Successful Blog

Kick in Peak Productivity Immediately to Win

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Great Weeks Reek of Productivity

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Ten days ago I offered a Productivity Checklist for the best way to end a Friday. Key to the process was setting up things at the end of day — ordering tasks by priority, putting things where you most often use them, and planning the first thing you’ll accomplish on Monday.

Did you try it? I thought perhaps not, but even if you set a plan that ended your Friday neatly and optimized Monday for productivity, take care that you don’t walk in to your workspace and undo all that you’ve set ready to start this week in a great way

Start with Peak Productivity

Being able to kick in peak productivity on a Monday or any other day is function of focus and few steps found in this checklist.

    1. Start your “real work” a hour later on Monday. Most folks don’t want to interact with you first thing Monday. Invest in yourself and your own productivity. Make a commitment reward yourself as soon as you accomplish the simple steps of this checklist. When possible, avoid setting up meetings before 10a.m.

    2. Allow yourself 10 minutes for an office check. Organize everything on your desk. Put things away. Lay out things that still need attending to. Are the things you use most closest to where you use them? If not, move them, so that they will be. Are the files you access most on your computer only one click away? If not, as you work, move them so that they will be.

    3. Allow 10 minutes more to scan your incoming email. Look long enough to know whether a dire emergency is waiting your response. Schedule a time in your calendar to answer the rest.

    4. Make a realistic plan for the week. Plan no more than 3 important tasks per day. Schedule no more than 5 hours of independent work. Leave 1 hour for your social networking investment. You’ll have the other two hours for the inevitable interruptions, phone calls, emails, and meetings that steal time during your day. If you find extra time at the end of the day, you can use it get ahead on tomorrow.

    5. Order tasks what you can get done fastest first. Two reasons support this: It starts you with a quick sense of accomplishment and you’re able to pass on what you’ve finished –which means that someone else can be starting on what was your task one as you move to your task two.

    6. If your habit is to get in early to stop by the water cooler or spend some time on Twitter, keep your investment working for you. Put fences around the time you’ll be spending getting inspired by socializing or you might find that it undoes your performance energy.

The biggest part of kicking in productivity is knowing what we want to do and when we want to get it done. Taking time in the morning to plan a productive day immediately can put us in the mindset to our world flying high for the win!

Whether your workspace is in another building or in your kitchen, you’ll find that peak productivity will kick once you’ve outlined the tasks you want to accomplish in a realistic fashion that fits that time you have to do them. Once you get into the habit, you might find that a 30-Minute Strike Force Strategy may be enough to keep you going.

What’s your best tip to kick in peak productivity immediately?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Work with Liz on your business!!

5 Tips to Start Your Small Business in the Strongest Way

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Abby Evans

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Your dreams of starting your own business may be the result of one or more factors; a life –long desire to make a career out of something you’re good at or a need to supplement your current income are two very popular reasons. The jobs we have may not always be the jobs we want and starting your own business, be it small or medium sized, may provide you with the career enrichment or financial autonomy you’re hoping to achieve.

Your Input Determines Your Outcome!

But don’t be fooled…don’t think that starting your own business will be any easier than working for someone else. The only way to guarantee your own success is by hard work. Sometimes the input required is more arduous than jobs(http://www.jobs.ca) you’ve had or have. At any rate, it requires dedication, thoroughness and a follow-through attitude. Here a five key tips to give your business starting efforts the jump start they need to be rewarding and triumphant!

1. Give The People What They Want!

It is a regular occurrence that when starting their own business, many people center it around a product or service they think will be successful rather than on an already existing idea that has a proven and functional market. Think about it – it’s much better to grab a slice from a large, thriving market than from an industry with no market standing at all.

2. Keep Your Costs As Low As Possible

Stimulating a steady cash flow will be moot if you’re spending more than you’re making. Especially where starting a new business is concerned, you don’t want to spend the formative portion of its inception in debt. One simple standard to adhere to at any stage of your business’ development is – Don’t Pay Retail! Wherever possible try to source wholesale prices on your purchases and always try to negotiate a discount. Trust us, it adds up.

3. Too Much, Too Little…

This one’s pretty basic but is a useful maxim to apply when you’re starting your own business – overestimate your costs and underestimate your revenue. Being conservative in your incoming revenue expectations isn’t saying that this is what you’re hoping of aiming for; at the start of your own business it just gives you a greater wingspan with which to maneuver. Likewise, overestimation of your expenditure is just plain smart – how many times have you PLANNED on spending XXX amount of dollars on something and by the end you have to shell out three times that amount?

4. Testing Testing!

Whatever you spend your money on must directly and consistently prove and maintain value. Don’t let emotion or tradition be the rationale behind what you fund within your business. Test that what you’re paying for is actually commensurate with a real, functional value. For example, don’t spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on a marketing scheme that isn’t bringing customers to your door for the sake of it. Constantly evaluate the return statistics of every level of investment you make in your business.

