Archive for ‘Time Management’ Category
How To Make Your Reading Time More Productive With Book Summaries
Over the last few weeks, we took a deep dive into squeezing more reading into your life. In 12 Ways to Organize Your Life to Read More – Part 1, we looked at creating space and time for reading, creating better habits, and making reading a communal experience. In 12 Ways to Organize Your Life to Read More – Part 2, we delved into developing reading lists, changing formats, tracking reading habits, and motivating yourself with challenges. We also touched on sampling books.
One problem my clients often report is difficulty reading the right books. There are so many titles on a topic they need, usually for work, that they never quite get to – or through – many of them.
Today, we’ll look at services offering summaries of important, recommended, and/or best-selling books that your colleagues (and bosses in the C-suite) may be discussing. You want these people to feel like you’re on the cutting edge. However, (especially during the pandemic, when you’re not only a worker-bee but perhaps also an in-house substitute teacher), it’s hard to make time to read all those buzzy-wordy tomes.
So, consider these options CliffsNotes for non-fiction books. These services give you the birds’ eye view of what they feel are the author’s most important points in any book. If the author’s style resonates with you, continue on to read the actual book. If not, you’re a jump ahead of the person who has only half-read a few reviews.
Book Summary Services
Read It For Me – What do you think of the idea of being presented with the “Best of a Book in 12 minutes?” That’s Read It For Me’s theory, that in under a dozen minutes, each audio or video summary can share the biggest ideas from the best books on sales, marketing, leadership, and personal development.
For over a decade, founder Steve Cunningham and his team at Read It For Me have worked with the leadership development programs at companies like Mailchimp, Zappos, Bank of Montreal, AstroZeneca, and Spotify to develop and tailor educational content, the basis for the Read It For Me summaries.
Each week, there’s one “featured” sample book summary video, available at no cost. Visit Read It For Me’s main page and scroll down until you see the friendly lady holding the popcorn and beverage, and click. The first few minutes introduce the platform, and then you can watch the video summary.
For each book summary in the Pro (paid) version, Read It For Me creates both an audio and a video summary (with an accompanying transcript). Just toggle “Listen” or “Watch,” depending on your preference, and with either version, you can read along with the transcript. (Note: the video does not have closed captioning; if you require it, you can open the summary page in a separate window and read while watching the video, side-by-side.)
Once you’ve completed a summary, you can mark it as read to help track your progress. Clicking a little heart icon works just as you’d expect to let you know that it was one of your faves.
Inside your book summary library, you can view all books, or sort by those that are most popular, the ones that you’ve already read, the ones you’ve marked as favorites, or by specific categories, which Read It For Me keeps fairly broad:
- Human Capital
- Innovation/Trends
- Entrepreneurship
- Personal Development
- Marketing
- Sales
- Leadership
Monthly pricing for Read It For Me Pro is $10, with no contract and a free first week. An annual contract is $110, payable in one lump sum. (Keep your eye on the site, as they often offer great discounts on lifetime memberships.) The app is available for iOS and Android, but the site is also well-formatted to access in your browser.
I’ve been a subscriber for about six months, and find the Read It For Me videos make a great (and educational) mental palate cleanser when transitioning between projects, especially in the late afternoon.
I use the summaries both to get a clearer picture of books that I’m not likely to read in full (generally on sales) as well as to get a sense of which books on similar topics would be the best fit for my reading and learning style (like Difficult Conversations: How To Discuss What Matters Most by Douglas Stone vs. Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Kerry Patterson and Joseph Grenny vs. Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and Life, One Conversation at a Time by Susan Scott).
So far, my favorite summaries have been for Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic and Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly.
A few final notes: all of the audios and videos are narrated by the founder, Steve Cunningham, so if you listen often, that can get a little repetitive. (But he’s got a conversational style of summarizing and a fun Canadian accent.)
Also, and of greater concern, the majority of titles are by white men, meaning that there’s a paucity of diversity of thought leaders, in terms of gender, race, and ethnicity. While this is attributable to which authors make it to the best-seller list, and this is common across all of the platforms discussed below, it’s worth noting at the outset.
Blinkist – Based in Germany, the app’s editorial team pulls the key ideas and insights from 3500+ bestselling non-fiction books and transforms them into 15-minute (or shorter) read-or-listen offerings, called “blinks.” Created in 2012, it’s one of the oldest subscription-based book summarizing services and has more than seven million users.
