Reading through time management and productivity tips, or learning them in a seminar, it is easy to get the impression that getting more out of your schedule is a simple as going home and following some basic advice. And often, it really is. But there are some careers in situations that make it difficult to follow the traditional advice. Ironically enough, they are also the careers that require the most in terms of time management and efficiency.

So what do you do when your calendar is out of control, and you cannot seem to use the same advice as everyone else?

The answer is not to follow tips that are not working for you, or to throw up your hands and decide that productivity is beyond you. Instead, you may need to take some of the traditional pieces of time management advice and twist them a little bit.

In order to help you get started, here are some classic time management tactics adapted for those with unconventional careers or schedules:

Think in smaller pieces of time. Although an hour of uninterrupted time may be ideal to make progress on a big project, you still might be able to get a lot done in 10 or 15 minutes, if that is all you have available to you. Do not fall into the trap of thinking that time management is “all or nothing.” Simply do what you can when you can, and you will keep moving forward.

Schedule around the known. No matter how crazy your schedule is, you probably have some items – like a meeting with your boss, or a conference call – that you can plan around. Fill those in on the schedule first, and then look to the small gaps that fall around or between them.

Make time for interruptions. In the same way, if you don’t know what sort of fire is going to pop up, but can reasonably expect you’ll have to put a few out, account for that time beforehand. Knowing that you are likely to lose a few hours leaves you free to think about what else you might accomplish in your day, instead of overloading your project list and feeling depressed when you do not finish any of it.

Put travel time on your side. Few opportunities for work are wasted as often as travel time is. A few minutes in a taxicab, or a few hours on a plane, can be more than enough to finish report, plan a meeting, weigh the factors for a critical decision, and so on.

Keep fewer priorities that matter more. Instead of trying to stay on top of ten projects, have four or five that really matter to you (or your boss) and that you can make regular progress on. You’ll be far more effective as a professional if you fully accomplish a few things than you will if you constantly struggle with too many.

Take advantage of “quiet time.” Are there times before or after your scheduled office hours, or maybe on the weekend, that you can use to catch up? If you have a crazy job, then adding more hours to your working life might seem like an insane tactic. On the other hand, it could give you the power you need to make some progress on your longer-term priorities or career goals.

Textbook time management techniques work for those who have textbook careers. If your life and schedule are a little less conventional, however, you can still make them work – it’s just a matter of adapting to your situation and thinking outside the box.

For more ideas on time management, find strategy and techniques for managing your time, as well as tips for overcoming common time management challenges at http://www.no-hype-time-management.com.

With another January here, it is time to envision goals for the new year. Most of us will think big, just knowing deep down that this will finally be our time to close that big client, get that promotion, and maybe even get fit and trim during the coming months.

You can certainly do all of those things, and more, but remember that this may not be the first occasion that you made these promises to yourself. It is a well-known phenomenon that New Year’s resolutions and lofty goals are easy to lose track of once the real work of achieving them – not to mention keeping up with day-to-day life – begins in earnest.

With that in mind, here is one way to get an early start on the process and keep yourself motivated: Spend a little bit of time thinking about the things you are disappointed you did not do last year. In other words, embrace your 2011 disappointments. Think about them deeply and analyze the reasons you might have come up short. Were they not really as much of a priority as you thought, were you not able to make the time, or did your willpower not hold up the way you thought it would?

These can be uncomfortable questions to ask ourselves, and aren’t nearly as much fun as envisioning a brighter future is. Going through this process of self-reflection can be a big help, however, as the answers to those questions can cause you to remember stumbling blocks you might have otherwise overlooked. Tough as it might be to face them head-on, anticipating them in 2012 could make all the difference in overcoming them.

I hope you will all had a wonderful holiday season and hold big dreams for the coming year. As you do, consider the challenges you faced in reaching your goals last year, and think hard about ways to get past them this time around. One helpful start would be to invest in some type of time management training to help you with focus and scheduling.  

A great thing about seeing a new year is realizing that you are smarter and wiser than you were before. Take what you’ve learned in 2011 and use it to make your life even better this January.

