Color Organization

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LNCtips.com: Color Organization


Quick! Look at this paragraph. Does one word in the paragraph stand out? If you picked the word "color", you were right. That's why color is a powerful organizing tool. Our brains can recognize colors and attach meanings to the colors faster than we can read text. And faster means you'll have time for more important tasks than searching for things.  Let's look at some approaches to color organization used by law firms and ways that you can adapt those organization tips to your home office.

One of the easiest color organizational methods is to use different colored file folders. In law firms, each case can generate hundreds of files.  If all those files are in manilla-colored folders, it can take a long time to find the exact file that's needed. That's why many law firms organize their case files with different colors for different parts of the case. For example, they put expert information into white folders, correspondence into yellow folders, research into blue folders, etc. Imagine how much easier it is to look through three white folders to find a file on your cardiac expert than it is to look through hundreds of manilla folders to find the same information.

Many law firms put medical records, medical research and other information into binders, then group those binders alphabetically by case. Using different colors on the binder spines can aid the user to quickly find case information. For example, in the law firm where I work, the binder spines are yellow for presuit medical records, white for litigation medical records, light blue for medical research, and green for mediation notebooks. Even though my firm has hundreds and hundreds of binders, it's easy to quickly find the one I need.

In your home office, you probably won't have hundreds of files and binders, at least at first, but you can still use color as an organization tool.

* You can organize your clients by different colored folders or different colored dots on folders.

* You can organize by function. For example, you can put invoices into green folders and work product into blue ones.

* You can also organize by priorities. For example, put projects with looming deadlines into red folders. Put those that can wait a bit into yellow folders.

* Or, you can use a mini-version of a law firm's filing cabinet. Buy an expandable file folder for each case and put your medical research, work product, correspondence, invoices, etc. into different colored folders within the expandable file folder.

Now that you've added color to your office, you're going to have more time and a better functioning office

...Katy Jones