3 Ways Evernote Can Boost Your Productivity

If you are tired of trying to keep track of every detail in your life, it’s helpful to look for tools that can help offload some of that mental overhead. One of the best tools I’ve found for doing this is Evernote (http://www.evernote.com) – it’s a fantastic (and powerful) note-taking tool, which helps to capture all sorts of different types of information. I’ve implemented Evernote both in my own business and with my clients in a variety of ways to help them streamline some of their processes and save them time. Here are a few ideas for how you can do the same:

Snap your scraps. Instead of trying to rework how you do everything, try using Evernote in little pieces. Start by taking snapshots with your cell phone of all the scraps of paper that you have scattered around your office - your sticky notes, the backs of envelopes, scrawls on napkins, etc., and then put them all into Evernote where they can be searched later. You don’t have to stop using your written notes right away, but over time, you may find yourself needing them less and less as you transition to using Evernote more and more – especially as you discover how handy it is to be able to search your notes and actually FIND what you’re looking for!

Shoot the whiteboard. Meetings with other professionals can be productive, but taking notes can be a real chore. At your next meeting, instead of frantically writing down notes and trying to copy everything that’s written on a whiteboard, try snapping a photo of the whiteboard with your phone, and send that pic to Evernote. Since Evernote can read the handwriting in the photo, you’ll be able to easily search for and refer back to that whiteboard later on when you need it. You can also attach an audio note about the gist and the details of the meeting.

Share the love. If you work with clients and you’d like to share information with them, set up a shared notebook in Evernote dedicated to that client. In it, you can capture clips from web articles they might like, snapshots of resources that they could find useful, ideas for upcoming meetings or sessions, or links to online applications they may find helpful in their day-to-day lives. This can be a HUGE value-add to your clients and the people you serve – not only are you introducing them to a new tool (Evernote), but you’re populating their notebook with stuff they’ll be interested in.

Any one of these strategies can help gather your information in a central spot, and can definitely help save you time. Try a few different ways of using Evernote to boost your productivity – I think you’ll be surprised at how much it can help you!

The Cost of Disorganization

2010 is just getting started, and getting organized is on many resolution lists. Of course, this is a great goal (it is, after all, National Get Organized Month!). But beyond it just being timely, it’s helpful to really focus on the reasons why you want to get organized, as that can help keep you motivated throughout the organizing process. One reason people want to get organized is to save time and money. But just how much of these essentials are you losing from your current level of disorganization?

Whether you consider yourself super disorganized or just a little, you may have a sinking feeling that your disorganization is taking a toll on you - a financial toll. And you’re probably right - after all, any time that you waste looking for things that are lost in your computer, on your desk, or in your space is time that you’re not spending being productive – or just on true downtime. Anything that you can do to make you more productive is going to save you time and potentially money. Let’s look at a quick formula to see just how much disorganization is costing you:

Time it. First, think about how many hours a week you spend being disorganized. Maybe half an hour looking for papers; maybe a few hours trying to search through your phone records and notes. Really think about all the different ways that you lose your focus, your “flow,” and your productivity. Be honest with yourself – this number is only for you. On average, how many hours a week do you spend being disorganized?

Charge it. Then write down how much your hourly rate is. This could be how much you charge clients per hour, or it could be your salary divided by the amount of hours you work in a week. Then, multiply your hourly rate times the number of hours per week that you are spending being disorganized. The result? How much disorganization is costing you every single week.

Multiply it. If you want a really scary number, take your weekly cost of disorganization and multiply it times 50. That number will give you how much disorganization is costing you over an average working year.

What did you come up with? Even if it is relatively small, wouldn’t you rather be generating that income rather than losing it by being disorganized?

In upcoming editions of the newsletter, we’ll be exploring strategies to help you get organized to boost your productivity. By implementing some of the ideas, you’ll reduce the amount of time you spend being disorganized, and instead will find yourself more productive and efficient. It can be done – and 2010 is the year for you to do it!

Top Back-to-School Gadgets (for Adults Too!)

Ok, so I admit it - I love gadgets. If it has buttons, batteries, or an LCD screen, it's probably for me!

These days, everyone has a gadget of some sort. If you're sending someone off to school this fall and they need some new tech, it can be hard to separate the gadget wheat from the chaff - after all, there's so many devices to choose from!