Pick ten people at random and ask them to describe their vision of a productive work environment. You will probably hear the same answers: stress-free, quiet, lots of teamwork, happy employees, good morale, room to work, places to concentrate, etc. Now ask the same ten people how to design an office that best creates this environment and you will suddenly notice more discord than agreement. To some, working in a somewhat isolated office setup is akin to being cooped up in a cage or a comfortable prison cell. But to others, this same setup allows them to focus more easily without getting distracted by things going on around them.

Some workers elevate their game when they can see their co-workers clearly and when they know that asking a question anytime will get them an instant response (quite possibly followed by a lively discussion). But others get stressed out in this same environment by the constant noise, lack of privacy, and inability to concentrate. Hence the classic debate: is the most productive office one that is open, where employees sit together eyeball to eyeball; or closed, where employees are more isolated?

The debate is not a new one. It began with the advent of the first office many decades ago and has carried over into the 21st Century. What is new, and evolving all the time, is the nature of today’s business climate and changing workforce (increasingly team-based and collaborative). Over the past decade, the European market has weighed in pretty clearly on the side of open office design and this trend has slowly started to migrate to the U.S. Many companies, here and abroad, are now embracing the open office concept and touting its many benefits including cost effectiveness, team-building potential and positive environmental impact. And these things are all very real. But if the answer were really this simple, there would never have been a debate in the first place. Detractors are quick to point out the negatives of an open office design: loss of privacy, potential health problems, too much noise, not enough personal space, and visual monotony.

Smart companies are beginning to realize that both sides are right. And they are adopting creative measures to bring closed-office benefits to open-space designs. A blog by Mishkin Bertieg describes the 8 important elements to consider when designing an effective work space. Some of these elements need special attention in an open environment. Here are ways that companies are addressing the most important areas proactively so that their open space designs will lead to higher productivity:

Personalization

One of the main drawbacks of going open, especially for companies that are switching from a long-entrenched closed model, can be a perceived loss of individual identity among employees who feel that their personal space is being taken away from them. Many companies are realizing that an employee’s workspace can be open while at the same time still be highly personalized. And they are being careful to allow every employee a relatively large amount of personal work space within the open setting and to build a large dose of flexibility into their planning so that employee work areas can be modified by their occupants to accommodate photos, plants, posters, and other incidentals which define their space as their own. A large component in making this happen is the right kind of furniture (e.g., adjustable chairs, desks, etc.). Some firms have implemented component and accessory options that were not only personalized but also modular and somewhat portable, allowing workers to take them along in case their work location changed.

Privacy

Hand in hand with the issue of personalization is the issue of privacy.  An open workspace doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for privacy and lack of privacy can not only make workers uncomfortable, but can hurt their morale and productivity. Every employee needs to be able to get away for short amounts of time. Firms are realizing this, and are not implementing an open design without allowing employee access to enclosed rooms or isolated areas where they can have privacy for personal phone calls, individual meetings, or sensitive business when needed.

Acoustics

Noise is probably the biggest drawback to an open office design. Research has shown that even low levels of noise generate high levels of worker stress. Research such as this longitudianal field study cite excessive noise as one of the leading employee gripes about working in an open office. Fortunately, there are several ways of dealing with this problem and companies have had success mitigating most of the negative effects. There are numerous sound-masking systems on the market and some of them have been shown to work quite well when properly installed and tuned. Another measure that many firms have adopted is to locate many of the principal noise-making sources (e.g., printers, scanners, photocopiers, etc.) into a single room which is at least partially soundproofed. Some companies even hand out noise-dampening earphones to employees who want them.

It is not escaping the eye of corporate America that open office design brings with it lower costs, greater team collaboration, and potentially higher productivity. So it is no mystery that the open model is being adopted and embraced by several large firms as well as many smaller ones. But companies are also seeing that there are some aspects of open office design that tend to dampen productivity and are taking active measures to deal with them. What is resulting is a heavy dose of the good mixed in with smaller and smaller doses of the bad. And slowly but surely, that ideal vision of a productive work environment is starting to become a reality.

This guest post is from Dean Stier. Dean is Vice President of National Business Furniture, one of America’s leading providers of office desks, office chairs, and office-space design to businesses, government agencies and other institutions.

How many times have you heard someone say that a vacation, or a day off, went by much too quickly… and that they wish they could do it over again? How many times have you been that person?

