Close
Enter your
text here

productivity

meeting, advice, tips, tricks, manager, employee
Make Meetings More Enjoyable
 Make Meetings More Enjoyable 660 371 admin
By:

Workplace meetings can tend to become a drag and become the bane of the employee’s existence. However, there are ways to make these meetings fun and something to look forward to. Here are some tips and tricks:

  • Reduce the number of meetings. If possible, try to use other means of communication, such as text message or email, to deliver information. This way, the meetings you do hold do not seem superfluous.
  • Follow a timeline and agenda. Having a layout of the meeting will help the team know what to expect and gives them a better sense of control, as they now know what will be discussed.
  • Provide food. Who doesn’t love free food?? Something as simple as coffee and doughnuts can help meetings become the highlight of the week.
  • End with something not related to work. The mood of the team can be tense after a meeting, so ending with a funny video or something light can help everyone get back to work off on the right foot.

Did these tips help make meetings for you and your team? Let us know in the comments below!

How to Plan for the Future
 How to Plan for the Future 1024 640 admin
By:

 

Nowadays, we are able to immediately satisfy our needs, whether it be same-day shipping or doing a quick online search to find the answer to whatever question we have. With this, we can forget the importance of planning for the future. In this Ted Talk, Ari Wallach gives us the proper tools to have the foresight to ensure that we can help make the world a better place in the next 10 to 15 years, and beyond.

Wallach suggests that we can better plan for the future by realizing our responsibility to help set up the future generations, rather than just focusing on ourselves. Next, there are many different “futures” that we can help become a reality if we put in the effort. Lastly, all of this is not possible if we think of the “future” as 5 years from now. Rather, we must think “30, 40, 50, 100 years ahead.”

This is an important shift in thinking, as many of us just try to find “sandbag solutions”: temporary fixes to our dilemmas. However, these do not fully fix our problems and leave the future no better than before.

With this in mind, we can take control of the future and not think about it as something that just washes over us. Rather, it is something we have full control of. We just need to widen the view of the world and our impact on others.

Watch Wallach’s Ted Talk below, and check out other talks at Ted.com.

The Best Career Advice You Ever Got
 The Best Career Advice You Ever Got 275 183 MPatton
By:

The best career advice I ever received, I got from my best friend. I was just starting out freelancing and I thought I must be crazy for leaving a steady-paying but difficult job. Am I supposed to convince people to pay me to just write stuff all day? Apparently, yes.

“Just pretend you’re good at it. Eventually, you will be.” She made it so simple.  I’m not confident in my coding skills, but I can say with confidence that I’m willing to learn and have the equipment to do so. My first job rolled in and soon, I was surprised at how fast pretending to be good at my job meant I eventually became good at it.

Pretending you’re good at your job doesn’t mean lie on your resume – far from it. For me, it meant embracing the things I could learn from as much as it meant selling the skills I had. For example, an interviewer asks you this question:

What experience do you have with collaborative software?

Right, Answer: I have experience with Slack, but I’m interested in learning other platforms.

Wrong Answer: I only know of Slack but I don’t use it much.

See the difference?

More than just a poster, it's great career advice.

Great advice for any situation.

But so what, right? Now you’re confident but you’re still not an expert on collaborative software. You don’t need to be. Take time and back up your confidence. Look up tutorials for other software programs and platforms. Familiarize yourself with the basic who, what, how, why and you’ll have confidence going forward. I’ve noticed the more I go on, the less I’m pretending. It was really helpful advice.

United EVENTures CEO and President, Will Leggett’s best career advice is simple and straightforward: Figure out what you love to do in life and then figure out a way to get paid to do it. You will never work a day in your life that way.

Our Director of Program Development, Brian Rendine shares his best career advice: Do something that you love and you will never work a day in your life. I had an Irish Christian Brother in high school teach me Spanish for three straight years, Br. Sheridan, and he not only passed that good advice to me, but also was a living example of how when you love what you do, it’s not work.

Our redditors have also shared heir answers with us:

  • Document your wins and tell your boss about it OFTEN, not just during your annual performance review.
  • My best advice was work your butt off for something you’re passionate to achieve. Having done this I’ve accelerated quite quickly in my chosen career which is surprising for my age. I’ve only realized this was good advice 3 years later when it paid off.
  • Listen, don’t just hear. It is amazing what you will learn when your mouth is closed and ears are attentive.

