2013 was a great year here at Innovatively Organized and to celebrate we are sharing our ‘best of 2013′ blogs. From useful downloadable checklists to step-by-step processes for increasing productivity, here are our top blogs from the past year:

1. Must Haves On-the-Go: Mobile Professionals Checklist- In February, we shared our Mobile Professionals Checklist to all our readers so that they could be more productive no matter where they work.

2. How to Efficiently Delegate to Your Assistant- Whether you need help from your assistant or a coworker, this article will help you delegate efficiently so you can save yourself time.

3. Essential Productivity Apps Checklist to Keep You Efficient- As a celebration of Small Business Week in June, we compiled a list of our top productivity apps that we recommend to our clients and shared them in this article.

4. 7 Ways Our Team Has Efficient Meetings- We described our step-by-step process of how we at Innovatively Organized hold efficient and productive meetings.

5. 5 Common Bottlenecks in Your Office- Whether it’s the chatty coworker in the cubicle next to you or duplicate documents that make finding the most recent version a headache, most offices deal with numerous productivity killers on a daily basis (sometimes unknowingly). This article helps bring awareness to some of those common bottlenecks.

6. App Recommendation: EchoSign- When a client signs a contract with you, the process of faxing or scanning documents is tedious and makes the negotiation process longer and more stressful for everyone involved. Fortunately, EchoSign allows users to send, sign, track, manage and access documents digitally. Read why we love EchoSign with this post.

7. Staying Productive When Your Self-Employed- When you are your own boss or work from home, there isn’t always someone pressuring you to complete that tedious report and while this can be refreshing for some people, it can also lead to procrastination or added stress because you are fully responsible for your own work load. In this article we provided a few tips we have come up with to help you stay motivated and productive when you’re self-employed.

8. Decide & Delegate During the Holidays- As more and more people in the office start disappearing during the holiday season, it can be stressful for those still left working. We provided a list of questions to go over with your team or coworkers so that everything is handled accordingly.

When December hits it seems as though half of the office disappears, which can be stressful for those still working. Even though its the holiday season and many businesses slow down, it’s still vital to think ahead during this time. Make sure everyone in your office knows when you and your co-workers (or your team if you’re the boss) are taking holiday vacations near the end of the year and plan ahead for how their absences should be handled.

As a team, you’ll typically need to plan ahead for questions such as:

• Who will answer the phones?
• Will you shut down operations to give everyone the days off or will you keep a skeleton crew running?
• Who will get the mail?
• How will people work from home? Will they have access to the correct files and software?
• If there is a “lighter” day, then what will the staff do - organize and file documents to get ahead, perhaps?

Its also important to ensure that your role gets filled when you are gone if the company isn’t on a holiday itself. This means that you should delegate the tasks that need to get done before you leave.

The countdown is on: just ten days left in the year!  For many of us, that still includes about a week left in the office working.  Take advantage of this time to prepare yourself for the New Year.  Rather than leave your office and your work a huge mess, racing to complete deadlines and get to the holidays, use this time to get organized.  Here are 15 tasks you can do this last week of December to help you return next year ready to hit the ground running!

1. Go through the pile(s) of papers you’ve been meaning to sort.
2. Set up a system to help your business go more paperless—we offer paper management and filing systems services for business.
3. Deep clean your desk or workspace—here are some tips to organize your desk.
4. Empty your email inbox—here’s one of our webinars to help clear your inbox.
5. Set your “out of office” for the day and work on 2013 strategic planning without interruption.
6. Write and send thank you notes to networking contacts, clients or strategic partners.
7. Attend a webinar to add to your skill set—here is a list of our upcoming webinars.
8. Update your LinkedIn profile.  Write recommendations for people or endorse their skills.
9. Go back and read industry newsletters or blogs you’ve been meaning to catch up on.
10. Go through the pens at your desk and toss the ones that have dried up.
11. Pre-write content for your blog or newsletter so you don’t have to do it later.
12. If you use a paper calendar/planner, set aside time to purchase your 2013 calendar and get it organized.
13. Read a book you’ve been meaning to read—here are some of our book recommendations!
14. Identify 3 repeatable tasks you can delegate to someone else and write the necessary instructions.  That’s three items off your list in the New Year!
15. Write down your individual goals for 2013 and set an appointment with yourself each month to track your progress.

Good luck during this last week of the year, and may you have a relaxing break for the holidays!

It’s beginning to feel a little quieter in Downtown Seattle.  You can tell people are starting to head out of town for the holidays and it will likely remain this quiet until the New Year.  It can be tempting to lose steam with so many people out of the office, but we can honestly say it’s one of our favorite times to be in the office.  Why?  Because it’s my most productive week of the year!

Below are a few tips to help you stay focused and productive during the last week of the year:

1.  Write it down – Make a list of all of the tasks that you’ve been meaning to get to, but have never become a top priority.  You know what we’re talking about - that pile of papers you’ve been meaning to go through, the thank you notes you keep putting off writing, the email inbox you keep hoping to organize, and the strategic planning you start working on but somehow you always manage to get interrupted.  Writing these tasks down helps you stay focused on accomplishing them.

2.  Team Up With a Coworker – If you need help finishing some projects this week, ask a coworker for their assistance.  Everyone is busy this time of year, but the work goes faster when everyone helps out.

3.  Limit Your Social Media – We all love our Twitter breaks, but it is disruptive and distracting to keep refreshing your feed.  Put your social media on hold until lunch breaks or after work.

4.  Set Specific Times To Check Your Email – Take down your pop-up notifications that announce each incoming email.  As strong as we all think we are, it’s hard to look at the subject of an email and not click to open it.  Pick a few times throughout the day to check-in on your inbox, rather than reacting to it the entire day.

5.  Break Down Monotonous Tasks – You might be procrastinating some tasks and projects because they seem long, tedious and boring.  Try breaking these tasks down into smaller blocks of time (30 minutes a day) and scheduling them for a time when your brain needs a little break anyways.  For instance, I prefer to save “mindless” tasks for late afternoon because it allows me to be productive during a not-so-productive hour of my day. Stay consistent and you’ll be done by the end of the week!