Scheduling nightmares. We’ve all been through the back and forth jungle of trying to find a common time for a group of people to meet.

An email gets sent to a group of people and everyone’s email inbox gets jammed full with the Reply All responses. As the coordinator of a meeting, you spend too much time trying to find the most common meeting date & time for everyone to meet.

Here’s a solution to your scheduling nightmares.

Doodle enables you to propose several dates and times through an email to a list of participants. inside or outside your organization, across calendars, and time zones. Participants can indicate their availability online through a poll. Once you choose the most common date from the online poll, you can send an email to set a firm meeting date. Doodle is free of charge and registration is not required.

Have a look at a demo for Doodle.

Doodle Calendar Connect and MeetMe are options worth having a look at. These enhanced features enable you to connect your calendar so you can share your availability, no matter what calendaring system other participants are using and regardless of which organization they are in.

Tungle.me is a similar option to Doodle.

When trying to set up an appointment with a client, by clicking on the Tungle.me link through the downloaded program, you are able to select available time options and send these options through an email. Once a suitable time is selected, an appointment is automatically added to each participants calendar.

Have a look at Tungle.me’s video demonstration:

Instead of spending your time searching for a suitable time to meet, save your time for your meetings instead. Give Doodle or Tungle.me a try and let me know what your preference is.

For 62 per cent of employed Canadians, work was identified as the primary 

culprit of stress in 2010 according to new numbers from StatisticsCanada.

A pressure-cooker to begin with, the workplace is made even more stressful by  being disorganized.

“Canadians are in a constant time crunch and experience feelings of stress,  failure and frustration,” says Clare Kumar, a Toronto-based professional  organizer. “Today’s office workers must take stock of both their work habits and  their environment, and take necessary action to alleviate the tremendous  pressure disorganization has on their productivity and work-life balance.”

“By having the right tools in place, Canadian office workers can save at  least 15 minutes per day which works out to a week and a half per year,” adds  Linda Chu, a professional organizer in Vancouver. “This has a dramatic effect on  the health of businesses and their workers.”

Professional organizers say desks in disarray causes a drop of 20 per cent in  worker efficiency; costing the economy billions of dollars in lost productivity.  Studies show the average worker spends at least 400 hours per year searching for  paper documents. “This places tremendous stress on the bottom line for many  businesses that need to return to profitability, especially coming out of the  economic downturn.”

Chu recommends several steps to become more efficient and productive in the  workplace.

• Categorize. Sort through possessions and group them into similar categories  of information and tasks. Identify what things are, instead of getting  sidetracked by thinking of solutions.
• Limit. If space is a premium you may have to choose between what is  important – your space or your stuff. Limit your collections by regularly  reviewing and letting go of information.
• Evaluate. Focusing on what matters most is the key to prioritizing.  Continually evaluate information and tasks as they relate to achieving goals to  increase your efficiency and productivity.
• Allocate. Find a method to store information and possessions to be able to  find what you need, when you need it.
• Remove. Items that are no longer of value or no longer needed can be  removed from the workspace. Focusing on what is important will get you on track  to be more efficient.

see article in The Province

The Government of Canada has identified key Literacy and Essential Workplace Skills. These skills are used in nearly every job, throughout daily life and at varying levels of complexity. Having a common foundation of skills will enable people to successfully participate in the Canadian labour market, enhancing communication and workplace productivity. Essential skills give people the ability to evolve with their jobs and to adapt to workplace change.

The nine Essential Skills include:

1. Reading
2. Document use
3. Numeracy
4. Writing
5. Oral communication
6. Working with others
7. Thinking
8. Computer use
9. Continuous learning

To help you kick start your continuous learning efforts, Out of Chaos will be offering the upcoming workshop basics:

Get Organized: de-clutter & focus and what matters most!
November 1, 2011 – 7:00 to 8:30pm

For the pilers, filers and stuffers who are running out of space. For those that are overburdened and stressed with too many email, voice mail, paper, and interruptions. This workshop will give you take-away tips on how to get yourself organized by addressing:

• How to begin diving into the piles when you “just don’t know where to start”
• How to prioritize and focus your time on what’s important when everything appears urgent
• Decision making using the “Decide in Five” model to help you focus on what matters most

Class held at the new Healistic Planet Wellness Studio in Kitsilano, 1860 West 1st Avenue, Vancouver, BC

604.689.8034

Pre-register here

In this electronic age, it does not come as a surprise that most work disruptions are electronic. According to a survey conducted by social email provider harmon.ie in March 2011, they commissioned a survey of 515 IT users working in US and global companies to better understand the impact that electronic distractions have on the workplace.