So tell us in the comments, what’s the best career advice you ever got?

TGIF: Get the Most out of Your Friday by Preparing for Monday
 TGIF: Get the Most out of Your Friday by Preparing for Monday 575 340 MPatton
By:

Fridays in the office are basically dedicated to staring at the clock, making excuses to get coffee, and ducking your supervisor lest they give you a project that makes you stay past 5:30. But the clock watching coffee marathon on Friday can lead to an overloaded and chaotic Monday.

There is a solution to your conundrum: work. I know the concept of actually accomplishing something on a Friday is a little on the radical side but hear me out. Using your Friday to get ready for Monday, you’ll be more prepared and less swamped Monday morning. Clear these small tasks off your desk and they’ll add up for an easier week.

weekend-1756858__340Clear out your inbox and voicemail. Catch up on all your emails and voice mails. Use your clock watching time to follow-up with coworkers, clients, and customers. Don’t start a long email convo back and forth – just be short, sweet, and to the point so you don’t end up with extra stuff to add to the pile. Finishing up your communication for the week means no surprises on Monday morning and no weekend texts or phone calls.

Prep for meetings. One of the companies I used to work for loved Monday morning meetings. Sometimes the meetings were productive and sometimes we all took turns bumbling around and shuffling papers to hide that we were unprepared. If your Mondays and Tuesdays are booked with meetings, carve some time out of the day on Friday to get prepped; make info packets, tweak your power point, double-check your reports. Prepping on Friday means you’ll have a few extra minutes to stagger around on Monday morning and shake off that zombie feeling before you hit the conference room.

Don’t dive in to any big projects. If you have a presentation or a big project coming up, leave that for the middle of the week. Starting something big just before the weekend can throw you off when you come back to it two days later. Odds are, you’re not planning to take the work home with you over the weekend. If you have a big project, don’t just jump in with both feet at 10am on a Friday. Break the project down into small sections, do some outlining and a little bit of research so you have something to show if your supervisor wants an update.

Make a donut run. Seriously, make a donut run. You’ve cleared out your inbox, got your Monday prep ready and you’ve got a good handle on that next big project. Take your fifteen and go off site and bring back some glucose encouragement for the rest of the team.

Not every Friday is created equally and, of course, you’ll probably have days where you’re so busy you don’t notice the day fly by or days when the clock never moves forward. Keeping your Friday lightly busy and organized will help you at 8am on Monday.

efficiency, productivity, happiness, health, life hacks
5 Life Hacks on Self Improvement
 5 Life Hacks on Self Improvement 960 640 Brenda
By:

The road to self improvement can often be difficult and we may find ourselves not knowing where to begin. It’s hard to know if we’re doing the right thing, at the right time, yet we keep going in hopes that we will guide ourselves in the right direction. I have compiled some of my best tips to help in your personal growth journey. Some of them are simple steps in which you can engage in immediately, while others are bigger steps which take a more conscious effort to act on.

  1. Read a book everyday

Books are concentrated sources of wisdom. The more books you read, the more wisdom you expose yourself to. Some of my favorite books that I have come across and have recommended to others are The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey, Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson, and Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David D. Burns.

  1. Let go of the past

Now is the time to let go. Letting go can be difficult. Letting go of people, unhealthy relationships, expectations, desires, ideas… the list goes on. Every day, every moment presents an opportunity to create ourselves anew, to shrug off the baggage of the past, open ourselves up to the possibility of the moment and take action to create an incredible future.

  1. Unplug from social media

Last year I decided it would be a good idea to get rid of all social media accounts for a period of time and it was the best decision I have ever made. I found myself becoming immersed in follower requests, messages, likes, and friend updates. I was so focused on others and how I portrayed myself on social media that I slowly realized I was wasting my time by being so consumed in media, and getting less real things done. Even if you don’t get rid of all social media completely, unplug from social media at least once a week or for a few hours each day.

  1. Learn to laugh at situations that would normally make you angry

Laughter is truly the best medicine. We realize that in life, things may not always work out the way we wanted them to, or expected to, but we must work with the cards we are dealt. Not everything has to be taken as a serious or frustrating issue. Take it easy and live lightly!