Blinkist offers 27 different reading categories, ranging from productivity and personal development to entrepreneurship and corporate culture, to marketing and economics, and has created a wide variety of intriguing booklists. Not all of Blinkist’s categories are business-oriented, as philosophy, religion, science, politics, history, and more also get the summarizing treatment.
You can view recently-added titles (Laura Vanderkam’s The New Corner Office caught my eye) as well the community’s most popular titles. Every Blinkist summary is created in two versions, so you can read or listen. Personally, I process what I learn much better if I can read it, but some people might prefer to listen first, then read to get the full experience.
In addition to key takeaways and insights, the Blinkist app features curated book lists to help you select the best titles in specific categories. It also suggests new titles based on your reading history, presents new and trending titles, and makes it easy to discover your next preferred summary (or actual book to read). In addition to the app, Blinkist has a podcast, as well as a digital magazine with some compelling content like:
Becoming More Productive Isn’t a Goal, It’s a Habit
Why Are So Many People Struggling With Loneliness
Dare to Read: 8 Non-fiction Books Recommended by Brené Brown
Blinkist has a 7-day free trial, which gives you access to all of the summaries. After that, you can choose the Basic plan, at no cost. This grants you access to one Free Daily Read, but it’s selected by Blinkist, so you’re at the mercy of what they select for everyone. (On the plus side, you and a friend could discuss each daily title, augmenting what you get out of the experience separately.) The Basic “blinks” are read-only.
Alternatively, there are two pricing options for the Premium plan, either $15.99/month or $99.99 billed annually (for $8.34 month). The Premium plan includes the following features:
- Unlimited access to every title
- Audio summaries
- Offline library access
- Highlight the portions of the text summaries
- Forward your highlights to Evernote
- Send your text summaries to Kindle
12 Min – Short for 12 Minutes (because who has time to read the whole word?), 12 Min is similar to Read It For Me and Blinkist. They offer a tiny bit more about their editorial process, noting that the team members “[r]ead the books several times, highlighting and writing down everything, searching for key ideas. Our team meets, discusses and summarizes the most important concepts and ideas” and creates what they call a “synthesized, optimized…microbook” available for consumption in under 12 minutes.
The platform covers thirty non-fiction categories, from standard business fare (like corporate culture and communications, management and leadership, and marketing and sales) to self-help (like health and diet, investment and finance, sex and relationships, and productivity and time management). 12 Min also offers summaries of children’s books, biographies, and memoirs. Search by category, author, or title. The website itself is available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and appears to be a Portuguese company.
Each 12Min “microbook” can be read as text or listened to as an audio in the app, and as with podcasts, you can adjust the speed, rewind ten seconds, or fast-forward thirty seconds.
Subscribers can create a new account with Facebook credentials or by creating an email/password combination, and 12 Min is available for iOS and Android. Compared to other platforms, the free trial period is pretty short at only three days, and, frustratingly, the website is not-at-all transparent regarding subscription costs. The iOS description indicates that subscription plans are available as Lifetime (full access to the library “forever,”), “Semestral” (for a six-month semester), and Yearly (for an annual membership).
The Android page indicates that in-app upgrades range from $12.99 to $144, but do not specify further. Eventually, by Googling “12Min pricing” I got to a pricing page to which one apparently can’t navigate from within the site, where it indicates a $69.30 annual price, and states that if you choose not to upgrade to from the free trial, you’ll be place on a “free plan” (also not referenced on the main site), able to read one free summary per day. I’d be eager to know if Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking readers can find more detailed information on the translated pages (linked at the bottom of the site).
Sipreads – This platform claims to offer “Takeaways from the best books, for free.” Categories of books summarized tend to focus on personal development, career success, startups, mindfulness, and happiness.
Launched in the past year by Ali Salah and Basile Samil, this email-based subscription service sends you a notification each week with the announcement of a new title’s summary. Each text-based summary will take about 5-10 minutes to read, and is printed in vision-saving large text with bulleted and numbered lists, bolded key points, and easy-to-read language. For example, here’s a summary of Nir Eyal’s best-selling Indistractible. The individual summaries are archived on the website.
The biggest advantage? Obviously, the $0 price tag. Sipreads has an affiliate relationship with Amazon, so if you find a book intriguing, click through, and buy the book, they get a tiny portion. While it doesn’t increase the book’s cost to the reader, it allows Sipreads to run the service for free.
