How To Stay Productive During The Holidays

It’s almost 2015, and that’s all I can think of! The Holidays are finally among us with presents to buy, parties, hosting, traveling, and those far off New Year’s resolutions - it’s all too exciting. But, but, but, but, there are still work days in the week and the day-to-day tasks that have to happen, especially in the Inspherio office! Instead of letting your work day results suffer or that of your teams, refocus and concentrate on getting everything, from business to the holidays, done in time. If you are anything like me, these tips will help you through the next few weeks!

1. 1. Create Lists: I am a list-o-manic; it exists, I swear. Gather all the information and write down EVERYTHING you need to buy and do. Food to get, presents, wrapping paper, butter, everything, it will help. (Pro Tip: It would also help if you made separate lists of individual stores and list only everything you have to buy from there). 
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3. 2. Beat the Rush. Plan Ahead: At work, focus on work. When you are home, make your plans and schedules so you aren’t doing everything at the last minute. From Christmas to after New Years, schedule out shopping trips, holiday parties, etc, so that your business hours are devoted to actual business. 
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5. 3. Ask for Help: Yes! It’s the Holidays, it’s the time to lend a hand and ask for a hand. If you are finding yourself stressed and spending your work day thinking of everything that still needs to get done for that holiday soiree in 5 days, ask family or friends for help. 
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7. 4. Organize Your Work Day: Seriously, truly organize your work day. What HAS to happen by lunch or by the time you go home. Forget about what is a few days away in your social calendar and focus on your tasks and get to work! Morning is your most productive time, so get what’s most important done when you get in - maybe you’ll even find some time to make another Holiday list! (I’m telling you, they get addicting.) 
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9. 5. Avoid Distractions and Multitasking: As I say, “put on the blinders.” Don’t juggle personal and work-related tasks at the same time. Definitely don’t check your personal email for holiday cards or your social media to see how Tiffany from Yoga is already off and on vacation. Stay focused and in the zone. 
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11. 6. Speaking of Vacation, You’re Not on Yours Yet: I know that I get ahead of myself and start listing and packing for my New Years trip a week before Christmas, but I try to keep myself in check. Follow suit! You won’t have a vacation next year if you don’t do your work this year. 
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13. 7. Most Important, Remember What the Holidays are All About: It’s a time for family and love and a season of celebration. This should be the most joyful time of the year, so if you have to, take a deep breath, regroup, and realize what all of this is for. This time does not have to be chaotic - remember that. 

It can be tough to find that balance between work and life, and it only gets harder during the Holidays. Presents for the loved ones, cookies for the kiddos, it gets overwhelming but your job and your work tasks should be at the top of your list. Everyone shares a similar vacation schedule at the end of the year and it should be clear what needs to be accomplished before you go. So instead of working over vacation or spending Christmas Eve stuck in the office because you have projects to finish, finish the year strong! Give a gift to yourself of staying organized, focused, and you will get to enjoy your holiday season even more!

Any more tips on how you stay focused? Let me know!

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What Successful People Do With the First Hour of their Work Day

Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk

The following article was written by Kevin Purdy and first appeared in Fast Company

Remember when you used to have a period at the beginning of every day to think about your schedule, catch up with friends, maybe knock out a few tasks? It was called home room, and it went away after high school. But many successful people schedule themselves a kind of grown-up home room every day. You should too.

The first hour of the workday goes a bit differently for Craig Newmark of Craigslist, David Karp of Tumblr, motivational speaker Tony Robbins, career writer (and Fast Company blogger) Brian Tracy, and others, and they’ll tell you it makes a big difference. Here are the first items on their daily to-do list.

Don’t Check Your Email for the First Hour. Seriously. Stop That.

Tumblr founder David Karp will “try hard” not to check his email until 9:30 or 10 a.m., according to an Inc. profile of him. “Reading e-mails at home never feels good or productive,” Karp said. “If something urgently needs my attention, someone will call or text me.”

Not all of us can roll into the office whenever our Vespa happens to get us there, but most of us with jobs that don’t require constant on-call awareness can trade e-mail for organization and single-focus work. It’s an idea that serves as the title of Julie Morgenstern’s work management book Never Check Email In The Morning, and it’s a fine strategy for leaving the office with the feeling that, even on the most over-booked days, you got at least one real thing done.

If you need to make sure the most important messages from select people come through instantly, AwayFind can monitor your inbox and get your attention when something notable arrives. Otherwise, it’s a gradual but rewarding process of training interruptors and coworkers not to expect instantaneous morning response to anything they send in your off-hours.

Gain Awareness, Be Grateful

One smart, simple question on curated Q & A site Quora asked “How do the most successful people start their day?”. The most popular response came from a devotee of Tony Robbins, the self-help guru who pitched the power of mindful first-hour rituals long before we all had little computers next to our beds.

Robbins suggests setting up an “Hour of Power,” “30 Minutes to Thrive,” or at least “Fifteen Minutes to Fulfillment.” Part of it involves light exercise, part of it involves motivational incantations, but the most accessible piece involves 10 minutes of thinking of everything you’re grateful for: in yourself, among your family and friends, in your career, and the like. After that, visualize “everything you want in your life as if you had it today.”

Robbins offers the “Hour of Power” segment of his Ultimate Edge series as a free audio stream (here’s the direct MP3 download). Blogger Mike McGrath also wrote a concise summary of the Hour of Power). You can be sure that at least some of the more driven people you’ve met in your career are working on Robbins’ plan.

Do the Big, Shoulder-Sagging Stuff First

Brian Tracy’s classic time-management book Eat That Frog gets its title from a Mark Twain saying that, if you eat a live frog first thing in the morning, you’ve got it behind you for the rest of the day, and nothing else looks so bad. Gina Trapani explained it well in a video for her Work Smart series). Combine that with the concept of getting one thing done before you wade into email, and you’ve got a day-to-day system in place. Here’s how to force yourself to stick to it:

Choose Your Frog

"Choose your frog, and write it down on a piece of paper that you'll see when you arrive back at your desk in the morning, Tripani advises."If you can, gather together the material you'll need to get it done and have that out, too."

One benefit to tackling that terrible, weighty thing you don’t want to do first thing in the morning is that you get some space from the other people involved in that thing--the people who often make the thing more complicated and frustrating. Without their literal or figurative eyes over your shoulder, the terrible thing often feels less complex, and you can get more done.

Ask Yourself If You’re Doing What You Want to Do

Feeling unfulfilled at work shouldn’t be something you realize months too late, or even years. Consider making an earnest attempt every morning at what the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs told a graduating class at Stanford to do:

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

“Customer Service” (or Your Own Equivalent)

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark answered the first hour question succinctly: “Customer service.” He went on to explain (or expand) that he also worked on current projects, services for military families and veterans, and protecting voting rights. But customer service is what Newmark does every single day at Craigslist, responding to user complaints and smiting scammers and spammers. He almost certainly has bigger fish he could pitch in on every day, but Newmark says customers service “anchors me to reality.”

Your own version of customer service might be keeping in touch with contacts from year-ago projects, checking in with coworkers you don’t regularly interact with, asking questions of mentors, and just generally handling the human side of work that quickly gets lost between task list items. But do your customer service on the regular, and you’ll have a more reliable roster of helpers when the time comes.

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