Aaaargh! Oh, wait. There's cake? Well then...

1) It will usually be viewed as an informal party, and should always be accompanied by food.

2) If done too often, employees will begin sluffing off on Friday, because they know they’re going to have to make up the time on Saturday anyway and they need to enjoy their weekend while they can. (This may not pertain to your employees, per se, but I’m surprised at how often this one pops up.)

3) If used rarely, productivity and creativity can almost double on these days because your employees now it isn’t their usual 9 to 5 and they need to come in with their game faces on.
4) Starting at 10 instead of 8 will go a long way toward tcutting back on the complaining when it’s time for your team to get out of bed.

5) Nobody really needs to wear a suit and a tie to the office on Saturday.

6) If you know you’re going to need your team to work on Saturday, consider taking them out for lunch during the week. Unless that hour could get you out of working on the weekend, in which case you’re better off staying right where you are.

7) Make weekends project driven, not time driven. Knowing they have to get the first three stages of a project done by Monday morning, your team will bust their humps to get those stages out and get out of there as quickly as possible. If they know they’re stuck until 4 regardless, they’re going to drag the process out under a case of the weekend “I don’t wannas” for as long as possible, and may still be cutting it close at the end of the day-if they don’t just decide to roll over what they haven’t done until Monday morning.
Opening the windows might seem like cruel and unusual punishment but there’s almost nothing more painful than a grey, gloomy office on a bright, sunny Saturday. So let the sunshine in, take it with a grin, and go out there and get ‘er done!

Tags: Business, productivity, working weekends

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Remember when being able to put “skilled multi-tasker” on your resume was a good thing? Guess what? Science has finally proven what most of us have known (or at least suspected) for a while now. Multi-tasking kills your ability to actually get anything done!

Okay, granted, that’s not entirely true. I can reset a router while talking on the phone and pulling a mouse on a string for Office Cat. No problem. What I can’t do is write this blog post while talking on the phone, checking my email, eating Chex Mix, talking to the guy next door and keeping an eye on your error messages. Guess what’s not going to get done?

Two hands. One brain. There's a reason for that.

Right. Writing this blog.

Focus

When you’re doing multiple things at once, you’re not really paying attention to any of them. When you’re doing four things, each of those things only gets a quarter of your attention. Do you really think your boss wants a quarter of your attention to be on the presentation they have to give tomorrow?

I don’t think so. If they did, there’d be a lot more World of Warcraft allowed in the workplace.

Time

Jobs done in tangent with other jobs intrinsically take longer, because they don’t have your complete attention. That means that while it might have taken you five minutes to check your email at the beginning of the day, it’s going to take you the better part of 20 while you’re on the phone. And as mentinged in the article link above, it can take 15 minutes or longer to get back on-task after wandering off to answer one little email!

Multi-tasking is taking up time that you don’t have.

The moral of this story? If you really want to maximize productivity, forget everything you ever learned about multi-tasking. Go back to the good old days of doing one thing at a time unless you absolutely, positively have no other choice. You’ll be impressed with what it does for your mental health, your team will be impressed by what it does for the quality of your work. It’s a win/win situation all the way around.

Are you a chronic multi-tasker? What’s your take on the idea that continued multi-tasking can actually deteriorate your ability to concentrate on one thing at a time? 

Just tuning in? Don’t forget to join us for Part 1: Power-Up Your Morning , Part 2: Learning to Start Your Day Early and Part 3: Where Do You Start?

Tags: be more productive, Business, increasing productivity, marketing, multitasking, productivity

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It’s easy to get overwhelmed by your to-do list. If it’s anything like mine, what you actually get when you write it all down is a never-ending list of errands to run, work to be done, housework to do and friends expecting you to put in an appearance sooner or later. Home improvement projects. Personal projects. Etcetera. Etcetera.

When the list gets long enough, just the idea of trying to get from beginning to end is enough to make you squirm. Or decide to take the day off and hitchhike to Hawaii. Whatever. The point is, eventually you’ll end up overwhelmed. That’s where the trouble begins.

Prioritizing Your To-Do List

The first thing you want to do is prioritize your to-do list. If you have more to do than time to do it, ask yourself what really needs to be done. Do you have to go to dinner at your aunt’s tonight, or can you reschedule for a more convenient time? Take anything off your list that doesn’t absolutely have to be there. You can come back to it when your head’s a little less likely to explode.

Accept that you probably won’t get through everything today (unless you can) and that you’ll be carrying some items over to tomorrow (unless you won’t). Put the things that have to be done today on top. Include pieces of long-term projects here; shunting those off until tomorrow is just going to  put you farther behind.