Luckily, Time magazine has come up with a list of the top 25 gadgets for the 2009 back-to-school season. Some of Time's favorite gadgets include things like backpacks that can hold all the tech gear that's fit to carry, the latest cell phone headsets, and much more. Check it out at:

www.time.com/school_gadgets

Secrets of Straight A Students

Readers Digest has a great set of articles on back-to-school (http://ping.fm/83LCJ), but the one that I found really interesting was on ideas for how to help set up your student for success. I personally struggled for years in school until my junior year of high school, and wish I’d had some of these tips to help me along the way! Some of the top tips include things like getting organized, which is an absolute must. Today’s students have to juggle so many tasks, and if they’re not organized it can become completely overwhelming. Work with your student to find a system for keeping track of their homework, their reading, extracurricular activities, chores, and so on. While it can seem like work setting something like this up, it will definitely pay dividends during the school year and beyond. If your student is a techie, there are applications for many mobile phones (including the iPhone) that can keep track of homework and tasks.

Another great idea, one which I’d wish I’d discovered earlier in life, is to take a speed-reading course. I was skeptical of speed-reading for years, but once I actually took a seminar on it, I was sold. I was under the impression that by speed reading, I’d miss lots of things because I’d be skimming everything, but in reality this was not the case. Instead, my reading speed and my comprehension increased dramatically. Being able to quickly read, understand, and absorb lots of information can be super-helpful when a student has many things they need to read for a class. And I have to say, I love reading, and speed reading for me didn’t take away the joy of reading at all. This is actually something that both parents and their kids can learn together – it’s a skill everyone can benefit from.

Back to School Time!

Back to school can also be looked at as a time to remind ourselves how important continuing education is. I know for many people once they are done with school, they are DONE and kind of give up on learning after that, which I think is kind of a shame. It’s so nice to find a topic that you’re interested in and then rediscover the joy of learning that way, rather than when topics were forced on you or required for a degree. There are a ton of low-cost resources to help you re-ignite the passion for learning. One of my favorites is to take classes at your local community college. These are fantastic resources for classes on just about any topic you can think of, and for very, very little money. One year I took a semester-length healthy cooking class for $20 – including the cost of food. What a deal! Another way to learn is to find free webcasts from top universities. For instance, Berkeley offers videos of many classes, completely free.

If you’re looking to learn something a little more practical and less scholarly, the website eHow has how-to guides on thousands of different topics, on everything from how to make your PC perform better, to how to get the smoke odor out of clothes. It’s definitely worth checking out!

http://ping.fm/mCF93
http://ping.fm/0jIo9

Top Home-based Businesses

Making more money is on a lot of people’s minds right now, and if you have some free time it might be a good idea to look at home-based businesses you can start.

Entrepreneur Magazine has just put together a fantastic list of the 55 best businesses you can start from home for under $5000. Included in their list are professions like consulting, writing, editing, professional organizing, and some unexpected ones, like eBay Assistant, home energy auditor, and event planner.

If you are thinking about starting a home based business, it’s a great idea to check out your local Small Business Administration office – which is a government agency that helps small businesses by providing education and access to resources.

http://ping.fm/cjxPg

Quick Organizing Tip - The Goes Elsewhere Bin

In every home and office, no matter how large or small, there’s always stuff to be put away – you know, the things that somehow end up in rooms where they don’t really belong. These things end up becoming clutter, especially if they don’t get put away. One of the core principles of getting and staying organized is to make sure that all your stuff has a home – homeless stuff definitely becomes clutter. Sometimes, that home can be temporary, kind of like a way station for stuff while it’s waiting to be put away elsewhere. What I recommend creating in every room in your home or office where clutter collects is a “goes elsewhere” bin or box. Essentially, this is a place to put all those things that don’t belong in a given room, and collects the in one container. Having them all in one spot makes it easy to grab the bin, walk around your space, and put things in their proper homes.

Easy Ways to Backup Your Data

I can’t stress enough how important it is to back up any information you have on the computers that your family uses. If you’re backing up to a CD or a flash drive once in awhile, that’s a start – but there’s an easier way. What I recommend to my organizing clients now is that they sign up for an online backup service, which keeps your computer backed up all the time. How this works is this: when your computer is idle, little bits of data are sent securely over the internet to an offsite storage company. They keep your data safe, and in the event of a computer disaster, you can download all your data from their server. What’s great about this is that you don’t have to do anything – it works automatically in the background. The price is right too - the first 2GB are free, and then it's $5 per computer per month for unlimited data storage.


