Lesson 7: How self-organization impacts work results

Being organized and having a work ethic may increase productivity and improve your performance. It also helps reduce stress and tensions because you have everything planned, and you deliver top-quality results.

But what are the most important elements of self-management at work? And, most importantly, how does your organization impact your performance?

In this lesson, you’ll find key aspects of self-organization along with some tips to become better at planning your work.

Let’s begin.

As we previously mentioned, self-management at work is crucial for improving performance and ensuring success. However, if you want to improve your abilities, you may want to learn what are the most important elements on the basis of self-organization.

Planning

The first thing that comes to mind when talking about self-administration is planning skills.

Carefully scheduling activities to fit into your day is an extremely useful skill and a key aspect of productivity. It makes you more reliable and trustworthy. Additionally, it allows you to work with less stress, as you're not constantly worrying about deadlines and racing against time.

Efficient planning is based on a couple of micro-elements, such as:

• Prioritizing tasks and solving urgent ones. This way, you respect deadlines and risk creating a chain of delays.

• Independent work process. This means that you don’t need frequent help to do your job.

• Fast and effective communication that’s always up-to-date. This means that you answer emails and phone calls as soon as possible without postponing meetings and other collective activities.

• Organization in the work environment. Having a clean and tidy desk or workplace helps with productivity by ensuring you always know where things are. Organizing documents alphabetically and using post-its are practical strategies. You can enhance this further by digitizing your documents, allowing direct searches for important files. If handling legal documents, it's wise to use templates for contracts. This prevents the need to create them from scratch and ensures you always know where to find them.

• Punctuality. Arriving on time or early is a sign of professionalism.

• A calendar that includes all the free days, weekends, leaves, office parties, etc.

• Preventive communication and measures. An organized person notifies their boss about the leaves a week or two prior so that the company doesn’t suffer from delays and other issues. Also, a person who can manage themselves always has a backup plan in case of an emergency.

Accountability

If you are an employee who independently manages your work, there is a good chance that you prevent many errors through careful planning. Nevertheless, mistakes happen, and when they do, it's important to show that you can respond honestly to your superiors.

Nowadays, managers and CEOs look for employees who are not afraid of taking responsibility in case of slip-ups. The last thing companies need is workers who try to blame others for their faults. Therefore, admitting your failures and successes is part of the journey, and it saves the funds of the company.

Here’s how an organized employee manifests their accountability:

• Accepting challenges and new responsibilities if they’re confident about their role.
• Declining new tasks and projects if they think that they’re not capable of completing them.
• Admitting their success with confidence.
• Admitting faults with a critical mind and thought of improvement.
• Reliability.
• Adaptation skills for unprecedented situations.

Initiative

Another crucial aspect is the initiative. Being able to find new ways to do your work or come up with new ideas for the whole business is one of the most useful skills.

Most agencies that wish to expand try to find employees who can work autonomously and know how to be productive. Also, they look for people who can bring useful input that can accelerate the company’s progress.

Having initiative skills include:

• Problem-solving skills through new and creative ideas.
• Coming up with innovative ideas that aid the company’s growth.
• Taking action without waiting for a superintendent’s encouragement (unless it’s a risky situation that requires approval).
• Encouraging others to take measures and to get involved.

Bonus:

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