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Personal Productivity: Achieving Balance in Your Daily Life

Dec 03, 2008

balancebeam As Home Office Warriors, we often get caught up in the day to day trials and tribulations of running our business(es). But one thing that you must bring to the forefront is balance.

Balance is key to maintaining a strong mind, soul, and spirit.

If you are not balancing your workload, play time, and time with self, you will end up crashing and burning. While it may be something small, like catching a cold or getting a headache, it could be a major crash and burn such as a breakdown or an illness that puts you in the hospital for a undetermined period of time.

As we all feel, we cannot afford to take time off. We feel that we are the back bone (and we most likely are) of our business and that no one can do things as well as we can. While that may be true, the fact still remains that you have to balance your workload in order to achieve personal productivity. Taking a day off here and there (make it a weekly habit to take at least one day completely off) will allow you to rejuvenate yourself and keep you functioning at the top of your game. The consequences of crashing and burning are far greater than the consequences of taking one day off a week.

The body demands balance, and you, as its caretaker, must listen to what your body tells you! You know the signs in your own body that tell you when you need to rest or take a break. But I know that you sometimes turn a deaf ear to it. I realize how we feel that we must push on and through in order to Get Things Done. But when you have balance in your life, you are able to work at the top of your game, and you will be able to put forth a much better quantity and quality of work than if you are unbalanced.

Some things that I do for balance are:

Play with the Wii
Play with my dogs
Take walks
Meditate
Escape for a day out of the office

Tell me, what do you do to retain the balance within your life? What are the little escapes that you take? Let’s chat in the comments!

Kris Rowlands is a Professional Productivity & Organization Coach. With over 20 years experience, she can most certainly help you to become all that you want to be! Please visit her blog, Fresh Focus...On Productivity! to view the GTD and Organization products that she has created, as well as scheduling one-on-one time with Kris. Your confidentiality is guaranteed. Let her know what you need and you can make it happen!

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Organization

Greetings and Salutations!

Dec 02, 2008

Well hello there!

I’m very happy to be a part of the HOW contributors group. I love meeting new people and hope to share with you (and have you share with me), lots of great ideas on how to be productive and organized in this world of chaos that surrounds us.

Today, I’m just throwing myself out on the table in order to greet you and get to know all of you. You can take a trip over to my spot on the contributors’ page to see who I am and from where I come.

I’m very pleased to meet all of you and wish you a great day, today and every day! My first content post will be on balance. Tell me though, how do you acheive YOUR balance? Let me know in the comments. Looking forward to interacting with you!

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Organization

Template Love — GTD Templates

Aug 29, 2008

Grant was kind enough to ask me to write about my GTD Templates, and I’m happy to oblige! While I’m a bit late with this post, hopefully Grant can forgive me!

In my journey towards GTD nirvana, I looked high and low for some nice, attractive, inexpensive GTD templates. But I couldnít find any! While I found inexpensive ones, I did not find attractive ones. I donít know about anyone else, but I am more apt to use something if it is aesthetically pleasing to me. A nice leather Circa with attractive GTD pages was what I was going for: but I couldnít find anything that fit the bill.

So I thought to myself, ìSelf, you can make GTD Templates that will knock peoples socks off! So I did! I looked through my gigabytes of graphic files that I have on my computer until something spurred my interest. And my first template was born.

While I looked at many templates to get a feel of the style and flow of the layouts, I wanted my templates to be unique. The first image I found that caught my interest was the steaming coffee cup. So the Java series was born.

All of my templates series consist of the following templates:

Notes

Graph Paper

Mind Map

Agenda

Expense Report

Phone Log

Project Planner

Personal Profile

To Do List

Weekly Template

Monthly Template

Most of these are self-explanatory, but let me do a quick run through of how I use them. With the Notes template, I tend to use that to keep track of random thoughts that pop into my head: because I know that if I donít write them down, they will disappear forever. Graph paper is for quick sketches, but is also a great tool for MindMaps. Agendas work for both conference calls, meetings, or anything else that you would need to chronicle things to discuss. Expense reports keep track of all your expenses, whether youíre traveling or just running errands around town.

The Project Planner is is for bigger projects. I tend to use one page per idea/ project and fill it up til it canít take any more! I narrow down my focus and get fairly detailed in my project planning, so itís a great tool. The Phone Log is something that I cannot do without. Whenever I call anyone, whether it be a company or friend, I keep a log of what was discussed, so that I can refer to it later. Sometimes when I discuss things with people, it will spark other ideas that I have to write down. Personal Profile keeps your name, address, and any other pertinent information at your fingertips.

Items from my Project Planner get moved to the To Do List. This is where the bit-sized chunks of the Project Planner ideas start to come to fruition. I check things off as I go, and move onto the next one. Weekly and Monthly templates help me to plan the items from my Project Planner and To Do lists so I can schedule my time accordingly, stay ahead of the game, and have time for important meetings.

The next series I started is the SwirlyQ series. With delicate brushes and the colors of springtime, this series is sure to get you motivated! It is currently in development, so six templates of the total twelve are complete. I plan on getting the rest completed shortly.

My templates are inexpensive, with the complete twelve page series going for a mere $21.99. I can guarantee you that you have never seen templates like this and they are definitely one of a kind. They can be used with three hole punches as well as Circa punches. They are in PDF format, so they scale well to any size. I am very anxious to do custom templates, and know that I could make you just what you need! Custom work is priced on a per project basis, as well as exclusivity or public release.

Grant, thanks for allowing me to take the time to share my love for GTD and these templates with your Home Office Warrior readers. Whether you are in a Home Office setting, or public one, these templates are sure to assist you in being the most productive individual you can be!

