Seeking Simplicity?

National Simplicity Day

National Simplicity Day is observed every year on July 12th, honoring the life, work and philosophies of Henry David Thoreau, who advocated for living a simple life via poetry, in his books and as a transcendentalist.

In our modern-day world, life is complicated by so much: the pings and dings of technology, the clutter amidst our calendars and to-do lists alike, the avalanche of communications received via email, calls, texts, social media, snail mail, technology and mainstream media... The list goes on and on. Yet, amidst our current pandemic, I see so many refocusing on their truest priorities, people taking time to reconnect with loved ones while actually slowing down a bit, new routines being turned into necessary habits as well as an emphasis on listening to what our minds, bodies and spirits truly need.

Whether you think of "simplicity" in terms of being plain, natural or easy to understand, I believe this National Simplicity Day is an ideal time to really align our actions with what matters most to us, including the personal mission, vision, core values and life desired to cultivate for each of us. How will you choose to let go of life's complications to make room in each day's 1,440 minutes for what's most important to you?

Some ideas for slowing down and living deliberately include the following:

• Think deeply about what matters most to you.
• Put things on your calendar that align with your priorities and the life you want.
• Adopt a new attitude by being deliberate in how your time is invested.
• Expend as much energy to reflect, live in the moment and appreciate life as you schedule for when to get things done.
• Shift your focus from "all the things" to what you can actually control.
• Utilize Do, Decide When, Delegate and Delete from Eisenhower's Matrix so your resources go toward what only you can do first.

Where will you choose to start in your efforts to celebrate National Simplicity Day?

Simple Tactics to Boost ROI from Your Investment of Time

Each day offers only 1,440 minutes. Unlike dollars invested in the stock market that we anticipate will give us back more dollars to reinvest, each minute can be spent no more than once. Are you getting the desired return on investing your limited time?

If you're experiencing hiccups, consider these time management tips to boost productivity:

1. Stay true to your priorities, intentionally aligning your actions with those areas of importance and better avoiding burnout. As priorities shift, it’s important to be flexible, shuffling how your time is invested to keep your actions focused on achieving your highest priority goals. It's important to regularly revisit this alignment, assessing how well you are staying focused on what matters most and investing your limited minutes in those priority actions.

2. Learn to say "no". What actions are being asked of you that don't actually need to be done? Are there tasks on your to-do list that could be delegated to someone else who can do them equally well if not even better so you open time for what only you can do? Alternatively, should you consider "not now" for something that can be delayed until a later deadline?

3. Utilize work-life integration for more overall success. Create harmony with goals for home, work, society and yourself by allowing them to complement one another rather than compete with each other. Focus on actions that can accomplish multiple goals at once, plan how you can invest your time with each of your most important priorities at the forefront of your emphasis and maintain pliability to easily address your priorities as they evolve over time.

4. Cut back on distractions with fewer pings and dings. When distracted, it can take us an average of 23 minutes to fully re-engage in the task at hand. Each time we receive a notification for a new email, social media update, text or voice mail, those are the distractions that steal our time. Stop bleeding minutes throughout the day! Turn off the notifications and schedule set times to check each platform. For folks requiring immediate responses, make them VIPs to utilize Do Not Disturb on iOS and Priority Mode on Android.

How do you make sure the limited number of minutes you have in each day is moving you forward in crafting the life you want to live? Make every minute matter!™️

Top Tips to Simplify Your Life

As we near the first week of August, plan how you'll celebrate "Simplify Your Life Week" with baby steps you can take to streamline, cut out the clutter, make life easier and better invest your limited resource of time. With a few tweaks to how you get things done, you can better focus on what matters most, making greater progress on your priority goals to achieve your desired results.

Per Dictionary.com, simplify means "to make less complex or complicated; make plainer or easier." Invest some time in simplifying to limit stress, more quickly find what you need when you need it, have a clear grasp on what needs to be done at any moment and stop wasting precious moments of time. Make every minute matter!Ⓡ

Here are tactics to jumpstart your efforts at simplifying your life:

• Deliberately choose how you invest your time. Develop habits such as a weekly strategy session and daily wrap-up to map out a specific game plan and stay on track.

• Learn to say "no". What actions are being asked of you that don't actually need to be done? Are there tasks on your to-do list that could be delegated to someone else that can do them equally well if not even better so you open time for what only you can do? Alternatively, should you consider "not now" for something that can be delayed until a later deadline?

• Stay true to your priorities. When you know what matters most, you can more intentionally align your actions with those areas of importance, avoiding burnout. As priorities shift, you can be flexible and shuffle how to invest your time so you keep your actions focused on your goals.

• Utilize work-life integration for greater overall success. By studying research by Wharton's Work / Life Integration Project along with my experience with clients' best practices, I know first-hand how you can create harmony with goals for home, work, society and yourself complementing one another rather than competing with each other. Focus on actions that can accomplish multiple goals at once, plan how you can invest your time with each of your most important priorities at the forefront of your emphasis and maintain pliability to easily address your priorities as they evolve over time.

• Respect the value of your space. Whether it's in your physical space, electronic files or calendar, keep only what is accurate, applicable, useful, bringing you joy and not just as easily found with a quick Google search. If something filling your physical space, electronic files or calendar no longer meets those requirements, remove that clutter.

• Plan to have the tools you need nearby when needed. Do you utilize a smartphone, tablet or laptop? If so, you are well aware of all the accessories needed, especially when you are working on-the-go, like charging cords, earbuds and the like. Rather than depending on whether you remember to bring "all the stuff" with you whenever you work outside an office, keep multiple sets of accessories (one for the office, one in your vehicle, one for your bag), bundling your tech tools together with the GRID-IT or a canvas pouch that's easily portable.