You certainly are not alone if you feel like there are never enough days to get away from the office and enjoy the rest of life. But if you find that the time you take away is not as refreshing as it could or should be, then the problem might be that you are not getting away from work often enough.

In other words, the key to getting more out of your next vacation or day off might be to take more of both.

Does that advice sound paradoxical to good time management skills?  At first glance it could, but the reality is that when you do not take enough time off, you put too much pressure into the rare moments you do have to yourself. For example, you might try to make a long weekend into the “perfect vacation,” or attempt to cram too many activities into a Tuesday afternoon to finish all of them, much less enjoy them. The result can actually leave you feeling more frustrated during and after the time you set aside for relaxation.

When you take more breaks, on the other hand, you can take things at a slower pace, mentally, and prevent yourself from expecting too much from a day or two away from the office. Because you know you will get another break soon, you don’t have to try so hard to make the most of it – enjoying yourself just happens naturally.

To help you prepare for vacations, read  Getting Ready for a Vacation:  Tips to Help You Relax and Recharge. 

It has been well-documented that Americans use a fraction of the vacation and personal time that most other workers around the world do. There is no problem with all of us wanting to get a lot accomplished, but if we want to make the most of the down time we do have, we need to remember to take it often enough.  Then watch your productivity climb on your return.

Of course, the holidays are not traditionally a time to concentrate on productivity, and we may spend December thinking about our families, celebrations, and possibly some upcoming time off of work. Most of us will still have work responsibilities during that time, however, and the last thing you need in January is a bigger list of unfinished projects than you would already have.

With that in mind, here are five holiday season productivity killers to avoid:

Late night, midweek holiday parties. Once the schedule starts to get full, people will be tempted to throw parties and get-togethers in the middle of the week. Staying out late on a Tuesday night is a great way to wreck your productivity for three days, though, so try to avoid these types of gatherings… or at least get to bed early.

Sleeping in. As the weather turns cold and our brains shift into holiday mode, it is going to be easy to start softening on your morning routine, especially when it comes to things like workouts and early meetings. Missing one of these is not usually a big deal, but it could throw you off your normal schedule or leave you feeling sluggish, so try to keep up if you can.

Unnecessary travel. Is that mid-December layover in Chicago really worth the headaches? There are a lot of reasons to skip face-to-face meetings in favor of webinars, teleconferencing, and other forms of virtual contact these days. That’s especially true during the holiday season when airports are overloaded and the weather is bad.

Short visits to relatives across town. Of course you should not skip out on seeing your family altogether, but those drop-in visits never turn out to be as quick as you think they will, do they? Somewhere around your third cup of coffee and a conversation about your cousin’s stint in rehab, you realize that you didn’t leave enough time to really catch up. Try to set up family get-togethers for days and occasions when you have plenty of time without cutting into your sleep or productivity.

Crunch time gift shopping. Most of us do not enjoy crowded shopping malls, and it is often easier to shop on the Internet, anyway. Either way, try not to leave your holiday shopping to the last minute; you won’t have to rush if you take care of it early, and it will not be on your mind and affecting your productivity later.

The holidays are not really about productivity, but they do not have to be a drag on your working life, either. Simply follow these tips, and make the most of your December.  Then consider taking time to clear out the clutter in your life as the new year begins.

As a society, we are constantly lamenting the fact that attention spans seem to be getting shorter all the time. In this age of the Internet and text messages, it just seems like no one can focus on anything anymore. But, much as we like to talk about these things as part of an irreversible trend requiring multitasking, shouldn’t it be possible to learn to concentrate again?

Evidence suggests we can; it just takes practice. Some of the best ways have been covered on this blog before in how to manage your time and limit the need to multitask for greater productivity.  Here are a few ideas to help you get started again and stay focused:

Block off time. Decide what tasks or projects most need to be finished, and then block off uninterrupted chunks of time to work on them. Having even half an hour to devote to a single thing can be great for making progress and keeping your mind where it needs to be.

Keep a clean desk. On one level, this makes it easier to find what you need, rather than digging through papers, pens, reports, and other obstacles. In a deeper sense, having a clean desk and work space removes distractions from your field of vision – and makes you less likely to be distracted by them.

Reduce mental clutter by writing things down. If you have a great idea, or remember a task that needs to be finished, write it down on a note and place that note in the appropriate file or basket. That way you will not have the idea floating in the back of your mind, trying to be remembered, when you should be concentrating on something else.

