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Blog: Paper Doll, Tackling The Stacks And Piles
 A Culinary Model for Successful Mobile Offices
Over the past few weeks, we've been talking about
mobile paper. Today, we're looking at
the specific systems of materials and skills needed by all you road warriors in your mobile
offices. And ironic as it might seem coming from someone who
has blogged previously about a lack of kitchen-related skills, Paper Doll is a big
believer in imitating the systems of a chef when developing an
auto-office. I, Julie, may not be in the same realm as Julia  (or even Dan
Aykroyd's version of Julia), but I nonetheless
propose:
A Culinary Model for Successful
Mobile Offices
As professional
organizers and moms are known to say, the key to
organizing is to have "a place for everything and everything in its
place". Just as a chef (hopefully)
won't find the eggs in the mailbox, nor the ice cream next to the
phone, nor spark plugs in the veggie crisper, it's important to the
mobile
office manager that things get put where they belong, things that don't
belong get removed, and that there's a system for acquisition, storage,
and retrieval of all papers.
Any chef's basic system
is comprised of two elements: simple tools and
solid, replicable procedures. An effective mobile office system echos
these same elements. First, the tools:
Whether it's a scary freezer
chest big enough to store a season's worth of
Bullwinkle  or a typical fridge-top freezer, every
cook
takes advantage of cold
storage. Within, there are not-ready-for-prime-time items
that could be called upon to make a
meal, but in general, are not going to be grabbed quickly or accessed
without forethought. If you've just popped home for a quick
lunch, that fully frozen beast isn't going
to be your first choice.
Similarly, the
cold storage for road warriors is paperwork that may eventually need to
be retrieved, but you're not going to expect spontaneous
access. Your Deep Freeze (usually a filing cabinet) lives in your permanent office (your home office, your
corporate office, etc.) and is made up of two categories:
archival materials
(e.g. closed client files) and deep reference
(e.g., papers with historical but not immediate practical
value).
Neither archival nor deep
reference need to be traveling around with you, taking up valuable real
estate in
the passenger seat. Keep them in cold storage until needed.
Whether cooking for
the PB&J crowd or masterfully delivering at the Iron Chef
level, every cook has a pantry for all of the essentials: the
standby, non-perishable (or slow-to-perish) ingredients, basic utensils
and cookware.
The mobile office needs to be equipped
with a pantry, too. This mobile Pantry appears most often as
an
open, milk-style file crate or sturdy lidded
 tote. Either fits well
in your trunk and can be safely moved to your hotel room or event
venue, as necessary. The Pantry is basically a filing system
of the non-perishables of your profession: the one-sheets,
the handouts, the brochures, the glossy
catalog pages, blank forms and templates from which you will
periodically select a small subset (see Weekly Shopping Trip and
Specialty Ingredients, below) for daily/weekly use.
Unlike the Deep Freeze, because of careful upkeep
and maintenance of the Pantry and
its proximity to your work area (i.e., your car), you can access the
contents on an unplanned basis with a
quick jaunt to the trunk. (With the rest of the trunk tidy, your
Pantry, alphabetically filed within appropriate categories, is for your
eyes only, but you'll need not be embarrassed if someone sees the
contents.)
If the
Deep Freeze is an archive, kept neatly tucked away back at
headquarters, and the Pantry is a source for all your
typically-needed ingredients, like the file drawers in a standard
office desk, your Lunch Box is what allows you to carry your masterpieces with
you. While the Deep Freeze and Pantry are solely
practical, the Lunch
Box can be whimsical  or workmanlike, depending upon your profession and/or
personality. The Lunch Box allows you to take your
papers into the offices and venues of your clients and
prospects without seeming like you're setting up shop. The most practical (but least
fabulous) is the portable file
box that really does look like a
lunchbox  , though if your mobile paper
includes hefty catalogs, you'll
probably want to put wheels on that Lunch Box and make it a little mobile. (Think: picnic basket more than lunchbox.)
If your
papers are outsized (and you're a contractor
or architect who spends a lot of time on the road), you'll probably
want
one box, crate or bag for contracts and standard paperwork, plus a
super-sized Lunch Box (i.e., portfolio case) for your super-sized meal
(i.e., papers). Depending on your client types (fashion
boutiques or banks), your portfolios may be stylish
 or subdued
 .
Every chef has to
be prepared for
leftovers. In a fancy restaurant, the remains of your meal will be
artfully crafted into a tin-foil swan. At home, the food that makes the
second-day cut goes straight into Tupperware® or Rubbermaid® food
storage. Well, your mobile paperwork includes leftovers,
too. At the end of each visit to a client, customer or
prospect, you'll likely have anything from signed contracts to
paperwork that needs to be faxed to headquarters to notes requiring
some sort of follow-up action on your behalf. Sure, you've
mastered the art of entering the tasks into your smartypants phone or
logging them in your planner (right?), but what do you do with those
papers that are
awaiting action?
At the very least, carry a manila
folder labeled "To Process"; match it to an alarm reminder on your computer or phone to prompt you to address the
papers (and get them where you'll see them at the right
time). Better yet, use my beloved tickler file  to ensure
follow-up on projects (and if you're new to tickler files, be sure to
pick up a copy of Tickle Yourself Organized to
gain the best
benefits).