  1. Get yourself a journal

The simple act of journaling has the ability to change your life. It provides you with clarity and organization, which in turn, aids you in realizing your dreams and desires. By journaling, negative emotions can pass through your writing without them feeling like a permanent obstacle.

twitter, team building, best of twitter, #teambuilding
The Best of #teambuilding That Twitter Had to Offer…
 The Best of #teambuilding That Twitter Had to Offer… 1024 768 admin
By:

We went searching on Twitter this week to see who had the best #teambuilding posts. Here is what we were able to find! Take a look and leave some comments.

 

Jason Fried, Tedx Midwest, Ted Talk, Productivity, Workplace, Interruptions
How Your Workplace is Secretly Killing Productivity
 How Your Workplace is Secretly Killing Productivity 960 638 Emilie
By:

Jason Fried, who wrote Rework along with co-author David Heinemeier Hansson, is an expert at reanalyzing the way we assume our workplace is productive. In his Tedx Midwest Ted Talk, he takes an inventive look at what allows us to work productively. Shockingly, he claims that working within the office actually hinders us from being productive or accomplishing any meaningful work. Instead, we must wait until we get home, or work at some other time of day in order to successfully accomplish tasks.

But why is this? Fried argues that work can only be done productively when people are given long stretches of uninterrupted time. He compares work to sleep: if someone was constantly interrupting you as you were trying to sleep, would you ever be able to reach a deep sleep? Of course not. Work, he says, is the same. Work can be done efficiently and effectively when we have been working for long, uninterrupted periods. The problem arises when we have constant distractions that rip us from any productive flow state which we have entered.

The reason why the workplace reduces productivity is the same reason why so many of us worked productively in the library or coffee shop back in college: people are the most productive when they do not have distractions, or the distractions they have (email, Facebook, instant messaging) can be answered on their own time. The workplace uses constant check-ins and meetings with the idea that this will keep everyone working, therefore increasing productivity. However, with these constant interruptions, most people enter the office each day and never end up having even a few hours of uninterrupted time. By the time you account for brief check-ins and un-wanted conversations, most of us rarely have a full hour of uninterrupted time during the day. This means that we aren’t ever able to work on anything thoroughly and deeply.

Fried’s suggestion is to limit interruptions that demand people to acknowledge the meeting or check-in at a specific time, and to increase communication which people can check on their own time. By using email, instant messaging, and collaborative platforms like Slack, it is easier for workers to finish what they are doing, and to then work on these other forms of communication when it is productive for them to do so. Fried further suggests that we should decrease check-ins and meetings, reduce personnel in meetings to only the essential people needed, and that we should establish weekly or monthly “No Talking Afternoons” in which no one in the office is allowed to talk to one another in order to decrease interruptions.

So if you’re looking for ways to increase productivity, start making changes that allow your workers longer and more frequent periods of uninterrupted time. Remember that the most important thing is to make the workplace a location people want to work because it allows them to accomplish their tasks efficiently.

feng shui, workplace, work, desk, productivity, positive energy
10 Ways to Increase Productivity through Feng Shui-ing Your Workplace
 10 Ways to Increase Productivity through Feng Shui-ing Your Workplace 960 640 Emilie
By:

We all know that having a clean, tidy desk can make us feel more organized and productive. But often the days get busy and it’s hard to prioritize the cleanliness of our work spaces. However, with these simple tips, we provide you some easy ways to increase your productivity and positivity by easy changes to your workplace environment. Each tip revolves around the practice of feng shui, an ancient Chinese practice which utilizes the rearrangement of objects in specific locations in order to maximize a positive flow of energy. By following feng shui principles, it can create a warmer, more productive place for us to do our job in. The best part? These changes alter the very flow of your workplace, so even when it gets a little messy, you will still have a better place to work in.

1. Orient your desk so that it faces the door. This helps for two reasons. First, it means that you will face people as they enter your office, making you feel more grounded and in control. This is why it is referred to as the “command position.” Second, it will mean that any client or coworker who enters your office will see your face as they enter, making them feel more comfortable. You do not need to be perfectly in front of the door, but you should be looking at it, from the opposite wall.

2. Keep nature prevalent in your office. This can include a small aquarium, plants, or wind chimes; all of which embrace one of the five elements as according to feng shui. Experiment with putting things on different walls/corners of your office, because various placements may have a better flow than others.

