Most offices are a ghost town the last two weeks of the year. The days between Christmas and New Year’s day finds many employees taking vacations and enjoying family and friends. The sound of your voice echoing through the empty office often prompts the question - now what will I do? Even though the office can be devoid of staff, you can still get some work done during those last two weeks in preparation for the upcoming year.

1 - Clean out your desk. If your desk is a mess, now is the perfect time to straighten it out. Armed with a shredder and small compartmentalized sorters, take stock of what is in and on your desk. Sort through the jumble of paperclips, pens and pencils that have been carelessly tossed around during the year. It’s always great to start the year off not having to search for the staples under the jumble of papers in the drawer.

2 - Do you have file folders you no longer need taking up residence on your desk? If you pulled a folder to do some research during the year, now is the time to put it back in the proper place. Especially if you are done with it. It will also make room on your desk for the new research needed for the upcoming year.

3 - Sort your files on the computer. Do you tend to type a lot of correspondence and documentation on the computer? This is an excellent time to start file folders on your computer to organize your work for easier retrieval. This will definitely improve your productivity for the upcoming year.

4 - Have you implemented new procedures during the past year, but have not had time to write them down? It is sometimes hard to write new procedures in the midst of chaos. You have the best of intentions but are unable to catch up. Now is the perfect time to get those procedures written down to also help to make you and your staff more productive during the upcoming year. With the staff out of the office for the holidays, you will have less interruptions and more time to concentrate.

5 - Relax. Spend some time looking over the goals that were established during your last performance evaluation. If there are goals that you have not reached, determine what you need to do in order to meet those goals.

The last two weeks of the year do not need to be unproductive. Even if the rest of the office is out, you can still be productive and get work done that does not rely on you working with other people.