Living Simply E-tip: Be A Curious Observer Of Yourself
Being hard on yourself actually decreases your effectiveness at work. If you make an error or catch yourself wasting time, shake it off and get back to work. And just take mental notes. Being a curious observer will help you make more positive changes than being a mean judge will.

Living Simply E-tip: Give Yourself The Weekend Or At Least One Day Off
Even God rested on the seventh day. Shouldn't you? Being "on call" constantly and/or working even a few hours each weekday gradually wears on you. Carve out at least one day a week to really take a break and recharge your mind and body. You'll be fresher on Monday.

Living Simply E-tip: Let Go of Perfectionism
Being "perfect" can be the enemy of being good-enough and done. You can begin to let go of perfectionism by deliberately not fixing unimportant errors (e.g., misspellings in your personal to-do list). Work your way up to trying something new and risking doing it badly. Gradually that drill sergeant in your head will quiet down one day at a time.

LSC E-tip: Use "I" Statements To Be Heard
Using "I" statements keeps your listener from getting defensive and tuning you out.  "I need you to make personal calls only during your break" is more effective than "You have to stop wasting time with personal calls."  It preserves the other person's dignity and the relationship.  And your message gets heard.

LSC E-tip: Get Moving To Work Better
Regular, especially vigorous, exercise improves not only your physical and mental health but your productivity, too.  Research consistently shows that physical activity stimulates your brain and improves executive functioning.  Go for a walk during lunch, and your afternoon will fly by.  Give it a try!

LSC E-tip: Make Your Goals SMART
Whether it's a New Year's resolution or a work initiative, make sure your goals are SMART: S=specific; M=measurable; A=achievable; R=relavent to your mission/values; T=time-oriented.  If your goals aren't SMART and connected with a plan of action, they're just wishes.

LSC E-tip: Use AutoCorrect
When your spell check indicates that a word is misspelled, don't just correct the word.  Instead, click on AutoCorrect.  Your computer will instantly make the correction and then add that misspelling to a list so that it gets automatically corrected next time.  Think of all the emails and Word docs you write--and all the time auto-correcting can save.

LSC E-tip: Put First Things First In Your Calendar
As the holiday invitations begin to arrive, it's easy to over-book without realizing it. To prevent this, block time on your calendar NOW for shopping, baking, "date time" (with significant other and/or children), and just kicking back and relaxing. Then when an invitation arrives, you can make a CONSCIOUS decision about how to spend your time--e.g., keep the TV night or go to the Holiday Happy Hour. If you decide to stay home, it's easy to say no: "I'm sorry, I've already got plans that night."

Living Simply E-tip: Use Home Delivery
Don’t spend your time running to the post office, grocery store, office supply store, pharmacy, or dry cleaner’s. Have your supplies delivered to your home or office through www.usps.com, www.amazon.com, www.officemax.com, etc. Sometimes, there’s no shipping fee. Either way, it’s well worth it to save yourself the hassle.

Living Simply E-tip: Prepare for Work the Night Before
Decrease your stress by preparing at night for the next day's work. Scan your calendar, set out the clothes you'll wear, prepare a lunch and put all the items you must bring beside your car keys. You'll arrive at work feeling more relaxed and prepared--and it will translate into into greater efficiency during the day.

Living Simply E-tip: Use the Backburner Instead of Procrastinating
You can't do it all now. Still, the way a project or action item ends up on the backburner matters. If you consciously avoid it or unconsciously keep putting it to the bottom of the list, that's procrastination. If you look at it, consider your priorities and resources in the near term, and decide to postpone it for a while, that's prudent planning. The first brings anxiety, the other relief.

Living Simply E-tip: Create a Car Collection Station
Set up "collection stations" in your car (and home) to capture your random thoughts, ideas, and to-do's. A collection station could be a notebook, notecards, a box on your car's front passenger sheet where you can put scraps of paper, a carbon-copy phone message pad, an MP3 recorder or whatever works for you. Develop the habit of moving the contents of the "station" into you in-box so you can usher those ideas, goals, and tasks to fruition.

Living Simply E-tip: Re-focus After Interruptions
To minimize the effect of interruptions, take a couple of seconds (when the phone rings or the person enters your office) to jot a note to yourself saying where you need to start when you return to the task. You'll be more likely to return to the task quickly (because you've reinforced its importance by writing about it) and you'll save time by not having to remember where you were.

Living Simply E-tip: Choose Your Next Task Wisely
"To be effective we must displace less important tasks with more important ones. We can.t wait until we have time to take on another task. We will never have any more time than we have right now."  -- Harold Taylor

Living Simply E-tip: Ensure You're Delegating Enough
Review your list of projects with a critical eye. Which could be handled by someone else? Is there someone who'd gain new skills and be forced to "stretch" if given one of the assignments? By focusing your attention on the tasks that ONLY you can do and developing your team, you spend your time most wisely.

