productive
Improve Your Productivity: 5 Tips To Clear The Clutter
Is clutter standing in the way of you doing your best work? Likely it is. In fact, it’s one of the biggest challenges to your productivity.
Are you constantly searching for client files, notes, or even something to write with?
Is it a nightmare to find a file on your hard drive or the cloud because you lack an organizational structure and/or an effective file-naming convention?
Do you have a dozen tabs open on your computer at any one time? Yes, that’s a form of clutter, too.
Are there stacks of books, papers, or even coffee cups or dishes sitting on your desk?
Are your file drawers crammed with paperwork that’s no longer needed and which belongs in the trash can?
No wonder it’s hard to focus or get anything done. And, even if you do accomplish anything, you’re probably not feeling your best when you work under these cluttered conditions.
Across the board, clutter is often fueling these uneasy feelings and your lack of productivity. It has a way of sucking the life out of you, distracting you from what’s most important, and derailing your success.
5 Tips To Clear Clutter In Your Workspace
You can’t increase your productivity by reading a book or taking a class. You actually need to take action.
After that’s done, you’ll start to see the effects — increased productivity.
Let’s focus on some basic components of your work environment.
A cluttered and messy office is no place to expect your best work. And, while some people believe that’s where they get their best work done, imagine what they could accomplish if working in a completely upgraded environment! Here are some simple tips for helping you to create an environment for success.
Put It Away!
Put away everything that belongs in your desk drawers or file cabinet.
If you find things that don’t belong in your office, then take them to wherever they belong and put them away.
Bonus tip: Discard anything you haven’t used in the past year. If you haven’t used it in that time, odds are you never will.
Clear It Away!
Clear everything from the top of your desk and wipe it down.
Prior to placing things back on top of your desk, evaluate each item to make sure you actually need it front and center.
If not, then put it away or throw it away. Reduce visual distractions as much as possible.
Bonus tip: Wipe down your desk phone and/or smartphone. They’re a haven for germs.
Review
Gather all your Post-It notes and scraps of paper.
For the remainder, type them into a digital document for safekeeping.
Bonus tip: If they include items you need to reference, keep the one page document easily accessible on your desktop or stored in a top desk drawer.
Clean Up!
If you have boxes or stacks of items on your office floor, go through them and discard everything you can. Again, if you haven’t used something in the past year, discard it or give it away.
Discarding is the better choice so that it can be recycled.
Bonus tip: Go through your bookcase and get rid of any books you also own digitally.
Box up any others that are outdated and either give them to the library or recycle them.
Remove Digital Distractions
Technology produces its own brand of clutter.
Close down any tabs that you have open on your computer except for those that apply to your current work.
Bonus tip: Turn off any gadgets except the ones you need to do your core work tasks. You’ll get more done faster and easier without added distractions.
By implementing these simple tips, you’ll be well on your way to clearing the clutter in your office and reducing distraction.
You’ll love the result. You’ll be more energized, less anxious, and more focused on your work. Investing a little bit of time today to prepare your work environment will make a noticeable difference in your productivity!
The Benefits of Personal Coaching
As a successful entrepreneur or business person, you probably know exactly what you want and how to get it. You are driven, determined and a self-starter. So if you have all these great qualities, why would you need a coach?
10 Real World Benefits of Coaching
The personal benefits of coaching are as wide-ranging as the individuals involved. Many clients report that coaching has positively impacted their careers as well as their lives in many ways. Here are ten of the many ways that having a coach will benefit you.
1. Establish and take action towards achieving goals:
This is especially important for introverted entrepreneurs and solopreneurs who run online businesses as it’s easy to become enmeshed in your own business world. A business coach will push you to step outside your comfort zone, meet new people and try new things in your business. Even extroverted entrepreneurs can get caught in ruts and a business coach will push you out of them and force you to take action to strive towards your goals.
2. Regain clarity:
When you decide to become an entrepreneur, you start with great dreams and aspirations of growing a business, hoping to achieve great things. As the months and sometimes even the years go by, you start realizing that your business is yet to become what you had initially envisioned, and you have yet to implement all the ambitious action plans you once thought of. You may start seeing that you are so caught up in the day-to-day running of the business that you find little time to think and plan a strategy. Working with a coach will help you raise your head from the day-to-day business race and look at the bigger picture. Your coach will get you to start thinking about the future, where do you see yourself and your business, and get you to act on this vision by developing a winning strategy that you can execute with confidence.
