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!

Administrative professionals can be an enormous help around the office, but it’s important to identify how and what to delegate to your assistant so you can both be more productive and efficient. Too often bosses don’t delegate tasks because they think explaining the task will take longer than doing it themselves. However, when you invest the time to implement efficient delegation techniques with your assistant, you’ll ultimately save time in the long run (for both of you!).

Here are a few quick tips to help you delegate more efficiently to your assistant:

1. Daily Checkpoint Meeting

Start your day with a brief 5 to 10 minute checkpoint meeting so you can quickly review the top priorities for the day. This will also help your assistant batch questions together so they don’t have to interrupt you as many times throughout the day.

2. Implement Task Management Software

It’s easy to forget what you have and have not delegated, so shared task management software can help keep you both on the same page. The key to implementing task management software is ensuring that the solution you choose allows you to share tasks. If you’re having problems selecting one (there are many to choose from), just give us a call.

3. Share Email Access

Enlist your assistant’s help with responding to certain types of emails (scheduling, follow-up, etc.) by adding them as a “delegate” to specific email folders. This will help cut down on the number of times you have to forward emails to your assistant; instead, they can respond for you! Remember to clearly define how and what types of emails you would like their help with. It will take some getting used to, but it’s worth it in the long run.

4. Establish Inbox Trays

When you’re constantly on-the-go and returning from appointments with business cards, meeting notes, and marketing collateral, it’s important to create inbox trays that are clearly labeled to reflect the follow-up tasks associated with the items in that tray. For example, you may want to create inbox trays for To File, To Scan, To Enter in CRM, or Receipts to Process depending on your specific set of needs.

Do you have any tips for delegating tasks more efficiently to your assistant? We’d love to hear about them in the comments!

Are you still scrambling to find a gift for your office manager or executive assistant on Administrative Professionals Day? Every April the International Association of Administrative Professionals, devotes a week to honoring the people who help you schedule meetings, plan office parties, and keep everything in order. Perhaps they even let you raid their secret candy stash to satisfy your sweet tooth?

Deciding on a gift can be tough, so we’ve compiled a list of five ideas to help you express your gratitude (and hopefully save your administrative professional time in their day).

1. Personalized Leather Circa Folio

This is an excellent option for an administrative professional that enjoys keeping track of to-do lists on paper. The Circa notebook system is completely customizable and you can rearrange pages quickly and easily. For a more personalized gift, you can add the recipient’s full name or initials to the leather cover. Learn more about the Circa Folio here.

2. New Desk Accessories

When you spend a lot of time at your desk, it’s nice to give your accessories a facelift every once in a while. Put together a gift basket of stylish and functional gift accessories for your administrative professional. You may want to include a desk caddy, letter trays, sticky note holders, or cord management supplies. One of our favorite sites for desk accessories is See Jane Work.

3. Tote Bag (with good pockets)

Many administrative professionals appreciate the value of organization and their laptop bag is no exception. There are lots of bags to choose from, but try to find one that has functional pockets. FranklinPlanner carries a number of good options that help you stay organized while maintaining a certain amount of style.

4. Ergonomic Desk Chair

You know that feeling when you’ve been sitting down too long and your desk chair isn’t exactly helping the situation? Administrative professionals are often sitting for lengthy periods of times, so why not relieve them with an ergonomic desk chair? Our friends at Turnstone have a great option called the cobi Select. Now the only question is how you’re going to wrap such a large gift?

5. Gift Certificate to Swap Roles for the Day

If you’re looking for a more creative gift idea, look no further than this gift certificate you can download! When you give this certificate to your administrative professional, you’re agreeing to be their assistant for a day. The simple fact that you’re willing to see what their job entails says a lot about how much you appreciate their help.

In honor of Administrative Professionals Week, stay tuned for another blog post about tips for delegating between you and your administrative professional.

Happy Earth Day! In honor of all things green, we’ve put together a list of ideas to help you reduce paper, reuse everyday items, and reorganize with sustainable organizing products.

1. Reduce Paper

ScanSnap S1300 - This is one of our all-time favorite products to help you achieve your goal of becoming as paperless as possible. This scanner is portable, easy to use, and maintains great quality. Learn more here.