3. Be aware of pointed or irregular objects. Feng shui seeks to increase positive energy called chi. The opposite of chi, called sha chi, increases the flow of negative energy. Sha chi is present through irregular and pointed objects, especially when these irregular shapes are in places that infringe on your workspace. For instance, make sure pointed edges of your desks and tables aren’t pointed towards you or clients as they enter. Be aware of how branches outside your window or shadows from buildings outside interfere with your indoor space. Try rearranging what’s inside your workspace to make sure such shadows and outdoor objects interrupt your workplace in less intrusive ways.

4. Increase circular, softer edges. In opposition to sha chi’s relation to straight lines and pointed edges, you can find chi through softer shapes, like circular and soft edges. These shapes are meant to increase flow and circulation, instead of abruptly disrupting flow.

5. Use mirrors. A lot of the time we can’t remove sharp edges in our workplace. We work around a lot of things with sharp edges: desks, computers, filing cabinets. Sharp angles and long straight lines tend to increase the “speed” at which chi travels around the room, making it feel more negative. In order to reduce the speed and make chi travel more slowly, utilize mirrors in your workplace to make it travel more gently.

6. Embrace sense of smell. Smell is a far more powerful tool than we think. In fact, we hardly ever remember how much smell can do! Smell can help with memory, and importantly here, it can help with clarity. Specifically, feng shui believes that citrusy and peppermint based smells with help increase mental clarity in the workplace. You can use candles, fragrant sprays or incense to help put these smells in your office.

7. Learn the importance of color and cardinal directions. In accordance to feng shui, each of the five elements (fire, water, earth, wood, and metal) are associated to different colors and cardinal directions, each of which are attached to certain meaning. Depending on what you want your space to emphasize, you can choose to pay extra attention to these cardinal directions and colors. But remember, feng shui is built around balance. The best workplace will find a balance of all of these elements.

  1. Wood– Creation and Growth- East- Green
  2. Fire– Power- South- Red
  3. Earth- Agriculture- Center- Yellow
  4. Metal– Money- West- Grey and White
  5. Water– Communication- North- Black

8. Remove objects of your “past life.” Are there pictures on your desk with friends you don’t see anymore? Are there awards on your wall from activities you are no longer involved in? Remove these pieces of your past life and embrace pictures and reminders of what currently is bringing you joy in life. By surrounding your office with memories from the past, this creates stagnant energy instead of creating a positive, moving flow of energy which could be embraced by what you currently find exciting and moving.

9. Keep as little on your desk as possible. According to feng shui, energy in your workspace is the most positive when you only keep what you absolutely need on it. That means your computer, phone, pencil holder, maybe a stapler and only the few pieces of paper you need. Imagine how fresh the energy in your office would feel if you only pulled out a file as you needed to use it, and then it went right back in a filing cabinet. Keep your coffee and laptop handy, but keep everything else hidden away until you absolutely need it. And then, remember to put it back away after.

10. Clear out that clutter. Okay, I know I said these are suggestions that help despite clutter, and they do! However, your flow of energy is never going to be as positive as possible as long as you have clutter around. Spend one day filing away anything that is an older project which you are not currently working on. Keeping around these old projects in your line of vision is the ultimate way to feel stagnant energy. By organizing and decluttering, it keeps the energy around you light and fresh.

So there it is! By keeping the energy around you warm and light, it will help not only your productivity, but also your positivity. And the best part is, you don’t have to spend a lot of money to do it. Feng shui principles can easily be embraced with spending very little money, or no money at all. It’s all about rearranging and understanding flow. So good luck with your new and improved workspaces!

Samborn, Hope V. "Go With the Flow: Tapping into Positive Energy in Office Decor through Feng Shui Principles." American Bar Association Journal 87.10 (2001): 76-77. Web.
Bonaiuto, Marino, Elena Bilotta, and Angela Stolfa. "'Feng Shui' and Environmental Psychology: A Critical Comparison." Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 27.1 (2010): 23-24. Web.
Leffler, David. "BEING SOLO: How to Feng Shui Your Law Office." GPSolo 27.5 (2010): 58-59. Web.
meetings, workplace, efficiency, productivity
How to Make Your Meetings More Effective
 How to Make Your Meetings More Effective 960 319 Emilie
By:

No one gets excited for meetings. Each one marks a time on your calendar that you are forced to delay all other work, postponing what you’ve been working on to update others about your progress. Anyone who has ever run a meeting knows the challenges: to keep people focused, to keep people engaged, to cover everything you need to without letting the meeting get too lengthy. But at the end of the day, meetings are important. They allow us to flush out bad ideas, brainstorm new, innovative ideas, and organize everyone so they feel like they are on the same page. But how do we ensure that each meeting is a successful one? How do we keep people engaged, while still being productive? Luckily for you, we have searched articles and research papers to bring to you the best advice to make your next meeting a great one.