• Address email. Unsubscribe from eNewsletters you are no longer reading, consider bundling subscriptions that you do read via Unroll.me and shift from checking to processing newly received messages, moving to-do items to your task management system, adding requests for your time to your calendar, shifting retention items from your inbox to personal folders and using delete as your friend to remove trash or junk.

• Save time with forms, templates and checklists. If you regularly send the same reply, create a template that can be easily plugged in and tweaked as necessary, saving time by not starting from scratch each time. Create a packing checklist so you don't forget anything needed for travel. Design a form for your grocery shopping list so you remember to restock the essentials each time and save valuable minutes by listing the items in order of the aisles at your store.

• Automate daily processes. "Set it and forget it" may be the greatest time-saver. Investigate options such as IFTTT, Podbox and Zapier to find the best solution for your needs. In addition, add an automated cloud back-up solution, such as Backblaze, Carbonite or CrashPlan, and consider which social media management solution will allow you to automate putting the right message in front of the right audience at the right time.

• Cut back on distractions with fewer pings and dings. When distracted, it can take us an average of 23 minutes to fully re-engage in the task at hand. Each time we receive a notification for a new email, social media update, text message or voice mail received, those are distractions that rob us of valuable time. Turn off the notifications and schedule set times to check each platform. For folks that do require an immediate response (like key account clients or your direct supervisor), make them VIPs so you can utilize Do Not Disturb on iOS and Priority Mode on Android.

Where do you see excess in your life or time being wasted? How can you take action in tiny steps that will assist in simplifying your life so you get to your goals more easily?

Delegate and Automate to Get More Done

Tasks are thrown at us each day via calls, emails, meeting conversations, texts and people stopping by our office. With our limited time, it often feels as if there are never enough minutes to get it all done; yet, our inability do it all on our own does not eliminate the never-ending to-do list. Until cloning becomes a realistic option or we can get our Inspector Gadget tools, we need alternative solutions.

When evaluating tasks requesting your attention, think this way:

1. Does this task need to be completed at all? If not, can it be deleted, totally removing it from my to-do list?
2. If the task must be done, does it need to be done immediately? If not, to when can it be deferred?
3. Does this task require my unique skill set? If not, can someone else learn from doing it or does someone else have a skill set that will get it done better, more thoroughly or more quickly? To whom can it be delegated?

In any instance where a task can be completed by someone or something else, you open up time in your schedule to allocate towards getting something done that only you can accomplish.

Resources for delegation are not limited to existing member of your team, whether those at your company, members of your household or volunteers on a committee you chair. There are endless options for delegating the different types of tasks on your to-do list: Errand Girl, Fancy Hands, Fiverr, GigSalad, Guru, Metro's Other Woman, Moonlighting, Outsourcely, Red Butler, Sweeps, Task Rabbit, Thumbtack, Upwork, 99Designs. Likewise, consider delegating the task of grocery shopping to options such as Instacart, Shipt or Amazon Prime Now. Or think about how personal assistants can help, like Amazon Alexa, Cortana, EasilyDo, Google Home or Siri.

Automation is a form of delegation where you delegate to technology and can massively expand how much you get done concurrently. Set what rules apply to your needs in automation tools like IFTTT, Podbox, Zapier and social media managers like Buffer, Edgar, Falcon Social, Hootsuite, SocialOomph and Sprout Social. These "set it and forget it" solutions fulfill your desire to do two things at once while not hiring a human-being to help.

What are some tasks on your to-do list that could benefit from deleting, deferring or delegating? Which of the aforementioned tools might be a positive addition to your productivity toolbox?

Capitalize on Your Energy for Enhanced Productivity

When thinking about a normal day at work, are there times you feel more "in the zone", the output seems to flow more easily, you're in a groove and you're energized? Can you envision what those instances have in common? For many, the theme that runs consistently amongst instances when working tends to work better happens to be our personal energy level.

As I've learned by using the Time and Space Style Inventory assessment with my clients, each of us is invigorated by different things in different ways, and our energy level has a dramatic impact on our ability to be productive from moment to moment.

It is important to attack challenging work when your energy is at its peak. This becomes more complicated as the timing of one's peak energy level varies from person to person; therefore, the first step in pairing the work that is most demanding of your abilities with the timing during which your abilities flow most freely happens to be self-assessment.

Know when your energy is most likely to peak so you can schedule uninterrupted time then for addressing your hardest work.

If your energy peaks first-thing in the morning, you may choose to enlist your energy level as a productivity tool by "swallowing the frog", tackling your most difficult tasks first. This approach is why folks talk about wanting to "hit the ground running" each day.

If your energy peaks later in the workday, you may choose to enlist your energy level as a productivity tool by adopting the mantra of "activity breeds activity", starting with easier tasks and building momentum to do more difficult work later in the workday.

Unfortunately, it's not always feasible to pair those more challenging tasks with times when your energy peaks. Since meetings are designed for discussions and shared decision-making, they can be a drain on energy and force you to be filled with energy during times that are not your normal peak energy time. If you find your energy waning right before an important meeting, invest in actions to fuel your energy reserves and replenish your energy on demand. It might not be quite as effective as your natural time for peak energy, but there are always options to quickly boost energy as needed. Use whichever works best for you.

Does your energy peak in the morning, afternoon or when the sun goes down? How do you adjust when you attack certain work functionality to best use your energy peaks?

Control Your Email Instead of Letting Email Control You

The average professional receives over 175 email messages each day, and many of my clients receive over 400 new emails daily, causing them to view handling email as a very time-consuming aspect of the workday. This is truly an overwhelming amount of communications. It can make you wonder how any real work gets done beyond simply reading each day's new email messages.

