What's more annoying than sitting around in an unproductive funk all day? How about trying to get yourself in the mood to work by trying out productivity tips that have never actually helped anyone? No thanks! (Last week I did a handstand against a wall in the office to "get my blood flowing." It just made me dizzy.) So we did some research at Wrike HQ to see what our coworkers are doing to stay focused in the office. Their first suggestion was to stop doing handstands. And then they shared some insightful advice from their own tried-and-true productivity arsenal, including: Color-coding your calendar by activity type Starting off your day by helping your colleagues with their work Looking around at your desk space — and fixing it up to make it a better space for focusing Watch our quick three-minute video to hear ten pieces of advice that are actually helping office workers get more done, straight from the mouths of our most productive Wrikers: What productivity tips have you tried? Are you a productivity junkie? Have you tried every productivity tip you could find online, along with a few of your own homespun concoctions? Let us know what has helped you focus during a long day in the office (and what doesn't help at all) — we all want to learn from your experience. Here's to a more productive workplace for all! Related Reads: 16 Simple Motivation Tips to Get More Done (Infographic) 6 Reasons Your Marketing Plan Isn’t Working (+ New Welcome to DroneCo Comic) 4 Problems with Virtual Meetings that You Can Fix
Wrike is introducing more and more features to help marketing teams manage and track all their work in one centralized place. Our marketing team completely relies on Wrike to collaborate and get work done, so we're doubly passionate about making Wrike the best workspace for Agile marketers. One of the many ways we use Wrike is to track our blog's publishing calendar. For example, this post has been on our editorial calendar since March, and we've been tracking its progress from just an idea all the way through the publishing date today! Now we want to show you how we use Wrike as an editorial and marketing calendar, so you can efficiently manage your company blog, too. 5 Steps to Set Up Your Marketing Editorial Calendar with Wrike 1. Create a folder to hold every post that you'll publish on your blog. Our folder is called "Blog Posts". Every time you create a new task to write a blog post, make sure it's tagged into this folder. 2. Create a Custom Workflow that accurately reflects all the different stages that your blog posts go through on their way to being published. For example, at Wrike our Custom Workflow for our blog calendar looks like this: Sometimes, posts jump back and forth between "In Review" and "Writing", if the author has received feedback on their post for additional edits, and Wrike makes it easy to adjust your task to that back-and-forth workflow. 3. Create a Shared Dashboard to give your team visibility into the publishing schedule. We call our Shared Dashboard "Editorial Calendar". It will look like this when you're done with every step: 4. Now you need to create the two widgets for your Dashboard: a. One for all posts that have yet to be scheduled, e.g. "To Be Scheduled". These will be tasks in your folder without due dates. i. Create the widget by filtering inside your Blog Posts folder for tasks that are BACKLOGGED. ii. Also select all Custom Statuses you care about for this widget. At Wrike, we filter for 'planned', 'writing', 'in review', 'in design', and 'ready to post' because we want a list of everything that is definitely going to be published at some point. We leave out 'idea', since those ideas may never make it to the publishing calendar. iii. Once you've filtered for tasks to show only what you want to see in your widget, add the widget to your Dashboard! b. Now create a widget for your current publishing schedule, e.g. "Publishing Schedule". These will be tasks in your folder that do have due dates. i. Create the widget by filtering inside your Blog Posts folder for tasks that are PLANNED and MILESTONE ii. Also select all custom statuses you care about for this widget. At Wrike, we filter for 'planned', 'writing', 'in review', 'in design', and 'ready to post' because we select publishing dates before posts are fully ready. We choose NOT to show posts that are already 'published', but you can decide to show them if you'd always like to see previously published posts on your Dashboard. iii. Finally, make sure you organize your task list "By Date" to make sure the widget lists your tasks in the correct order, and then add your widget to your Dashboard! 5. Now you're all set up! When you're looking at your Dashboard, you can click the quick scheduling button on your task card to choose publishing dates. If you've set up your filters as described above, your task will automatically move from the "To Be Scheduled" widget over to the "Publishing Schedule" widget once you've selected a date. You can use the same button to quickly rearrange posts in your publishing schedule, in case new posts need to be added into the mix and things need to move around. It gives your marketing team the ability to stay agile. Note: Because our Editorial Calendar system uses task due dates to set publishing dates, we cannot use due dates to note when we'll be done writing, when editing needs to be completed, or anything except the final publishing date. If your team relies heavily on due dates to move work through every stage of your workflow, you will need to modify our process described above to fit your needs. More Tools to Make Your Marketing Team More Agile Learn more about how today's marketers are using Agile techniques in our survey report: How Marketers Get Things Done: The State of Agile Marketing in 2016. Then, start a free trial of Wrike to get your Agile marketing team running at peak performance.