The biggest disadvantage right now is a question mark. It appears that Salah and Samil write all of the summaries, and there’s no information regarding their professional experience in curation or librarianship, so the reader is left to trust that the summaries are accurate. Thus far, they seem to be. And again, spending no money and no more than 10 minutes reading the summaries means, at worst, you may not get everything you want, but you likely will get a sense of whether a book is for you.
These are only a few of the platforms and apps available for obtaining non-fiction book summaries. Others you might consider include:
- Sumizeit – ranging from a free 3-summary option to $5.99/monthly, 39.99/yearly and $69/lifetime plans
- getAbstract – $99/year for access to 5000 book summaries or $299/year for 20,000 titles
- Four Minute Books – free access to 800 book summaries
- Headway – Often compared to Blinkist for summary quality, it’s considered more user-friendly but has fewer titles; a monthly subscription is $14.99.
Pros and Cons of Book Summary Services
A summary is just that, a summary.
On the upside, you cut out the fluff and focus on the most salient points. If you need to have passing familiarity with the concepts of a buzz-wordy book in your profession, a summary can give you the key insights to keep from embarrassing yourself in conversation.
However, with summaries, you also lose the color, nuance, and richness that anecdotes in non-fiction books deliver. Are you the kind of person for whom insights come from declarative statements or from vivid stories? It’s important to know what kind of learner you are to get the most from a summary experience.
How to Make Book Summary Services Work For You
Don’t multitask. Seriously, it’s 10-15 minutes. Sit at your desk, snuggle on your couch, or otherwise make yourself comfy, but don’t try to dash off emails while you listen or work out while you read.
Take notes. You’re more likely to remember what you learn when you engage. There’s no need to make a transcript of the summary, but try creating a skeleton outline of the main points (or a mind-map, if that’s your thing), and write down any key words or phrases coined by the author, or which you otherwise find unfamiliar.
Develop a learning schedule. As we discussed in 12 Ways to Organize Your Life to Read More – Part 1, creating a specific time in your schedule for reading (after breakfast, before closing up work for the day, etc.) ensures that you will make time for expanding your knowledge. As none of these platforms take more than a quarter of an hour to embrace, you could explore five books each workweek (to get ahead on your backlog).
Read the actual books. If a book summary intrigues you, read the book. For full enjoyment, there’s really no substitute!
Paper Doll Post:
Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? 5 Strategies to Cope With Pandemic Time Dilation
Does anybody really know what time it is? (I don’t)
Does anybody really care? (care about time)
If so I can’t imagine why (no, no)
Chicago, Chicago Transit Authority, 1969
©Warner Chappell Music, Inc, Spirit Music Group
This is not a post about time management.
In full disclosure, I started writing this post in February for Time Management Month. Paper Doll strongly believes that we cannot manage time; we can only manage ourselves. But we do need to better understand time, to have a sense of how it passes. And for most of us nowadays, it’s passing…well…weirdly.
We don’t know what time it is. We don’t know what day it is.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but today is Friday.
— Laura Marie (@lmegordon) March 21, 2020
Just asked my husband what day it is. He’s Googling it. I’ll get back to you all with the results.
— Elizabeth Hackett (@LizHackett) April 8, 2020
Alexa is getting tired of me asking what day it is.
— Rodney Lacroix (@RodLacroix) April 17, 2020
In case you were worried that it was just you, even the news media has been talking about it.
Once we settled into sheltering-in-place, many of us, especially those working from home, found it speeding by as we added work-from-home tasks, family tasks, and self-education tasks. We sought anything we could to stop April from feeling like the sluggish month of March. And what does May hold?
Why We’re Losing Track of Time
It’s not that strange that we’ve lost our sense of time. Think about the week between Christmas and New Year’s, where every day feels vaguely like Sunday. We’re not working, or if we are, there’s a strange hum of quietude. Is Grey’s Anatomy on tonight? Is it Trash Day?
Vacation days are like this, too. For the first day or so, we’re on “real” time, not only hyper-aware of what day it is, but when it’s 10:30a, even if we’re on a beach or in a museum, our internal clocks tell us that our colleagues are stepping away to the break room or the coffee truck. Vacationing parents may be dressing for a late romantic dinner out but be subtly aware that normally, they’d be corralling the tiny humans for bath-time.
But by a few days into the vacation? All of that gets swept away. When I went to Italy in 2018, I realized that by the time we left Rome, it was no longer Friday, but merely “Day 7.” My real life was a hazy memory.
We’ve Lost Our Sense of Routine.