Now, put the most important thing on that list on top. Note that what’s most important isn’t necessarily what’s most urgent. Maybe you have to have a certain report in by the end of the day, but if you don’t set up a meeting with your team this morning you might not get a chance to later. Do what’s most important first, even if it’s not necessarily what’s most urgent.

Once that “most important thing” is done, move on to the next most important thing. And the next. And the next. By starting with your heaviest job when you’re at your best (preferably early in the morning) you’ll be able to get more done, more efficiently, and have a better chance of making it to the end of your daily list by the end of the day.

Starting Big Cuts Back on Procrastination

Saving your light work for the end of the day, when you’re tired and aren’t performing your best, doesn’t just guarantee that more important projects will get your full, undivided attention. It also guarantees that a two hour project won’t turn into a four hour one. Trying to do something labor-intensive when you’re tired leads to daydreaming, dawdling, procrastinating (remember that one more cup of coffee we were going to give up on?) and dragging out simple tasks far longer than they need to be dragged out for.

Pull it up. Get it done. Go home at the end of the day.

Do you do your most important tasks first, or do you save your “heavy” load for the end of the day?

Just tuning in? Don’t forget to join us for Part 1: Power-Up Your Morning and Part 2: Learning to Start Your Day Early.

Tags: maximizing productivity, prioritizing, productivity

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When I first started writing this post, I had every intention of calling it “Learning to Get Out of Bed”. Because really, isn’t that big, warm, soft, comfortable bed the biggest obstacle you face when it comes to  maximizing your productivity by starting your day early?

Then I heard the melodious sound of my roommate’s shower running at noon and realized that no, no it’s not. Just getting out of bed in the morning isn’t enough to get your day started. (They’ve been up since seven.) You have to actually motivate yourself to step away from the email and the television, put down that cup of coffee and get moving.

But we’ll still start with learning to get out of bed!

Learning to Wake Up Early

For those of you who think training your body to get up early is just a matter of setting your alarm clock an hour early, I say…good luck. You’re going to need it.

Myth: Going to bed earlier will let you get more sleep so you can get up earlier.

In theory,going to bed early works great. After eight hours of sleep, you wake up bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and ready to go, right? Problem is, if you’re used to going to bed at midnight and you try and go to sleep at seven, guess what’s going to happen?

You’re going to lay there for 3-4 hours before you finally fall asleep.

Your body needs different amounts of sleep to recharge, so here’s what experts suggest. Go to bed when you’re sleepy (but not overtired), then get up at the same time. Every day. And no matter how tired you still are, you have to drag yourself out of bed when the alarm goes off. If you tend to sleep through your alarm, get one of the annoying buzzing ones that put an earthquake to shame. If you constantly hit “Snooze” get something like Clocky the Moving Alarm clock to make you get out of bed.

Whatever you do, don’t leave your clock where you can reach it without having to get up. You’ll slap it off in your sleep, and it’s all downhill from there.  

Getting Started Once You’re Up

Avoid staring at the computer screen when you're still a shadow of your bright-eyed, bushy-tailed self.

Getting out of bed is half the challenge. The other is to motivate yourself to get started once you’re up. Word of advice: Don’t check your email, surf the web or hit social media sites while you drink your morning coffee. An intended fifteen minute coffee break can easily turn into 3-4 lost hours if you’re not very, very careful.

Instead, get out of bed, exercise (even if it’s just a ten minute walk around the block), and head straight into the shower. Even if you’re working from home, make yourself get a shower and get dressed. This cues your brain into the fact that it’s time for the day to start. Grab coffee and breakfast, and sit down to eat without getting sucked into any other activities. I find this is a good time to make my to-do list for the day so I know where to get started.

As soon as your breakfast is done, put your plates in the sink and get started on the first item on your list. It should all roll up from there.

Having trouble sticking to your to-do list? Try tackling it 20 minutes at a time! Tune in to Part 3 to learn how to prioritize your to-do list…and why you’re probably doing it wrong.

Tags: Business, marketing, maximizing productivity, productivity

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Time management. It’s such a dirty word for most of us. Seems like there’s never enough time, with far too much to do in the little bit that you have.

Unfortunately, business isn’t exactly known for sitting back and letting you take your time. Neither is marketing. And nobody really wants to work around the clock. If you’re going to keep your head above water (and your company in the black) you’re going to need to learn to turn your workday into a powerhouse of productivity.

This is the first of a ten part series on productivity and making the most of your workday, starting with:

Power-Up Your Morning

Are you a morning person? I’m not a morning person. If my day could start at noon every day of the week I’d be a happy woman. But studies show that getting a late start to your day could actually put a crimp in your productivity.