Living Simply E-tip: Spring Clean Your Office
If your goal to be more organized this year seems to have fallen by the wayside, let the sunshine re-energize your commitment. Jot down 10 ways you can clear the clutter from drawers, desktop, floor, in-box, etc. Then pick item one to focus on this week. You can send your plan to me and I'll cheer you on.

Living Simply E-tip: Get More Sleep to Be More Productive
Research finds that a full night's sleep keeps you healthier. Runner's World magazine recently reported on a study that found people produce 50 percent more virus-attacking skills after 8 hours of sleep compared to only 6 hours. Get more sleep and you'll stay healthier and get more energized, setting the scene for greater productivity.

Living Simply E-tip: See Slips as Opportunities, Not Signs of Failure
Psychologist John Norcross, Ph.D. and his team's research found that 71% of SUCCESSFUL resolution-keepers had a slip, usually in January, and it only strengthened their commitment. So if you lapse, it doesn't have to turn into a relapse. Just get back on the horse and start again, one day at a time.

Living Simply E-tip: Use a Card Service
It's that time of year to send holiday and New Year cards to clients and family. If you want it done fast, well, and inexpensively, I suggest you use Send Out Cards. You can customize cards with your own photos and even handwriting. They mail the resulting physical cards, individually addressed, to one or hundreds in just minutes. To learn more, contact Lisa Renz at  (757) 580-8689  (757) 580-8689 or visit www.sendoutcards.com/30558 . I use Send Out Cards; it's great.

Living Simply E-tip: Think Before You Buy
Before you bring something into your office or home, stop and think about this idea of Stephanie Denton.s: Will this .addition. to your life really subtract from it? Will it take more effort to clean it, store it, fix it, etc., than it's worth?

Living Simply E-tip: Use Folders to Delegate
If you deal with a lot of paper that must be handed off to others, keep a folder standing on your desk for each of the people you deal with often. As you process the paper, you can put it immediately into the named folder, which you then distribute next time you leave your office or cube.

Living Simply E-tip: Keep Emails Brief
If you have a short message to send, write it all in the Subject line. Either send it or copy the Subject text and paste it into the email's body.

Living Simply E-tip: Drop the Dead Weight
If you belong to some organization but you.re not really participating, quit for now. You.ll shed the guilt that comes from a sense of unfulfilled commitments and feel better about it, especially if you.re heart.s not in it. If you are interested but don.t have the time to engage fully, you can rejoin in the future.

Living Simply E-tip: Add an Hour to Your Day
Turn off the TV one hour earlier than you normally do. Use the time to do something you love. Try this for two weeks and you.ll feel happier and more fulfilled.

Living Simply E-tip: Keep a TEMP folder in My Docs
If you create documents that you need just for a short time, you can simplify your filing system by keeping them in a TEMP folder in your My Docs. Periodically purge the older files out of that folder to keep it lean. Examples: pdfs that you create to send as secure attachments (keep the original Word or whatever doc in its folder) or receipts for online purchases (keep until the item arrives).

Living Simply E-tip: Manage Your Work-Related Reading
Scan the table of contents to see if any article is of interest. Rip out the articles that you want and recycle the rest. Keep the articles where you.re likely to read them, e.g., in a folder that you take to lunch, at home, etc.

Living Simply E-tip: Don't Always Be a "Yes" Person
If you say "yes" to one thing, you automatically say "no" to something else. Taking on others' responsibilities means that you put your own needs at risk. "Yes, I'll do that" may mean you'll have to say "no" to sleep, exercise, time alone or time with loved ones. Sometimes it's worth it; sometimes it's not--but you should know what's really at stake.

Living Simply E-tip: Take a Walk!
All exercise gets more oxygen and glucose to your brain. Walking might get more oxygen and glucose there because your legs need them less than in other forms of exercise.  As the website below shows, walking really might clear your mind! http://www.fi.edu/learn/brain/exercise.html#physicalexercise


Living Simply E-tip: Set Calendar Reminders as All-Day Events
If you need to make a call or do a task on a certain day but not at a certain time, schedule it as an all-day event with a reminder on your calendar. (Scheduling it as an appointment when it really doesn't need to be at a certain time and it won't take a full half-hour just clutters your calendar and makes it less trustworthy.)


Write Down the Dates on Your Papers
Write dates on all your papers--including the year. It's amazing how quickly one year melts into the next. If you don't write the full date, it's hard to determine what happened when as you search through old files.


Make Sure Your Task List Has Next Actions
To radically improve your productivity, take a look at your task list today (or at your weekly review Friday). Make sure that it contains only Next Actions--not projects or third-step-down-the-line actions. Group all of your Waiting For (Others to Do) items so that they don't clutter YOUR action list. It makes a difference.