There are no daily markers. We’re not going to work on weekdays or having our Monday stand-up meetings. We’re not attending religious services on weekends, and we’re not driving our kids to piano lessons on Wednesday or soccer practice on Thursdays. We’re not going to yoga. We’re not going anywhere!
We are used to marking time by space – weekdays mean work or school; weekends mean stores or attending religious services or restaurants with friends. Now, our dining rooms are schoolrooms; our kitchens are offices. Our living rooms become gyms. We’re in the same few rooms doing everything. Our surroundings aren’t changing even when our activities do, so even if we’re substituting virtual activities for the “real” ones, everything has an otherworldly, dreamy quality.
Further, we’re not doing any of the little things that mark the time advancing in smaller increments (minutes, hours) toward the bigger events. If we’re not getting up to go to work or school in the morning, there’s no reason not to read until the wee hours. If the kids aren’t going to school, there’s no rush to finish dinner and clean up the kitchen we can pack their lunches for the next day.
There’s a sameness to our days. There’s no ebb and flow to our hours. We’re moving through molasses and then we’re our own time-lapse videos.
We’re Busy, But We’re Not Being Satisfied
As a professional organizer, I split my time between working in clients’ homes and offices, usually in four-hour blocks, helping them achieve their organizing and productivity goals, and working in my office on the administrivia of small business: researching and writing blogs, providing organizing advice to media outlets (speaking of which, check out page 58 of the May 2020 issue of Real Simple), talking to prospective clients, marketing, bookkeeping, and so on.
Although some clients are opting to avail themselves of my services virtually, my workdays are now spent primarily in the 8-foot square box of my office. I’ve done enough webinars and classes, including Yale’s The Science of Well-Being, that I’m probably only a few webinars away from getting a pandemic diploma. I’m busy, but I don’t feel productive.
If you’re doing the work-from-home thing, you still have emails and phone calls and Zoom meetings to replace your “real” life, but deadlines are more amorphous. You may be actually getting more work done because you’re not getting distracted by Katie’s birthday cake in the break room or back-to-back meetings or getting cornered by Doug, who wants to talk about the cute thing his cat did.
But even if you’re busier (heck, even if you’re more productive), nothing has the same sense of immediacy, and sometimes that means we lose that sense of satisfaction what we’d otherwise get from having made it through Hump Day or having finally reached the weekend.
When There’s No Difference Between Tuesday and Saturday, Why Do Anything Now?
The Dowager Countess of Grantham has a point. What is a weekend anymore?
Why scramble to finish a project by Thursday afternoon if nobody will see it until Friday morning? Or Monday? Or May 73rd? Why focus your time and energy to complete your work by 5 o’clock if there’s nothing to separate from 2 o’clock in the afternoon from 9 o’clock at night?
Why? You know the answer…from the before-times. You know that it takes until about Martin Luther King, Jr. Day to feel like you’re back in the rhythm after a winter holiday break. Most of us have been sheltering-in-place six or more weeks. We need to have an accurate sense of time to be productive (whatever that means to you) both now, and later, when life returns to normalcy. We need to keep ourselves and our kids from becoming temporally feral, wildly eating and sleeping (or not sleeping), starting projects without finishing them, and generally feeling unmoored.
Allostatic Load and Lack of Novelty, or What the Heck Happened to Our Brains?
Our brains are getting mushy. In ‘Allostatic Load’ Is the Psychological Reason for Our Pandemic Brain Fog, the research indicates that our body’s physiological reactions to emotional stress can be powerful. Even though we’re sitting around not doing much of anything, our stress hormones are building up, exhausting our bodies. But we need physical energy to do mental labor, which (in addition to the emotional stress we’re already carrying) means that our brains are slowing down while we shelter-in-place.
Additionally, our brains are hungry for novelty. Every day looks and feels very much like every other, so when we’re not seeing new people, visiting new locations, or engaging in novel activities, our brains go on autopilot. We stop noticing details, so we stop making new or vivid memories, so everything blends together. Tuesday is Saturday is Everyday.
Our Body Clocks Are Borked
This isn’t all just psychological. There are physical reasons why we’re not sensing the passage of time the way we ought.
- We’re not sleeping normally. The weirdness of our schedules makes it tempting to stay up reading, or binge-watching, or gaming, and also makes it more acceptable to sleep later, getting us out of our normal habits. When we’re not going to bed or getting up at our normal times, it messes up our circadian rhythms and it distorts how short or long (or interminably long) any given day feels. If you sleep until lunchtime, it feels like it got dark awfully early. If stress-monsters woke you at 5 a.m., then by mid-afternoon, it feels like bedtime should be approaching. And because sheltering-in-place while we’re not getting a lot of new stimuli coincides with anxiety, we’re having weird dreams.