Virtual Notebooks - Using virtual notebooks is a great way to reduce the amount of paper you use for notetaking or jotting quick to-do lists.  We like Evernote and Microsoft’s OneNote as great options to consider.  They are a great way to keep all of your notes paperless and organized.  You can even share your notes with other people!  For more information on virtual notebooks, download our virtual notebooks webinar.

2. Reuse Everyday Items

No time to handle the influx of mail coming into your office?  Wish you could focus more on building your business, attending to your customers, and working efficiently, rather than opening invoices, scanning documents, and filing correspondences?

At Innovatively Organized, we are big fans of Earth Class Mail, a service that allows you to do just that. Earth Class Mail is an online service that manages your incoming paper mail, scans it, and then sends you an electronic version.  This allows you to take all the actions you would with email—file, delete, archive.  They have a variety of products and offerings, including a Virtual Mailroom, Mail and Parcel Forwarding, and Virtual Warehouse, that make you more efficient.

In particular, the Virtual Mailroom is a great service for individuals and offices that travel frequently, enabling them to stay on top of their mail while on-the-go.  It’s especially helpful for people that want to be more paperless because it keeps physical mail from piling up at the office. They even offer scanning, shredding, and shipping services so you have more time to focus on the tasks you want to be focusing on.

How do you currently process your incoming mail?

We are thrilled with JoAnn’s recently organized office space.  What began as an overwhelmed, cluttered, and inefficient room is now a functional and organized office.  JoAnn is finally able to work productively in her space, which maintains its organizational system with little effort required.

Our Sponsors

With the close of our second Messiest Desk Contest, we would like to thank everyone that made it possible.  A huge thank you to all of our wonderful sponsors:

• Turnstone
• Smead
• Leo Santiago Photography
• Getting Organized Magazine
• Scan-Doc
• GeekPeek.tv

The Messy Desk Transformation

Thank you as well to everyone that submitted a nomination and voted in January!  In case you missed our journey organizing JoAnn’s space, here was our process and big reveal:

• Picking Containers that Work for Your Space
• Scanning Physical Binders into Electronic Files
• Creating a File System that is Easy to Use and Maintain
• The Big Reveal!

Photo courtesy of Leo Santiago Photography

Throughout this three-part spring cleaning series, you have learned how to clean out Microsoft Outlook and how to organize your physical mail (life should already be feeling less stressful).  For the final part of our series, we’re focusing on areas that tend to get cluttered when you’re a busy professional on-the-go.

In order to stay organized and productive throughout your busy days transitioning from one meeting to another, here are 3 tips to help you spring clean your car, mobile devices, and more:

 1. Clean out your car

Go through all of the clutter in your middle console, glove box, back seats, and trunk.  In between your meetings and work, your car is bound to get a little disorganized. Restock your car with supplies you use frequently, like car chargers, notepads, pens, and wet wipes. To help you stay productive on-the-go, add grocery bags and create a mobile desk to sit in your passenger seat.  And if your car could really use some TLC, maybe it’s time to treat yourself to a car detail.

 2. Clean up your mobile devices

Delete the apps you no longer use (or that game you played for one day), the productivity apps you tried but didn’t like, etc. Wipe down your screens to kill the germs that have accumulated. Scroll through your contacts to delete duplicate entries. Don’t forget to delete the photos you no longer need.

 3. Clean out your purse, briefcase, or tote

No matter what your bag of choice is, it can quickly become a dumping ground full of old business cards, meeting notes, etc.  Clean out your bag, but make sure you process the items you remove (maybe adding a task to your to-do list, adding new contacts to your CRM, or scanning meeting notes).

We hope you are feeling more focused and less cluttered now after our Spring Cleaning series!  Remember to add time to your calendar every month or every quarter to help you clear out clutter consistently, not just in the spring.

And be sure to sign up for our newsletter for monthly tips like this to keep you track.