Wrike has gotten some great new updates to email notifications lately, and we've extended that to our Wrike app for Android™. Enable push notifications for Wrike on your Android device to be instantly notified of task changes. You'll never lose track of project progress. With the update, the Wrike app for Android now gives you more detailed push notifications. It tells you: 1) When a task is assigned to you 2) When you are @mentioned on a task The additional information means you can instantly spot these important changes when scrolling through your task updates. You stay up to date with your workload at all times, and can immediately provide feedback on tasks when you are @mentioned. Stay productive on the go; enable push notifications for your Wrike app for Android and never miss another update.
You're a creative director. You have too many projects, your staff is already working overtime, and you have no idea how to get it all done quickly and efficiently with your current system. Where do you turn? Collaborative work management solutions help cut down on the time your team loses attending extra meetings, managing an overwhelming amount of email, and searching aimlessly for the latest attachments and updated creatives. More importantly, an efficient collaboration tool will allow more time for your creatives to BE creative, instead of tracking down project specs or sending emails. Creative teams are busy, busy folks, whether they're bringing on new clients or juggling endless requests. They don't have time to try new tools just for the effort to fail. Before you commit to a work management solution and jump in head-first, read this guide to help you make sure your choice is successfully adopted by your busy creative team. And then go forth and create! 1. Define your processes for using the tool You know how you do what you do. So as the first adopter and ultimate champion for the tool, take that knowledge and create a set of clearly defined rules for how your team will use the new tool so they know what to expect. Create a document that outlines: What features you will use — and how. Some tools come with a lot of features, but you may not need them all. Make a list of the features your team will take advantage of, and exactly how they will help your team get work done. How to organize your work. Your collaboration tool should offer a system for organizing tasks into folders or projects, so your work isn't scattered aimlessly throughout the tool. Decide if your team will organize work by the kind of deliverable(s), requesting client, assigned designer, or all of the above. Whichever works for you. How to name your work. Setting up a consistent naming convention will make it easy for your employees to understand what they'll get when they open a task. Set up a system to include rules like: Start/end tasks with [Client name] Start tasks with a verb, e.g. "Create" or "Update" Start/end with a time estimate for how long the task will take, e.g. [2hrs] How to organize your attachments. Align your team around where documents and creative files should be stored to make sure assets don't get lost.Will they be housed in one folder all together? Will they be attached at the folder level, project level, or at the individual task level? Is there a shared drive where all the files are currently stored? After a project has been completed, will final versions of creatives be housed somewhere specific? Setting up recurrent meetings. If your team has recurrent meetings, set them up in your tool. (Check out this article to learn how to conduct meetings in Wrike). This is not 100% necessary, but doing so will keep all your collaborative work (and meetings should be collaborative) in one cohesive space. Our suggestion: Create a folder called "Meetings" with subfolders for different types of meetings (if desired). Then, in this folder, create a task with the date and title of your meeting, assign it to attendees, set the date, and make it a recurring task. When these meetings are held, take meeting notes in this task, so everyone has immediate access to the notes, and can add further input as required. 2. Introduce a small core group for testing Once you have outlined your processes for using the tool, it can't be automatically assumed that you've created the best way for your entire team. Just as you would with your customers on a project, get feedback. Bring a small core group of early-adopters into your tool, explain your outlined processes, provide trainings on the features, and ask them to start using it immediately to collaborate on a project. Sell them on the benefits of the new tool and processes in order to minimize the risk that they'll revert to their previous style of working. 3. Adjust your processes to improve them As the collaborative project goes on, ask your team to add to or modify your preliminary processes as they see fit before rolling the tool out to the rest of your team members. If they have suggestions for better ways to use features, name folders, name tasks, etc., incorporate their feedback into the process document. It is the team that should have final say on how to use their new collaboration tool, as they will be the ones working with it every day. 4. Deploy the tool to the entire team After you and your small group are confident that you have created a sustainable way to implement and use the collaboration tool, it's time for the big reveal! Roll out the tool to your entire team in the same way that you rolled it out to your small test group. Share your process documentation, provide trainings for your team, and ask them to start using the tool immediately to collaborate on new projects. 5. Continue adjusting processes as necessary As always, keep getting feedback. If someone has an idea on how your team can better make use of a feature, consider every idea for the betterment of the team and reaching your end goals. When a process isn't working, create a solution and check in with the team once per month or quarter as you make adjustments. If you are using a SaaS collaboration tool, it's likely that the company will release regular updates, improvements, and new features. Always consider if you should implement these new features into your workflow for better team collaboration. Not every feature will suit your team's needs, so only update your processes if you think it will improve the way your team works. Help your team work better together Use these 5 steps to make sure your creative team is able to successfully adopt your new collaboration tool, so they can work better and spend more time CREATING instead of maintaining their inboxes. If you have more advice on what does or doesn't work when rolling out a collaboration tool to a creative team, please add your advice to the comments section below! In the market for a new collaboration tool? Give Wrike a try for free — all you need is an email address.