- We’re not sleeping, period. It would be weird to not be anxious right now. We’re worried about our health, and the health of our loved ones. We’re worried about our personal finances—Will unemployment benefits will ever kick in? Or if we’re still working, will our companies survive with everyone intact? — and the global economy. (Whatever you do, don’t check your 401k or IRA statements!)
- We’re not eating normally. OK, some of you are cooking Alison Roman recipes and making sourdough, and still setting the table, but most of us are grazing and not eating normal foods (or amounts) at what could only charitably be called “mealtimes.”
- We’re not getting fresh air. One of my colleagues lives in New York City and hasn’t been out of her apartment – not her building, but her actual apartment – in more than 45 days. She has no balcony, no roof access, and she’s avoiding her beloved, coughing doorman. Those of us with porches or backyards may be getting out more, but the weather around the country has been unpredictable. There were snowstorms in April. We’ve had tornados in Tennessee. And there’s pollen. So Much Pollen!
- We’re not getting sunlight. If we’re not getting outside, unless we have skylights or floor-to-ceiling windows, we’re just not getting a lot of the goodness provided by that big, yellow ball in the sky that helps us regulate our circadian rhythms and our moods.
- We’re overexposed to blue light. We’re Zooming and WebExing, in front of our computers all day without the break-room parties and water cooler convos that get us away from our screens. We’re texting with friends and reading Coronavirus news, binge-watching Amazon Prime and Netflix and Hulu. And some of you are gaming or playing Animal Crossing. All that blue light is wreaking havoc on our circadian rhythms, along with all the other things it’s doing to our eyes, or mental health, and our hormones.
5 Tips to Reconnect to Time
1) Put structure in your life.
Create the kinds of daily rituals that you wouldn’t bother with if this were a staycation. Have mealtimes at set hours. Living like we did before, where lunch came at 12:30 p.m. and dinner at 7 p.m. makes it less likely that we will graze our way to the Pandemic 15, but it will also put some definition in each day.
Develop buffer habits. If you can safely go for a walk before dinner, knowing you’ll do that between work and cooking gives you a “commute” of sorts. Listen to the podcast you’d normally dial up, or get back in the habit of calling your mom “on the way home” from work.
Time block to create boundaries in your day. I know I said this wasn’t a time management post, but time-blocking is a key strategy from the world of productivity. Block off specific times in your schedule for overarching categories: passive work projects, creative/active work projects, self-care, self-education, entertainment. A place for everything – in a schedule where everything has a place.
Even if your life doesn’t have any natural boundaries, you can create them to work as transition periods. Have one or two things on your schedule every day where you are honoring obligations to others so that you’ll wind up one task so you can show up for the next. Meet a colleague for a Zoom lunch. Hold an accountability call with a friend to help you both manage to shower and dress well before the day is half over!
Consider creating daily time blocks in which you work on a particular project most weekdays:
- 45 minutes of housework (laundry, cleaning, organizing, etc.) early in the day for a sense of accomplishment
- an hour and a half of working on your taxes (because the delayed due date of July 15th will be here faster than we expect)
- two hours of researching blog posts or sourcing graphics or planning meals
- a one-hour block, daily, of calling or video-chatting with someone
Micro-block your time with the Pomodoro Technique to conquer your tasks list. In case you’re not familiar with the Pomodoro Technique, it’s a time management system designed to battle procrastination and increase productivity. The very basic concepts? Identify what you want to work on, set aside 25 minutes to do so, and then do it – and that time in inviolable. If you let yourself get interrupted, you have to start over. Every 25 minutes, you get a five-minute break. Lather, rinse, repeat.
We’ve talked about doing pomodoros on the blog before, but for a more robust look at this incredibly effective method, my colleague Stacey Harmon has created a How to Focus in Uncertain Times Using the Pomodoro Technique® training, which she has made available at no charge.
Theme your days. Handle financial tasks on Monday Mondays. Solve problems on Weirdness Wednesday. It doesn’t just have to be activities. Celebrate Taco Tuesdays and have a meal you’re looking forward to eating…and even making.
2) Enhance novelty.
Go through your address book, your contact list, and our LinkedIn contacts. When you’re bored, or weary, instead of texting your BFF or your mother, with whom you’ve already spoken 43 gazillion times, pick two new people to contact each day.