Now that you have cleaned out your Outlook for better email management, it is time to clean-up the physical mail that comes across your desk (or ends up in piles around your desk) and limit the amount of junk mail you receive in the future. For the second phase of our three-part Spring Cleaning series, here are 3 tips to “spring clean” your physical mail and maintain it:

1. Sign up for e-statements

Banks, insurance, and investment companies are just some of the businesses that tend to send a lot of paperwork.  When you sign up for e-statements, you can considerably cut down on the amount of incoming paper.  Just remember, if you choose to receive e-statements, make sure you have a digital filing system so your email and desktop don’t become cluttered.  There are services available as well, such as FileThisFetch, that will retrieve your statements for you and file them in a document repository, like Dropbox.

2. Remove yourself from direct mail lists

Take your name off of direct mailing lists as you come across  junk mail that you no longer wish to receive.  There are a number of resources online that can help you choose what you do and do not want to receive. Some tools we suggest are the Direct Marketing Association website, Catalog Choice, and Reduce.org.

3. Create a mail center for easy processing

Setting up a mail center in your home or office is an excellent way to keep all of your incoming mail sorted and organized.  It also helps you process actionable pieces of mail more efficiently. For an easy how-to, download our webinar, Creating a Mail Center: How to Handle Bills Efficiently.

Stick with us for the final part in our Spring Cleaning series coming soon!

For almost a year, our team has been waiting for Mad Men to return and now we can officially say it’s back…finally!  Last night marked the start of the sixth season and we were reunited with our favorite characters.  Naturally, since Innovatively Organized is a productivity consulting firm, we were paying close attention to how efficiently Don, Peggy, Pete, and Joan stay productive throughout the day.

Below are the four Mad Men-inspired productivity methods we identified.  Do any of them sound like you?

The Don Draper Productivity Method

Don wastes time by…

Lounging on the couch, indulging in his vices too often (ahem… whiskey… ahem… tobacco… ahem… shall we say more?), coming in late to the office, and waiting for the next big idea to strike.

You might be like Don or relate to his productivity method if…

• You’re known for your innovation and creativity.
• You develop a lot of ideas and they’re good.
• You delegate (AKA bark orders) without a sense of what you’re actually asking the person to accomplish.

If Don was working today, these tools could help him boost productivity and capture ideas…

Action Method, Ideaboard, Penultimate

The Peggy Olson Productivity Method

Peggy wastes time by…

To be perfectly honest, she doesn’t have much time to waste because she always has something to prove.  With that being said, she’s been known to escape to the cinema, crack jokes with Stan, befriend bohemians, and partake in some “joint” ventures (in the name of inspiration, of course).  Oh yeah, and then there was that time she discovered the elderly receptionist, Miss Blankenship, dead at her desk.

You might be like Peggy or relate to her productivity method if…

• You’re a workaholic.  People often find you working on a project and burning the midnight oil.

If Peggy was working today, this suite of tools could help her boost productivity…

Microsoft’s Office 365

The Pete Campbell Productivity Method

Pete wastes time by…

Schmoozing.  From wining and dining prospective clients to charming his in-laws, Pete is constantly trying to sell.  While he has been known to let loose dancing the Charleston on rare occasion, he typically has a motive behind actions such as exchanging a wedding gift (a chip n’ dip tray) for something better, taking Drivers Ed with teenagers, and inviting Don to dinner at his home.

You might be like Pete or relate to his productivity method if…

• You are impulsive and often make quick decisions; sometimes it pans out and sometimes it doesn’t.
• You are goal-oriented and ambitious.  You’ll do whatever it takes to get to the top.

If Pete was working today, these tools could help him track goals efficiently…

GoalsOnTrack, 42goals

The Joan Holloway Productivity Method

Joan wastes time by…

Listening to her coworkers’ problems, sipping cocktails in a midtown bar, giving the secretaries unsolicited beauty advice, and being interrupted often.  From whipping up last minute office parties to displaying her talents such as playing the accordion, Joan somehow manages to let loose while still maintaining her composure.

You might be like Joan or relate to her productivity method if…

• You are the organized one in the office and a list maker.
• You always seem to know what people are doing at any given time.
• You are brutally honest.
• You take initiative and know how to get things done behind the scenes.

If Joan was working today, these tools could help her keep track of her to-do list…

Evernote, Microsoft OneNote, Toodledo