Tangible tools are an essential part of
the
Culinary Model for Successful Mobile Offices, but don't forget the
procedures that
allow us to equate culinary delight with mobile office
success:
1. Read the Whole Recipe--As
anyone who has ever watched the Thanksgiving episode of Friends where
Rachel makes the trifle
knows (and if you don't know, you MUST click that link), a recipe is a game plan that
lets
you which know ingredients and tools you need, when you'll need them,
and in
what order. As Rachel proved, inexactitude breeds a distinct kind of
failure.
For your mobile office to work
effectively, you'll need to schedule time every day, as well as once a
week for a full-menu planning session. At the end
of each
business day, whether you're back at headquarters, in your hotel room
or in that little corner of your house affectionately known
as "the office" (and the guest room and the craft room...), sit down to
read your recipe. For the next day (or the upcoming week),
determine:
- Who do you need to
see?
- How will you get there (and when)?
Do you have the maps/directions organized in chronological order of the
visit?
- What is the end-goal
of the meeting/appointment?
- Based on the goal, what
papers will you need to display or distribute?
- Do
you have enough copies of each piece of paper? If not, when
and where will you make/acquire
extras?
- What documents will you need
signed or returned to you from a previous
visit?
2. Make a Weekly Shopping Trip--On a
weekly basis, a home
chef will replenish the pantry to make sure that almost everything one
might need for a planned (or spontaneous) meal will be
available. The cook shops, returns
home and puts away the groceries.
The
road warrior's process is similar. With recipe (planned
schedule) in hand, the mobile office manager determines what items
might need to be removed from the Deep Freeze for review or evaluation
at any particular meeting along the route. Next, it's
necessary to "shop" in the Pantry to gather the items that will be
needed in
the Lunch Box for the next day (or the coming week, depending on how
ambitious you are in following the plan).
3. Locate Special
Ingredients--A typical weekly
shopping trip doesn't always take advantage of surprise sales or allow
for the acquisition of fresh produce at the Farmers' Market. Similarly, if you've got a mobile office, you know that sometimes your
week is atypical. Maybe you usually present to offices and
organizations on topics A and B, but this week includes a specialty
presentation and will require making and distributing new Powerpoint
copies
or photos never used before. A careful reading of the
"recipe"
for the week ahead allows every mobile office manager to prepare, make
copies and never be stranded.
4. Clean Up As You
Go--The
one thing most cooks will tell you is that keeping an organized
kitchen is dependent upon simply cleaning up as you go along.
If you leave the counter and sink full of sticky, dirty dishes and
utensils, it creates bigger, stickier messes that require more elbow
grease to get clean.
Handling papers,
especially in a mobile
office, works the same way. If you walk out of a client's
location, toss all of the loose papers in the back seat and head onward
to your next location, by the end of the day, let alone the week, your
mobile office will look like a motor vehicle accident that happened
from the inside-out.
Build buffer time,
even just ten extra minutes, into your mobile schedule. As
soon as you return to the car, before ever belting yourself in, go
through your Lunch Box and special ingredients to make sure that any
papers you acquired in the meeting are either filed for reference or
added to your "leftover" container (i.e., tickler file)
for prompt
follow-up. Just as you'd return the container to the fridge
to
keep milk from spoiling after adding it to a recipe, it's essential to
put your papers where they belong...on a timely basis...to make sure
they won't spoil
(i.e., won't collect coffee stains or disappear
just when you need them the most).
If you aim to use
your buffer time to file away your frequently used and/or
newly-acquired papers, by the time you pull into your driveway (or the
hotel parking lot) at the end of a long business day, you'll feel more
at
ease. Taking a few moments to remove the pop cans, meal
wrappers and other detritus from the car ensures you'll get into a
fresh-smelling, chaos-free mobile office the next day.
5.
Taste-test and Refine the
Recipe
Every chef knows that even the
best recipes require tweaking. When you encounter something
that doesn't quite work, make a note of it in your planner so that you
can address it during your next "recipe review" planning
session. When you review your recipe for the next day, do
your
"shopping" in the pantry, transfer tomorrow's essentials to your
lunchbox, and then close up the kitchen (i.e., lock the car), secure in
the knowledge you've had a good day on the
road.
We've talked
about general mobile paperwork issues, paperwork that travels with you
on your daily errands and how to operate a mobile office.
Next week, to round
out our mobile paperwork chat, we'll discuss what design features maximize your paper portability--what your backpack, messenger bag or briefcase
needs
to ensure you can get on a plane or train or just amble over
hill and
dale, while keeping your papers (and your mobile sanity) secure.
So, anyone else hungry?
posted on: 6/30/2009 10:30:00 AM by Julie Bestry
category: Paper
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Paper Doll, Tackling The Stacks And Piles
by Julie Bestry
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About Julie:
Julie Bestry, President of Best Results Organizing in Chattanooga, TN, is a Certified Professional Organizer®, speaker and author. Julie helps overwhelmed individuals and businesses save time and money, reduce stress and increase productivity through new organizational skills and systems.
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