Tag Archives | productivity

Get Involved in Your Community

By on January 13, 2012 in Personal Growth, Success

Photo by Dennis Herrara (CC BY-ND 2.0)

Smart Moves

Did getting more involved in your community make your list of goals or resolutions?

Here’s why it should.

Any form of community involvement can be a wonderful thing in itself. The satisfaction you experience by contributing to your community and the people around you is priceless and many times is the most positive thing you do in your day. Although community involvement by its very nature is altruistic, you will often find that you receive more than you give.

But beyond the personal rewards, being active in your community also provides a tremendous opportunity to network with people who live in your area and the professional connections can help you advance your career or bring in more business. It can also present a fantastic opportunity to make new friends and build your personal support network.

Start participating in neighborhood or community meetings, take part in activities relating to your kids’ school or join a volunteer group or cause that interests you. The choices are endless. Find something that appeals to you and fits into your schedule. Don’t view this as another demand on your time, but as a possibility to enhance your career and your life.

Plus you’ll be setting a great example for your children.

I have over the years been a part of the school PTO and joined a local literacy tutoring group. I found both to be enjoyable, rewarding and very beneficial in adding to my pool of connections.

What type of community involvement have you done or are you planning to di in the future?

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7 Ways to Stay Productive While Working from Home

By on January 4, 2012 in Productivity

Today’s post is a guest post by Amanda Tradwick. Enjoy…

You’ve worked only one hour, and it’s nearly 4:30. The kitchen smells like a wharf with last night’s shrimp leftovers, the neighbor needs you to trim those branches that keep shedding leaves onto his precious lawn, the dogs peed on the carpet again, but the boss is breathing down your neck in cyberspace.
According to Business News Daily, people who work from home name household chores as their number one interruption at “the office,” and that’s followed by distractions like television, errands, children, and the Internet.

No one can fix all of these problems for us, but there are ways to keep chaos at bay.

1. Choose one room from which to do your work—and only one room. Working in a common area like the dining room sets you up for family- or roommate-related distractions. Choose a quiet space, preferably with a door from which you’re going to hang a “Do Not Disturb” sign (yes, you are) and with adequate natural lighting to keep you wide awake.
2. Keep your workspace tidy. Working in a clean and organized environment means you’ll be spending less time cleaning and organizing—or using cleaning and organizing as an excuse to procrastinate work—and more time accomplishing tasks. Try to spend five minutes daily or thirty minutes at the end of every work week putting your work place in order.
3. Look professional. Just because you work from the spare bedroom doesn’t mean you should do so in pajamas. Our hygiene and outfits have an impact on how we feel on a date just as much as how we feel in an office, even if it’s a home office. So, have breakfast, shower, and put on deodorant and clean clothes.
4. Invest in lumbar support. You’re probably going to be sitting in your chair for several hours; doing so in a cheap one can lead to shoulder and back pain and an overall I-hate-work mentality that will damage productivity. Try Craigslist or your local thrift store for a cheaper option.
5. Keep a glass of water nearby at all times. Not only will the motion of drinking every few minutes keep you awake almost as effectively as a cup of coffee, you’ll force yourself to take small breaks throughout the day, which is important for your body and mind.
6. Shut the door and turn off the phone. Remember that “Do Not Disturb” sign? To prevent upsetting family members, gently explain to them that just because you work at home doesn’t mean you’re always available for errands and favors. Your home office is still an office, and it should have office hours during which you work, not mow the lawn. Explain this to anyone who tends to call you during work hours, too, and then leave your phone on silent or turn it off altogether to maximize focus. If people refuse to help you on your path to productivity despite these conversations and the passage of time, it’s probably safe to say that you won’t lose much by ignoring them.
7. Define and separate work and play. One of the most difficult parts of working at home has been keeping myself from checking my Facebook and other social sites—while my work email is loading, after I’ve come back from the bathroom, when I get a notification on my phone, etc. My solution is this: create a business profile alongside your personal profile on your computer. On the business profile, use only business-related tools and use only a browser that has business-related favorites. The process of logging out of my business profile, logging in to my personal profile, checking Facebook, logging out, then logging back into my business profile has been enough to deter me from temptation…at least until lunch.

