By the time December rolls around, you’ve probably got one thing on your mind: taking a (much-deserved) break for the holidays.
You’ve worked hard all year and we know you deserve it! But before you log off and kiss this year goodbye, make sure to give your systems a clean sweep, too — specifically ClickUp!
We know it’s tempting to shut your laptop and forget all things business during this time of the year, but trust us. Doing the work now to start the new year with a clean slate is SO worth it.
With a few ClickUp organization steps, you’ll have old projects archived, new projects moved to the forefront, and old lists, dashboards, and SOPs updated or archived. Once you have those things tidied up, you’ll set yourself up for success, making it faster to get back into delegation (or doing) mode in the New Year.
But how do you clean out your ClickUp at the end of the year? That’s what we’re covering in this post, with your end-of-year Clickup organization checklist! Watch the video or catch the notes below!
Take a look at everything that changed inside your ClickUp workspace throughout the year. Use this as a “ClickUp review” to see what worked and what didn’t.
What ClickUp hierarchies or processes did you implement this year? Did you create new spaces, folders, lists, or dashboards to help you do your work better/faster? If so, how did it pan out?
For example, in the middle of the year, we started implementing task lists for each team member. This made it easier for us to have a place to dump some quick tasks we had to delegate to each other, as well as each team member could add their own tasks and reminders.
Overall, this worked really well for our team, and we’ll keep the structure of those lists for the next year!
However, one thing we’ll change is our structure for ClickUp builds. We were using Sprint folders for each client, but the Sprints weren’t working the way we wanted them to. We felt like we wanted our builds to be segmented by phases, but organized in a more manual way because every project is so different. We’ll be rearranging that in the new year.
Action item: Look at any new ClickUp processes, templates, dashboards, etc. that you’ve added, and make sure they’re helping you do your best work. If not, it might help to remove or archive them or make a plan to create new ClickUp workflows early next year.
It’s time to clean up that sidebar (aka all your ClickUp spaces)! If you’re a project-based business, this can be especially helpful to “clean the slate.” Simply archive all of your completed projects, folders, etc. Archives are great because the data never goes away, really. But once archived, those completed projects aren’t cluttering anything in your workspace.
To archive a folder or project, follow these steps:
Odds are, you’ve added a few dashboards to your ClickUp this year. We love dashboards because they give you a high-level view of everything going on in your Workspace, or by specific project.
You might use dashboards to help track a launch, a sales goal, a specific project, or a team member’s progress. You can even use dashboards for things like vision boards, brain dumps, workload reports, etc. So many of the dashboards a business creates are “temporary use,” and don’t need to stay in your dashboards area.
You can simply delete them and move on!
The same goes for your ClickUp Goals. Review all the goals you’ve created this year and see if any can be archived/removed entirely. For example, if you had a launch goal tracker and that launch has ended, you can archive that goal!
Of course, keep any goals that you want to compare or need in the New Year. For example, we keep our year-over-year sales trackers so we can see progress/changes.
The most important thing to remember about ClickUp? If you don’t have a process for using it, everything will be messy. That’s why you need SOPs (standard operation procedures) — and you need to keep them current!
The end of the year is the perfect time to review your ClickUp processes and SOP library, especially as work may be slowing down (as it does for many of us!).
Sort through all your SOPs to see what’s been used within the last year or so. If an SOP hasn’t been used in the last year, it may be time to archive it. There is also a very high chance that some of your SOPs need to be updated — especially if you made any shifts (like hiring or outsourcing) during the year.
Updating SOPs doesn’t have to be complicated, either. A simple read-through and quick line item update will do! If you record videos of your SOPs, you might want to update the text/list version and then create a task to re-record the video at a later date (like when the holidays aren’t happening).
Note: It may take some time to fully update your SOPs, but it’s one of those tasks that can really transform your business and make things work even better in the future.
Also, check your ClickUp automations and templates to make sure those updated SOPs are linked to the right tasks. This eliminates a lot of searching and confusion about which SOPs are related to which projects or tasks!
A little end-of-the-year TLC is great for your peace of mind and ability to actually disconnect at the end of the year. Because when you’ve got a great system in place, you don’t have to dread coming back online!
But this isn’t something that you should wait to do until the holidays; it’s something you should do year-round. ClickUp maintenance is such an important part of making this tool work for you — so make sure you’re checking in regularly.
If you want to keep your ClickUp organized year-round, check out the video below! We’ll show you how to clean up your ClickUp in seven steps.