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Organization

Using Gmail to be more Productive — Part 1

Jun 16, 2008

I belong to a couple of listservs and one of them had a conversation recently concerning tools such as email and calendars. After the conversation had gone on for part of an afternoon, I offered my take on things. And one of the tools I talked about using was Gmail.

I also briefly mentioned Gcal, Jott, Remember the Milk (RTM) and sync’ing all of the data with each other. Because each of these and others are such an important part of my every day functioning and being productive, I have decided to break them out into a series of post. And the first one we will discuss is Gmail.

First of all, some of what I am going to discuss and the ideas I use are not original to me. There are some huge gurus of Gmail out there. And Steve Rubel is one of them. Some of what I am going to discuss are some of the ideas Steve has posted about.

Gmail to organize your emails:

I get a ton of emails on a daily basis to multiple email addresses. There is no way I could manage this without Gmail and the built in tools it contains. One of the built in features I use the most with Gmail are labels and filters. First, I set up labels for the different type of emails I get. Labels are actually like folders in other email programs or services. For example, I have labels for staff emails, client emails, listserv emails and even one for social media emails. And those are not even all of the ones I use.

To get my emails directed to these labels (folders) I have set filters inside Gmail. Another very important built feature of Gmail. Setting up filters is easy to accomplish with Gmail. You first need to choose a search criteria. You start the process by deciding what email addresses you want to be sent to a label (folder). Than you decide on the action you want it to take. I usually have mine skip the inbox and send it right to the label (folder).

The only emails which go to my inbox are those who don’t get filtered to a label. One key to this is to make sure you keep the emails filtered “marked as unread” so you know how many unread emails are in each label. I also use the process to manage the number of comments I get from my blogs and any “quick contact forms” I get from my blogs. In other words, I have one label marked as “blog management”. And another marked as “contact us form”. You should get the point by now. You can make any label and filter you want which will help you to be more productive and keep track of the emails you get. Oh, and lets not forget about the label I have called “listserv”. All of the listserv emails I get go there so they don’t plug up my main inbox.

Have I mentioned lately that I love Gmail? However, I don’t use Gmail in my browser window. I use a great third party program called Mailplane. Mailplane is for Mac OSX and it is wonderful. You get all of the features and benefits of Gmail in a desktop application. It does cost $24.95 and in my opinion is worth every single penny.

Gmail to organize your data:

Besides using Gmail to organize your emails, you can use it to organize the amount of data and information you deal with on a daily basis. One of the tips I use almost on an hourly basis is “turn Gmail into your personal nerve center from Steve Rubel. Steve provided such a great idea when he suggested you can use Gmail as a massive database. And he is right. If you use Firefox and the Google Toolbar, you can use the send to Gmail function to send items right to Gmail. To do this, you should first set up a secret email address. What I mean by this for example may look like this: grant.griffiths+[secretword]@gmail.com. Keep in mind [secretword] can be anything you want. For example you can call it notebook, data, archive, or whatever you want. The main thing to remember is the +[secretword] acts like a filter. You than set up a label (folder) in Gmail and set up a filter to send all the emails you get with the +[secretword] to that label. I also set the filter to mark these as read since I know what I just sent myself and will view them later.

Because Gmail has the same great search abilities as Google itself, you can search and find anything you have stored in these labels you have set up as database storage.

I also have one of these special +[secretword] Gmail addresses to be a location where I send blog post ideas too. If I am reading items in my browser, I can send a link and an idea to myself as a blog idea for later use. How many times have you been looking for something to blog about. If you use this system, you can search the blog idea database in Gmail and come up with ideas.

Just remember to change the subject line in these emails so they aid in your searching of these labels (folders).

iPhone and Gmail:

What I love about this system is that I can use it with my iPhone too. Gmail works great with the iPhone’s built in mail application. And lets not forget that Google has optimized Gmail for the iPhone with its own iPhone interface Gmail web based service.

Tomorrow, I will discuss how I use Gcal and a couple other select web based applications to manage my events and to-do’s. In the meantime, leave your comments on how you use Gmail to organize your own daily life.

Email, Organization, Road Warrior, Web-Workers Written By Grant Griffiths Comments (0)

Organization

6 Tips For Using Your Calendar Effectively — And the Home Office Warrior

Mar 22, 2008

One problem we face as home office warriors is the effective control of our time. It is easy to get distracted from the task at hand when we work out of a home office. I know for me, I enjoy working at home and enjoy the benefits of working at home. And those distractions are for me some of the best benefits. Especially having lunch each and every day with my wife.

However, we have to keep on task and we have to “get things done.” I use multiple tools to keep track of my calendar and those things that need to be done. First and foremost is my computer based calendar, iCal. Next, I sync my iCal calendar with Google Calendar. I do that for two main reasons. First, as a backup to my computer based calendar. And, second to give my virtual assistant access to my calendar.

My next calendar tool is my iPhone and its built in calendar feature. I am able to keep the two calendars sync’d with each other too.

The problem is, not one of these tools will work or help if you don’t use them effectively. To that end, I was pleased to see a post on one of my favorite blogs, life Sutra titled, 6 Tips For Using Your Calendar Effectively. Brick provides 6 great tips for using your calendar effectively and best of all, it appears he is a Mac and iPhone user too.

Here they are:

Use only for time or day specific items

Use the location field

Use the notes field

Use the invitation feature

Set a reminder

Block your “golden time”

You can go to the actually POST to see a great explanation of each of the above tips. What I was pleased to see was I am actually using the tips and they do work great. The one I do need to try, which I have not done and can see the benefit of using is the “block your golden time.” This might help me control my weakness of letting myself get distracted.

Featured, Home Office, Organization Written By Grant Griffiths Comments (0)