Take time for reflection. One of the great ironies of time management is that, occasionally, “doing nothing” can be very productive. That is because our minds use time for reflection to organize information, make connections, set new goals, and otherwise clarify ideas in our minds. Taking some time away from the tasks at hand can actually make them easier to focus on later.

Although it may be getting harder for the men and women around you to concentrate, you do not have to be driven to distraction yourself. Just learn to “focus on focusing” by following the tips above, and it will not be long before your concentration skills are top-notch.

If you continue to struggle with concentration and feel that you fall into the category of someone with ADD or ADHD, read our article on Managing ADD in the Office.

Office organization is always a challenge for small businesses because they tend to channel most of their labor resources into “productive” work that directly generates revenue rather than into ancillary functions. Still, a properly organized office is necessary to maintain a positive atmosphere that is tidy and structured. To replace chaos with sanity in your office, use these 7 office organization tips for small businesses.

1. Create procedures
Even the most mundane procedure in your business should be documented so everyone knows exactly what needs to be done and how it needs to be done. For example, incoming paperwork should be processed in a way that it is processed through a single handling process of action and then filing. This type of policy keeps those disturbing piles of printed matter from cluttering desks and being either difficult or impossible to locate.

2. Set a schedule
Small businesses tend to run wide open for as long as possible as long as there is work that needs to be done. To avoid burnout and to promote a sane working environment, however, office hours should be set, with scheduled breaks, so everyone involved including workers and customers knows what to expect when they arrive and when they can come and go. This structure makes it easier and more predictable to work for a small company.

3. Use virtual assistants
Repetitive tasks like editing documents, printing reports or answering phones can be done by anyone, so consider using one of the many virtual assistant services that are springing up to get the routine work done at a super-low cost to your business. This frees up your time and others’ for productive work.

4. Have a computer backup plan
Small businesses often end up being disabled for days or weeks at a time just because a key computer or server crashed, losing all the information it contained. Small businesses should have a backup plan in place where all their computers, servers and external storage devices are backed up so when the worst happens, the work can go on. Consider using one of the modern online backup services, so you always have a copy of your work.

5. Set goals and monitor progress
One of the biggest problems with businesses and individuals is that they lack direction. They don’t know where they are headed and – because of that – they don’t know how to get there. Get together with all your employees right away and start setting some goals for your small business, and then have a simple chart set up in the office where everyone can contribute to monitoring their achievement.

6. Define responsibilities
Small businesses get into the habit where everyone just assumes that everyone else will always do what they have always done in the past. This “seat of the pants” management approach may work for a while, but as new employees come into the mix, they will be frequently left dead in the water, not knowing what they are supposed to be doing and who can address the various issues that arise. Take some time to create some job descriptions and make sure you have periodic meetings to make sure everyone is working from the same page.

7. Maintain records
Record keeping in small businesses is often inadequate because no one has time to archive records or pay attention to regulations that stipulate what records must be kept. When tax time comes around or when your business is audited for compliance with various privacy and labor statutes, businesses are reminded of the importance of keeping good records.

Take some time to figure out what records must be kept and how to keep them, and then make it a team responsibility to carry out the plan. If everyone does a little bit, record keeping won’t be much of a chore.

Use these 7 office organization tips for your small business to start bringing order out of the chaos that currently reigns in your office. The extra time and attention to these issues will be well spent will be rewarded in a more efficient, productive and profitable business.

This guest post was submitted by James Adams. James is a full-time writer and a reviewer at CartridgeSave, an online specialist suppliers of HP cartridges.

Call it the curse of the hyper-productive person, but trying to do too much with your time can almost be as bad as trying to do too little. That is because, no matter how well you are using them, you only have so many hours and minutes to spend each day.

That realization leads us to an interesting question: How many projects can you successfully balance at once?

Obviously, there is not a set answer to this question. For most people, however, it is probably around four or five major projects, depending on how complex each one is. Any more than that, and you probably need to either prioritize your goals, or talk with a supervisor about your workload.