Mozy - http://bit.ly/At7sb

Syncing Your Data Across Multiple Computers

Like many of you, I have more than one computer - in my case, a laptop and a netbook. Copying files over my network or via USB to try to keep files I'm working on was starting to become a pain, so I started looking for other solutions. My new favorite services are ones where you can specify files that you want to be available to you everywhere - on all your computers, as well as via the web. What's great about this is that there's multiple backups of your data, which is always a great thing to have.

I've personally been using DropBox, which creates a folder on your computers where you simply drag and drop the files you want to stay synchronized across all your computers - it really couldn't be easier. I've been testing and using DropBox extensively with my currently active documents, and also things I just want to have handy on all my computers (frequently used documents, RoboForm password data, etc.). It's been AWESOME, and it's free for up to 2 gigs of data.

Check it out at: http://bit.ly/429EU

Customizing Firefox to Save Money

My browser of choice is Firefox - it's fast, open-source, and almost infinitely customizable. As with any of our tools, it's great when they can be customized to meet our needs, and Firefox definitely can be customized a zillion different ways. For instance, I use the Evernote Web Clipper extensively to take notes on sites that I want to visit but not bookmark, and that's just one of the many productivity extensions available for Firefox.

A more fun way to customize Firefox is to download one of the many extensions that can help you save money while shopping online. I use RetailMeNot, but there are many other extensions also designed to help you find discounts online. Check out this comprehensive list:

http://ping.fm/SzfRL

Can a Watch Give Me More Time?

This special watch, the SleepTracker, is supposed to monitor your sleep cycle, waking you at just the optimal time so you awake feeling rested. This might even be BEFORE your regular alarm goes off - giving you a few extra minutes of awake time. Pretty cool, I wonder if it works! check it out:

http://ping.fm/fgecg

Product Review: Rubbermaid Easy-Find Lids System

I love fresh produce, and frequently buy from my local farmers market. Of course, since most of the items there are organic, they can sometimes not last as long as the ones purchased in a typical supermarket. I’m always looking for ways to make my produce last as long as possible – I hate waste! In my quest to make my food fresh, I use a lot of food storage systems to try to make things last. I also use food storage containers for alternate uses in the office, such as storing supplies, cables, and small electronics.

I recently ran into the folks over at Rubbermaid at a NAPO conference, and they sent me a set of their new Easy-Find Lids food storage system to check out. What’s nice about this system is that even though the containers come in various sizes and styles, the lids are interchangeable, so you won’t have to spend time searching your drawers or cupboards trying to find the right lid, which is incredibly annoying. This particular system comes in a variety of styles, including ones that are designed to resist stains (Premier), and ones that have Fort Knox-style snap-on lids that are designed to snap on and stay in place (Lock-Its).

My favorite containers in the set I was sent are the Produce Savers, which are pretty smart. These include a small tray that goes in the bottom of each container, which is designed to raise up your produce and separate it from any moisture or liquid. Additionally, the lids have tiny holes that are designed to let air in. These two features can help keep your produce fresh longer, which in my experience, they did.

A couple of extra features that are part of the Easy-Find Lid system is that when you stack the containers, the bottom of each container snaps into the lid of the one below it, which can help keep them tidy. When you open a container, you can also snap it’s lid onto the bottom during use, which I thought was pretty clever.

I do have a couple of minor gripes with this system. Even though the empty containers are all stackable and fit together nicely, the lids don’t snap or stack together. It would have been nice for the lids to interlock in some way. Also, some of the lids are hard to snap onto the actual containers – some of them, specifically the Premier, I had to work to get on and off.

While the whole Easy-Find system is pretty cool and can definitely save time and frustration in the kitchen and elsewhere, the Produce Savers are the stars in my book.

http://bit.ly/omhV9

Save Time and Boost Productivity by Bypassing Phone Trees

Remember the days when you would call a company's 1-800 number for customer service, and on your first try you'd reach an actual human? Well, by and large those days are long over. Instead of reaching a person, you're far more likely to get stuck in a version of "press 1 for this, press 2 for that" phone tree hell. It's frustrating, and a major time waster!

I'm always looking for ways to save time for both my organizing clients and myself, and time spent on phone trees is not time well spent. There are several services that say they can help you skip directly to a human. Two favorites - www.gethuman.com and www.fonolo.com - give them a try and let me know what you think!

