Our client is a very busy sales person who works from his home office, but is constantly out meeting clients or visiting manufacturing facilities.  He is always on-the-go, feeling like he is racing around and never with enough time.  In order to help him stop being reactive to his day, we worked with him on being proactive by planning his day more efficiently.  Our team helped him learn how to manage his to-do list, as well as his contact management system.  We also identified his most productive hours in the day and then blocked them off in his calendar as times to work on his most important tasks.  He is now more organized about creating his schedule and better able to work while on-the-go.  Does this sound familiar?  If you’d like help improving your time management and streamlining your day, call us for a free 15-minute phone consultation.

Are you a “Morning Person” or a “Night Owl”?  Perhaps the real question is: does your schedule complement the times you are most productive?  For some, working in the morning comes naturally because that is when they are most attentive.  For others, burning the midnight oil might make the most sense. Take a moment to consider what time of the day you are the most productive and hardworking.  Are you more alert and focused in the morning, before lunch, early afternoon, or late evening?  Try scheduling your time so that your most important work and tasks are accomplished when you are most productive.  We love this blog post, “Work-Life Balance for Night Owls,” by Cheri Baker of Emergence Consulting.  She details how she shifted her schedule so that she can work efficiently at the time of day when she is most alert.  It might give you some helpful ideas for how you can improve your schedule as well.

At Innovatively Organized, our consultants tend to be productive at different times. While some get a jump-start during the wee hours of the morning, others get more accomplished late at night.  

Call us for a free 15-minute phone consultation to learn specifically how you can improve your time management.

You’ll love them for:
•  Taking notes while reading
•  Using a project notebook
•  Organizing office files
•  Color-coding systems
•  Adding sub-categories to notebooks
•  Updating projects as they change

Ever find yourself with unexpected pockets of time?  You may be early to a client meeting or waiting at a doctor’s office, for example, and wishing you had some way to stay productive.  Rather than try to kill time by reading tweets on your phone or checking text messages, you can try to be prepared.  
A great way to use these gifts of time throughout the day is to always have something you can work on.  You can use virtual notebooks to keep running lists of phone calls to make, bring stationery for writing thank you notes, or carry a folder of documents to review/sign.  This way, you can stay productive and take advantage of time no matter where you are.How do you stay productive while waiting on-the-go?  Share with us in the comments!

Abilities:
•  Create unlimited text messages to be sent to your phone
•  Specify exact date, time, and repeat schedule

Great for:
•  Remembering important tasks
•  Recurring tasks like household chores, paying your bills, backing up electronic devices, etc.

•  Keeps meetings more focused and efficient
•  Makes use of 15 minute blocks of buffer time between meetings to quickly check emails or make phone calls
•  Shows attendees that you recognize that their time is valuable and you do not want to waste it

“Buffer Time” Defined: The extra time added before or after an event or task.

Benefits: Buffer time allows you to stay on time throughout your day, even when unexpected delays occur.

How to Get Started: The next time you schedule your day, try including an extra 15-20 minutes between appointments to account for travel delays or longer than anticipated meetings.  Apply the same concept to completing tasks.  Leave room in your schedule so that when things do not go according to plan, you won’t be scrambling to meet a deadline.  For one-on-one help improving your scheduling and time management, call us for a free 15-minute phone consultation.

Do you wish you could easily reference your to-do list while on-the-go?  TeuxDeux is one of our favorite time management apps because it has a simple interface and allows you to add tasks to your to-do list quickly.

Abilities:
•  Check off, move, or delete tasks
•  Create a “someday” bucket for future tasks
•  Automatic rollover of unchecked tasks
•  Organize tasks by day of week
•  Sync with your mobile device

Great for:
•  Going paperless
•  Staying organized on-the-go with mobile devices