Productivity Cafe

Your Home Office – To Share or Not To Share

If you share your office in your home chances are that your effectiveness is a fraction of what it could be. So, carve out a space of your own for work. This article is aimed especially at field representatives, entrepreneurs, and telecommuters who work a meaningful time in their home office each week.

I probably don't need to remind you about the distractions that come along with working at home in the first place – the kitchen offering snack breaks all the time, the temptation to go out for a run when the weather is beautiful and just the right temperature, or the X-box where you can better your score. Those and similar distractions are the reason to designate your own work hours.

The reasons to designate your own work space include:

• You can keep a project out without disarray coming from other people as always happens when someone uses the dining room table as a workspace
• When you put something on your desk, it should stay there
• Someone else looking at then commenting on your work is discouraged
• You can be sure to have all your own supplies which support your work at hand
• When you're on the phone you can concentrate
• You can implement good ergonomics such as good lighting and a perfect chair to create an ideal physical environment
• You probably grew up with your own room and actually function best when you have your own time in your own space

  Reasons not to share your space include:

• Someone walking off with your stuff is frustrating and slows you down
• An eavesdropper who offers commentary on what you're doing means you're not doing your work and they're not doing theirs

Doodle, Draw, Delight - Friday @ Five

If you doodle, and who doesn’t doodle, pencil your pleasure this weekend. If you draw, sketch your satisfaction. If you can cartoon, capture your amusement – perhaps with crayons.

Be carefree about your creation – there is no ‘right’ way to do this. Whew… my taking my own advice here has revived some silly stuff from way back when. My doodle looks like kid stuff.

If you have fun with this, send your creations to me via email and I’ll post the results here in the next week or two.

Have fun.

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R & R (rest and rejuvenation) are the intentions behind the Friday @ Five entries. Often these are inexpensive and low key because you recharging your batteries can be more easily achieved without running around and doing, doing, doing. Many Friday @ Five entries are geared to do with your family or friends.

Productivity Tips from other blogs

Productivity advice comes from many sources and it's my role to hook you up with the useful information. In a rare move I am sending you to Zen Habits to read an article on Mental Concentration - 5 Tips to Maximize Your Ability to Concentrate - because it rings true.

"The quality and quantity of work you can produce is dependent, not only on the effort you put in, but on your ability to concentrate. No matter how hard to you try, if your brain isn’t performing well, you won’t be as productive as you should be."

While some of the tips don't work exactly the way he predicts for me, the concepts are solid. Exercise is a vivid example ~ sometime I need a nap if my workout has been very strenuous and at those times a hard workout in the early evening works better. How do those 5 ideas work for you?

Charity Mixes Well with Productivity

Productivity is often coupled with being streamlined. As I wrote about in the Dress for Success Post and Closet Edition of Friday @ Five – a streamlined wardrobe frees you in decision making, closets are easy to use, and the clothes we actually wear are what we have in front of us. One aspect of streamlining your wardrobe is getting rid of things you don't wear. I firmly believe in the community-minded practice of recycling and repurposing clothes that come out of closets. That is, make those clothes available to others with less. This leads to my favorite local charity – the Career Wardrobe.

I've been tapped to write about my favorite charity by Lorie Marrero at the Clutter Diet who is participating in the effort started by Alex Shalman. Click on the pink banner for more details.

The Career Wardrobe begins by educating women on welfare about skills they need in the job force. Most importantly this builds self confidence that leads to self-reliance. Then, when the women are well prepared to leave welfare and start to work they are given an outfit for interviewing and few outfits suitable for work. This Individual Career Wardrobe again helps to build a woman's self confidence.

Over 5,000 women are assisted by this Philadelphia organization each year.

I see this as a major win-win. The world wins by clothes moving in circulation rather than corroding in closets. Women win through confidence of feeling good by having valuable information and smart looking outfits. You win by lightening your load. There are Career Wardrobe like organizations in most cities. Look in your yellow pages and ask around to find a great place to give your goods.

Public Transportation Impacts Productivity

In this era of 'being green', you might be considering taking public transportation. Public transportation is good for the environment and your productivity. So, go for it!

Pat was considering moving to an attractive suburb of Atlanta. She calculated that the additional commute time would be 40 minutes per day for a total of 65-70 minutes. That is 70 minutes in the car every day compared to her current 25 minutes. Those 40 minutes per day converted to nearly 3½ extra hours in the car per week and 160 hours per year. Ugh, 4 weeks per year extra in the car. Clearly that was something that discouraged her from thinking of the move as a good idea.

Still, the town she considered is full of things attractive to her. She could picture herself eating at one of the locally owned restaurants and visiting with neighbors on nice evenings.