If someone were to peer over your shoulder right now to look at your email inbox, what would that person find? Do you keep just about everything received in your inbox, making it such that you have several hundred or thousands of emails in there right now? Do you keep action items alongside retention items in your inbox, making it harder to know what's been handled or what needs to be done? One little tidbit with an immense impact on productivity is the realization that your email inbox is definitely not your to-do list. I recommend using your email inbox as exactly that... an "in box". New items funnel through as needed.

To make this possible, shift your mentality from "checking" to "processing" new messages. According to stats from email marketing company BlueHornet, folks look at their phones more than 150 times a day on average, many of which are to glance at their email inboxes. Each time you read a new email and, then, plan to come back to deal with it later, that initial reading becomes a distraction because you have to re-read the message and re-start your thought-process on how to respond. Beyond the repetition involved with new messages, stop letting emails rob you of time by retaining fewer and moving them from your inbox.

Instead of wasting time by reading and re-reading your emails throughout each day, develop a habit of OHIO and "only handle it once", meaning you read new messages only when you are ready to deal with them and you use your inbox as a funnel instead of a holding zone. Here are tips to make such emailing easier:

• If the email is asking you to complete a task that takes less than 5 minutes to complete, follow Nike's advice and "Just do it" immediately upon reading it.

• If the email is asking you to complete a task that takes longer to complete, move it to your running data dump of to-do items needing your attention, and make time for completion.

• Move appointment requests to your calendar.

• File reference emails in your personal folders, making sure you have enough folders that everything has a home and no more than necessary so you never have to wonder in which folder you should file a new message.

• Implement delete as a tool so you have fewer retained emails to search through when looking for a specific one.

• Replace multiple, back-and-forth email messages with a quick phone call, even if you have to follow that call with a summary email for documentation purposes.

• Unsubscribe from emails you no longer read rather than investing more time in repeatedly deleting the unread ones.

Do you find email overwhelming? How do you address email overload now? Which of these tactics will you employ in turning the email you receive into a productivity tool?

Delete and Discard Can Help Boost Productivity

Whether email, paper, electronic documents, physical items or calendar commitments, the more we have, then the more we must sift through to find what we need when we need it; those wasted moments can be better invested with other activities. Clutter, piles and excess can be debilitating, preventing desired results. Be selective.

The Justin Case book series is a great example of how keeping things "just in case" they're needed leads to terrible results. Justin worries about everything and carries his concerns to wild extremes, similar to those worried about not having something will keep everything and those with fear of missing out will commit to doing more than feasible. Failing to remove anything might be worse than editing out everything, although neither is an ideal scenario.

Realize that delete and discard can help boost productivity when utilized appropriately. Keep only what is accurate, applicable, useful, bringing you joy as well as difficult to replicate or find online. You'll better utilize your available tools to boost productivity and have less excess to drag down progress.

When struggling with whether to keep something, consider what would be the worst-case results if you discard it and, then, need it later. Are there legal ramifications? Can the content be easily recreated? It is important and necessary to keep certain things, but I encourage you to be more strategic as you select what is allowed to fill your workspace, your schedule and your hard drive.

How do you currently decide what to discard? Once you've made a decision about what to keep, how will you maintain what's established? What are your retention schedules?

Which Tasks Can You Complete Quickly?

There is a well-known quote that instructs each of us to "plan your work and work your plan", which provides valuable insights for how to be more successful and better achieve more desired results. With a weekly strategy session, we create a game plan for addressing our priorities through tasks, communications, time commitments and development opportunities, staying on track toward achieving our most important goals via the habit of a daily wrap-up at the end of each day. Yet, there are times when we find that we can do even more than that which we'd planned to accomplish.

Maybe traffic was light and you arrived at your next appointment with a few moments to spare. Maybe one of your meetings ended early, giving you extra minutes before the next commitment. Maybe you had a cancellation, which opened up an unexpected block of time. That time can be a gift for boosting productivity.

If you have no guidance as to what can fit within the available time, you might spend 5 of your 10 available minutes determining your 10-minute tasks, which leaves only 5 minutes to actually get anything done. Alternatively, if you denote within your data-dump of tasks how long each will take, you'll know immediately which take 10 minutes and easily plug what fits into the available time.

Don't lose minutes. Make the most of your time, optimizing the most limited of your resources. Know which of your to-do items can be completed quickly so fewer valuable minutes are wasted determining possible tasks for small windows of available time, whether 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes or another increment.

How do you optimize your task management efforts, filling small windows of time as they become available for accomplishing more?

Assign a "When" for Each "What" to Get More Wins

In planning for each day, week, month, quarter or year, we all have things we want to accomplish. Sometimes, they are big, and, other times, they are small; however, we all have accomplishments that we aspire to achieve. Hopefully, we are documenting them somewhere instead of counting on simply remembering them; then, we can funnel that running list through our priorities to incorporate in our weekly strategy and pinpoint on a specific date with our daily wrap-up, but that doesn't always work as planned.

When you look at your data dump of tasks needing your attention, until time is allocated for moving each action from a to-do to being done, it's a list of things you wish you could accomplish. That's it. Only when you carve out time in your schedule for getting them done do they become goals and start looking more like a to-do list.

Many of us fall into the trap of thinking "I'll do that when things calm down" or "I'll get to that someday" or "I'll plug that in when I get a few spare moments". I've yet to find a calendar that includes someday; calendars include Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday but not someday. Does anyone ever have free time magically appear in our schedules? Does life calm down without proactively working to slow things down a bit? I believe it requires a different approach to get things done.