Dan Roam is a management consultant and strong advocate of incorporating visual thinking into your business to solve any problem. He's the author of four best-selling business books, including The Back of the Napkin, which has been called one of the best innovation books of the year. Wrike interviewed Dan Roam to get his take on using visuals at work to improve the way we're working and communicating. Watch to learn: His predictions for the future of work — it's not a common viewpoint! How to fix common problems he sees in both large and small teams. How to deal with the three major business problem areas: emails, meetings, and reporting on activities. How to use pictures to sell your ideas or startup pitch, even if you don't think you're a good salesman. Why it's important for every worker to hone their presentation skills. Hit 'play' now to hear more about visual thinking and how you can use it to improve communication on your team: (Note: there is a minor sound issue in the first minute.) Our biggest takeaways from our interview with Dan Roam were how we can start using visuals to improve our team communication today. Here are some ideas from Dan Roam, mixed in with a few of our own: 5 Ways to Use Visuals to Improve Communication Classic technique: when giving a presentation, instead of loading your PowerPoint slides with text, fill them with pictures to illustrate your point or inspire a feeling in your audience. Before sending an email, think about the content. Can you illustrate any of your ideas instead of sending a explanatory paragraph? Sketch it out quickly on paper, snap a picture on your phone, and attach it to your email. Next time they respond, you'll be working around an image, instead of a heavy block of text. If you're sending a task to your design team, mock up your design ideas instead of explaining them with words. Even if you don't have a good eye for aesthetics, giving them your ideal layout at the start prevents the disappointment and wasted time of them creating a first draft that misses the mark. Proactively get up and use a whiteboard during meetings. Just hold the marker in your hand to make yourself more likely to open up and start drawing. Even if you use circles, squares, and arrows to illustrate your point, structured whiteboarding helps make sure everyone understands the goals in the same way. When it comes to reporting, a picture is worth a thousand words. Send charts and graphs instead of a string of numbers and percentages. What do you think about bringing more visuals into conversations? Have you read any of Dan Roam's books? What was your biggest takeaway from our Dan Roam interview? If you are already using visuals to improve team communication, have you noticed a big difference? Share your thoughts with everyone below, and if you already have a tried and tested method, tell us how we can keep improving the way we work with visualization. Let's start a conversation! Read Next: The 4th Phase of Project Management: Interview with Peter Taylor (Video) 20 Lessons from David Allen on Succeeding at Work, Life, and GTD (Video)
At its inception, email was a great way of sending short notes to your officemates and people around the world. Since then, it has become a primary way to communicate at work, and messages can be anywhere from a short, "OK," to a long-winded essay on all the tasks that need to be done before tomorrow and every step to be taken. Which then quickly spirals into a chain of back-and-forth emails. Tasks get assigned and promptly forgotten, people send simultaneous messages that contradict one another, and you never know if your email has actually made it through the territorial spam filters. We challenge you to look at your email inbox again and consider if this is really the best way to communicate with your team. How many projects have been delayed because important emails weren't read properly or in time? How often have you had to resize a document in order to attach it successfully? Do you open your inbox in the morning and groan at the amount of junk mail you are now required to wade through? Watch our video on the reasons we "love" email, and if you identify with these groan-worthy moments, maybe it's time to switch to a better communication tool: What do you hate about email? We only named six reasons why email is a pain in the neck, and we know we left some out. So tell us: what do you hate most about communicating with your team via email? Download our free ebook: It's Not Me, It's You: Why Managers Need to Break Up with Email and Spreadsheets If this video resonated with you, and you know your company needs a better communication and work planning platform, try out Wrike. You can start a free 2-week trial for your team today. Related Reads: Email Management: 10 Clever Tricks to Hit Inbox Zero 3 Collaboration Tips for Enhancing Teamwork The 5 Ws of Virtual Communication