Puzzling Diversion - Friday @ Five

Back to the basics this weekend. Begin to put together a puzzle starting Friday at Five. Go to a department store like Target for something basic or a game store for a puzzle with extra challenge or design. Designate your dining room table or set up a card table in the room with the TV. Plan to leave this puzzle table up and pieces strewn about until it's finished… and that could be weeks unless you're having bad weather. Then it might be done this weekend.

Yes, some of you have been putting those big piece puzzles together with your younger kids. You're not tired of puzzles. You're tired of puzzles with no challenge. Go get your own adult puzzle.

Watch how this activity becomes a staying spot for your family and visitors alike. This anchor will lead to some good conversation, interesting stories about 'back when we lived in our first house…', and delightful diversion.

Oh, and since this is your idea, hide the last piece somewhere you'll remember – then you get to have the final mark on the game. Have fun!

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R & R (rest and rejuvenation) are the intentions behind the Friday @ Five entries. Often these are inexpensive and low key because you recharging your batteries can be more easily achieved without running around and doing, doing, doing. Many Friday @ Five entries are geared to do with your family or friends.

Close the Door on the Open Door Policy

Are you taking the Open Door Policy thinking too far? Answer these three questions to evaluate your implementation of an Open Door Policy.

1. Do you regularly wish a person who popped in would just leave already?
2. Does your assistant come to the door to remind you of a fictional meeting to send a visitor the signal to leave (or do you wish she would)?
3. Do you have to wait until after 5pm or come in before 8am to get real work done?

If you answered yes to even one of these questions you might benefit by modifying your open door policy. Actually it's not an open door policy, it's an accessibility policy.

 

 

Dress for Success with Wilma & Betty (or Fred & Barney)

Enviable wardrobe decisions were made by Wilma & Betty and Fred & Barney from the famous comic – the Flintstones. Do you remember what they wore? Yes – it was caveman era of the classics – always the basics. Did Fred wear zebra stripes, or leopard spots? And Wilma, long or short dresses. In fact, what they wore rarely changed.

Take a look at the banner at the top of the Flintstones World Web page to refresh your memory on their wardrobe. It was the same day in and day out, week after week. Simple. Attractive. Well tailored. And, in the background.

What most people remember from watching the Flintstones is their vivid personalities, their entertaining quirks, and the humorous interaction between the characters. We do not remember their clothes. And, chances are few people remember or really care what you wear. Really.

You Make the Call - Friday @ Five

This weekend's Friday @ 5:00 suggestion requires 30 minutes from you. Block 30 minutes and telephone someone you've been meaning to call. Spend 5 minutes thinking of a couple of good things that have happened since you talked to this person last so you have some good news to share. Then, pick up the phone and call! Catch up, tell stories, and make a point to mark your calendar to reconnect again in a shorter amount of time.

I am inspired to recommend this because a couple of uplifting reconnections happened this week. First, Ray and I are working to get on the phone together – I can't believe he changed jobs almost a year ago. We haven't talked since.

Additionally I saw my first boss ever on Oct. 6th. Woody hired me right out of college and helped me get on a career path that has been great. I hadn't seen him since we moved from New Hampshire in 1986 to go overseas for 2+ years. We had a jovial time reminiscing and catching up.

I hope your call is as enjoyable!

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R & R (rest and rejuvenation) are the intentions behind the Friday @ Five entries. Often these are inexpensive and low key because you recharging your batteries can be more easily achieved without running around and doing, doing, doing. Many Friday @ Five entries are geared to do with your family or friends.

Shorter Meetings with 6 Useful Agenda Tips

If you have an agenda use it. Sounds like a statement that should actually be, "If a meeting has an agenda, follow it, *pause* Duh". Yes, this seems like a no brainer. Yes having an agenda is obvious. Yet, executives I talk to say they would be delighted if all meetings did have an agenda and if it was followed when they do.

The post from earlier this year addresses making meeting shorter is where the suggestion for having an agenda first appeared on the Productivity Cafe. Today's article is about bringing the meeting back on track when the agenda seems to be left behind as conversation flows to non-agenda topics.

Here are some transition lines that you can use to leave the time-wasting rabbit trail and get back on the main track.

• We seem to be off the agenda at the moment. What you're talking about is important and it should be the topic of a separate meeting. Let's get back to the point where we got off the agenda. We were on item # 4…. (then pick up back on the agenda item).
• That discussion seems to involve just the two of you. Let's take advantage of everyone being together and get back to the topics on the agenda that concern everyone. Would you two take that off-line and summarize your conclusions in an email?
• We are taking a bit too much time on this topic if we're going to wrap the meeting up by 11:30.