Assign each task that you want to accomplish specific time in your schedule, and you'll be much more able to get it done. With this move toward task management, every "what" is given a "when", meaning there is time allocated for getting it done, and you'll be able to actually complete it during that assigned time. You don't have to schedule every 15-minute block in your calendar, but it helps to have a general idea of how you'll invest each day's 1,440 minutes, which is fluid and flexible, allowing you to adjust as needed while being guide down that clear path to achievement.

Experience tells me this will empower you for greater success and make you more likely to win at the game of accomplishing your goals, but I'd love to hear about your experiences. What tactics have you found most successful for moving tasks from to-do to done? Do you create synergy between your calendar and to-do list?

Stay on Track with a Daily Wrap-Up

Are you familiar with the quote "the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry"? This is a common experience for people as they strive to boost productivity. The week starts with a plan, something shifts, and that initial plan seems to no longer fit. Maybe a client has an urgent, unexpected issue arise and needs your time to get the situation resolved. Or a team member calls in sick, leaving you to cover the tasks that can't fall through the cracks. Perhaps one of your employees needs direction to meet a deadline, pulling you away from your must-do list to answer questions.

There are two ways to respond: either feel like the week is lost or make adjustments to get back on track. I find daily adjustments enable achieving my priority goals and fuel my desired results.

Completed at the end of each day, the following checklist enables the necessary adjustments and better empowers staying on track:

• Communications - Get end-of-day updates from appropriate team members, touching bases to drive awareness and get everyone on the same page; think outside the box to include all team members, like employees, subcontractors, vendors, family members, roommates, volunteer committee members and more. Touch bases with new and returning "hot prospects" to increase your awareness of what is happening while keeping you in the other folks' awareness. Verify you're up-to-date processing received emails and following up on voice mail.

• Tasks - Review your must-do list from the day that's ending and look over the next day's anticipated to-do list. Are all important tasks included that need attention to meet impending deadlines? If something wasn't completed today, determine at what point in the next few days time can be allocated for completing those carryover tasks. It is realistic to plan for fulfilling 3-5 actions on any given date, and knowing beforehand which are your must-do items for the next day will allow you to hit the ground running when you return to work.

• Time Commitments - Evaluate your schedule for the next day and verify that you are prepared for everything scheduled. If you are not prepared, when will that preparation occur? Does your calendar include buffers and time to get where is needed?

• Space - Whether you're in 4 walls, an open office space, a vehicle or working from a bag, tidy up your workspace. File new items and put that day's work back into each item's home, creating a blank slate for the next day. Make sure what you need for the next day's activities is ready and accessible.

• Successes - We live in a do, do, do society, meaning we don't necessarily take time to reflect on meeting the goals for which we strive. Instead, each day, celebrate all you've accomplished in the day that's ending. If you got out of bed, you accomplished something, and acknowledging that is motivating. Stop the monotony of simply getting things done, and acknowledge what you've successfully completed to encourage continued productivity. Make sure you take time to celebrate daily successes, no matter how large or small.

• Gratitude - As there is a vast amount of research regarding the many ways gratitude improves productivity, use the power of gratitude to drive your daily productivity. End each day with gratitude, and denote that for which you are grateful each day. Don't stop with simply thinking of that for which you are grateful; actually say it out loud or document in a gratitude list at least 1 thing for which you feel grateful every day.

What is your experience? Do you take time at the end of each day to properly wrap-up the day that's ending as well as plan for the next day? What successes can you share from practicing this habit? On the flip side, what issues have arisen when you've been unable to regroup daily and end each day getting back on track? What aspects of this checklist can you start implementing today?

Use a Timer to Boost Productivity

Maybe you are struggling with procrastination and simply cannot get started. Maybe you get distracted easily and want to better stay on track. Maybe you are overwhelmed by all that needs to get done and are drowning in what you're doing. No matter what might be your challenge for getting organized to boost productivity, a timer might be the most powerful tool to help you get things done.

Here are a handful of ways in which using a timer can help you better achieve your priority goals:

• Build momentum by getting started - As the old adage goes, activity breeds activity, which means working on a given task to a limited amount of time can propel you to continue working on it, making more progress towards its completion. Working on any task can energize you to get it all done.

• Eliminate procrastination - When struggling to find time to get started working on a big, hairy, audacious goal, it could be that you are frozen by the thought of all the time needed for the entire project rather than the individual tasks going into that overall project. Setting a timer for 5 minutes, 10 minutes or, even 30 minutes can get the ball rolling on any of those smaller, more manageable action items, giving a more realistic view of how long the entire project will take as compared to the intimidating mountain created in your mind.

• Shorter work times feel less overwhelming - If the task you have been avoiding is something you really don't want to do, knocking it out in shorter sessions of time can make it much less daunting. I mean, you can do anything for a short amount of time, right? When you envision something you truly dislike doing, it can be much less bad if attacked for a shorter interval.

• Work harder if for shorter durations - If you have all afternoon to complete a task, it is likely to take that entire time; however, if you set a timer for a much shorter amount of time, you will race to beat the clock. Shorter spans of effort energize greater results, and you are likely to get the task accomplished much more quickly, maybe even finishing the entire task in that shorter amount of time.

• Compete against prior times to do tasks - When faced with a to-do item that you complete regularly, it might feel more mundane and tend to drag on more with each iteration. If you set a timer for slightly less time than it took to complete the task previously, you race the clock, competing against yourself, and can often get it done more quickly.