About the author:

Amanda Tradwick is a grant researcher and writer for CollegeGrants.org. She has a Bachelor’s degrees from the University of Delaware, and has recently finished research on minority grants and student grants in Utah.

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Why You Need a Clean Sweep if You Want to Improve Your Success

By on December 30, 2011 in Life Balance, Personal Growth, Success

Photo by Jesse Gardner

Every once in a while I get the urge to just dump everything…well almost everything… that I’m doing and clear the decks. Just sweep them clean. Create a blank slate on which to write our aspirations, goals and dreams. We get so tied up and bogged down in everything we have on our plates; projects, commitments, habits, that we have no room to breathe. No space to experiment. Not even the tiniest crack in our schedule to stop and think.

Do I truly care about the projects I’m involved in?

Why am I doing this again?

Do I really need to do that thing?

Here’s the harsh reality. If you haven’t made any progress on those goals you set earlier in the year, you need to question if they really matter.

Now take a deep breath and let them go. Make room for new goals, fresh ideas, creative projects.

What would you do if only you had the time?

It’s almost a new year, time for a fresh start.

Time for some house cleaning, both literally and figuratively.

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Yes check

13 Things You Need to Do to Wrap Up Your Year Right

By on December 26, 2011 in Personal Growth, Productivity, Simple Steps
  1. Yes check

    Image via Wikipedia

    Clean out email sent, trash and archive files. Will speed up email program!

  2. Delete any unread newsletters, articles, feeds, magazines. Let them go – there will plenty more in 2011!
  3. Finances – pay bills, issue invoices, & balance accts. Bonus – make budget for 2011!
  4. Clear your inbox!  – set aside time to sift through email – don’t go into 2011 with unanswered email over your head.
  5. Clear your piles! -use an hour or 2 to sort, toss & file old papers – Clean slate work space.
  6. Tackle your E-desk – delete, condense and organize desktop shortcuts & electronic files.
  7. Tackle paper files – sort, toss & file old papers – condense & organize files
  8. Evaluate unfinished projects – do they still matter to you? If not, let them go…
  9. Do a quick inventory of supplies – at work & at home. Do you have too many? Need to replenish some?
  10. Back up your computer files to an external hard drive or the cloud!
  11. Do a review of the year – What did you achieve? What went worked? What didn’t?
  12. Set goals, intentions, focus for 2012… what do you want next year to look like?
  13. Rest – give yourself permission to take a well-deserved break!
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The One Thing You Must Do to Gain Control of Your Inbox

By on December 19, 2011 in Productivity, Simple Steps
Email Icon

Image via Wikipedia

Simple Steps

Do you cringe when you open your email? How could you possibly have 42 new emails overnight you ask?

If you’re lucky they’re spam (that’s easy to take care of with a good spam filter,) but usually they’re not. Many of those messages are announcements, updates, sales or some other form of mailing list torture that you’ve somehow gotten yourself into; social media updates, group messages, retail ads, community, news or parenting digests, the list of our informational interests is endless.

You may have thought it seemed like a good idea at the time. Of course you don’t want to miss out on a good sale. You have to keep up with the latest news and industry updates. You never know when you’re going to receive a fabulous new recipe or tip that will change your life.  But now, the informational deluge is overwhelming. You cannot conceivably read every one of those emails if you ever want to get anything else done. They must be multiplying while you sleep…

You could just delete them. That’s probably what you have been doing, isn’t it? How’s that working?

