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 it’s time to communicate with a client, is your first thought to pick up the phone or draft an email? Do you prefer brainstorming sessions or “brainwriting” sessions? How do you keep track of your to-dos? The answer to these questions may depend on whether you’re an introvert or extrovert.

Both types of employees can be outstanding and productive as long as they are planning and executing their day to fit their personality. In order to be the most productive you can be as an introvert or an extrovert, consider the following tips:

Email vs. Phone Calls

Introverts tend to prefer to communicate in writing via email or online discussion boards. It gives them time to craft their responses and thoughts. They will often put off making certain phones calls by reworking their to-do list.

Extroverts often like communicating via phone or in person. When sending emails to an extrovert, remember to keep them short and sweet or else they may start skimming.

Brainstorming Sessions

Introverts usually favor writing their ideas down during brainstorming sessions. Sometimes extroverts assume that because introverts aren’t the first to speak up, they aren’t as creative. That’s not the case! Provide introverts with an opportunity to think on their own and then submit their ideas.

Extroverts tend to thrive in a room with a whiteboard and at least one additional person to bounce ideas off of and help them stay on track. Unlike introverts who prefer to formulate their thoughts before speaking, extroverts usually formulate ideas as they’re talking.

Time & Task Management

Introverts, on the whole, prefer to track their appointments and tasks in their own personal system. They are frequently hesitant to share calendars with coworkers. If you are sharing a calendar or scheduling appointments for an introvert, try to give them breaks between meetings so they have time to reboot.

Extroverts often benefit from capturing to-dos in more non-traditional ways (other than just writing them down), such as with a visual-based to-do list app like Action Method. As an extrovert, consider asking a coworker to check in with you and hold you accountable for your daily to-do list.

Have any other tips for extroverts or introverts? Let us know in the comments below!

Have you ever reviewed notes from a meeting, but quickly realize you have no idea what you were thinking when you were writing them down? Although you may feel like you will remember everything from the meeting at the time, it’s easy to lose track of the specifics when you start focusing on other tasks. To avoid confusion and wasted time, here are 4 secrets to taking effective and organized meeting notes:

1. Label Your Notes

At the top of the page include the date, title, type, or purpose of the meeting. This will allow you find your notes quickly later on.

2. Refer to the Agenda

If there is a meeting agenda, use the topics listed as a guide to organize your notes. You can number each topic and use that numerical system to outline your meeting notes. This will simplify your search because you can find your notes on certain topics discussed without reading through all of your meeting notes.

3. Mark Follow-Up and Action Items

Take special note of items that you are required to complete or follow-up on. You can use the word “ACTION” to call out such items, or place a checkbox next to the words that describe the action item.

4. Update Your “To Do” List

If you have a lot of action items, place your action items directly into a separate “to do” list as soon as you can after the meeting. This will ensure that you won’t forget any important tasks that were assigned to you during the meeting.

Could you use additional help on taking effective meeting notes? Sign up for a free 15 minute consultation!

A couple of weeks ago, our team at Innovatively Organized held a really productive strategic planning meeting. We thought it would be beneficial to set aside half of a day to meet as a team. With so much to discuss, we wanted to be sure we stayed focused and spent our time wisely. So here is a little insight into how we kept our meeting efficient (Hint: Tip #7 is the best one):

1) Change of Scenery

We reserved a private conference room at Thinkspace. We’ve learned that a change of scenery helps our team focus on the task at hand without the distractions we encounter in the office on a daily basis. If you need help finding a conference room near you, use eVenues, a conference room finder that allows you to search by city, capacity, and price, along with other search criteria.

2) An Agenda

Set a specific agenda and stick to it.  For our meeting, each section of the agenda had a time associated with it so we knew when to move on to the next task.

3) A Time Keeper

We used a timer called Cool Timer. One person was in charge of setting the timer, but they never had to worry about interrupting the meeting because Cool Timer’s alarm feature did it for them. The timer also has a large display so anyone in the meeting can see at a glance how much time is left.

4) A Moderator

Have one person run the meeting. For this meeting, it was Elizabeth Bowman. The leader should guide the rest of the team and introduce each new topic in order to stay productive throughout the entire meeting.

5) A Large Whiteboard

Our team likes to draw diagrams, write lists and create timelines. A whiteboard allows us to erase as we go, color-code with different color markers, and adhere sticky notes. It allows for a lot of flexibility. For instance, at one point we were trying to finalize the order of events, so we used sticky notes to map out various options on the whiteboard. Once we finalized the order we were able to add additional notations with whiteboard markers. But don’t forget to take photos of the whiteboard before you erase it!

6) Actionable Items & Deadlines

Throughout the meetings we made a point of identifying the actionable items, who was responsible for it and when it was due. One person tracked the actionable items and distributed them after the meeting to ensure everyone was on the same page.

7) A Reward

Strategic planning can be exhausting! As a reward for finishing all of the items on our agenda, we rewarded ourselves with a late lunch and wine tasting in Woodinville, Washington. The photo at right is of (from L to R) Elizabeth Bowman, Elizabeth Kent, and Jackie Chapman.