• Stay on task to make greater progress - It is easy to get pulled away from the task at hand, running off on a tangent or following some distraction. Does "Ooooo... Bright shiny thing!" or "chasing squirrels" sound familiar? If so, setting a timer for the length of time you want to invest in any given task can keep you on track; when the timer goes off, if you are still working on the task at hand, you are success, but, if you've followed a distraction, you have to start the timer over again. Set a timer for short intervals and repeat that for whatever number of intervals is needed to achieve your desired result, making sure you are still on task after each interval.

Whether you implement the timer built into your phone, utilize a kitchen timer or try out the Time Timer app, this tool in your productivity toolbox will prove helpful in moving you more efficiently toward achieving your priority goals.

How do you currently utilize a timer? How have you seen using a timer boost your focus and productivity? What are some of your greatest success stories? If not yet, by when can you give a timer a try? How do you envision a timer fueling desired results?

Be Proactive with a Weekly Strategy Session

Imagine it's Friday afternoon and you're preparing to walk out the door for the weekend. Looking back on the work week that's ending, how accomplished are you feeling? Did you effectively address what was important for work, home, your community and yourself? Or did you get pulled into others' priorities, spend your week putting out fires and neglect your goals?

If you feel less successful than you'd like, take steps to better address what matters most in upcoming weeks.

Those who have ever played or worked in athletics know there are many preparations that occur before each game, including scouting the opponent, preparing equipment and creating a game plan. Yes, during the game itself, there will be adjustments based off how the other team plays, but coaches would never lead their teams into athletic competitions without creating a game plan beforehand. It is about proactively creating the direction in which you will proceed rather than simply reacting to what's thrown your way, and the same philosophy applies to addressing your priorities for work, home, your community and making yourself the best possible.

Take control of your productivity by creating your own weekly strategy, which is a specific game plan for how you'll address your priorities in each of the following ways:

• Carryover Tasks - Evaluate which of the tasks you'd planned to do during the week that's ending were actually completed; determine what's left undone and when those undone tasks can be rescheduled. Be honest with yourself about what you are actually willing to do. If not you, then who can accomplish what needs to get done? What can you delegate? Does each incomplete task truly need to happen or can any be deleted? 

• Team Communications - Get in-depth updates from each member of your team (at work, at home, involved with the community projects you're currently addressing or those with whom you've contracted to get more done), seeking input on what is working, what is not working and what needs attention.

• Client Communications - Catch-up on processing outstanding emails, phone calls and snail mail. Reach out to schedule time with those who have been needing your attention. Touch bases with clients from whom you've not heard lately, whether with gratitude, to wish a happy birthday or simply seeing how things are going. Sometimes, reaching out should include a call to action; however, realize that reaching out without a call to action can provide even greater results in certain scenarios.

• New Tasks - As every project should be broken down into smaller, more manageable action steps with associated deadlines for their timely completion, there is a good chance upcoming deadlines are approaching, and there are tasks related to those deadlines that need addressing in the upcoming week. Decide which new tasks should be added to your to-do list, ensure you are clear on their associated deadlines, and make time for taking action to get them done.

• Time Commitments - Review the next week's appointments to make certain you're prepared for all related tasks, ensuring there is time for necessary preparations and travel to each. Do you need to incorporate any additional buffers for traffic or unforeseen things that'll pop up? Do you know which will occur in person, over the phone or via video conference? Are you clear about how to get to each of the in-person commitments?

• Development - Never neglect a focus on continually improving yourself. Determine opportunities for personal and professional growth; what will move you towards your goals? This could be training, networking or anything focused on fueling your desired results. Review what upcoming options have come to you via email, snail mail, websites you've seen or conversations you've had, and make decisions about which can earn space on your calendar, registering to attend once you've determined you will.

It is less important when you complete this process as compared to whether or not you get it done at all; many like to wrap-up the week with a weekly strategy session on Friday, Saturday or Sunday, but choose which works best for your unique situation.

Be strategic and map out a specific game plan for addressing all that needs your attention. Keep in mind each of the elements for work-life integration: work, home, community or society as well as the private realm of mind, body and spirit. As each of these elements is a layer of life with rotating levels of emphasis, focus on how you can best invest the upcoming week's 168 hours to address the current priorities within each realm of your life.

Especially when you first start implementing the weekly strategy session, set a timer. Knowing you have a certain amount of time in which to complete this checklist will keep you focused and better ensure your planning doesn't run longer than necessary.

Do you take time at the end of each week to properly plan the week ahead and proactively address your priorities? How does this equip you for greater productivity? On the flip side, what issues have you encountered when you haven't been able to plan adequately before starting your week?

Stop Depending on Remembering... Document Everything

Keeping track of our ever-growing to-do lists, resource materials, checklists, websites to reference and shopping lists gets progressively more overwhelming every day. The amount of information to be remembered is constantly increasing. How can we possibly remember it all, let alone take the actions necessary to respond to each request for attention?!?

No matter how we attempt to keep track of everything, we must keep in mind that our brains are meant for strategic and creative thinking, not remembering things. Our brains are less than ideal tools for keeping track of anything, and the biggest lie we tell ourselves is "I don't need to write that down; I'll remember it." How often does that actually work?

Get what must be remembered out of your head and document everything. Whether you choose a paper or electronic solution, do a data dump and collect it all in something other than your brain.

While you probably use a calendar for dates to remember, an address book for contacts' information and a task management solution for your must-do items, where do you cull together everything else that is overflowing your brain? Do you prefer a paper notebook, a mobile app or something accessible everywhere?

If you prefer a paper solution, I suggest you look at the Arc notebook system from Staples®. Once you choose which notebook size, style and color you prefer, you customize it with the type of paper preferred; then, you can segment the content to be retained with tab dividers, adjust the amount of paper that can be retained with expansion discs and move pages around by simply lifting them out and pressing them back into the rings however preferred.