Great for a few moments, but they just keep coming back, stalking you like that weird kid in 7th grade who wanted to walk home with you every day…but gave you the creeps. You just knew eventually you were going to have to tell him to leave you alone. Right? Or did you just try dodging him, ducking over to another street or walking fast so that he maybe couldn’t keep up? That’s just sad…

Well the same thing happens in your inbox. You can run, you can hide, but you will never get away from the unwanted stalker emails unless you take a firm proactive action.

Wait! It’s easier than it sounds.

Unsubscribe. Yep, that’s it. That’s all you have to do.

Look for the link at the bottom of the email. You may have to log in and change your email preferences or settings, especially if it’s a group or membership.

But that takes time. Stop whining and just do it. A few minutes now will save you minute after minute, week after week after week. Those minutes add up to many hours of your valuable time wasted.

I started doing just a few unsubscribes each day for a week or two. It took maybe 10 minutes at most. The funny thing is it would have taken me at least that amount of time to sift through them to get to the important emails. And after a couple of weeks my inbox was so light, I could see white space around the edges.

Try it for a week and see if you don’t notice a difference.

*If you can’t possibly live without some of these updates, use your email program to create a filter for updates or sort them into a separate folder for later review. Pay attention to which ones you actually read on a regular basis and unsubscribe from the rest.

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Make a Difference in Your Productivity in Just One Hour

By on December 12, 2011 in Productivity
An

Image

Simple Steps

Implement a daily Focus Hour. We bandy about strategies for focusing and concentrating our mind on technical or creative pursuits, but the single most useful tactic to get more done in less time is to eliminate all distractions and “uni-task.” But, but…people need me…I can’t be out of the loop. Really? Even for an hour?

Try it for a few days and you’ll see for yourself how valuable it is. For 60 minutes each day, preferably at the start of your day, shut off and shut out everything else and just focus on doing whatever task or project you’ve chosen. If you can’t manage 60 minutes, try 30. Any time you can carve out will help.

I have been doing this, not every day, but several a week and even I am shocked at how much I can get done. (Confession…I have to leave my phone downstairs and out of earshot so that I am not tempted to peek at messages.) But I am getting more comfortable with the disconnection as I start to see results.

Question everything, move forward, enjoy the journey.

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English: Line art drawing of a scroll

Don’t Forget the Golden Rule….of Productivity

By on December 9, 2011 in Productivity
English: Line art drawing of a scroll

Image via Wikipedia

Every once in a while we need to be reminded of the basics…

We are, most of us at least, creatures of habit and structure. We thrive when there are rules and guidelines to assist us through the veritable maze of life and work processes. Why should productivity be any different? Learning or developing any routine or program can be frustrating and confusing. If you are feeling overwhelmed, don’t let those feelings discourage you from your quest for higher personal and professional efficiency. You will not master every technique for organization or effectiveness; you should not even try. I can hear the type A’s protesting out there – mostly because I am one of them – but if you strive for perfection, you will inevitably come away disappointed.  Seek instead; measurable improvement over time and your pay-off will be less stress, greater success and more time to enjoy your life.

So, with that in mind, I have assembled a list of the most crucial rules that will ensure your success in becoming more productive over time. They are a combination of strategies gathered by researching and studying highly successful productive professionals, juggling mothers and also what I have personally found works for me.

Productivity Golden Rules

  1. One Change at a time – you get the best results when you truly focus on one change at a time.
  2. Know Your Why – What is the purpose behind your goals or work?
  3. Clarify your objectives.
  4. Plan your day, every day.
  5. Energy management – Know your peak productivity cycle.
  6. Set boundaries – Protect your time and space.
  7. Play to Your Strengths – Delegate or automate the rest.
  8. Don’t overthink, don’t procrastinate, and just do it.
  9. Invest in yourself – Learn, grow, improve your skills.
  10. Focus, Focus, Focus!

For a more in depth discussion on these productivity rules, read their individual posts, where we describe them in further detail.