With the rise of telecommuting in business, web meetings and virtual conferences are becoming more common tools for team communication.  At Innovatively Organized, we use web meetings on a regular basis to stay in communication with one another from different locations.

While virtual meetings have the advantage of allowing teams to communicate from various locations, it’s important to remember that they are still meetings. And like any meeting, they can quickly turn unproductive if you’re not careful.  Here are some of the tips we recommend to help yours run smoothly:

Make sure you have a good microphone

Few things are worse than repeating yourself over and over (or listening to it).  A good microphone will help you reduce background noise and improve the clarity of your voice. We recommend the Snowball microphone for it’s intuitiveness and it’s ability to pick-up sounds in a variety of environments (individuals speaking vs. a group of people sitting at a conference table).

Arrive early

Think of logging into your web meeting similar to parking your car to go to an in-person meeting.  You never know what bumps you’ll come across when you’re logging in, so better to leave buffer time to ensure promptness.

Be prepared

The same rules apply to web meetings as they do with in-person meetings.  In order to stay productive, you still need an agenda, a timekeeper, and all the right people in attendance. Don’t forget to add time to your calendar to complete follow-up tasks from the meeting.

Don’t forget the “little things”

Make sure your laptop is charged, have a strong internet connection, and look presentable if you will be using a web cam!

For more help conducting business in the cloud, we offer business productivity solutions, including process improvement and project management.

There are countless ways to waste small pockets of time throughout your day. A few minutes here and a few minutes there can add up quickly! However, for actions you repeat frequently, there are some easy fixes to help you save time. Here is a list of ten ways you may be wasting time and how you can fix the problem:

1. Not having enough chargers: If you’re constantly moving a cell phone or laptop charger from one location to another and searching for new outlets, we suggest purchasing multiple chargers.  You can keep one at home, in the office, in your car, or anywhere else you frequently use them.
2. Driving and parking: Rather than lose chunks of time every day driving to clients or sites, schedule meetings on the same day.  You can also download a traffic app to help your commute run smoothly, like Seattle Traffic Mobile or Beat the Traffic.
3. Searching through your phone: It’s a waste of time to constantly dig through your phone in order to find frequent contacts or apps. Help yourself out by adding specific contacts into your “Favorites” screen and moving your most-used apps to your home screen.
4. Reacting to each phone notification: Yes, we all love to see a text message or social media notification come through.  However, this distraction slows productivity and focus.  We suggest putting it on silent or tucking it away in a desk drawer to help you focus on the task at hand.
5. Trying to remember the genius idea you know you came up with but didn’t have a place to capture it: Ideas come to us while we’re in the car, while we’re getting ready, or while we’re commuting on the bus.  Try solutions like the Dragon Dictation app, a waterproof notepad for your shower, or a virtual notebook for your mobile devices.  Maybe even get a virtual assistant and call them when you have an idea; just make sure to schedule time to process theses ideas later.
6. Holding onto tasks because it’s too much effort to explain and delegate: Delegating tasks is a great way to save time.  We can’t always do everything ourselves and sometimes we become a bottleneck to the team by holding tasks up. Here are a few additional tips to help you delegate.
7. Not protecting your time: Letting everyone else have your time between 9 am to 5 pm means your to-do list doesn’t get touched until after hours.  Block off times that you can specifically work on your tasks. Think of it as scheduling an appointment with yourself and think twice before you reschedule the appointment.
8. Meetings, meetings, meetings: Meetings that drag on, get off topic, or have no agenda take everyone’s time.  Make sure your meetings have a schedule and a timekeeper to keep it on track.  You can also try cutting down to just 45-minute meetings.
9. Responding to each email that comes in: It’s almost impossible to divert your eyes from the bottom of the screen when an Outlook email notification pops up.  Try turning these notifications off and then establish consistent times in your day to respond to emails in batches.
10. Deleting the same spam emails you never read: If you signed up for an email newsletter but never read it, then take the time to unsubscribe.  It may take a minute, but it saves the time spent deleting them each day.

Which of these time-wasters are you going to fix?  Let us know in the comments!

Person A: Hi. How have you been?

Person B: Busy. You?

Person A: Good, but really busy.

Does this sound familiar? You might be working on projects all day, but being “busy” does not necessarily mean you’re being productive.  You can be busy checking things off of your to-do list, but if they’re not the right priorities, it does not matter.

Here are 3 examples of how you might be “busy” during the day, but not always productive:

1. It’s possible for people to be busy during meetings, but meetings are not always productive.  Calculate the cost of a meeting and consider trying 45-minutes meetings to stay efficient.
2. People often feel busy when they are processing emails, but this is often a reactive task.  Responding to each email as it comes in is not productive when there are pending projects that need to get done.
3. For entrepreneurs and small businesses especially, everything you do should come back to bringing in dollars (which looks different depending on your role).  Take a step back and ask yourself if you’re doing the right things with your time.

Think you’re too “busy” at work?  Contact us for a free 15-minute phone consultation to see how you can become more productive with your time.