Touch base with a professional contact and you never know what brainstorms may occur. Chat with an old friend just to find out what’s happening. Novelty can make each day more vivid and distinct from the day before.
Use different spaces. Do you have a guest room you hardly ever use for anything except piling up things that don’t have a home? Consider pushing the bed to the side to create floor space and do your workout routine there.
Is the idea of a guest room laughable?
ah yes the hotel-like guest room with a sea view that we definitely all have pic.twitter.com/8teYONwJuj
— Current Affairs (@curaffairs) April 27, 2020
Search your home for an underused space, maybe with the help of a tiny human. (They have a natural gift for such treasure hunts). As a toddler, I used to like to sit on the small steps from the kitchen down to our side to wait for my sister to return from school. In my current home, I’ve found that sitting and reading at the landing at the top of my stairs gives me good light and a feeling that my reading nook is a special place. Find a new space for an old task. Play cards in the laundry room. Picnic in the backyard.
3) Create vivid sensory clues for the passing of time!
The timer on my Fitbit buzzes at fifty minutes past the hour, reminding me to take 250 steps. Use that as your cue not only to walk, but to take your eyes off the screen. Fitbit’s reminder to move is built into the app, and most fitness trackers have a similar function. You can also try a movement reminder app like StandUp! to prompt you to take a break at a predictable time.
Whether you are bored or absorbed in an activity, a vibrating reminder that another hour has passed can help you acclimate. Similarly, you can set chimes or alerts on your phone to play hourly at 17 minutes past the hour, or set auditory alarms for every three hours, to remind you to take meal and longer activity breaks.
Go Analog. Digital clocks don’t give you the same sense of the passage of time as old-school watches and clocks. Start by looking to see which of your digital clocks you can change to an analog appearance. Android phones allow you to change your lock screen from digital to analog easily. On the iPhone, the clock app icon is a working analog clock, but the lock screen stays digital. There are apps like FaceClock Analogue to give you a working clock, but they can’t be added to the lock screen.
If you have a digital screen (like the kind for a rear-facing camera), your car will also probably let you change from a digital to analog clock.
Put a clock in places where you tend to lose track of time. Do you dawdle in the shower or while putting on makeup? Attach a small waterproof clock to your bathroom mirror with a suction cup to keep tabs on how long you’ve been debating cutting your own bangs. (Don’t do it. Just. Don’t.)
Embrace Time Timer – One of the favorite time management tools of professional organizers is Time Timer. I’ve written about many updates to Time Timer over the years, but the key thing to know is that the sweep of red helps your brain recognize time as it passes.
Please note, per Heather Rogers, the Co-President of Time Timer, “Until this crisis is over, the Time Timer apps for iOS and Android (available on the App Store and Google Play) will be free for everyone to help create some comforting structure wherever you are.
Also, all products at timetimer.com are 20% off with code HOME2020 and all US shipping is free while schools are closed.”
Of course, if analog isn’t retro enough for you, you could always take the sands-through-the-hourglass route.
Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives. Share on XYou won’t know what time it is, but if you take a few breaks to watch the time pass through a beautiful hourglass, you (and your kids) will have a stronger sense of how long five minutes or five hours really lasts.
4) Get what you know you need! The first month or six weeks of sheltering-in-place, we could be excused from letting everything devolve into an extended summer vacation, but now it’s time to get serious.
Get daylight. If you can get out and walk in nature (or your neighborhood) without encountering another unmasked human being within six feet, go for it. If you’re using the Pomodoro Technique, use your five-minute breaks to go outside. Jump rope or play hopscotch in the driveway. Run around the backyard. Dance to Lizzo on your balcony.
Get sleep. Close friends know that it’s ironic for me to give this advice, as sleep and I have a bitter and lifelong enmity. But the internet is chockfull of advice for getting enough sleep, even (and especially) if pandemic anxiety is keeping you awake.
Get exercise. Jumping to conclusions and stress-pacing aren’t enough. There are literally hundreds, perhaps thousands, of online workout options, from free to OMG-I-Can’t-Believe-I’m-Paying-Peleton. The standard go-to these days is Yoga With Adriene, but there are dozens of free live-streaming exercise classes (as well as recorded videos) to help you keep in shape. Or just run around with your kids or your dog.
Get dressed. Seriously. I know the jammies are comfy, but even having day-PJs and night-PJs isn’t enough. You don’t have to put on shoes, but if you shower, groom yourself, and actually put on underwear and real clothes each morning and change for bed each night, your sense of time will improve.
