Category: Productivity Tools

Balancing Life: The Importance of Having a Routine

Pamela Ayuso December 16, 2019

We all have routines. They can include everything from what time we get up to how we end our days are work . Routines provide a structured guideline to how we spend our days.

Thankfully, routines develop naturally, but if you decide to use your routine as a tool, they can help you ensure you get the most out of your day. The idea is to set routines up so that you are taking care of the activities that are most important to you in an automatic way. Once a habit is embodied, tasks that might be more difficult to accomplish happen without having to think about doing them.

Why Rituals in Your Professional Life Are so Powerful

Pamela Ayuso October 7, 2019

Rituals are a powerful practice that can help you both conserve energy and achieve your personal and professional objectives. With practice, the actions you take to achieve your goals can become automatic. As Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz write in their book The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal (public library), rituals are an effective tool that can help you get the results you want and mold your life the way you want.

Positive energy rituals are powerful on three levels. They help us to insure that we effectively manage energy in the service of whatever mission we are on. They reduce the need to rely on our limited conscious will and discipline to take action. Finally, rituals are a powerful means by which to translate our values and priorities into action—to embody what matters most to us in our everyday behaviors.

– The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz

Getting the Most Out of Your Day

Pamela Ayuso September 2, 2019

There are so many ideas and projects that we dream about doing. Some may be more immediate plans, such as launching a project at work, while others are more long-term, like writing a book. In so many cases, there doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day. The demands on our time, which include work and our personal responsibilities, are so many. It can often feel overwhelming, yet some people can do so much with the amount of time they have.

If we all have the same amount of time available in the day, then the only way to be more efficient is to make better use of the hours we do have. Efficiency will come from focusing on the work that will best give us the results we are seeking and from organizing your time as best as possible. This is not an exhaustive list of strategies for how to best organize your time, but they can help you start improving the impact of the time you have available.

One Way to Increase Your Productivity: Keep What You Need Close

Pamela Ayuso July 1, 2019

Each day, we have the same amount of time to do what we set out to accomplish. We can’t create any more time, and there also has to be enough time to rest and do other activities outside of work. It makes sense, therefore, to use the time we do have for work as productively as possible. The more efficient you are, the easier you will make your daily work for yourself. Every second that you can save in your everyday routine will add up and contribute to more useful time overall.

One way to be more productive is to keep everything you need, both digitally and physically, close at hand and easily accessible. Knowing where everything is located and being able to find it with no wasted effort will save you tremendous time. Suppose you spend an average of one minute a day looking for documents or any tool you need to do your work. Of course, this amount of time is on the lower end, as we generally waste much time searching for lost emails, files, or sorting through pens that don’t work. If you work 250 days a year, that is four hours a year you spend looking for lost items. Now suppose the average goes up to five minutes a day– that adds up to over 20 hours a year.

How to Streamline Project Management and Effectiveness

Pamela Ayuso April 29, 2019

One mechanism that we have found works well for following up on and managing complex projects at our company, Celaque, is holding recurring meetings. We meet every week or every two weeks to go over a set agenda. The person who leads the meetings establishes the agenda. We make major decisions as a group and guide the projects forward. Since starting these meetings, we have found we can make better choices and move faster because there is an added accountability to the group.

Meetings have been overscheduled and can even be negative if not appropriately deployed because they can waste a lot of time. On the other hand, they can also be very powerful if used for the right kinds of reasons. In the case of committee-type groups that come together to work on projects, they are very impactful. Multifaceted areas or plans often require input from numerous points of view because there are so many variables to take into consideration. A person may look at the work from one perspective, but another person may view it from a different one. The best product will, therefore, emerge.

Problem Solving for the Office and Your Personal Life

Pamela Ayuso April 1, 2019

We spend most of the day at work, solving problems on a daily basis. What we often forget is that many of the tools for problem solving that we use at work can be very useful for our personal lives as well.

Problem solving for life follows a similar process to that in business. Our personal and professional lives are always busy, and sometimes we don’t give our personal difficulties the same type of attentiveness we give to our business problems. It is in the personal sphere, though, where we can have the most impact in our lives overall, freeing more time and space to be more creative and feel fulfilled.

Maintaining a Successful Professional Work-Life Balance

Pamela Ayuso March 18, 2019

In a growing company, the amount of work is endless. Often there is work that has accumulated and needs to get done immediately. Other times, everything might be caught up and working well. Things can always be better, however, even when everything is up-to-date, and the sky is the limit to the many improvements that can be implemented within a company.

Any entrepreneur, business owner, and company leader knows how difficult it is to let go of work at the end of the day. Our thoughts and worries don’t just go away the minute we walk through the front door at home. With today’s ubiquitous technology, it is very easy for work to start seeping into our spaces outside of our work hours.

Metrics and How They Can Benefit Your Business

Pamela Ayuso February 25, 2019

Creating dashboard metrics for every part of a business is one of the best uses of your time as a business leader; they will give you an overview of the current state of every important part of your business. Metrics provide the key parameters that show you where your company is headed such as the number of sales or prospects in the pipeline or the amount the company is spending on monthly basis.

These metrics, however, shouldn’t just be limited to the standard values that come to mind when we refer to these types of indicators. They can also include the parameters that are crucial to your company and more specifically, your industry. Some of these indicators may not even be used by other similar companies–they might be your special formula and what makes your company unique.

10 Simple Methods to Increase Professional Productivity

Pamela Ayuso November 19, 2018

I often wish I had more than 24 hours in the day. Although obtaining a few extra hours is unfortunately not possible, there are ways to get the most out of the time we do have. These practices have helped me be more productive during the time that I have, and I hope they help you.

Music at Work: How it Can Benefit Productivity & Focus

Pamela Ayuso October 15, 2018

One of my greatest allies at my work has been music. As a constant companion, music is always there for me and has contributed endlessly to the work I do.

Whenever I need to concentrate, I put on my earphones and turn to my favorite playlist. It immediately helps me focus on what I am doing. Other times, there are things I don’t want to work on because they are tedious or complicated, and I would prefer to put them off and do something else. I fight the urge to avoid or procrastinate by putting in my earphones, and music gives me the energy I need to work on those challenging tasks.