Successful Blog

  • Home
  • Community
  • About
  • Author Guidelines
  • Liz’s Book
  • Stay Tuned

My Productivity Secret Weapon

February 9, 2017 by Rosemary 1 Comment

If your work involves spending any significant amount of time online, you’re always going to be vulnerable to distraction.

Ooh pictures of baby hedgehogs…

Every tab you keep open in your browser represents an opportunity to wander down the garden path. That’s fantastic if you need creative inspiration or you’re spending some downtime. It’s destructive if you’re working against a deadline or trying to “move the big rocks.”

Hey, a new recipe for enchiladas…

Today, I wanted to share my single most effective productivity secret weapon. (Full disclosure: my amazing husband kept telling me about this and I only recently downloaded and fell in love with it.)

It’s called Pocket and if you use it effectively, it can really keep you focused and organized.

Pocket

Once you sign up for an account, you have a space where you can save articles or web pages of interest. There’s a browser-based interface and an app for your phone, so you can save things from anywhere.

The superpower comes in when you use the browser extension button (it’s available for Chrome, Safari, Opera, and MS Edge). With the extension, you get a tiny magic button in your browser bar. Any time you find yourself on a distracting website, just click the magic button and it’s saved for later.

Yes, you can save fun things like hedgehog pictures and recipes, but you can also use tagging to organize and separate the leisure items in the list from the business-related content. I’ve got tags set up for “research” and “marketing planning” as well as “recipes.”

Sometimes magic happens when the random content you’ve been reading collides with a real-world business requirement. Remember the scene in Working Girl where Melanie Griffith pulls out her “idea” folder and shows Mr. Trask how she put together Trask and radio?

Pocket is my “idea” folder and my distraction terminator. Did I mention that it’s free for most functions? There is also a premium option that adds advanced search, permanent saving of pages (protects against website changes), and other goodies.

I wasn’t asked to promote Pocket, and I’m not an official “ambassador,” but it’s made such a big difference to me that I had to share it!

How do you defend against distraction?

 

 

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for Social Strata — makers of the Hoop.la community platform. Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

 

Featured image via Flickr CC: Chief Trent

Filed Under: Productivity Tagged With: content_tool, Productivity

FIOTB–Tool 1: Content Development Tool

March 13, 2006 by Liz Leave a Comment

Finding Ideas Outside of the Box logo 2

Because thinking outside of the box is unstructured, it can can lead to “swiss-cheese solutions”–answers that have holes in them–things that we just didn’t think of in our unstructured thinking. So I find that using structured tools relieves the stress of checking to make certain that all bases have been covered.

Content Development Tool

Ironically using boxes makes it easier to think outside the box. I use this content development tool to make sure that I have considered a topic from every direction before I start getting it ready for any audience. This tool works equally as well for planning an interview, a brand, an article, a small meeting, or a major presentation.

Purpose/Getting Attention: What does my audience want to know?

  • What are my main points and ideas?
  • __________________________________________________
  • __________________________________________________
  • __________________________________________________
  • __________________________________________________
  • What facts and details support them?
  • __________________________________________________
  • __________________________________________________
  • __________________________________________________
  • __________________________________________________

Presentation/Keeping Interest: How is it that I will show and tell them?

  • How will it look?
  • __________________________________________________
  • __________________________________________________
  • __________________________________________________
  • __________________________________________________
  • How will I say it with simple elegance?
  • __________________________________________________
  • __________________________________________________
  • __________________________________________________
  • __________________________________________________

Brand YOU/Reader Satisfaction: Why will they be glad they listened?

  • Analysis, predictions, interpretations
  • __________________________________________________
  • __________________________________________________
  • __________________________________________________
  • __________________________________________________
  • What value-added will leave my audience feeling satisfied?
  • __________________________________________________
  • __________________________________________________
  • __________________________________________________
  • __________________________________________________

Whether you’re inside or outside of the box, you need to know the what, how, and why of the information you’re offering any audience about any topic. That’s why I’m sharing this tool before we begin talking about getting ideas and solving problems.

I use it all of the time. It’s here now, if you need it.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles:
Got the Idea. Now What Do I Do with It?
Editing for Quality and a Content Editor’s Checklist
Introducing Power Writing for Everyone
Why Dave Barry and Liz Don’t Get Writer’s Block

Filed Under: Business Life, Checklists, Content, Outside the Box, Productivity, Strategy/Analysis, Successful Blog, Writing Tagged With: bc, content_development_tool, content_tool, finding_ideas_outside_of_the_box, generating_ideas, thinking_outside_the_box

Recently Updated Posts

Lay the Best Foundation for Your Business

How to Generate Online Leads for Your Local Business

How to Build up Your Career by Showing Off Your Uniqueness

How to Build up Your Career by Showing Off Your Uniqueness

How to Know if Your Marketing Strategy is Working

How to Know if Your Marketing Strategy is Working

3 strategies for achieving business growth

Three Strategies for Achieving Business Growth

Build a foundation that will grow with you

Build a Foundation that Will Grow with You



From Liz Strauss & GeniusShared Press

  • What IS an SOB?!
  • SOB A-Z Directory
  • Letting Liz Be

© 2022 ME Strauss & GeniusShared