5) Take a Technology Break – There are all sorts of ways to get some social distance from your devices.
Give yourself a tech timeout every time you realize you’ve lost an hour to social media or cable news. (That’s where the fitness tracker reminders come in!) Leave the devices in a separate room during mealtimes. Talk to the people in lockdown with you, or if you’re alone (or just don’t like your peeps all that much after six weeks in the same house), read a book.
Put yourself and your family on a tech curfew. There’s nothing that happens after 8 p.m. (or 11 p.m., or whenever you’ve set the curfew) that you can’t catch up on the next morning. Give you eyes a break from the blue light.
Consider taking a Tech Shabbat. In 24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day A Week, Tiffany Schlain makes an excellent case for the physical, mental, and social benefits of stepping away from the technology for a whole day.
Does anybody really know what time it is? Paper Doll really cares.
Paper Doll Post:
You Are Invited to the 2019 Productivity Summit!
What did you accomplish today? Was it everything you’d hoped?
What do you think of when you hear the word “productive” bandied about? There’s a commonly-held but false belief that productivity is just about getting a lot of things done. But productive has two definitions: it can mean both prolific (quantitatively measuring how much gets done) and useful (qualitatively measuring how worthwhile and valuable an endeavor is).
Being productive means not just accomplishing a lot, but accomplishing the right things.
How many times have you gotten to the end of your day and realized that you’d been incredibly busy, completing many tasks (both the ones you planned as well as putting out small fires), but you didn’t feel fulfilled? Perhaps you read lots of blogs (like this one) and books, and have incorporated some of the advice. Maybe you theme your days or time-block your work projects. Hopefully, you eliminate as many interruptions as possible. But you know there’s more you could be doing. You know you could be doing better.
I’m excited to announce that I’m going to be participating in a special project, the brainchild of my colleague Ray Sidney-Smith, whom I met a few years ago when we were getting certified as Evernote consultants. Ray knows how to figure out what someone needs to know and presents that material in a way that’s easy to absorb. So Ray came up with the Productivity Summit!
Ray says “The 2019 Productivity Summit is going to be the most productive two days of your life,” and from what I’ve seen, I believe it!
I’ve attended a variety of internet-based conferences and summits on topics ranging from organizing and time management, to ADHD and hoarding, to writing and publishing. The material can be great, but it can often feel a little hokey, as it’s obvious those other virtual summits are just pre-recorded presentations released on a “drip” schedule, with no opportunity for attendees to ask questions or interact with the speakers.
The 2019 Productivity Summit is a LIVE, two-day remote conference with more than 40 expert speakers presenting in real-time about personal productivity, technology, organization, and business development. And your own Paper Doll will be one of them!
PROGRAMMING TRACKS
The 2019 Productivity Summit has four concurrent tracks of programming:
- Productivity – This track focuses very specifically on how to be more personally productive using the speakers’ recommended principles, strategies, and techniques.
There are some real powerhouse talents in this group, including Canadian rockstar and friend-of-the-blog Mike Vardy, the author/coach/podcaster known as The Productivityist. Where Mike is, the fun follows. I’m also excited to hear what Keep Productive’s Francesco D’Alessio has to say about Notion, a (geeky) up-and-comer that some people thinks give Evernote a run for its money. And Thanh Pham from Asian Efficiency is also on-deck, and his take is always a must-seeand must-listen.
- Technology – This programming track is focused on what and how to use specific technologies to get things done.
As much as I’m truly a Paper Doll, I know how technology is key for making work and life run more efficiently. My colleague Stacey Harmon is my go-to for Evernote coupled with David Allen’s GTD. From the ergonomics of productivity to leveraging systems to specific technologies, this programming track is for those who want to geek out as well as those who just want stuff to work so they can get on with their lives.
- Organization – For this track, it’s about the nitty gritty of getting your home or office more organized – it will cover the physical, intellectual, and psychological skills for dealing with clutter and disorganization.
Hey, that’s me up there!
If you follow organizing blogs or the professional organizing industry, you’ll recognize most of the people participating in this programming track. There’s industry standard-bearer Barbara Hemphill, fellow Certified Professional Organizers Kim Oser, Dawn George, and Kacy Paide. We’ll be joined by sharp and savvy NAPO colleagues like Andrea Hancock, Terri Blanchette, Penny Bryant Catterall, and coach Alexis Haselberger. Topics we’re covering range from the economics of clutter to how to organize your digital resources, from conquering fear of letting go of what’s on your desk to trying to go paperless when you can’t let go of the paper. Me? My presentation is called Organize for Maximum Productivity When You Work From Home.