Survey results are worth spending some time to ponder:

The majority (57%) of work interruptions now involve either

• using collaboration and social tools like email, social networks, text messaging and IM, or
• switching windows among applications and personal online activities such as Facebook and Web searches

In fact, 45% of employees work only 15 minutes or less without getting interrupted. Constant interruptions have created problems ranging from difficultly working/producing, to missed deadlines, to poor work evaluations.

53% waste at least one hour a day due to all types of distractions. That hour per day translates into $10,375 of wasted productivity per person per year, assuming an average salary of $30/hour. That is more than the average U.S. driver will spend this year to own and maintain a car, according to the Automobile Association of America (AAA). That means that for businesses with 1,000 employees, the cost of employee interruptions exceeds $10 million per year. The actual cost of distraction is even higher in terms of negative impacts on work output, work quality, and relationships with clients and co‐workers.
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Some of you may have seen the commercials, alluding to the tax time filing pains in our nether regions, as we struggle with getting ourselves organized to file our taxes in time before the deadline. Even if you aren’t filing your own taxes, the trauma of finding all your source documents is enough to give you a headache or pain in the…

Gloria Munro of Munro & Company, CGA has these great tax checklists to get you prepared for your personal and business tax filings. Just filing your return on time will save you money on the late filing penalties, even if you are being charged interest on the unpaid tax amounts. According to Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), April 30 (or June 15th, if you’re self-employed) is the deadline to file your taxes. After that, if you owe the government, you will be charged a 5 percent late penalty on the total owed, and 1 percent interest per month, for a maximum of 12 months.

Your business tax receipts may already be in a disorganized pile for this year’s tax filings, but by following these tips you will be in top form for next year. You’ve got one year to rid yourself of more tax pain…

1. Keep your tax documents in one location (section of file cabinet or separate file box)
2. Create Company File Folders for those you use often or receive monthly statements from
3. Create Category File Folders for expenses which may not have the same supplier (auto repairs & maintenance, office supplies)
4. Create Dedicated File Folders for tax accounts and government issued documents (HST, WorksafeBC, etc)
5. File receipts in the year transaction took place and only after they have been entered into your accounting system

Read more about good filing practices from Munro & Company, CGA

Another Workshop Announcement: Stay tuned for our workshop on how to organize your financial papers, co-hosted with financial planner Kendra Sivertson.

We all have that never ending list of things to do. We complete one task and 10 more tasks take its place. The key to getting from to-do to to-done is managing your

1. Task List
2. Creating Transitional Holding Patterns
3. Plan your day by Scheduling Your Commitments

Keep in mind that your to-do list is nothing more than a list of intentions (some day, when I find the time…). Add to this the dilemma of various lists in the form of scraps of paper, post-it notes, pads of paper, note books, and flags in your email correspondence – the feeling of overwhelm is almost too much to bear.
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I help people de-clutter their lives and get rid of the bad habits that led to the chaos in the first place. Sometimes, my professional advice seems a lot like something you might hear from a life-coach.

After all, my “Three P’s” — planning, process and procedures, which help people stay organized and have a good life balance are also keys to long-term success.

Recently, some of my friends in the coaching field have written advice about forming good habits and letting go of things. My colleague, Dr. Brian Walsh, who collaborated with me on the Self-Hypnosis CD Ending Procrastination, provides this advice on improving behavior:

Over 97 per cent of our behaviors are unconscious. These behaviors are the result of imprinted patterns. Most of these were created when we were very young, perhaps under the age of seven. Another term for these patterns is habits, and yes, procrastination is a habit. It was learned, so it can be unlearned.

Most people believe that it takes 30 days to establish a new habit. Recent research has found that anyone can establish a new habit in as little as five days. Now, there’s a catch to this. Even if you have planted a new habit, the old one is still hanging around and is fighting for survival. Old habits die hard.

