What Are The Organizational Skills? And How To Improve Your Organizational Skills?

What are organizational Skills? 

Organization skills are types of skills that a person can exploit to manage his/her tasks and stay organized. Organizational skills help you manage your business expectations and deliver results within the timeline expected. 

Organizational skills are significantly impacting your personal and professional life more than you think. Don’t believe me? Fair enough.  

Notice your productivity when you’re working at a place with too many piles of papers, leftovers of yesterday’s pizza, or tons of dossiers, how fast is your pace?  

Many studies show that the subconscious mind can’t excel fast enough as it perceives too many details, so the high distraction level affects the speed of producing tasks and doubles the stress on you.  

Don’t worry! We’re here to break down how to improve organizational skills down for you step by step. 

How To Improve Your Organizational Skills?

There are four basic principles that can help you Improve Your Organizational Skills:

1. Remove The Clutter for Better Productivity 

Before you complete reading this article, look at your desk, does it look like it's been hit by a cyclone or an earthquake? 

Now look at the desktop on your computer or smartphone, does it look messy? 

Sometimes we feel overwhelmed about taking on the task of removing our clutter and tend to make excuses not to do it. Most of us claim that we don’t have the time, or that there is too much to do at once.  

But if you look a little deeper, you’ll find how important is to remove the clutter for getting better results, faster performance and less stress.  

Follow the below styles for better results:  

• Decide on how you can get started.
• Set a ‘cleaning task on your calendar’.
• Stick with your plan until the job is complete.
  
• Don’t let the same excuses hinder your organizational process.
  

2. Building The Habit of Organizational Skills Training 

The importance of organizational skills extends to cover professional performance. Hence, organizing your tasks plays a key role in increasing the productivity level and assists in managing projects in a better way.  

Not to mention that memory performance will be enhanced accordingly when acquiring the habit of organizational skills.  

Indeed, such skills are not acquired overnight, but rather they need lots of hard work and practice.  

But believe me, with a little guidance and the usage of the right tools, anyone can learn how to stop hunting for missing things in messy places and become a better-organized person. 

3. Give Your Computer a Cleanse 

Clutter can appear in many different forms on your computer, unread emails, unneeded applications on smartphones as well as any device that contains data. Here are two primary steps you need to consider. 

• Elimination Step: 

Consider organizing or clearing out files from your desktop screen. Delete the items you don’t need anymore or the multiple copies of your downloaded documents. Clear your trash bin on your device can also help in speeding up your laptop. 

• Segmentation Step: 

Filing or segmenting your files will reduce the hassle on your desktop. Defragmenting your drive or getting rid of applications and programs you no longer use. 

4. Declutter Your Saved Files  

Are you among those people who exclaim “I have to keep [this] because I might need it later!” If yes, then you may never get back to them. 

In fact, we can throw away half - or maybe more - of our saved documents or items without feeling a sense of regret.  

Now ask yourself the below questions: 

• Am I going to use such items soon? 
• When was the last time I needed this? 
• Can I live without this? 

The decision to keep everything can drive us to make unneeded choices with the organization and contribute to more clutter. We can break that kind of negative thinking by examining what we are holding on to while realizing that the ‘what if I needed those items later’ style won’t get us anywhere. 

So now, get rid of anything that doesn’t have a clear purpose. Once you have removed the items you don’t need, you are no longer wasting time on useless clutter, but are developing better organizing skills for what you have. 

The 5s Organizational Techniques 

The 5s technique originated in Japan as part of the Kaizen concept. Its purpose is to create a safe, clean, and well-organized workplace. 

Although it was developed for manufacturing, this method can be used to improve efficiency and reduce clutter. 

The 5 Organization Steps are

1. Sort.
   
2. Set in Order.
3. Shine.
4. Standardize.
5. Sustain.
   

The 5s steps can help you organize almost any environment. Whether you're trying to clean up your office or reorganize your entire department, following these steps will help you be more productive.  

It's important to complete each step fully before you move on to the next step. 

1st Step: Sort 

Here, you eliminate anything in your workspace that is unnecessary for doing work. This includes tools, furniture, clutter, instructions, processes, books, or documents. If there is anything that you're not using for your current tasks, remove them. 

2nd Step: Set in Order 

After completing the Sort step, you should have only those items that you and your team need. 

You must now organize these items to make sure they are easy to find. Place items close to where they will be used so that you and your team don't have to waste more time to get to them. 

3rd Step: Shine 

Keep your office or work areas clean and free of clutter, and determine what level of cleanliness you want your office or work area to move toward. 

Identify sources of clutter and dirt, like piles of paper around the copy machine, or empty coffee cups in the conference room, which you have to clear each time you want to have a meeting. 

4th Step: Standardized   

Now that you know well how clean you need your space to be, develop a routine or process to keep it clean every day. Also, analyze the problem areas and create a plan to fix them.  

The point is that cleaning systematically should be a daily part of work, not an occasional activity. Make sure that you analyze all problem areas and develop a solution to eliminate the cause. 

5th Step: Sustain 

This is often the most challenging step. After you've established the previous four steps, it's time now to sustain the new system and retrain yourself, and your team, to develop new habits.  

Sustaining the organizational technique is vital to your long-term success. 

Use training, posters, and incentives to help you and your team develop and maintain these new habits. 

To sum up, disorganization not only wastes our time but also lowers productivity and increases stress levels. 

Hence, one of the hardest parts about getting organized is going through the above process and getting rid of the things that cause distractions and take up a lot of space.  

When you find yourself among stacks and piles of stuff and items, it can seem overwhelming. 

But by taking it one step at a time, and remembering to breathe, you begin to de-clutter your life, acquire organizational skills and start on the path to a successfully organized lifestyle. 

Indeed, the 5s technique is an effective, methodical process for reducing waste and making your workplace more efficient and organized.