Practice Imperfection
Perfectionism is a common productivity-buster for hard-driving Type A's. Here's one antidote: practice imperfection. Don't correct a typo in your to-do list. Allow yourself only 2 revisions of that document, etc. Deliberately making small, IRRELEVANT mistakes is good practice. Spend your extra time on important activities instead.


Establish Deadlines When You Delegate
Most of us work under the gun and are deadline-driven. Your direct-reports are no different. If you don't establish a realistic deadline for you assignments when you give them, they will get pushed behind everything that does have a deadline. That might be too late.


Set the Stage for Getting Things Done
Is your chair the correct height? Do your wrists, hands and arms feel comfortable as you use your keyboard? Do you have enough light? Is your computer monitor a comfortable distance from your face and at a comfortable angle? Minor, even subconcious, irritants create low-level stress and impede productivity. Fix them!


Make Down-Time Productive
Is summer distracting you from your work? Make your down time productive by engaging in necessary but rote activities. Do some filing, enter some info into your contact database, clear your in-box, etc. Sometimes a mental break helps you get back on track more quickly. Do only things that must be done, though!


Get Your House in Order
If your office is organized and systematized but your home is not, the imbalance may lead you (subconsciously) to spend more time at work than necessary or desired. The solution? Get your house in order one drawer, shelf and pile at a time. The results will help clear your mind, too.


Annotate Your Receipts Right Away
As soon as you receive any business-related receipt, immediately jot a note on it saying what it was for (e.g., "lunch with client X") to make expense reports and taxes easier. This tip especially helps individuals who work from home by clearly separating work from personal.


Create and Stick to Your "Don't Do" List
Productivity usually means doing MORE. Sometimes, though, you can increase your productivity by doing less. Create a "Don't Do" list for yourself. Identify your favorite time-wasters and commit to abstaining from them one day at a time. See how much time you free up!

Here are a few examples:
* Don't re-write that document for the fourth time.
* Don't over-format documents.
* Don't start doing "research" on the Internet without some alarm to keep you from losing hours on end.
* Don't check email until you finish the task you're currently working on.


Retrain Serial Interrupters
Do you have a serial interrupter in your life--someone who calls you or drops by several times a day to ask a quick question or share a quick story? Don't despair. YOU have the power to change this behavior. Ask the interrupters to keep a list of things they want to run by you. Only when they have a few items should they give you a call. And remind them when they forget. You deserve the peace!


Preventing Interruptions at Times Is Key
When you need to work on something that requires concentration, protect yourself from interruptions. Turn off your email alarm. Put your phone on voicemail and shut the door. You may need to go to a different room or offsite. It's not only OK to ensure that you get your work done--it's NECESSARY. Treat your time with this work as if it were an appointment with a person.


Get Ready for Tomorrow Tonight
Decrease your stress by preparing at night for the next day's work. Scan your calendar, set out the clothes you'll wear, prepare a lunch and put all the items you must bring beside your car keys. You'll arrive at work feeling more relaxed and prepared--which will translate into into greater efficiency during the day.


Use a Don't Do List
Productivity always seems to be about doing MORE. Sometimes, though, you can increase your productivity by doing less. Create a "Don't Do" list for yourself. Identify your favorite time-wasters and commit to abstaining from them one day at a time. See how much time you free up.


Negotiate Gift-Giving Early
Early December (or late November) is the time to negotiate gift-giving with family (nuclear and extended) and friends. If in recent years you (or your spouse) have been buying for 20 people, maybe this year you could draw names and only buy for a few. It saves time (if not money!) and hassle. It also helps remind everyone of the true meaning of the season. The less you stress, the more effective you can be.


Just Relax!
Chronic stress--the perception that you are overloaded--affects your DNA, effectively aging your cells (source: the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology). It increases cardiovascular risk factors as well.
Meditation is one anecdote and it's simple to learn. Just take a few minutes each day to focus on your breath, let go of your thoughts and just BE. This respite improves your perspective, helping you make better decisions about what to do with your time. Try it today!


Write Down Your Goals
A Harvard study found that the 3% of the population that writes their goals earn 10 times what the 83% who have no written goals earn. Writing your goals pays dividends! It's the first but crucial step towards achieving them. Take some time this week to clarify your professional and personal goals if you have not already.


Track Your Ideas
Keep a list of ideas that you may want to put into action (a trip, a marketing strategy, etc.) so that you can consciously decide whether or not to pursue them. If you don't make that decision consciously, the ideas will clutter your mind and may even make you feel guilty subconsciously, as though you'd made obligations you hadn't kept. The next time you go to file a piece of paper, STOP. Do you have to keep this for legal or policy reasons? If not, what's the likelihood that you'll need to look at it again in the next 6 months? If it's low, let don't keep it.


Create a notebook with master to-do lists. -- One list: EVERY project, no matter how small. -- One list: EVERY action item associated with each project. -- One list: EVERY dream project or idea. Review your lists regularly and cross out what you complete. Your productivity and clarity will soar.