5. When In Doubt, Ask!

If you’re worried about making a certain move or you just plumb don’t know what something will mean to your bottom line, seek professional help. There are a plethora of free SMB mentorship programs available that can pair you with seasoned professionals. These people provide valuable advice and perspective and can save tons of money and prevent you reinventing the wheel.

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Author’s Bio: Abby Evans is an avid blogger who writes on everything from how to find jobs in Toronto to outlining the principals of how to write a killer blog post.

Thank you for adding to the conversation!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Use the Psychology of Focus to Get More Done

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Beware the Illusion of Multitasking

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Have you ever had one of those days when you felt like you achieved a lot of things, but when you thought about it before a good night’s sleep, you found you’ve actually achieved nothing?

That is the illusion of multitasking.

Or as Clifford I. Nass, a professor of psychology at Stanford University once said, “Heavy multitaskers are often extremely confident of their abilities, but there’s evidence that those people are actually worse at multitasking than most people.”

And he’s not alone with his opinion. Various psychological studies have since found that multitasking comes with a host of side-effect, which includes everything from dampened creativity to lower IQ, and ironically, decreased productivity.

In fact, studies have shown that your brain can really only handle one task at a time, and even though it only takes one-tenths of a second to switch from one task to another, these “little” delays can add up and account for as much as 40% of a person’s productive time. And that’s not even including the 15 minutes it takes, on average, for people to get back “in the flow”.

So you want to multiply your productivity and grow your business? The answer is simple: focus.

Optimizing Your Work Space

Most people think focus is an issue of “willpower”. That if you just “try to focus more”, the problem would go away. I believe the inability to focus are really two problems: a lack of willpower and an abundance of negative triggers.

Before I go on, let’s get one thing straight: willpower is a limited resource. It’s not a motivational issue. It’s a capability issue. Studies have shown that if you spend your willpower resisting a piece of cookie, for example, you’ll spend less time trying to solve a complex puzzle later.

Willpower can grow, just like a muscle can get stronger, but there’s always a limit. It is a resource that should be managed like time and money. When we run out of willpower, we need to take a break. And because focus takes willpower, I believe multitasking, therefore, is a form of “mental break”.

So my approach to focus is twofold: increase willpower and conserving it. The first approach — willpower — is not only widely discussed, it’s also a painful process. I won’t go through it in this article.

The cleverer approach is to cut down on the distractions that drain your willpower. And one of the biggest drains of willpower are triggers. What are triggers?

According to BJ Fogg, founder of Stanford University’s Persuasive Technology Lab, three things must converge at the same time for a particular behaviour to take place: motivation, ability and trigger.

So according to Fogg, if you want to stop multitasking, you can try to change your motivation (difficult, in my experience) or you can hamper your ability (eg: hire a supervisor to stand over your shoulder). None of which are ideal, of course.

The last, and in my opinion, the easiest way to avoid multitasking is to simply get rid of triggers. Triggers are reminders for you to multitask. They are like temptations.

So for example, if you’re working on this report and Outlook pops up saying you have a new email… guess what you’ll do? That’s right, you’ll immediately check out the email. The same is true with any other alerts and notices.

Other common triggers include:

  1. Advertisements. Have you ever surfed the web for research but clicked through an ad and as a result, abandoned what you were doing? Enough said.
  2. The people around you. I used to work from home and one of the biggest triggers for multitasking at the time was my wife – once in a while she would ask me to check her email, or come into the room with a plate of food (it was a loving gesture, but that doesn’t make it OK!)

In your case, the trigger maybe the colleague who keeps dropping by, asking if “you have a minute”. Or perhaps it’s your boss always looking over your shoulder.

Mental Drains

Other than triggers, here are two more common mental-drains:

  1. Noise. Try this: Close your eyes and just listen. Can you hear your computer buzzing? How about the air conditioner humming? Maybe it’s traffic speeding by?

    These background noises have been shown to lower willpower and discipline, even if the subjects didn’t perceive stress from them. And as we now know, as your willpower drains, you begin to multitask.

  2. This one is the least talked-about mental-drain: functional control of your working environment. Functional control means you have to be able to adjust anything you want in your working space, things like the temperature, where you sit, what’s on your desk, brightness, etc.

    Functional control not only gives you physical comfort, it also give you psychological comfort. The fact that you can control the space gives you a sense of territoriality and safe space. It’s the difference between working in a strange environment and a place you’re familiar with.

    Now some entrepreneurs I know of are perfectly comfortable working in a cafe, but most of us just couldn’t handle the lack of functional control. The fact that there are strangers around you all the time puts most of us on edge.

So there, 4 easy ways to conserve your willpower and focus more. Do you have any tips? I’d love to hear them in the comments.