For time management considerations, here are a couple of tips for doing each:

When prioritizing. Figuring out which of your goals is most important to you can take a lot of work and self-reflection. Begin by trying to figure out which tasks are most important to your current job performance, and what you most need to do to take the next step in your career. Once you have clearly identified a few issues in those areas, it should be easy to spot some things that can (or should) be attempted later after you have finished other items first.

When meeting with supervisors. Know beforehand that this can be trickier than setting your own priorities. You do not want to sound like you are complaining about your job, especially when the economy is tough and companies are looking for ways to cut back. With that in mind, make sure to provide some details when explaining to managers that you may have too many projects on your plate. Keep the time log and show them how you currently spend your day, the number of open projects and priorities that are currently your responsibility, and what your future time commitments look like.

If you have more than one manager or supervisor, it might make sense to bring them together into one meeting. That way, you can point out that you could be more efficient and effective if you were more focused on a smaller number of priorities and let them focus on what those should be.

Figuring out how many projects and priorities you can successfully manage is not always straightforward. If you are feeling overextended and have more than four or five major items to deal with, however, it might be time to make some new priorities. 

Once you have settled on which are the most important projects, you need to then focus on the steps to take in managing each project.

Time management and productivity training is an interesting field. On the one hand, things are changing all the time: The tools, distractions, and priorities that people set for themselves change with new career paths and technologies. Meanwhile, a lot of what goes into “getting more done” boils down to a few key concepts that don’t change much over time.

In fact, some of the classic time management advice actually becomes more valuable and useful with each passing year.

One of those – and a personal favorite – can be summed up in three words: Do not procrastinate. Although this is a tip that most of us have been hearing our whole lives, we all know someone who puts everything off until the last minute… or maybe we are one of those people.

In one sense, it is natural to avoid pain or discomfort, so we are all hardwired to save chores we do not like for another time. But whether it is natural or not, procrastination can do terrible things to your life and career. That is because the very worst tasks are usually ones that did not start out that way, but became dreadful only because we put them off for too long. Some of them were not even tough at all, but the act of thinking about them again and again has made them seem overwhelming in our minds.

If you want to feel freer and lighter very quickly, get into the habit of doing what you most need to (like balancing your checkbook, filing expense reports, or clearing out your e-mail inbox) even when you do not feel like it. In time, you will notice two interesting things will happen:

• Each of these will become simpler because you took care of them at the right moment.
• You will have a lot less mental baggage to drag around.

In time management, like art, the best pieces are sometimes the classics. Remember that the next time you are tempted to put off something that really should not wait until another day or time.

If the procrastinator is someone else whose habits are affecting your productivity, learn more about how to deal with a procrastinator.

These days, most of us have hundreds – or even thousands – of files on our hard drives, both at work and at home. Finding them when we need them can be a major challenge if they aren’t perfectly organized. In fact, when you add up the time most of us spend an average week or month looking for the files we need, it could easily add up to hours that have been lost.

Given that we are always recommending that you keep a clean and organized workspace or task list, does it not make sense to do the same with your computer files? Here are a handful of tips to help you keep your files right where you need them:

Use names, dates, and versions. It is easy, when you are in a hurry, to give a file you are working on a simple name like “Kevin’s new account list.” But what happens when you are searching for that file three months from now? The only way to prevent problems is to develop a system for naming files and folders, and then use it consistently. Over time, it will become second nature, but only if you get into the habit at first.

Develop a file tree. All the major projects in your life or career should have corresponding folders on your computer. Beneath each of those should be sub-folders, moving from the broad to the specific, until you’re down to individual projects, clients, months, and so on. Again, this takes a little bit of discipline at first, but it is a habit that will pay you off for years to come.

Clean your folders and discs once in a while.  Assuming you are backing up your data as often as you should, there is no sense in keeping folders and files that you haven’t used for years –they are just in the way, making it harder to find other items you need now. Try to spend a few hours a month archiving and deleting old information; doing so will make it easier to find the name new files.

Add keywords to scanned documents. Many scanning programs allow you to mark scanned and digital documents with keywords, as well as file names. An invoice from a marketing firm, for example, might be saved with the company name, month, and year. But you could also mark the file with keywords like “expenses,” “marketing,” or “vendor invoice” to make it easier to find in the future.

One way to handle both your paper and electronic files is to use a program like Paper Tiger .  It helps you combine all of your filing with a quick retrieval method and make better use of your time.