I prefer to document everything in Evernote since it allows easy reference as I live, work and play on-the-go. This suite of applications allows me to use one username and password for accessing my information synced across all my devices (smartphone, tablet, laptop, desktop as well as accessible via the Internet), it has unbelievable search capabilities to find exactly what I need when I need it, it allows for uploading an extensive amount of different content types in various ways, and it empowers me to easily share content with others to boost collaboration. Whether retaining typed text, web clippings, photos of handwritten notes, checklists, audio / video recordings, bills from service providers or files, I can easily add those to my Evernote database; plus, when adding content, there are so many ways to seamlessly accomplish it: manually, scanning from my phone or the Fujitsu ScanSnap, IFTTT, emailing, FileThis and many more options.

As an Evernote Certified Consultant, I often post about ways to implement Evernote for your greater success, how you can utilize Evernote to boost productivity and ways Evernote will help alleviate your stress as you achieve harmony through work-life integration. To find these many helpful hacks and tidbits, simply search Evernote in the top, left-hand corner of this blog.

Do you already have a tool you prefer using to remember everything? Are you trying to rely on your brain, do you rely on a paper solution or do you have an electronic option you prefer? Have you tried Evernote for culling it all together?

What Does It Really Mean to "Be Productive" or "Boost Productivity"? Redefine Productivity for Greater Success

Productivity is a popular topic at networking events, in office conversations and for articles across many business-focused publications. I often hear people talk about how productive they are. Some folks use this buzzword to describe the rate at which a person does useful work while others use it to reference how much is getting done or how capable someone is to accomplish all that is needed. Maybe it's as simple as accomplishing what one sets out to do, fueling greater peace, happiness and success.

Although the dictionary definition of productivity is "the quality, state or fact of being able to generate, create, enhance or bring forth goods and services", I think it is so much more than simply getting more done in less time; from my viewpoint, productivity is about efficiently working to effectively achieve results desired for all elements of life. The emphasis on each element of life fluctuates as priorities change while our actions and efforts in each element of life can complement the other elements rather than having them compete with each other.

All individuals must determine what is "right" for their own productivity based off varying priorities and desired results, knowing there is not one best way to do this. Here are 6 common themes in how I help my clients boost productivity:

• Time is a limited resource and needs to be invested wisely. Each day gifts us only 1,440 minutes; each week is only 168 hours. Saying yes to doing something means saying no to anything else using that time. Once we have lived that time, we cannot get it back; unlike money that can be invested to grow, the return on time spent must be greater than simply more time. How each of us measures the return on our time investment should reflect directly on our priorities.

• Clarity of priorities enables knowing which goals to tackle when. Every what assigned a when is more likely to get done because actions need time for their completion; since there is no "someday" on any calendar, especially for "I'll get to that someday", priorities give us a filter to determine which actions warrant an investment of our time. Whether you choose the Eisenhower Box, Stephen Covey's framework or another, there are tools to clarify what matters and drive action; pick what will highlight your priorities so you can get them done.

• Proactively planning your efforts will boost success for your goals. When a team goes into a game, its coaches have scouted the opponent, determined which of the team's strengths match up best to the opponent's weaknesses and created a game plan. Each team adjusts its game plan based off how the game progresses, but the chance of winning at all depends greatly on starting with a plan. The same applies to living your life: plan your weeks and days while making adjustments as time progresses so you attack your priorities instead of getting pulled into others' emergencies. With a plan, you can focus on what's important, not simply urgent, and what matters most to you finds time in your schedule.

• Distractions are extremely detrimental to your desired results. Research shows the average US office worker is interrupted 11 times each hour of the workday and, then, it takes 3 to 8 minutes to refocus, although it can take up to 25 minutes to really refocus when working in deep thought. I'm not a mathematician, but even I can deduce how that doesn't leave much time for getting things accomplished. Since time is so limited, reducing distractions is a valuable skill to learn.

• It is imperative to utilize all available resources. Each of us has different assets in our productivity toolbox, but we all have tools to use. Resources can include apps or websites, streamlined workflow processes, an organized space in which you know where things are stored, consultants hired for their expertise, employees or service professionals to whom you delegate (including house cleaners and chefs), calendars, timers, boundaries, to-do lists, email, automation and much more. Sometimes, an unbiased individual with a fresh set of eyes can best find additional sources of help, but there are always tools to support our efforts and make life easier.

• Work-life integration is a realistic way to tackle what matters most. In thinking about "balance", I see a scale, forcing a perception of costs needed for success; yet, I do not believe my "work" competes with my "life", seeing instead how they regularly complement each other. Although balance would be static, life is certainly not and requires fluid solutions to address one's ever-changing priorities for work, home, community or society and the private realm of mind, body and spirit. I help my clients recognize how any element we choose to have in our lives can add value to each of the other elements and how harmony is possible. As the various elements of life are layers on top of each other, the emphasis needed for each element continually fluctuates, and each layer adds value to the others, making the total greater than any part. 

How do you define being productive? Do you tie it to literally producing more, helping you feel more in control, making more money or something else? When thinking about boosting productivity, are results or feelings more important to you? What do YOU consider productivity?

Is Your Team Filled With March Mania?

Whether you are not a fan of basketball at all or you are wildly cheering for your favorite team, you're probably well aware of the fact that March mania is here, which means college basketball is heating up and folks are getting their office pools started. As conference champions are crowned and the madness of the National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tourney nears, I see many parallels.