Increase Information Availability. A recent study by the Journal of Business Research showed that meetings can actually be a key way to increase empowerment within employees. However, it relies on one key factor. Specifically, empowering meetings rely on information availability. The easier it is for employees to easily access the information they need, the more productive the meeting will be. Additionally, it will allow employees to feel like they achieved more throughout the meeting, causing them to feel more empowered and positive about the next meeting.

Reduce Status Updating and Increase Problem Solving. A recent study analyzing stand up meetings collected interviews and empirical data from over 70 meetings, and analyzed the most positive and negative contributing factors for each meeting. It showed that employees feel more positively about meetings when they focus on information sharing and problem solving/discussion. However, they felt negatively about meetings that focused around status updating, and were long in duration. Aim to keep a schedule of what you need to discuss each meeting, and work to stick to this schedule in as short a time as possible. Additionally, establishing a way in which your employees can update superiors through quick technological means will allow for less time in each meeting to be spent on status updating, and more time to be allowed for problem solving.

Take a Walk. Here at United Eventures, we love the Ted Talk by Nilofer Merchant, which you can find on our About Us page. Merchant talks about the sedentary lifestyle that so many of us live in the modern age. She mentions a time when she was asked to meet with someone as he walked his dog. She has applied this idea to create “walking meetings” which means that less and less of her meetings are done in an office. Not only has she felt like she is being more active, but also that a walking meeting allows people to be less entrenched in their views, and has actually led people to talk in a more collaborative, agreeable manner. Although this cannot be used for all meetings, it is a great idea for catch-up or brainstorming meetings. Try carrying a notepad or voice recorder to catch important information and new ideas.

Optimize Your Virtual Meetings. Virtual meetings have been used extensively for many useful reasons. However, when applied improperly, virtual meetings can be frustrating, increase confusion, or waste time. A recent study demonstrated three main components to a successful virtual meeting. 1) Look at your worker’s perception of productivity. Do your workers feel like the virtual meetings are increasing productivity? Believe it or not, this perception is actually just as important as the actual productivity during the meeting itself. 2) Create clear behavioral steps for how your employees should use the technology and act during virtual meetings. Behavioral steps should outline a company’s policies and guidelines of how people should behave within virtual meetings. Currently, far less ownership exists within virtual meetings as compared to on-site meetings, and this will work to close that gap. 3) Focus on your company’s virtual maturity. The more exposure and experience your company has to virtual meetings, the more successful each one will be (which makes sense). Companies that are equipped to have external virtual meetings will be far more successful with their internal ones. A general rule of thumb is if you don’t feel comfortable using your technology or organization methods for an external virtual meeting, you should not be using these tactics and technology for your internal meetings. Overall, the implementation of virtual meetings may show an immediate increase in productivity, decreased travel time, etc. but this will eventually level off. Virtual maturity means that you must work to transition your virtual meetings past the replacement stage (in which you are simply using these types of meetings in place of on-site meetings) and transitioning to an integration stage. Remember that virtual meetings are different from on-site ones, and your company should be developing techniques and policies that work specifically for virtual meetings. Using virtual meetings simply because people are in different locations is not virtual maturity. Instead, utilize tools that transition virtual meetings into something that allows for effective collaboration.

Lindeblad, Peter A., Yuliya Voytenko, Oksana Mont, and Peter Arnfalk. "Advancing Sustainable Solutions: An Interdisciplinary and Collaborative Research Agenda." Journal of Cleaner Production 123 (2016): n. pag. Web.

Allen, Joseph A., Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock, and Stephanie J. Sands. "Meetings as a Positive Boost? How and When Meeting Satisfaction Impacts Employee Empowerment." Journal of Business Research (2016): n. pag. Web.

Stray, Viktoria, Dag I.K. Sjøberg, and Tore Dybå. "The Daily Stand-up Meeting: A Grounded Theory Study." Journal of Systems and Software114 (2016): n. pag. Web.