh my God, it’s this, no it’s simply filing. The biggest issue is filing on your computer because what I meant by time being your biggest enemy, that if you’re in a rush to do something, or you’re really like, oh my God, just get this done and download this image from Canva. And nine times out of 10, I worked from a Mac it’ll save to your recent folders. And that is where it will set or it’ll save to some random folder. And that’s where the problems lie because they’ll all be higgledy-piggledy in one folder. And then you come to try and, oh, I did that a couple of weeks ago.
Let me rephrase that. If you haven’t filed it correctly, you’re going to be doing a search and you’re gonna be sat there going five weeks ago. Hmm. What did I put as a sensible file name for that? Or maybe you downloaded something from Canva and it was like celebration one. And, you had actually reused the past post and it was now about your staff members. You saved it, but the name it’s saved under a celebration, would you then remember to go and look for, um, celebration one to do with the staff filing. It all comes down to filing. And, Skylar is a lady who works particularly with Google Drive. And one of the things that she always says is “it doesn’t have to be filed. It has to be found”.
I love that statement because you’ve got to think, what will your future self search for?
And if you have everything in random places, your time is wasted going. Did I say that? Did I say that to that? No. Okay. That doesn’t come up. What about that? No. Okay. Let me try this folder. Let me go in here and look there and see now it’s not there, right? Let me try this one before, you know, it you’ve lost 15, 20 minutes. However, if it had been saved correctly in the first place, under a decent name, then you would have gone straight to it. Now this doesn’t just work with the computer. A strong filing system will transform the way you work and will speed up the way you work. However everybody’s filing system is going to be different. And I could say, I’ll go alphabetically and somebody else’s say no, go in date range, no, go in something that you’re going to think, okay, it’s due with staff.
So it’s to do with staff contracts. So therefore it should be under staff and it should be under contracts. It should be sensible of that, but then maybe you’ve saved the contract and the legal documents, cause that’s also where they could belong. So you’ve got to think where the process is and whether you’re going to go folders and folders and sub folders and sub folders. And within that sub folder, it’s named correctly. You’ve got to think this through how is it going to work for you in the future? And that’s the biggest key. Now, in the meantime, what do you do about the mess you’re in now? Because it doesn’t fill me with any joy to sit there and go drag a new folder. Do I need that? Yes. Drag. Oh, wrong name, name it.
So another tip from Dara start new, create a whole new section of folders, brand new rename, renamed sub folders. As you use the stuff that you’re doing right now and in the future, as you use it, rename it, receive it to the correct place. Now this is a long-term strategy. This is not something that’s going to happen overnight. But then also it’s going to save you hours because who wants to go through all those folders.
Right? So think about that, transition through how you’re going to use things and what you will eventually find is like, oh, I’ve not used them in ages, or actually that’s got the wrong logo or the wrong information on, let me just delete that. And you’ll soon find that you can get rid of some of the other stuff and everything filed safely correctly with the right names that it’s easy to find in your new folder system. Okay. So ask yourself, is it time for clear out, is it time for you to sort out these folders and save yourself time in the future? Is it time for you to save yourself time? Let me know. Bye.
