Top 5 Organizational Tips for Administrative Assistants
Every position, big or small, needs to have excellent organizational skills to be successful. An administrative assistant position is not different. It’s a Monday morning at 9:00 am. Your supervisor just walked over to your desk and told you that copies need to be made. You need to call a list of 100 people before 11:00 am and you haven’t finished a quarter of the tasks brought to you 10 minutes before you left on Friday. I am here to tell you that there is a better way! A keen attitude, coffee or tea in hand, and a quick and careful plan will empower you to dominate your day. Here are our Top 5 Organizational Tips for administrative assistants.
Breathe
Unfortunately, a large amount of people will forget to do this one thing; breathe! Your employer knows you aren’t superhuman (even if you might act it sometimes). Unnecessary stress is often caused by not knowing where to start with the smallest of tasks. Knowing is half the battle when doing anything. Put your mind in a locked room and push everything else out. Ask yourself, how do I start? We made this #1 on our top 5 organizational tips for administrative assistants for a reason!
Prioritize your Agenda
An agenda allows you to visualize your day hour by hour. This visualization gives you an insight to say “okay, I have a meeting with Jean at 10:00 am in the Conference room.” Once you and Jean meet, you come back to your desk and cross that one off your list for the day. Keeping it together in notes improves your motivation for each task and creates a record of your day to day activities. Having this record gives you something to show to your supervisor if something did not get done.
Allocate your Time Accordingly
Having a list of things to do is great and all but what if something takes two hours longer than expected? How can you get that time back? The reality of it is that you can’t. Knowing how much time a task is going to take you will cause you to prioritize tasks for earlier or later in the day. The best analogy for this is the jar of rocks and sand. Imagine a large jar with empty space acting as your day. A bunch of misshapen rocks, acting as your large projects or tasks, are slowly piling up next to the jar. Sand, acting as your small tasks, filling up a cup next to the jar throughout your day. If you try to place the small tasks in the jar first and then large tasks you will run out of space quite fast. By placing the rocks in the jar carefully first and then filling the rest of the jar with sand, you can see that even with your large tasks you can mold the small tasks around your big tasks.
Cluttered Desk means a Cluttered Mind
Keeping your desk clean and organized keeps you on track. Finding something you need as soon as you need it is a time saver and gives you peace of mind. Having different piles of papers stacked on top of one another can allow things to get lost. A way to solve this is by putting stacks of different paperwork sideways on top of each other and alternating between straight up and sideways (in other words collating).
Assess your Day and Celebrate!
Number 5 on our list of Organizational Tips for Administrative Assistants is rewarding yourself. Give yourself a pat on the back! You made it through your day! It is now time to ask yourself whether you followed your plan and accomplished everything you needed to. If all your tasks were completed for the day it is time for a reward. Always treat yourself to something you like to eat or do at the end of the work day or work week.