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Crystal ball

The Single Most Important Productivity Tip

By on November 28, 2011 in Productivity, Simple Steps, Success

Crystal ball

Image via Wikipedia

Simple Steps

From the mailbag…

The question I am most often asked is… “What is your best productivity tip?”

Oh, there are so many, but the answer I give just might surprise you…

It’s not, do the most important thing first.

It’s not plan your day, every day.

It’s not eliminate distractions.

It’s not write everything down.

It’s not even set aside a power focus hour.

 

It’s BE CRYSTAL CLEAR ON WHAT YOU ARE TRYING TO ACCOMPLISH.

Because if you aren’t clear about what you’re trying to do or why you’re doing it, then the rest doesn’t really matter. You can be organized and efficient, but if you’re doing the wrong things then you are not being productive.

You are simply wasting your time efficiently.

Question everything, move forward, enjoy the journey.

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Santa Claus with a little girl

How to Keep Your Sanity (and get stuff done too) This Holiday Season

By on November 25, 2011 in Happiness, Life Balance, Productivity, Sanity Savers
Santa Claus with a little girl

Image via Wikipedia

The holiday season is fabulous time of cheer, good will and a lighter mood for most, but it can also be stress-laden and overwhelming to many. It’s hard to stay focused in the midst of holiday shopping, music, parties and revelry. It can also take a herculean effort to actually accomplish anything of substance at work while trying to juggle your extra family obligations at home.

What can you do?

Take some time for yourself – Yes, it may be tough, but you really do need to stop and catch your breath.

Set reasonable expectations – You cannot possibly accept every invitation and opportunity that comes your way. Don’t even try…and don’t feel guilty. If you can’t make it to the company party because Johnny has a school pageant, so be it. And if you just don’t have the energy to make 5 dozen cookies for the charity bake sale, then don’t commit to that. Don’t be a martyr. You can only squeeze so much into your day.

Pay attention to your health – Don’t use the excuse of a packed calendar to let your health slide. You will feel better and have more energy if you try to stay active and make somewhat healthy food choices. Instead modify if you need to. Swap out that glass of wine for eggnog. Cut back to a 20 minute walk at lunch if you can’t get to the gym after work.

Plan, plan, plan – Make a gift list, make a party list, keep a shopping list handy. Also, block out uninterrupted time for quiet, focused work. It’s more important now than ever to plan your day, your time and your most important tasks.

Lighten up. Try to have fun while you’re working and preparing for the holidays. Crank up the holiday music, put on your Santa hat and reward yourself with a cookie while you’re getting things done.

What is your biggest holiday stressor?

How do you keep yourself sane and productive? 

Question everything, move forward, enjoy the journey.

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Illustration depicting thought.

Want to be More Productive? You Need a Work Routine

By on November 14, 2011 in Productivity, Tools

Illustration depicting thought.

Image via Wikipedia

Simple Steps

Develop a work routine

In keeping with our simplifying theme this month, one great strategy to simplify your day and improve your productivity at the same time is to develop a work routine. Routines work well for all aspects of our lives. The most successful people I have coached use routines to help them achieve their goals, balance their lives, stay healthy and all around get things done.

It’s actually very simple. Once you cultivate a set of habitual actions that work best for you, you have a routine. No extra planning, decisions or thought process necessary. It’s far more productive than having to stop and decide what comes next.

An example routine might consist of:

Choose 3 top tasks for the day

Spend 20 minutes doing an email check and sort

Take 20 minutes to check and return voicemails

Spend 20 minutes on social media marketing

Use 60 minutes to work on top priority

Take 15 minute break

30 minutes to make phone calls

Spend 90 minutes with team or individually to work on project

Lunch break

And so on…

People tend to get more done both at work and at home when they have routines to support them. So, your challenge this week is to develop a work routine that will enable you to get more done with less stress.

*Bonus – Try using routines in the morning, evening and weekends too! It’ll be easier to fit in exercise and remember to take your vitamins and whatever else you have packed into your days.

Question everything, move forward, enjoy the journey.

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