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Author’s Bio:
Andrianes Pinantoan is part of the team behind Open Colleges, an accredited business management courses provider. You can follow him @andreispsyched.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Do You Manage the Objectives of Project Management?

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Focusing …

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What are the main objectives of project management?

Simply put, project management simply means the planning, organisation and management of the resources necessary to bring about a successful conclusion to a specific task (‘deliverable’), or group of tasks. There are numerous software packages available setting out detailed methodologies and providing project management training for managers who are new to the role.

Project objectives define a project. Projects by their very nature dictate that a number of different parties are involved in completing the various elements of the project and it is vital that all those participating are totally clear on what the final deliverable is, and what the staged objectives to achieve that deliverable are. It is the overall project manager’s job to draw together each of the separate strands of work, on time and on budget and oversee the project to a successful conclusion where the deliverables are presented to the client as agreed at the project outset. In the case of large projects where multiple teams are assembled, some project management training may be required by less experienced project team leaders and this may take place either prior to the project commencing or ‘on the job’ as a learning curve.

There are three primary elements which make up the basic project objectives to be realised.

  1. Firstly, a ‘drop dead date’, or completion date by which the final deliverable must be achieved, must be agreed and recorded in the project plan. A series of milestone dates should then be applied to the project plan by which the various smaller tasks must be completed to keep the overall plan on schedule. It is important to incorporate short periods of ‘slippage’ into the project plan around the tasks most likely to be delayed and it is the project manager’s responsibility to identify such tasks and accurately estimate the amount of slippage to be allowed for. Clearly, one of the key skills of the effective project manager is time management, both his own and that of his team.
  2. Project costing must also be explored and integrated into the overall plan. The financial aspect of costs will be recorded in a separate budget spread sheet. It is extremely important that the financials are projected as accurately as possible and are monitored closely as the various stages of the project are completed. Other costs are measured in terms of the personnel who make up the project team, third party suppliers who will be required to make a contribution at certain stages and equipment or materials required depending upon the nature of the final deliverable.
  3. The final main project objective is the quality of the final deliverable. This must be to a standard acceptable to and agreed with the project sponsor and client. Most contractual agreements between the project sponsor and client will have a clause dictating that a forfeit will be levied should the project fail to be produced on time, on budget and to the required standard.

Know your objectives and you’ll be able to report with clarity. Your role will be mission critical in keeping everyone aware of how the project is progessing and how to keep it on track.

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Author Bio

Blathnaid Magill has an MBS in Electronic Business from University College Cork, Ireland. She enjoys writing about software and technology. She is currently writing on behalf of QA, who are the leading providers in Project Management Training.

Thank you, Blathnaid!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

How Do You Look in High Definition?

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cooltext443809558_authenticityOne of my favorite contemporary artists is Chuck Close. He is famous for photo-realist portraits that will blow your mind. When you’re standing at the right distance, you’d swear it was a photograph, but if you come closer, you can see that the pixels are all made up of tiny blobs with a dot in the center.

Your business must be accessible and recognizable from a distance and from close up, so you also need to pay attention to the details.

If your audience is viewing you from far away (e.g., via your social outpost on Twitter), do they clearly see the same message as close up (on your own website)? The tools and trappings may be different, but the impression should be the same.

Here’s a low-tech exercise that gives you a quick look at your brand consistency:

Go to each online location where your brand lives (Facebook page, Twitter accounts, LinkedIn corporate page, main website, etc.), and literally print out the pages. Tape them to a wall.

Grab a cup of coffee, and stand back. Does it look focused, or does it look like fingerpainting?

Assess which pages don’t contribute to the impression you want to build, and tweak them until they fit. Remember that cohesiveness doesn’t mean sameness!

Consider your messaging from several perspectives, and the audience will recognize your artistry regardless of the medium.

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Author’s Bio: Rosemary O” Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out their blog. You can find her on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee
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Be Healthy

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A Guest Post by
Rosemary O’Neill

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Sometimes, you’re cruising along at light speed, taking names and kicking butt, and all of a sudden…bang, you’re sick as a dog.

You suddenly have to rely on others, an uncomfortable position for anyone who is used to being in charge at all times.

In my particular case, I lost my voice completely. No teleconferences, no drive-through ordering, no chatting with friends or reading to the kids. It was humbling and jarring.

But here’s what I really want to share—in the midst of this, I had two different situations where friends stepped in and took over for me, and both times, I had to be almost physically restrained from jumping in to help. (My wonderful husband was on the other coast, providing moral support via text.)

It finally sunk in. While you’re trying to be a human-centered business, don’t forget that you are one of the humans in the center of it! If you aren’t taking care of yourself, and letting your friends take care of you, then you won’t be there for the long run.

So today, go quaff some orange juice, get out the Purell, and if you do get sick, admit you’re human and let someone take care of you.

Heartfelt thanks to my friends Coleen, Elyse, and Susan for coming to my rescue this week!

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Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out their blog. You can find her on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee
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