Organize to Find Essential Information (Paper or Electronic Files)

As a business consultant, I see that more and more people are keeping less paper each year, but we still have paper files that are important to keep in hard copy format. Not only is it important to keep these paper files, but just as important is the ability to retrieve them when you need them.

Organize important documents

Do you need to get it together?

Following is a list of documents that we all most likely have someplace in your own home or office, (some more relevant than others), but can we get a hold of them when we need them? And in most cases when we need them, we need to find them quickly. It can be incredibly nerve-racking when these items can’t be found easily. There may be others, but this list will get you started in ‘getting it together’.

• Certificates and/or licenses:
• Birth
• Marriage
• Educational
• Religious
• Death certificates of family members
• Citizenship document (i.e.: Social Security card)
• Divorce decree document
• Estate documents
• Last Will and Testament
• Trust/Living Trust
• Living Will or Advanced Medical Directive
• Durable Power of Attorney for Finances
• Durable Power of Attorney for Healthcare
• Funeral information
• Passport
• Insurance
• Health
• Life
• Homeowner’s or Renter’s
• Auto
• Other (worker’s comp, person, family, circumstance-specific)
• Titles
• Property/Real Estate
• Auto

A few of these items you may choose to keep in a safe deposit box, so establish which items those will be. Scan a copy and store on your hard drive or upload to the cloud for easy access, ie. Google Drive, and the original can then be placed in the safe deposit box or other designated safe place.  When creating the file of the electronic copy, tag the location of the original.

For all other documents, index them into Paper Tiger. The Location name in your Paper Tiger database might be “Family Docs”. You can file them in any order you wish, then type the Item Names and keywords into your Paper Tiger database. The Item Number in the database will coincide with the hanging file folder number in your desk or file cabinet drawer.

Just a quick story about a client to show you how easy it can be to allow important documents to get scattered. Before I started using Paper Tiger, she thought she was reasonably organized at home. Her husband and she  kept titles and financial documents in our desk drawer. All other documents were kept in a file cabinet. When they moved, the big desk we used in our previous home was placed in the basement office where her husband would now work. Those same documents were still there, but now some of the newer important documents found a new home in a file box that was more convenient for her to file into upstairs. When she needed to find a car title, she thought, ‘is it still in the desk downstairs?’ or ‘did she put it in the file box?’ Needless to say, getting all those important documents together, and documented into Paper Tiger’s database is now a priority. Instead of a 10 minute exercise of going through the upstairs file box, then downstairs to search in the desk drawer, she can now conduct a quick search in Paper Tiger and be able to put her fingers on it in about 5 seconds!

Be organized to find important documents

Retrieval is the Goal!


Another advantage of indexing your files into Paper Tiger is that you don’t have to be the only one that knows where everything is. Anyone that you give access to your Paper Tiger database will be able to retrieve what is needed in seconds. Finding files that you’ve indexed into Paper Tiger will no longer be a scramble to search all over your home or office, but will be as easy as typing in a search keyword in Paper Tiger’s search box, and the results will lead you directly to the file where it is stored.Paper Tiger

Source:
www.ThePaperTiger.com
www.annemcgurty.com
480-442-2014

How Mindfulness Can Sharpen Our Focus and Productivity

Mindfulness has become a popular and trendy movement recently. As a business consultant in Phoenix, I work with clients recognizing the act of focusing on awareness on the flow of the present moment. It brings into the center of the present moment so that we are aware of what we do while we are doing it. It may seem both easy obvious yet when we focus, we can strategize and organize our attention to our thoughts we will discover that we waste the majority of our day thinking about past and future events. Or if we are fortunate enough, lounging around day dreaming instead of paying attention on what matters.

Most of us have a natural point of view and our thoughts are dominated by either past, present or future events. What we don’t want is that past or future events dominating our present experiences or that we live too much in the present that we don’t learn from past experiences nor plan for the future. So like most things in life we seek balance.

The practice of mindfulness teaches us to become aware of our thoughts and the present moment. It is a habit we need to nurture because our natural tendency is to stray from the here and how to tomorrow, next week or next month. When we practice mindfulness we keep calling back our wandering mind to rest on the current moment.

Some of the Benefits of Mindfulness
Below are some of the many benefits of mindfulness and how they can improve our focus and productivity.

More Effective Planning
On the outset, mindfulness may appear to conflict with the concept of planning but in fact they complement each other greatly. Planning allows us to practice mindfulness by reducing the burdens that the mind needs to worry about. If we are to schedule and plan all our responsibilities and duties we have less to distract us from our daily tasks. When applying mindfulness techniques planning can be a much more effective process and not be delayed by the disruptions of other activities and ideas.

Greater Focus
One of our biggest challenges to getting things done is the distraction of the mind, even though we try to get one job done, our mind reminds us of twenty others that still need doing. We readily check our email simply because our brain alerts us to the idea there could be unread emails in our inbox and in the event they remain unchecked we could be missing the fact that the planet is soon to be demolished by an extraterrestrial construction crew!

As this thought comes into our head we then remember that our copy of the Seven Habits of Highly Successful People was lent to a friend so maybe we should shoot over to Amazon and buy a fresh copy. Mindfulness jumps in the way of all these distractions of the mind and says “Hey, come back to the present moment, get what needs to be done, done!”

Stress Reduction
A lot of stress is brought about by imagining negative future scenarios, if we were to live completely in the present we would not suffer from this stress. But the human brain has the ability to cast itself into the future, so for now we are stuck with this capability, and will have to learn how to manage it. Stressing about future scenarios that haven’t happened is a pointless habit; mindfulness can teach us how to redirect these negative and worrying thoughts back to the present moment and remind us that the future hasn’t happened and so far is not controlling our present circumstances. Mindfulness can also help with the insomnia that often accompanies stressful situations.

As we lie awake during the night thinking about the poor sales figures or perhaps the debts that need to be paid, it's important to bring our focus back to our physical body, noticing our breath, and the simple fact we are lying comfortable and warm in bed and stuff whirling through our minds have not happened yet.

Take this moment to know that the future hasn’t happened, the past is gone and the present, the wonderful present, is all we have and all that is assured. Remember to be part of every second that you live and experience to gift which is Now.

Source:
Anne McGurty
www.annemcgurty.com
480-442-2014
amcgurty@gmail.com