As you enter the new year, it is important to start fresh with the right calendar for you. Here are 3 tips for choosing a calendar to keep you productive:

• Take a moment to consideration whether you want a paper or electronic calendar then choose the specific one that’s right for your personality and work style.
• Stick to only one calendar and avoid switching around between different ones if possible.
• Once you have picked your calendar, put your new years goals and timeline in it so you can hold yourself accountable.

2013 was a great year here at Innovatively Organized and to celebrate we are sharing our ‘best of 2013′ blogs. From useful downloadable checklists to step-by-step processes for increasing productivity, here are our top blogs from the past year:

1. Must Haves On-the-Go: Mobile Professionals Checklist- In February, we shared our Mobile Professionals Checklist to all our readers so that they could be more productive no matter where they work.

2. How to Efficiently Delegate to Your Assistant- Whether you need help from your assistant or a coworker, this article will help you delegate efficiently so you can save yourself time.

3. Essential Productivity Apps Checklist to Keep You Efficient- As a celebration of Small Business Week in June, we compiled a list of our top productivity apps that we recommend to our clients and shared them in this article.

4. 7 Ways Our Team Has Efficient Meetings- We described our step-by-step process of how we at Innovatively Organized hold efficient and productive meetings.

5. 5 Common Bottlenecks in Your Office- Whether it’s the chatty coworker in the cubicle next to you or duplicate documents that make finding the most recent version a headache, most offices deal with numerous productivity killers on a daily basis (sometimes unknowingly). This article helps bring awareness to some of those common bottlenecks.

6. App Recommendation: EchoSign- When a client signs a contract with you, the process of faxing or scanning documents is tedious and makes the negotiation process longer and more stressful for everyone involved. Fortunately, EchoSign allows users to send, sign, track, manage and access documents digitally. Read why we love EchoSign with this post.

7. Staying Productive When Your Self-Employed- When you are your own boss or work from home, there isn’t always someone pressuring you to complete that tedious report and while this can be refreshing for some people, it can also lead to procrastination or added stress because you are fully responsible for your own work load. In this article we provided a few tips we have come up with to help you stay motivated and productive when you’re self-employed.

8. Decide & Delegate During the Holidays- As more and more people in the office start disappearing during the holiday season, it can be stressful for those still left working. We provided a list of questions to go over with your team or coworkers so that everything is handled accordingly.

As the new year approaches, most people will start thinking of the goals they want to accomplish next year. Thinking of writing that book or getting rid of the boxes of files in your office is exciting and motivating. However, as soon as January actually hits its easy to forget about these goals as you frantically try to catch up after the holidays.  So how can you set goals for 2014 and actually stick to them when the time comes? Here are 4 quick tips that will help you succeed with your goals:

1. Brainstorm what you’d like to get done. Making a list of everything you’d like to accomplish on paper will help you with motivation.
2. Narrow down your list. You will most likely be busy when you return from the holidays, so don’t set too many goals at once. Highlight the 3 most important goals (that are big yet realistic) that you would like to accomplish first and focus on those.
3. Make a timeline. Writing down a timeline will help you hold yourself accountable when you are slipping back into your normal routine.
4. Reward milestones. When you reach a certain point in your timeline, be sure to reward yourself! Get a massage, buy that item of clothing you’ve been wanting, or simply relax for a full day. This will give you an incentive to keep working towards your goal to reach your next milestone.

Want daily tips on establishing good habits and increasing your productivity?  Follow @ProductivitySch on Twitter!

When December hits it seems as though half of the office disappears, which can be stressful for those still working. Even though its the holiday season and many businesses slow down, it’s still vital to think ahead during this time. Make sure everyone in your office knows when you and your co-workers (or your team if you’re the boss) are taking holiday vacations near the end of the year and plan ahead for how their absences should be handled.

As a team, you’ll typically need to plan ahead for questions such as:

• Who will answer the phones?
• Will you shut down operations to give everyone the days off or will you keep a skeleton crew running?
• Who will get the mail?
• How will people work from home? Will they have access to the correct files and software?
• If there is a “lighter” day, then what will the staff do - organize and file documents to get ahead, perhaps?

Its also important to ensure that your role gets filled when you are gone if the company isn’t on a holiday itself. This means that you should delegate the tasks that need to get done before you leave.