We always try to make your collaboration within team, across departments and with partners even quicker, smoother, and more efficient. Based on feedback from many of you, we added a great new feature that allows any user to immediately add new members to your Wrike account in an easy and secure way. These new user privileges will make it much easier to involve new people and let them get started with Wrike right away. Send Invites Without Interrupting Your Work Let's say you're working on an important project and you want to share it with your client, but your account admin went on vacation for a week. No worries. With this new feature, you can invite the client immediately instead of interrupting your admin's beach time to ask them to add the new user. And there is no longer a need to travel all the way to the administrative account management profile. We've introduced three new avenues so that, as an admin or a team member, you can invite people right when you think about it. ...From "Share Folder" in the folder list Right-click on a folder in your list and select "Share folder," just as you would to share it with a user already in Wrike. You will see a field allowing you to invite new users right away. To ensure your data stays safe, you can select the role for your invitee: regular user, external user, or collaborator (the two latter won't be able to share information with anybody else). People will have access to your folder as soon as they accept the invitation through their email account. ...From "Add assignee" or "Share with" in a task When you want to assign or share a specific task with someone not in the account yet you can invite their email address into Wrike directly from the "Add assignee" or "Share with" buttons. The task will automatically be shared with them once they accept the invite. For these two options, the new account's role is automatically assigned: If the invitee's email domain matches the corporate choice, they will be a regular user. If their email domain is different, they will be an external user. These new methods save you time and ensure that you never forget to add important people to your conversations. And by the way, if you're an account admin you can still use the previous methods for adding users, too. Your Data Stays Secure We're serious about the security of your data. Our elegant solution makes sure the right people get the right information. Make your employees regular users to give them all information they need to be productive. And when you invite an outside partner or client, they can be an external user with limited access: they can't invite new users, and they will only see the folders, files, and user information you explicitly share with them. Whenever someone is invited to join Wrike, the account admin will receive an email about the addition. If you have projects with elevated security requirements, you can modify your Account settings to restrict invitations. Enterprise admins will also be able to limit the role of new invitees to 'Collaborator' in the Security tab of their account settings. This collaboration enhancer will be rolled out to our existing customers on May 26, and new users can take advantage of the update right away. If you have any questions about the new feature, please feel free to contact our Support team.
Love staying on top of task updates, but wondering how to tailor your email notifications for specific changes in the tasks you follow? Now you can change your email notification settings to suit your individual needs and monitor only the updates you care about. How is this useful? Say you're on the marketing team and need to publish a blog post (such as this one!) once the text has been finalized. Your cue to jump in is when the copywriter has been unassigned from the task. So you may not need to know when the task description is revised by the copywriters, but you do need to know when the assignees change. In this case, uncheck the "Description changed" notification and leave the box for "Assignees changed" marked. To adjust your email notification settings, go to the "Email addresses" tab of your profile settings. Check or uncheck the notification boxes to customize the info that lands in your inbox. Email notifications you can opt in or out of: Task or folder created Comments added Task status changed Task description changed Task dates changed Task moved to another folder New task assigned/Assignees changed This new feature is available for all Wrike users, from Freemium to Enterprise. Because everyone deserves a cleaner inbox.