3. Become more self-reliant:
The one aspect that a coach brings that group sessions or mentors do not, is a keen awareness of your entire business and way of being. There are few times when someone is going to focus just on you for an entire hour, probing you about something that happened last quarter, an employee issue you had three weeks ago or your style of leadership. By being totally focused on you, a good coach can show you the way and when you take the necessary action you will become far more self reliant when running your business, and your confidence will soar and you are on an upwards success spiral.
4. Increased Productivity:
Professional coaching maximizes potential and, therefore, unlocks latent sources of productivity. To be successful and to get to a point where you haven’t been before, you need to do something you haven’t done before. And this is really what separates real successful entrepreneurs from mediocre ones. A good coach will not only motivate and encourage you, he/she will point out the things you are good at but most importantly he/she will point out the things that you are not exceeding in and you need to improve. We all have blind spots and often the more successful we are, the harder it becomes to highlight and accept our shortcomings. Identifying blind spots means that you get to work on areas of yourself you haven’t addressed before, which will result in becoming more productive and more aware about you need to do to lead a more fulfilling life.
5. Positive attitude and increased self-confidence:
Building the self-confidence of employees to face challenges is critical in meeting organizational demands and you will get much more done if the people around you are positive and uplifting, rather than negative people who are always complaining and wear you down.
6. Greater responsibility and accountability for actions and commitments:
A coach will not only push you and challenge you to do and achieve your best, but will also hold you accountable for your actions. An experienced coach is able to detect when you are lying to yourself and when you are sugarcoating existing realities in order to avoid the pain of taking action.
This leads to –
7. Return on Investment:
Coaching generates learning and clarity for forward action with a commitment to measurable outcomes.The vast majority of companies (86%) say they at least made their investment back.
8. Work more easily and productively with others:
Finding ways to do tasks more quickly and efficiently and understanding that is a process worth investing your time in is an important skill and this includes working well with others and, perhaps more importantly, being able to delegate tasks to others (especially when you may feel like it would be easier to do it yourself). You need to think about the bigger picture, the long-term results of investing the time to train and delegate tasks to others.
9. Communicate more effectively by voicing your frustrations:
Whether you are a solopreneur or you have a team around you, there will always be certain things that you may not be able to share with those around you for a number of reasons. In a coaching relationship, you can share your concerns with the coach, knowing that you are in a confidential setting; your coach is always your biggest advocate and wants you to succeed in whatever you set out to.
10. Coaching provides an invaluable space for personal development:
This is an important, but often overlooked benefit, especially in the corporate world but is just as important for a company as an individual. Take this for example; managers frequently have to deal with employees struggling with low confidence. The traditional approach would be to send them to an assertiveness course and hope this addresses the issue. In the short-term, the employee learns new strategies for communicating which may improve confidence. Unfortunately, in isolation these courses rarely produce a sustained increase in confidence. Although external behavior may change; it needs to be supported by changes in their internal thought processes. This is often where coaching is most effective and it can be tailored to the individuals needs.
Okay, there you have it. Ten top ways that coaching can benefit you.
Do you have the knowledge and expertise in your niche that would enable you to become a coach? There is no greater feeling than helping others to succeed. If you would like to learn more about how you can start your own coaching program/business, take a look at Mentoring Magic here: warr.us/atgmen1
Ensure That Your Aim Is True
Whatever you want to achieve in life or business, you need to have a clear vision of where you are heading. Without this, how on earth are you going to know if you are on the right track or straying from your path?
Setting clear, distinct goals is like looking down the barrel of a rifle and can ensure that you are ALWAYS aiming in the right direction and keep you on track.
Having a clearly defined path also give you “stickability” because when you encounter obstacles (and you will) it will help you to remain focused on where you need to go.
Without this level of clarity, you are much more likely to give up when the going gets tough and that is doing you a disservice because you deserve the rewards that your goals will give you.
The power of goals shouldn’t be underestimated and they should be set and re-evaluated often (especially your short term goals). Use goals to give you momentum, and more importantly, to maintain it, especially when you are going through the major challenges you are going to face.
Stay strong, be resilient and you will succeed; you are just being tested to see whether you really want it and you do, dont you?
Now, sit down right now and set some goals, and take some immediate action; let’s go get ’em!