Last week was National Procrastination Week so it inspired a theme for some of the articles in our monthly newsletter (which ironically is one week late.) That is just dripping in irony. For years, I have been a proponent of time management and organization. But I can and do procrastinate when there is something I simply don’t want to handle. Whether it’s that grumpy customer or an employee issue, the situation isn’t going away. It’s best to deal with it head on. The hard things you

I want answers now-hate to admit it, but I do. Our society has become a bit spoiled with the advent of the internet. If we have a question we simply turn to Google for a quick answer. We can find the best recipe for sugar cookies in an instant. Or, if you are like my eight-year-old son you can find out all you want to know about the world’s largest sinkholes. (True story) There are those unfortunate times, however, that Google cannot bail us out. Times that we need answers from real people.

Your greatest resource is your time. - Brian Tracy Automation is the key to doing more, more accurately with the time and resources you have. Many of the tasks we are required to do  - or think that we should do - can be done in whole or in part by automation.  Automating routines frees us up to spend our valuable time on problem solving, creative endeavors or personal relationships. So, how can we automate those routine tasks? I have a few go-to tools that I highly recommend: 1.

I have not always been the most organized and productive person so I am personally fond of shortcuts and other tools to keep me on track. I love finding the shortest and easiest way to accomplish what I need to do. My list here is certainly not a comprehensive one, but I have outlined those tools I cannot do without...they are truly my top 5. Also, read to the end to learn about my newest BONUS productivity tool. I absolutely LOVE it!     5  Snagit-software

Lifehacker.com says, “Mind mapping is one of the best ways to capture your thoughts and bring them to life in visual form.” Mind mapping allows you to capture your thoughts or those of a group in a very unstructured way and then tie those thoughts together as you go along. It is great for brainstorming ideas without the structure of outlines and notes. According to Tony Buzan, “A Mind Map is a powerful graphic technique which provides a universal key to unlock the potential of the brain.

For those of us in service-based businesses it is important to track the time we spend on various projects. A contact manager like Act! is great for tracking appointments and to-dos, but as our lives get busier and more complicated, we find we need a more fluid system. That is why I went searching for an application to track my hours in real time. I began with a simple Excel spreadsheet – as I imagine a lot of people do. Once I started using this spreadsheet I realized a couple of limitations

Recently I got back from a much needed vacation and was lamenting about how much work and emails had piled up in my absence.  Yes, I have an amazing crew who handled the majority of the calls, but they too were very grateful we were back because we as the owners were the ones with some of the answers or who several of our clients insisted were the only ones to talk with. Sigh. That’s when you start asking yourself is it worth it as a small business owner to take a vacation because of

Today, a friend and I were lamenting about getting people to do things and finish projects.  She said didn't I write an article once about this and I said, yes, it was a while ago.  In fact it was 2009. It was on another blog forum so it belongs here as well, based on recent events. This article is a departure from topics I normally write about.  By the way, this topic has been a speech, a magazine article and a discussion group topic.  It's about managing