Over one trillion dollars are spent annually on sales organizations. That's a 13-figure number, and no small matter for our economy. With so much money going into the field, shouldn't we make sure we're putting in every effort to ensure our sales teams are equipped to do their best work? We asked sales and business leaders for their tips on building a top-notch sales organization. Read on to see what they had to say and learn how you can help lead your sales team to success. 1. Sales boils down to People, Processes, and Systems Sales operations and management are all about putting the right combination of elements together to make your organization successful: people, processes, and systems. The interaction between your sales talent, technology, and management expectations can make or break your goals. As a sales leader, you hire sales people who are goal-oriented, hungry, have great communication skills, and can represent your products and company appropriately. Then you hand them a compensation plan and technology tools to drive and manage their behavior. —Cassie Dennis, Director, SocialRaise 2. Build processes for every possible situation your team will encounter The most important part of building a leading sales organizations is creating systems and processes. You not only have to be able to scale, but you also have to know what is working. You cannot have 10 people selling your product in 10 different ways. You have to build out systems for everything from sales process to handling objections. —Adam Dailey, CEO, funlyevents.com 3. Hold people accountable with KPIs You must have metrics to hold people accountable. You have to establish easily-measured KPIs that the entire team understands and follows. —William Bauer, Managing Director, Royce Leather 4. Continually coach & support your reps Sales management has to be able to oversee what is happening in the sales process to coach and focus the rep's efforts. Creating a system that supports and enables your sales people AND processes can make all the difference. —Cassie Dennis, Director, SocialRaise 5. Address the elephant in the room: fear Fear must be addressed. It is the single most-discussed issue relating to sales reps. The fear of rejection, failure, cold calling, contacting the Upper Crust buyers and sellers, and much more. It keeps salespeople from picking up the phone and going out to connect with buyers and sellers. —Jonathan Kendall, CCP, CPS, CMCT, President & CEO, PopUpSelling.com 6. Teach your salespeople how to develop relationships with customers In the new economy, selling requires individuals that understand they are in the marketing business, can control the discussion, and build a relationship. Customers are smarter today and have more access to information. Today’s sales individual has to be able to develop a relationship, since 88% of consumers will only work with people they know and trust. —Drew Stevens, Ph.D. 7. Show reps how to sell to customers from varied backgrounds and situations Millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers are naturally motivated to buy (and in the case of the sales team, sell) in very different ways. The one-size-fits-all sales and training methodologies, and the singular revenue-based sales management style, are outdated. The sales person needs to be led and taught to connect and sell to everyone, in any generation. —Jonathan Kendall, CCP, CPS, CMCT, President & CEO, PopUpSelling.com 8. Train reps to suit their learning style, not yours You need education that is focused on the learning style of the sales person. If the person is visuals-focused with a hard-charging, aggressive sales attitude, a touchy-feely approach will not work (and vice versa). In fact, it might demotivate them. Too many programs do not modify the process to meet the exact needs of the individual. Most are too focused on soft skills and the "I'm OK, you're OK" approach. Customization to the personal modalities of the individuals' brain is critical to the success of the program. —Jonathan Kendall, CCP, CPS, CMCT, President & CEO, PopUpSelling.com 9. Recognize the success of individual sales personnel using a great CRM tool Successful salespeople want to be compensated for closing sales, but they also want to be recognized. It's not just about how much they're paid, but about the thrill of victory and recognition. To make the most of this drive, you'll want to have a top-notch system where performance can be tracked. The challenge here becomes how to attribute team accomplishments as well as individual accomplishments. You want to enable people to take ownership of their achievements without being too territorial. It's important to set up a dual set of metrics to encourage pride in the team alongside pride in individual accomplishments. Good CRM software is crucial to managing this kind of information. It enables a company to clearly track involvement in different stages of the sales process, and enables you to reward employees accordingly. —Marc Prosser, Co-founder & Managing Partner, Fit Small Business 10. Automate repetitive tasks Don't do your own busywork. Use a third party tool to automate or hand off your repetitive tasks, such as building a list of leads, gathering contact information, researching potential clients, cleaning up CRM data, running drip campaigns, etc. —Joe Leon, Co-Founder, Steward More tips on building a sales team primed for success If you're serious about improving your sales team, the learning doesn't stop here. Read these posts next to see how you can turn your sales team around: 15 Stats You Should Know to Improve Your Sales Team How the Best Sales Teams Collaborate to Get Better Results 5 Challenges Sales Operations Teams Face Today Better teams use better tools Thousands of sales organizations rely on Salesforce to manage their client relationships — but how do they manage relationships with other departments? The Wrike + Salesforce integration allows your sales reps to communicate with other internal teams without leaving Salesforce. See how sales teams are already using Wrike + Salesforce, and then start your free 2-week trial of Wrike.