If you're asking what successful businesses have in common with winning basketball programs, here are a few of their similarities:

- Teams need strong leadership. For sports programs, that leader is the head coach, and Coach Mike Krzyzewski is a shining example of how strong leadership creates a winning environment. The leadership lessons from Coach K are limitless, like "Make people feel you, not just understand you", "Be responsive to the short-term goals, but never lose sight of your long-term mission", "Empower others to scale and sustain your impact", "Meet your people where they are" and "Your platform is a gift... Use it wisely"; however, there is no question that leadership is needed to succeed, and that same principle applies to any company's team.

- Team is defined as "Together, Everyone Achieves More". Each individual is human, which means our abilities are limited; however, if everyone is contributing to the same goal, the sum of those parts creates a much larger impact than any one can do individually. Larger goals can be achieved when everyone on the team is working together, associated in a joint action. For a college basketball program, that would be an NCAA Tournament championship; however, for your company, that success comes in achieving whatever "big, hairy, audacious" goal your team set for itself. Loftier goals are achieved only when working together, like the members of a crew rowing in sync and in the same direction.

- Teams succeed when members skillfully fulfill their roles. Throughout the history of basketball, the most successful teams pass the ball more on each possession than their opponents, trust their teammates to be in the right position at the right time, communicate clearly as to what is needed of each role player and have team members that dedicate themselves 100% to the specific roles asked of them. Whether asked to play point guard, shooting guard, small forward, power forward or center, each member of the team knows their role and how it meshes with the other roles to achieve the team's greatest goals. Winning teams pull together groups of stellar athletes to win against schools that have "the best player" but no one on the same page to fill the other roles.

Whether a basketball team or business entity, when each member does an assigned part and carries the associated workload, the combination of those roles is a winning team, where the synergy from working together creates bigger, better, stronger results.

Do you have a favorite sports team? How does that team exhibit principles of teamwork to make it more successful? How can your company implement the teamwork tactics of your favorite sports team to achieve greater success?

Baker’s Dozen Rules for Proper Time Management

How do you handle managing your time? Do you have a philosophy or best practices by which you swear for time management?

If you’ve been reading my blog awhile, you know I believe in managing our actions and the tools at our disposal rather than talking about time management as there’s nothing we can do to change how each day is limited to only 1,440 minutes. Still, this National Time Management Month is a great time to discuss some basic principles for best investing our limited time.

Here are some of what I recommend as basic principles for investing your time and, thereby, making every minute matter:

1. Saying yes to doing one thing means no to another. As time is a limited resource, we cannot invest the same minutes in multiple ways, and we can’t get back what minutes we’ve already invested elsewhere.

2. Be proactive in planning how to invest your time with monthly reviews of what’s upcoming, weekly strategy sessions to draft plans and daily wrap-ups.

3. Assign a “when” to each “what” to get more done. I have yet to find a calendar with “someday” but I complete tasks for which I’ve set aside time.

4. Plan no more than 3 – 5 “must-do” tasks per day. It is easy to feel like we are superheroes who can complete endless lists of to-do items; however, we are all human and can do only so much with what time we are gifted daily.

5. Enlist your energy level as a productivity tool. If your energy peaks first-thing in the morning, you may choose to tackle your most difficult tasks first; however, if your energy peaks later in the workday, you may prefer to start with easier tasks and build momentum to do your more difficult work later.

6. Align your actions with your priorities and goals to prevent burnout. As what’s important may shift over time related to work, home, community or society and the private realm of mind, body and spirit, continually audit how you are investing your time and focus your actions to what’s important.

7. Delegate or automate when you can. Consider resources like Fancy Hands, Fiverr, Guru, Help Tap, Moonlighting, Task Rabbit, Thumbtack, Upwork and 99Designs to enlist others’ help for getting things done; alternatively, If This Then That, Podbox, Zapier and social media managers like Buffer, Edgar, Falcon Social, Hootsuite, SocialOomph and Sprout Social help you “set it and forget it” so things happen without you having to invest your time to do it all.

8. Keep a list readily available of which tasks can be done in a 10- or 30-minute time slot so you are prepared to hit the ground running when those free moments magically appear.

9. End procrastination. Break projects into bite-sized actions so each step is less daunting. Ask for help or seek direction on anything that is ambiguous. If a task takes less than 5 minutes, just do it. Assign rewards for celebrating successful completion of tasks or ramifications for missed deadlines.

10. Utilize a timer. Get started on a “big, hairy, audacious” goal. Capitalize on how activity breeds activity. Attack challenging tasks for shorter times. Stay on task when working for a longer period of time. Energize greater results with shorter spans of effort.

11. Limit distractions. Turn off the pings and dings for notifications. Send your phone directly to voicemail as needed. Set a timer for how long you will use social media. Consider working remotely at times. Employ technology (like KeepMeOut, LeechBlock, Nanny, SelfContol and StayFocused) to block distracting websites temporarily.

12. Manage your tech instead of letting it manage you. Typical smartphone users check their phones 150 times a day, and it takes time to re-focus on the task at hand whenever distracted by our tech tools. Start with these tips to manage email and, then, make your mobile device a tool working for you rather than technology to chain or confine you.

13. Do not confuse immediate or urgent with important. What are the consequences of getting something done sooner versus later? When folks get you to stop working on what is important to achieving your goals in order to address their needs, they are managing your time; if you were unavailable, whether due to meetings or travel, an immediate issue would have to wait.

What tactics do you utilize for making every minute matter? Have you had success with any of those listed above or will you be implementing any of these strategies?

