The first step to organizing your office is to organize your life; without an efficient means of managing your time, it is quite easy to burn yourself out, and individuals need a sufficient amount of play and work. That’s why a color-coded calendar is almost essential to managing your life and remembering important events. Luckily, there’s an app for that, and for those of you without access to an iPhone, there’s a website for that: https://www.cozi.com/. Cozi is more family oriented, but can easily be used to keep your office synchronized and up to speed on important office events and deadlines. Staying updated on mobile news can also help bring you the latest and greatest smartphone tools for organizing your office – and your life, wherever your go.
Another example is www.zoho.planner.com. It is a simpler planner, but unfortunately it doesn’t have mobile app support. It can still be used to share events with friends and co-workers. Using a Google calendar enables sharing with friends through email, similar to Google documents, so that all parties’ calendars can be in sync. This is great if organizing a large group of people.
Online tools are a great way to get started with anything and stay organized. For getting your business started, www.sba.gov is a great place to go to find out the exact steps you need to take to start your business; many of the organizations that the site will refer you to will help you find locations for your office and help you establish a stable foundation. There are also Google apps for your mobile phone so that you can sync your computer calendar with your smartphone. In such a whirling and busy world, access to planning tools from anywhere can be a great lifesaving tool.
An office typically can’t run without employees; Monster.com is one of the largest online houses for employees. Most serious professionals can be found on Monster; however, that is one of its drawbacks. Monster caters primarily to people who are looking for long term career work, or work that pays a respectable amount.
However, there is another place that is home to a hefty number of individuals who are looking for work: CraigsList.com. CraigsList is where unskilled and inexperienced workers gather and look for any job they can do – or lie about being able to do it and then learn on the job. The biggest problem with CraigsList is that there isn’t really any way to guarantee the quality of an employee, and for the most part, that’s true across the board; but with other websites, users have profiles and the websites are designed for job placement and advertisement. CraigsList is more like a gigantic information board that doesn’t really service any particular group; however, if you need cheap labor, CraigsList is a good place to start, but keep in mind to always be safe about meeting a potential employee, especially if your home is your office.
When all else fails, Google is still your most powerful ally in finding and meeting your needs when it comes to starting your office and keeping it organized; most everything can be solved with a simple search.
Nolan Anderson is a student of philosophy who recently came back from teaching English abroad in China.