If you're looking for ways to improve your productivity, there are plenty of educational resources to be found online. The hardest part about finding new productivity tips is making sure you're looking at something helpful and accurate. We cruised through tons of online productivity resources and made a list of the best links and sites for you, so that you don't have to spend any extra time searching — that's just one more time-waster you can avoid. Our list of links includes blogs, TED Talks, YouTube videos, podcasts, eBooks, online classes, and more. As for the thousands and thousands of online articles about calculating productivity — there are simply too many; so, we listed some popular websites with "productivity" categories at the end, and you can browse those sites if you prefer reading individual articles. Happy learning! And stay productive, my friends. Productivity-focused websites and blogs These websites talk about productivity, and productivity only. If you're looking for fellow productivity-fanatics, these links are for you: A Life of Productivity: They publish unique experiment results after trying many different methods for increasing productivity. You can also find books, articles, and advice for time management, energy management, focus, and general productivity. Productive Flourishing: Aside from featured articles on productivity, this site also includes a podcast, planners, and more. The Productivity Pro, Laura Stack: A woman with a loyal following of passionate productivity enthusiasts. Her site offers courses to help you increase your productivity, links to her published works, free resources, and a productivity blog. Productive! Magazine: They publish online issues of their magazine, featuring 10 articles on productivity and high-performing teams and individuals. TED Talks about productivity If you've never listened to a TED Talk before, you're missing out. TED Talks bring great speakers onto stages around the world to discuss their wisdom and impart their advice — including advice on productivity. You can browse their website for productivity talks via topics or the search bar. Here are two links to peruse to find the talks you're interested in: https://www.ted.com/topics/productivity https://www.ted.com/search?q=productivity Need a more definite place to start? Here are five productivity TED Talks we suggest: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity with David Allen The Psychology of Self-Motivation with Scott Geller How to Succeed? Get More Sleep with Arianna Huffington Forget Multitasking, Try Monotasking with Paolo Cardini As Work Gets More Complex, 6 Rules to Simplify with Yves Morieux Productivity podcasts Podcasts are a great way to learn while you're on the go. If you're in the car, on a plane, or you're sick of staring at your glowing laptop screen, open your ears and learn about new productivity habits from these business podcasts: Back to Work: Hosted by Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin. They discuss productivity, communication, barriers to getting things done, productivity-enhancing tools, and more. New episode every Tuesday. Home Work: Hosted by Aaron Mahnke and Dave Caolo. A podcast focused on productivity advice for anyone who works from home, freelancers and telecommuters alike. If you want advice on a specific topic, you can submit questions to be answered on the show. New episode every Friday. The 5 AM Miracle: Hosted by Jeff Sanders. No, you don't have to wake up at 5 AM every day in order to be more productive (I shudder at the thought), but Sanders wants to help us be productive all day, every day. His episodes feature advice on making time for your passions, working with unpredictable schedules, and improving your brain to improve your work. He recently signed a book contract based on all the advice he has shared on his blog over the years. Beyond the To-Do List: Personal Productivity Perspectives: Hosted by Erik Fisher. He discusses and interviews people about all aspects of productivity, from creativity and freelancing to being a parent and still hustling at work. New episodes used to come out weekly or biweekly, but have slowed down to about once per month. ProdPod, a Productivity Podcast: Hosted by Ray Sidney-Smith. Listen to the ProdPod for hard-hitting productivity techniques, research, tool reviews, and other topics of interest for the productivity-minded. This show has already shared 90+ episodes at less than 2-minutes each, so you can listen to one right now for a quick break between tasks, or binge on several episodes at time for a nice 15-minute productivity session during lunch. Defeat the Drama: Hosted by Kirsten E. Ross. Her focus is on helping you get more done at work with less drama — that means cutting down on emotionally-charged arguing and excessive back-and-forth in decision-making. New episodes are released every few days. The Productivity Show: Hosted by Zachary Sexton. The "Asian Efficiency" blog has been offering time management and productivity tips for years, and now they host a podcast where they interview millionaires, actors, and regular Joes to discuss their business principles, and how you can learn from their success. Timeboxing: Hosted by Carl Sondrol. Having a hard time letting your