Here’s the key to success. Be aware that every time you fall back into the old habit, it will gain strength, and the new pattern will begin to weaken. The converse is true: Every time you practice the new pattern, it will gain dominance over the old one. Eventually it will dissolve, and that might take 30 days. You’ve heard that “Practice makes perfect.” Actually: “Practice makes permanent.”

On the topic of how to make your habits work for you, Life Coach Julia James has written a great article with a list of steps to follow:

1. First, pick a habit to establish.
2. What would be the smallest action you could take to get started? Commit to doing this one small thing on a regular basis, ideally on a schedule.
3. Set up a reminder to help you remember your commitment.
4. When you feel ready, gradually increase your commitment – but no more than you can consistently do.
5. Share your commitment with someone. Accountability really helps.
6. Identify the personal values you are honoring with your action.
7. Notice how good you feel when you follow a healthy habit; give yourself kudos for taking this positive step.
8. Stick with your new habit for at least 30 days. Before long, this behaviour will feel automatic and you won’t have to think about it anymore.

I’ve written before about how to face down the challenge of letting go of stuff that we don’t need. But what happens when your identity is tied to the things you own? My friend, Living in Vision Coach Lynne Brisdon discusses how to get past your hesitation:

When we have a strong attachment with our stuff our identity can feel threatened if we let go of it. This also has to do with being afraid of change and needing to control our surroundings in order to feel secure. The antidote is to shift to a sense of self identity that is truly about being who you are and not associated with having stuff.

This can also be related to the mistaken assumption that material objects: cars, a new PDA, or outfit, will fulfill us or have us feel complete. We feel good for a little while after acquiring the object of our desire, but we soon end up feeling empty again. We mistakenly equate having stuff with being loved instead of feeling whole and complete regardless of our belongings.

By Jennifer Myers
The Globe and Mail, December 26, 2009

Heading into the new year may be just the time to look at order and disorder in the workplace.

Your desk is a mess. You can’t dig out your to-do list from the overflowing pile, never mind tick off any items on it. You have dozens of e-mails waiting to be read. And you keep getting distracted every time a co-worker stops to chat, your in-box signals another message has arrived or the phone rings.

Workers everywhere can identify with that. And it’s only getting worse.

Downsizing and layoffs have resulted in fewer workers but no reduction in the workload. Those who have kept their jobs are functioning in a state of semi-chaos, scrambling to bring order to their work lives. And far from helping us stay on top of things, technology has only made things worse, says Linda Chu, founder of Out of Chaos, a professional organizing firm in Vancouver. Business has moved to a 24/7 economy and workers are now always on. We try to multi-task and it’s not working, she says.

Disorganization in the workplace can range from merely annoying to nearly paralyzing, and it costs companies both time and money in lost productivity.

“Things pile up, people feel mentally defeated and exhausted, and the task of organizing seems impossible,” Ms. Chu says.

Heading into a new year may be just the time to look at order and disorder in the workplace.

You know you need help when
1 . You spend more than 15 minutes each day searching for misplaced items.

2. The pile of papers in your inbox is always more than eight inches high.

3. Your book shelves are used for storing items other than books.

4. You have more than 100 old e-mails stored in your computer’s inbox.

5. You are constantly asking people to resend their contact information to you.

Source: Professional Organizers in Canada website

Calculating the cost of chaos
Your messy desk or jammed e-mail box may not seem like a big deal, but it could be costing you, big time. Find out the real cost of chaos with Tennessee-based DME Consulting & Training’s “cost of disorganization” calculator (http://www.thegosystem.com/cod_start.asp)

Enter your company name, number of employees and average hourly wage to learn the amount of time lost each day to disorganization.

Three common saboteurs to workplace organization, and how to beat them
Clutter Control
PROBLEM: For many, the desktop has become a storage place. Next to the family photos, you might also find yesterday’s lunch leftovers and an Aspirin bottle, not to mention overflowing piles of paper. People are still more comfortable reading physical documents, so they print every e-mail, memo and report that comes their way. Without the time or a system to deal with the material, it, too, ends up in disarrayed piles.

SOLUTION: Make it a habit to always put things away. Toss the garbage and return useful items to drawers when you’re done. Create a system for dealing with paper by segmenting it into three categories: active files; archival materials, research or information on projects you might need; and reference materials, contact info, or items you may need for a future project. The only folder that should stay on your desk is the active file you need to get the job done today.