KangaRoom Storage - Big Warehouse Discount

If you're going to be in San Francisco, swing by the KangaRoom Storage store by the ballpark. They are offering 20% off their entire inventory of organizing supplies and solutions if you purchase at their store (instead of online). I've consulted with them on some of their product designs, and they have some pretty cool stuff. I especially like their line of cord/cable management solutions.

Location: 360 Langton Street, Suite 105, San Francisco, CA 94103

Check them out at www.kangaroomstorage.com

NAPO 2009 Conference Follow-up - The Neat Company

The Neat Company had a strong presence at this year's NAPO annual conference, both as a presenting sponsor and with a large expo booth. I really like their products for scanning and managing paper, and I both use their products in my own office, and I frequently recommend them to clients as well. At the show, they debuted the Mac version of NeatDesk, a high-speed desktop scanner than can accept a variety of documents, including papers, receipts, and business cards, and can scan them directly to PDF or into the NeatWorks software (basically a database for your paper documents). I've been using the PC version of NeatDesk since it's beta last year, and I like it a lot. I'm glad I can start recommending it to my Mac clients now!

The quality and the design of Neat's hardware, such as the NeatReceipts and NeatDesk scanners, are really great - very sleek design and solidly built. I also like how well the optical character recognition works in the scanning software, which makes it easy to search for your documents later. The only thing missing is an online database, so you could access your scanned documents from anywhere - but I hear that may be in the works for the future... hopefully!

If you haven't seen their products before, check out The Neat Company at http://www.neatco.com.

They also won best technology of the show for Neat Desk.

NAPO 2009 Annual Conference Recap

I spent last week in Orlando at the 2009 Annual Conference of the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO). This was my fourth NAPO national conference, and it was a good one for me. There were so many opportunities for learning and continuing my organizing education. I always like to add new tools to my toolbox! In particular, I attended workshops on assessing the needs of business clients and strategies for tracking their progress towards their organizing and productivity goals, new time management tools and strategies, email management, and more. I'll be able to serve my clients even better with these new skill sets.

A big milestone for me: I was a speaker on the very popular "Ask the Organizer" panel discussion, where veteran organizers field questions on a variety of topics from an audience of four or five hundred other (many newer) organizers. This panel is usually one of the best-attended at the conference. I had a great time with my fellow panelists, all of whom I respect very much, and the audience really gave us some meaty questions to respond to. I'd never spoken at any NAPO conference up until that point, and it was a real treat to be able to share what I've learned along with way with my colleagues.

In the expo hall, along with the various organizing doodads and gizmos, a big presence was felt by companies offering tools and services to manage paper via scanning. The heavy hitter The Neat Company (www.neatco.com) had organizers flocking to their booth for their high-quality scanner/software combinations, along with upstarts Pixily (http://ping.fm/iiZAY) and XamBox (www.xamance.com). I'll post more about each of these services, along with some other great expo finds, soon in a series of follow-ups.

One of the best outcomes of any NAPO conference is the great professional and personal connections. It's great to reconnect with old NAPO pals, and extra fun to make new ones. I had the pleasure of meeting organizers from all over the country, and across the world, from places as far-flung as Australia and Japan. I'm already looking forward to next year's conference in Columbus!

Knoll Furniture Sale in San Francisco May 1-10

If you like your home or office not just organized, but also slick and stylish, the Knoll brand of mid-century modern furnishings is probably your friend. I love this stuff, but it can be quite pricey!

If you happen to be in San Francisco May 1-10, check out the Zinc Details store, where they will be having a 15% off sale on the entire Knoll line. Learn more at http://www.zincdetails.com/ht/events.htm

101 Quick Success Secrets

Some of you may have heard of www.selfgrowth.com, the internet’s foremost destination for self-improvement and generally living your best life. David Riklan, the founder of www.selfgrowth.com, has compiled 101 of today’s greatest success secrets of our time, and is offering them up in a $15 bundle, which includes all the tips and a bunch of bonuses.

If you’re a fan of quick organizing tips, you’d probably enjoy these quick, simple, and proven success secrets from experts in a variety of fields.

Check it out here:

http://tinyurl.com/cls-riklan

Thanks for all the organizing questions! Keep sending them in!

I'm currently writing some new productivity and organizing tips and articles. What topics or ideas would you like to learn more about?