“Life hacks”—or innovations to make your life easier in unexpected and original ways—are inventions of the Information Age. If you’d like some modern tips and tricks to reorganize your cluttered workspace and improve your office efficiency, read on.
- Paint fingernail polish on your keys. Starting off our list, this particular ‘hack is a reinvention with an Information Age twist. For those of us with many keys—all of which look the same in early morning light—painting your keys with nail polish is a quick and cheap way to tell which one’s your office key and which unlocks the theater prop room. You could also look into “key covers”—little plastic caps that come in all different colors and designs to fit your sense of style.
- Label binder clips to sort paperwork. Folders are all well and good, but sometimes you’re in too much of a rush to deal with them. Label binder clips so you can tell at a glance which forms have been completed and which ones still need signatures.
- Use extra binder clips to tame cables and cords. Clipped to your desk, you can use the silver “handles” to thread the cables of your desktop electronics to keep the different cords under control. Twist ties from grocery store bread bags or zip ties work well for this, too.
- Open supplies in heavy plastic wrappings with a manual can-opener. Instead of wrestling with your scissors to open the plastic packaging of a new flash drive, dedicate a cheap manual can opener to cut open packages like these, saving you time and shredded fingers. Check out this video if you'd like to see how to do it for yourself.
- Include non-English letters and characters in your computer passwords. To increase your security, go beyond the traditional alphabet and special characters to add tildes, umlauts, and other accent marks! A little notebook containing your passwords—especially for programs you don’t use often—will save you time resetting your access information every time to go to log on. (Be careful—store this notebook in a secure location!)
- Install a magazine rack as a corner shelf for extra room. With a drill and some screws, you’ll have a creative “catch all shelf” utilizing space you never realized you had. This method won’t work with a plastic magazine holder—besides, the wooden ones look more professional. Want more ideas? Search "bookcase" or "office space ideas" on Pinterest.
- “Touch everything only once.” This hack involves a new philosophy more than a gadget or DIY project. Coming from a former personal assistant, she explains that you should touch every piece of paperwork only once so that “nothing gets put on a to-do pile that never gets to-done.” This suggestion may be the most difficult on this list for a busy School Head like yourself to pull off, but it’ll save you headaches in the long run.
Additional ISM resources:
ISM Monthly Update for Trustees Vol. 10 No. 1 E-mail Wrangling
Private School News Vol. 12 No. 3 De-stressing in the Office
Private School News Vol. 9 No. 2 Keeping Your Work Space Organized
Additional ISM resources for Gold Consortium members:
I&P Vol. 26 No. 7 Define and Prioritize the Head’s Major Tasks
