Quick Productivity Tip

Turn off the ringer on your phone and let voice mail pick up your calls for a while.

Desk Clutter

We know that clutter impairs our productivity. But it could be doing worse things than that - what is the impact it is having on your clientele or your superiors when they see your messy office?

Imagine meeting an attorney for the first time, whose office is a cluttered mess - papers piled all over the desktop, mail and files scattered on the credenza, and an overloaded bookcase with stacks of books on top and on the floor. Regardless of the actual skill or reputation of that attorney, might your first impression be a negative one? Might your confidence in that attorney be lessened as well? In business, first impressions are important.

An important area to keep clutter free is your workspace/desk. Here are some tips from Monica Ricci on dealing with desk clutter:

Get a good desk. This doesn’t mean an expensive desk. It means one that is right for you and meets your daily needs. Your personal work habits as well as your business activities will determine what style and size desk is appropriate for you. If you refer to books, manuals or publications regularly in your business, a desk with an upright hutch would make sense. You can keep the books you refer to daily in the hutch. They will be easily accessed, but up off your work space. If books don’t need to be right at hand, a separate bookcase will suffice and you can go without the hutch in favor of a larger flat workspace. If you use a computer (and these days, who doesn’t?) and you have ample floor space, consider an L-shaped desk. You can keep your computer on one section and still have a large workspace on the other. This configuration allows you to avoid juggling two priorities on the same desktop. Another great aspect about an L-shaped desk is the additional room you gain for desktop tools such as upright file holders, stacking trays, baskets, portable hanging files, and your phone. Don’t forget all the space on your walls. When you can’t build out, build up! Shelves are a fantastic way to display personal items, awards, and photos while keeping your work area clean and functional.

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Helping the Negative Person

Try as we might to keep a positive mental outlook, we are bound to mix it up with persons at work or home that have a constant negative attitude.

Nobody likes a negative person. Listening to complaints from someone with a
pessimistic, mud-slinging, doom and gloom attitude can drain your energy, push
your patience to the limit, and impact your mental and physical health.

If someone who's close to you is consistently negative, you'll want to do something to help them change their attitude. That's because you can see what they can't: that their comments and actions are negatively impacting their career and hurting their interpersonal relationships.

So what kind of things can we do?

• cut them some slack
• establish boundaries
• ask for clarification
• offer solutions
• don't get baited
• call them on it
• don't let it get to you
• remember negativity is contagious

Check out this website for more information on each of these coping mechanisms.

Using Thunderbird for GTD

There are various ways to implement GTD in an email program, including David Allen's Outlook plug-in program. Mozilla's open-source email program, Thunderbird, provides a label feature that works well with GTD. For an interesting GTD system using Thunderbird, check out Entropic Principal's blog.

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Cut Off Your Time Stealers

Think about the activities that steal too much of your time. For many of us, we spend too much time dealing with email. For others, we spend too much time IM'ing.

One way to deal with such time stealers is to put yourself on a time budget for those types of activities. For example, you can set a fixed block of time each day to deal with your emails. That way, you won't be distracting yourself all day long, and spending more time than it deserves. It may also force you into focusing only on the important emails, delegating some emails tasks where practical, and thus improving your overall time and task management.

Taming the Paper

We are often told to handle a piece of paper only once - but what are we supposed to do with that piece of paper when we first handle it? A useful acronym to use is FAT - File, Act or Toss. Those are really the only three things someone can do with a piece of paper. We can:

-File it for future use or reference
-Act on it right now
-Toss it in the garbage.

Since much of what we receive we end up tossing eventually, toss it now, not later! That will get rid of quite a bit of stuff right off the bat.

Make the File part easy by having a readily accessible and easy to use filing system.

One thing I have found helpful is a scanner - if I'm not sure whether to File or Toss, worst case is I scan it into an organized computer file system so if I ever need it it will be there, and the paper end of the clutter disappears in either event.

Staying Focused When Working From Home

More and more of us are working from home. For some, this is our full time job. For others, we are bringing work home or connecting with our work computers from our home computers.

Especially for full timers, it can be hard to stay focused on work. For some tips on keeping focused, check the link below. Here is one of the tips:

Don't permit your friends and extended family to run over you. Many people get the blind idea that if one works from home then they are not actually working.Well-meaning people may try to fill your doorway to bring advice about getting a real job. Others may simply believe that if you are at home, then you are fair game for chitchat and socialization.You must stand firm. You must make certain your friends and family understands that when you are working, then you ARE working! If they wish to socialize with you, then they need to do it during the hours that are not dedicated to your home business.You are the only one who can stand up for you. Your friends and family will seldom be able to appreciate your dedication to your home business, unless you make the effort to make sure that they have the same respect for your business that you do.

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