Utilize Failure to Get Better Results Next Time

Even the greatest of success stories have included failures throughout their journeys. Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, J.K. Rowling, Michael Jordan and Steve Jobs are examples featured in this infographic from Online MBA Today:

Source: OnlineMBAToday.com

As 90% of business startups fail, it is imperative to learn from our mistakes so we can pick ourselves back up and become successful. To learn more about these famous fails as well as how you can turn failure into success, please visit http://www.onlinembatoday.com/without-fail/. Here are a few key steps listed as important in turning failure into success:

1. Investigate what went wrong.

2. Learn from each failure experienced.

3. If you're accountable for the failure, accept responsibility and, then, move on rather than dwelling on it or beating yourself up.

What techniques do you utilize to turn your failures into successes? Which of those suggested by Online MBA Today will you implement for even greater results?

Maintain What Systems You Create

As we start February, it is time to reflect on the progress made thus far this year. On this blog, we have covered so much ground throughout January. From habits that will aid being proactively productive to tools that one can implement for better or more efficient results, there are so many tiny tips to fuel your successes.

Yet, the 31 posts I've shared to jumpstart your new year are only the start. It is important to get organized and create systems; however, maintaining your organization is where productivity fuels true success. The challenge moving forward is to maintain what foundation has been developed.

Since none of us can envision all the hurdles we will face going into making changes, be reassured that backsliding is normal and to be expected. However, how we respond to those hurdles and any regression that occurs will determine our ultimate success.

Ask others for help to keep you on track. When you share your goals and what actions you are taking to achieve your desired results, you create a type of accountability that helps. Still, outwardly soliciting others' support is even more powerful.

Take charge of what resources are available to you. Sign up for free newsletters that will continually remind you of where you want to be headed. Join Facebook groups or Google+ circles that can provide ongoing support with changes you'd like to maintain.

Utilize reminders to stay the course. Set alarms on your mobile devices to trigger your new habits. Add sticky notes or labels around your workspace, home or vehicle as visual aides.

Be willing to continually review your progress. What works for someone else often won't work for you so you might need to tweak what habits, techniques and tools you've adopted to best meet your personality and specific needs. Plus, as the world around you evolves, your needs will change, and  you'll need to adapt suitably.

Take action to overcome common impediments to change, and you'll reap the benefits of success throughout the year. 

What have you implemented from my posts throughout January to jumpstart your new year? What is your game plan for maintaining that organization so your enhanced productivity can fuel your true and continued success?

Document Everything

Our ever-growing to-do lists, reference materials, resources, process outlines, checklists, websites to visit, shopping lists and much, much more... The amount of information we need to remember is constantly getting bigger and bigger. How can we possibly remember it all, let alone act upon any of it?!?

Where do you keep lists & references?

As we attempt to keep track of everything, it is important to remember that our brains are meant for strategic and creative thinking, not remembering things. Therefore, get it out of your head and document everything. Whether you choose a paper or electronic solution, do a data dump and collect all the information in a solution other than your brain.

While you probably use a calendar for dates to remember, an address book for contacts' information and a task management solution for your must-do items, where do you cull together everything else that is overflowing your brain? Do you prefer a paper notebook, a mobile app or something accessible everywhere?

I prefer to document everything in Evernote as it empowers easy reference while moving it all from to-do to done. Evernote gives me one username and password to access all information synced across my devices (smartphone, tablet, laptop, desktop as well as accessible via the Internet), it has unbelievable search capabilities to find exactly what I need when I need it, it allows for uploading an extensive list of different content types in various different ways, and it empowers me to easily share content with others to boost collaboration. Whether I'm retaining typed text, web clippings, photos of handwritten notes, checklists, audio or video recordings, bills from my service providers or documents, I can easily add those to my Evernote database; plus, when adding new content, there are so many ways to accomplish it: manually, scanning, IFTTT, emailing, FileThis and many more options.

As an Evernote Business Certified Consultant, I often post about ways to implement Evernote for your greater success, how you can utilize Evernote to boost productivity and ways Evernote will help alleviate your stress as you achieve harmony through work-life integration. To find these many helpful hacks and tidbits, simply search Evernote in the top, left-hand corner of this blog.

What tool do you use to remember everything? Your brain or an external place for dumping out all that information? Have you tried Evernote for culling it all together?

Dress for Success

Consider this: 55% of another person's perception of you is based on how you look. Every day, people are constantly developing conclusions based off the way each of us dresses. As explained in Business Insider's "Here's How Your Clothing Affects Your Success", the impact of your attire is vast: "Research shows that your appearance strongly influences other people's perception of your financial success, authority, trustworthiness, intelligence and suitability for hire or promotion." There is validity to the saying of "Dress for the job you want, not the job you have." However, it can be challenging to dress to your potential when you aren't clear on what your style might be, you don't have your clothing choices organized in your closet or you are not comfortable pulling the components together.

Amidst all the challenges to dress for success, there are plenty of resources to help. A quick online search for "make sure you dress for your success" is a solid way to get started; however, utilizing all available resources would involve reaching out to experts that can help.

North Carolina has several folks with whom I've enjoyed working and received quality feedback:

- Geralin Thomas of Metropolitan Organizing shares her wardrobe wisdom via one-on-one consulting, during public workshops, with social media, on her Managing Modern Life blog and through complimentary printables from her website.

- Mary Michele Ndiffer of StyleFinder Boutique writes and speaks as a Master Style Coach all over the world, empowering women to discover their own specific style of beautiful through her trademarked StyleFinder ID assessment tool.

- Kate Leser of The Makeover Expert guides you to find the one thing about your look that you can change to have a profound impact on life, both personally and professionally, bringing out your authentic self, working both virtually and in person with clients.

How does your wardrobe measure up in conveying your authentic self? Does what you wear accurately transport your positive attributes? Do you get dressed easily each morning? If not, which of the aforementioned ladies will you contact for assistance moving forward?