creative mind go wild, while also staying productive? This new podcast interviews creative workers on staying unique, getting in the right mindset for work, and being productive without feeling boring and repetitive — a challenge for many creatives. Getting Things Done (retired podcast): Hosted by David Allen, father of the renowned Getting Things Done productivity method. He published 35 podcasts on how to successfully get started with his productivity method, sharing tips for different types of people, and tools you can use to fuel your focus. Habit Chef Podcast (retired podcast): Hosted by Kendra Kinnison. Productivity is not only working harder and faster, it's also making sure that your work is good in the long-term, not just the short-term. Kinnison's episodes discuss how to set out to achieve your goals and change your bad habits — and make those changes stick. Though no longer releasing new podcasts, 44 episodes are still available for listening on her website. YouTube channels and videos on productivity Videos are becoming the most popular way to digest information. If you prefer a video over an article, check out these YouTube videos and channels for more advice on improving your personal and team productivity: "Why Happiness is the New Productivity (The Story of Mindvalley)": A one-hour recording of Vishen Lakhiani's speech during the "Engage Today" conference in Calgary. He shares how his company went from a side project to a successful business by entering his "state of flow" and using happiness to be more productive. "The Science of Productivity": A whiteboard video on the science behind productivity and motivation from AsapSCIENCE. "Double YOUR Productivity in 1 Day With 5 Simple Tips": Sean Cannell (owner of the popular seanTHiNKS YouTube channel) discusses how he makes time to work full-time, co-run THiNKmedia and THiNK TV, do creative consulting work, create video blogs for his YouTube channel, lead a happy family life, and still have time to watch his favorite TV shows. "Work Smart: How to Make Procrastination Productive": FastCompany's video on accepting the inevitability of procrastination, and learning how to make that time more productive. "7 Brain Hacks To Improve Your Productivity": BuzzFeed's seven hacks to improve your personal productivity. "Becoming The Ultimate Productivity Ninja": A whiteboard video from American Express on the top three tips you need to become a productivity ninja. Work, Money & Business playlist by Actualized.org: Eighteen videos by the very lively Leo at actualized.org on different improvement topics (including procrastination and time management) relating to your work, money, and business. Time Management playlist by Eben Pagan: Nine videos by Eben Pagan on how to improve your time management for better productivity. Free productivity eBooks Never read an eBook before? It's a book-like PDF file that you can download and read from your laptop or carry around with you on your mobile device. They have great learning, and range from ten to hundreds of pages — but usually they are no longer than about fifty pages. Start with these four eBooks on better productivity: What Doesn't Kill You Makes You More Productive: Free eBook from Wrike. Download to read about productivity killers, learn how to fight them, and get actionable tips for your team from productivity experts. Overcoming Procrastination: Free eBook from Free Management eBooks. Download to read through ten chapters on the psychology of procrastination, why quick-fix solutions don't work, and methods to identify your reason for procrastinating every time it creeps up on you. Productivity: How to Get Your S*!% Done: Free eBook from Word Chef. Download this eBook to read 11 articles from different bloggers that cover various topics related to procrastination and productivity: "schadenfreude," the details behind the "standing desk" fad, and getting more real work done in less time every day. The Productivity Manifesto: Free eBook from Nathan Barry. He owns a software design company and writes in his free time. His short eBook shares what he has learned over the years about personal productivity and ignoring the siren call of Twitter and Facebook to buckle down and focus on work. Online classes on productivity Are you motivated by the hustle and bustle of lectures and assignments? Take these online classes to learn in a structured environment and connect with other people who are also interested improving their time management: Work Smarter, Not Harder: Offered on Coursera. This curriculum was set up by a professor at UC Irvine, and can be completed at any time. It includes 4-8 hours of videos, readings, and quizzes that will help you hone your personal awareness so you can use that knowledge to be more productive. Wake Up Productive online productivity class: This class is not currently available at time of publishing, but you can sign up to receive their free videos by entering your email address, and get a message when the class opens up again. Productivity resources found on social media sites Social media can be a great resource to find information on any topic that interests you. Start with these productivity resources, and then see go out and find more on the other sites you love: Flipboard magazine: Productivity Works!: Subscribe to this magazine to stay updated with new productivity articles. LinkedIn Group: Productivity Improvement: Join this LinkedIn group for advice on improving your productivity from other users. LinkedIn Group: Think Productive - The Productivity Ninjas: Another LinkedIn group offering productivity tips and advice for individuals and teams. Pinterest board: Productivity Boosters: Follow this board on Pinterest to see articles and infographics related to productivity. Slideshare: 6 Ways to Simplify Work and Be More Productive: Ways to improve our productivity, based on a TED Talk. Slideshare: 10 Timeless Productivity Hacks: If you're a productivity hack enthusiast, you've read these hacks before. But they're a good reminder if you need to get back on your feet. Slideshare: Productivity: A presentation given at an entrepreneur roundtable by Matten Griffel on productivity and how to organize your work. Slideshare: Rules of Productivity: A research report on eight productivity experiments and their outcomes. Take their lessons learned and improve your own productivity. Slideshare: Work Measurements & Productivity: If you're into math, this presentation gives you a way to calculate how efficiently people are working. Scientific articles about productivity I know, I said I wasn't going to list any productivity articles. But I really liked these two studies, and their scientific findings about productivity and happiness are worth prioritizing on your "to read" list. Check them out: The Science of Productivity by Gregory Ciotti Happiness and Productivity by University of Warwick Well-known news sites with productivity categories Ready to read even more about everything related to productivity? Browse through the archives of popular online magazines and sites for more, more, more. Here's a list of productivity article archives you can start with: "Productivity" on Harvard Business Review "Productivity" on Inc. "Productivity" basics on Psychology Today "Productivity" on Entrepreneur "Productivity" on Huffington Post "Productivity" news on LifeHack.org "Productivity" news, videos, and more on LifeHacker "Productivity" news on Mashable "Productivity" on QuickandDirtyTips.com "Productivity" on the Wrike Blog What are your favorite online productivity resources? Phew, that was quite a list — but I'm sure I missed some of your favorites. Share your go-to resource for productivity tips and advice in the comments below. I'm grateful for any contributions to our list. And now, a poem: Improving work productivity is so greatand we know you've heard a lot about it of late.So we collected this list of links for youto facilitate your daily work to-dos. —Ashley Coolman Related reads:3 Notorious Productivity Killers and How to Fight Them (Infographic)50 Productivity Tips to Boost Your Brainpower (Infographic)Kick Butt in 2015 With These 16 Motivation Hacks
Collaboration is the new way to work. We no longer make progress in the silos of our own departments, we synchronize the efforts of multiple teams to get projects out the door faster and with better results. 55% of marketing leaders say they're now collaborating more closely with IT leaders than ever before. But there are still many kinks to work out in the collaborative process. It is not easy to collaborate with new teams for the first time — especially other departments who are used to different lingo, processes, and mindsets. If you want to prevent your collaborative efforts from devolving into a war between right-brained and left-brained colleagues, check out this infographic to see the common challenges facing Marketing & IT collaboration, and then think about how your team can overcome those barriers. Sources: The Creative Group (TCG) and Robert Half Technology (RHT) How to improve collaboration between Marketing and IT professionals TCG, RHT, and Wrike have published several articles to help you think about how to overcome the collaboration problems between these two power groups in your organization. They're worth reading, so take a look: Can We Please Get Along? 10 Tips for Collaborating with IT Professionals The Great Creative-IT Divide: Top 10 CIO Concerns 3 Collaboration Tips for Enhancing Teamwork Why Every Company Needs a Culture of Collaboration
Ever wonder how successful project teams make it seem so easy? Every team member is engaged, every deadline is met, and every project is a breeze.... Today on Elizabeth Harrin's popular blog, PM4Girls, our CEO and productivity-lover Andrew Filev teaches everyone how to instill new team productivity habits. Read it now and make other people wonder how YOU do it. Andrew's guest post gives us 5 easy steps to move team members from habit denial to habit acceptance as quickly as possible. He writes: "Your team’s productivity habits are the magic ingredients to your project's success. If you have the right recipe, your team will complete the project on time and collaborate in a hassle-free way... Motivational speaker Brian Tracy said, 'Successful people are simply those with successful habits.'" If you want to build better productivity habits for your project team (and who doesn't want better productivity?), and invest in a resources planning tool, read Andrew's advice on PM4Girls right now.