Ask The Organizer: NAPO GO Month

Work Place Productivity / Time Managment Toolbox:

1. Stress Management Tools:

· Square breathing

· Focus tools (coffitivity.com, calm app)

· Balance of productivity and rest (Pomodoro Technique, 52 and 10)

2. A Workspace that Works for You:

· Pare Down, Look Up

3. Routines that Work for You:

· There are three types of tasks: Survival, Maintenance and Progress

· Make survival and maintenance steps routine, freeing up your mind and your schedule for Greater Ideas and Productivity

· Establish habits around essentials for every day or every week.

· Decision-making wastes time! Make your decision now on tasks that need to happen daily and save yourself time and struggle later!

· Routines:

· Attached to times and events to make them run more smoothly.

· Add anything you’d like to see happen but doesn't.

· Decide which items are flexible, and which are not

· Put the items in a logical, time and step saving order

· Make anything that needs completed daily part of your routine.

4. Recipe, Checklists and Short Cuts:

· Enjoy economies by creating recipes / checklists / shortcuts for non-routine tasks that you don’t quite remember how to do (like your very own Standard Operating Procedures!).

· Leave a path, to make the job easier when it comes.

· Why re-invent the wheel?

5. A Plan B. (And a Plan C, and D, and E and F.)

6. Exit Strategies / Flight Plans / Extraction Strategy / Launch Codes:

· Ambulance Drivers – Prepare for the next call right away.

· SIDs and STARs: in aviation, a

o Standard Instrument Departure (our routine around leaving), and a

o Standard Terminal Arrival Route (routine around coming home)

· We need to get good at easing our transitions, they can make or break our productivity. We transition many times a day, let’s get good at managing those transitions and then getting back on track.

· Landing and Launch Pad – for your most important items!

7. Leverage Technology.

o Technology as a Tool

o One and Only One Planner, Technology or Paper:

§ Make sure it is updated ALL THE TIME, and portable.

§ Collect your thoughts. Use one and only one Planner.

§ Write everything down. Don’t assume you will remember later.

o Communications, Good communications, thorough, clear and consistent

o Keep your calls on track. Keep agenda in mind all the time, wrap up a call just as you would wrap up a meeting – what was our agenda, what are our actions to take, etc.

8. Priorities:

· Schedule your priorities instead of prioritizing your schedule.

· Eisenhower Box

9. Conquer Procrastination

10. The Power of the Last 10 Minutes: Now, Get Up and Put Your Stuff Away.

· Get up and Put Them Away in their final homes.

· The point is…. Embrace “Done”! And feel good about your efforts!

· A fellow organizer calls this the Stand And Deliver step.

· Even if the 10 minutes are in the middle of your project, Get Up and Put Stuff away. Then bask in the glow of your clean desk, and then keep going!

· Leave yourself notes for what you need to do tomorrow!!