E-MAIL
PROBLEM: Besides the distraction of checking e-mail messages either immediately or shortly after they arrive, many people also neglect the delete button. These days it’s not uncommon to see 1,000 e-mails stored in an inbox, Ms. Chu says. “It’s a fear of out of sight, out of mind.” But the sheer volume of messages makes it overwhelming and mentally exhausting each time we go online.

SOLUTION: Check e-mail on a schedule and stick with it. For some, that could be three times a day, for others it could mean every couple of hours. “Then get rid of the crud,” Ms. Chu says. Use the functions available on your e-mail program to manage your mail. For example, set up folders and move mail you really need to keep into the appropriate location. Create a rule that sends subscriptions, such as newsletters or news alerts, directly to a folder. The key is to process as much mail as you can as it comes in.

PERSONAL PRODUCTIVITY
PROBLEM: With the constant barrage of interruptions by managers and co-workers, the obsession to check e-mail and voice mail and the Web, and an overwhelming list of tasks to complete made only more onerous by belt-tightening and staff reductions, we’ve lost our ability to focus, Ms. Chu says. As a result, workers often reel from one task to the next without making any real progress.

SOLUTION: Develop a priority action plan each day. A to-do list is a useful way to declutter the mind and determine which items are a high priority. That means when a phone call, an e-mail or a co-worker interrupts, you can decide if the interruption is important enough to trump what you’re currently doing or can wait until you finish the task at hand.

More and more, social networking is being used to stay in touch with family, friends and colleagues and to boost business. But I barely have time to live my own life, much less to read what everyone else is up to. How do you manage your time and use social networking in an organized way? To answer these kinds of questions, I talked with WRITEIMAGE founder Jonathon Narvey, who helps organizations get their message out through social media.

Q. How is social media good for business when people are Tweeting, Facebooking and updating their status about what they just had for lunch? A. Filtering the information is the key to making it useful. You select the RSS streams, Twitter profiles and Facebook friends that you want to follow. If someone is always Tweeting about their lunch, the solution is simple – you would never follow that person in the first place. It’s the same idea as when you watch TV, in that you choose the channel you want to watch – except that you can probably get far more targeted information from scanning relevant status updates online for 10 minutes than from any TV show.

Q. Which tools do you use?

A. I manage several blogs to establish a presence in my chosen fields and build connections with others. I also guest blog on other websites. I use Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. These are the big sites. All of my social networks include both personal and professional connections. Often, there’s overlap, as colleagues become friends.

Q. But which tools are better for business?

A. All of them can be used for business. For instance, anyone can have a Facebook fan page for their business. LinkedIn is handy for building professional connections and finding professional associations. And Twitter is a convenient tool for finding influencers, connecting with them and broadcasting your message.

Q. Maintaining all those networks must be a lot of work. How do you manage your time?

A. Especially for those using social networks for business, the amount of time you use them will depend largely on how you want to use them. For passive connection-list building, a few minutes a day is probably all you need. If you’re using social networks for marketing campaigns, keep a strict schedule.

Social networks often include tools that automate functions, reducing the amount of time you need to spend maintaining them. For instance, you can set up your blog RSS feed (a summary of your most recent posts) to auto-Tweet whenever you publish, and then use Ping.fm to update all of your social networks at once.

Q. How do I de-clutter my social networking profiles?

A. Facebook and LinkedIn both let you customize the look of your profiles. You can select the applications you want and get rid of the rest. For instance, I organize my Facebook profile to show very minimal contact information, some links to my business and articles I’ve written. I keep it minimal to make an easier scanning experience for myself and others.

Social networking, just like email, can get out of control and consume what little time you have. Set your priorities and make social networking a part of your marketing plan, just as you would a face to face meeting or networking event.

Finding the right balance invariably comes into conversation when I work with clients. This month I’ll share with you a tip for your work, yourself, and your environment.

No Time to Open All Those Emails
Here’s a quick tip to put into practice immediately, to save precious time when managing your emails. EOM — End of Message. Use this in the subject line to signal the recipient of your emails that they don’t have to open up the email. All they need to know is in the subject line of your email.

This works nicely for things like. “See you Friday at 11:00 am. EOM”, “Congratulations on a great job!. EOM”. Forward this email tip and get organized.

When time is limited, every second, or in this case, every click counts.
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