Yes, even when it means getting a good 8 hours of rest.

The numbers don’t lie. Early risers have an easier time getting things done.

How do you explain this phenomenon of productivity? I look at it like this. Your morning sets the tone for your entire day. If you get right out of bed in the morning, get on your to-do list and start knocking things out of the park, your brain’s already in gear and ready to power through your day.

On the other hand, if you’re sluggish and slow, constantly reaching for five more minutes of sleep or that extra cup of coffee, that’s how your brain’s going to think. That mindset’s going to put a crimp in your step for the rest of the day.

More gets done, more efficiently, with greater accuracy, early in the morning.

Here’s another fun, astonishing fact. The quality and efficiency with which you work is at its best first thing in the morning.

If you’re dawdling your way through a creative day, you might be able to get away with a late start. When I’m hammering out ideas, sometimes it’s better if I get a slow start, take a run, enjoy a leisurely shower and a long breakfast. That way my mind’s relaxed and ready to start dipping into previously untouched territory when I sit down to work.

On the other hand, if you have a to-do list a mile long that needed to be done yesterday, wasting that kind of time is a luxury you can’t afford. You need your mind at attention and firing on all cylinders, and to do that you need to set that alarm and get out of bed!

Are you a morning person? A night person who’s converted into a morning person? How did you make it happen? Tune in to Part 2 to hear what people say about transforming yourself into an early riser!

Tags: Business, increase productivity, productivity

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How many times have you wished you could turn back the clock to add 7 or 8 hours to your day? Whether you’re overscheduled, haven’t mastered the more intricate components of effective time management or simply fall prey to distractions from the time you get up to the time you go to bed, if you’re constantly ending your day with a to-do list that’s longer than the one you started with it’s time to step back, re-evaluate, and put these simple principles into play to help you crank your productivity into overdrive.

1) Prioritize your day. Sure, you’ve got 100 things on your desk, half of which should have been done yesterday, but what’s really important? What projects are going to cause huge amounts of stress if you allow them to be pushed to the back burner? These are the projects you want to concentrate on first.

2) Make a schedule and stick to it. What time are you going to be in the office? What hours are you available for meetings? When will you be working on specific products, and what times of the day are reserved for routine tasks? If you commit to a schedule you’ll not only get more done, you’ll also feel better when the you get to leave work at work at the end of the day.

3) Kick procrastination to the curb. We all have jobs we don’t want to do every now and then, but putting them off

They tell you not to live your life by the clock, but sometimes it just works.

only makes the misery last even longer. Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can just as easily get done today.

4) Delegate. There’s a reason businesses have “teams” and not soloists. You can’t do it all. No one expects you to do it all. And the sooner you stop trying to do it all and start handing some of the responsibility over to the people who work with you, the sooner the end of that to-do list is going to come into sight!

5) Schedule your distractions. Everything takes twice as long when you have to stop every five minutes to answer the phone…or check your email…or talk to a colleague. Schedule your distractions and ignore them for the rest of the day. The more peace and quiet you get, the more you’re going to get done and the more productive you’ll be.  

6) Take a break. Seriously. You actually get more done when you stop and take small, regular breaks throughout the day than when you push yourself to the point of boredom. Why? Because when you’re rested and enthusiastic you’ll bring some energy to the project, and energy always increases productivity.

7) Shake it up. Don’t work on the same project from the time you punch in until the time you punch out if you can help it. Spend an hour working on one project, then an hour working on another. By not working on the same thing day in and day out you’re not burning yourself out.

Carry a notebook. Remember when we talked about managing distractions? Well, not all distractions are outside our head. Some are still up in there, lying in wait for the minute we turn our backs. Ideas, thoughts, to-do lists, phone numbers…all of these take up residence in our subconscious and irritate us to no end when we’re trying to finish our work. By writing them down when they pop into your mind you can keep your head clear and your day moving forward instead of stalling out halfway through.

9) Keep your office clean and organized. Thomas J. Peters said, “If a company has a clean desk policy they’re nuts, and you’re nuts to stay there.” I know I personally prefer controlled chaos to sterility in my working environment, but let’s face it. There’s no way you’re going to get from one to done on your to-do list if you have to spend the entire day looking for the resources you need.

10) Don’t forget to sleep! When you’re rushing from the time you get up until the time you go to bed, it’s easy to let little things like sleep fall to the wayside. Unfortunately, that also means that you’re running at something slightly less than your best the next day. Take the time to get a good 8 straight and watch your productivity go through the roof!

Tags: increase productivity, productivity, small business

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