- Business Development – This track is for those looking to build or grow their businesses more effectively and efficiently.
This is another power-packed lineup. These speakers will cover general business leadership topics like improving focus, growing sales, and developing entrepreneurial mindsets, but also delve into niche issues like video marketing, podcasting, and publishing. My longtime colleague, Nicole Chamblin is first up on Saturday morning, so I’ll be checking her out while I wait in the wings.
PRODUCTIVITY PANELS AND KEYNOTE AND DIGITAL INTERACTIVES, OH MY!
In addition to these concurrent programming tracks, there will be panel discussions across specific time slots. On Friday, October 4, 2019, summit host, Ray Sidney-Smith, Google Small Business Advisor for Productivity, will lead a panel of productivity technology experts entitled, “The Future of Productivity Technology.”
Then, on Saturday, October 5, 2019, Demir Bentley of Lifehack Bootcamp and Lifehack Tribe, will be keynoting the Summit with his presentation, “The Biggest Cover Up In Productivity History.”
There will also be a Digital Interactives area where speakers will be placing education-oriented quizzes (not the Facebook-style kind), polls, and more so you can engage with what you learn at the Summit. Finally, each day will end with with live, virtual networking events for summit attendees.
THE DETAILS
The 2019 Productivity Summit is free to attend live, and it’s all accessible through your Web browser. Visit the 2019 Productivity Summit page to see all the participants and topics, and I bet you’ll be as impressed as I am.
Register and get complimentary replays of the sessions through Sunday evening (Eastern time), October 6, 2019 , so you can watch missed sessions or rewatch sessions you found especially helpful.
Want more time to watch? You can buy access to the 2019 Summit video replay library. As I write this, early bird pricing is still available (until 9/13/19 4:59 PM US EDT); it goes up as the summit nears, and will rise again after the complimentary replays end.
Reach the summit – the 2019 Productivity Summit – and learn how to get more of the right things done.
Paper Doll Post:
Paper Doll Interviews Melissa Gratias, Author of Seraphina Does Everything!
Today’s post is special – I’m introducing a new “friend of the blog.” Her name is Seraphina, and she’s the brainchild of my colleague, friend, accountability buddy, and Skyper-in-Crime, Melissa Gratias, Ph.D.
Melissa, known for her expertise helping busy professionals with their productivity, has authored a book about overwhelm and trying to juggle too many activities. And in a delightful twist, my girl Melissa has written this book for KIDS!
I was an early reader (and fan) of Seraphina, so when I found out that Seraphina Does Everything! was being released on April 9, 2019, I knew I wanted to spread the word to Paper Doll readers. This post is your chance to meet Melissa and Seraphina, and to avail yourself of a nifty bonus opportunity. (Stick around after the interview for important information about pre-sale orders and bonus bundles.)
Interview with Melissa Gratias
You and I met when you lived in Chattanooga and were starting your career as a professional organizer and productivity coach. But you’ve had a ZAM-POW-packed personal and professional life. Will you tell the Paper Doll readers how you got here?
Looney Tunes style…with Acme Rocket-Powered Roller Skates. Fortunately, things have gone better for me than for the coyote!
Part one of my life was academic: I received my master’s and doctoral degrees in psychology from Virginia Tech. I also enjoyed teaching at a university in Chattanooga.
Part two was corporate: I was a human resources specialist and eventually led several teams of people smarter than me.
Part three was entrepreneurial: I started my productivity consulting business in 2007 with some great advice from Paper Doll [Editor’s note: blush] and a lot of gumption. Since then, I have helped my clients through specialized productivity training, coaching, and consulting.
Part four is unfolding right now: Seraphina Does Everything! is an exciting project and has the potential to be a storybook series.
You have a lot of experience writing blog posts and ebooks for adults. How did you come to write a children’s book?
I started writing poems in fourth grade. I had a wonderful creative writing teacher, Mrs. Sapp, who I still remember fondly.
Then, I took a 30+ year break from writing poetry…well, except for that one about trees, graves, and deflated balloons that I wrote in the 9th grade. (I’d had a bad breakup.) [Editor’s note: We’ve all been there.]
During a speaking engagement in 2017, the president of a publishing company commented on my storytelling ability and asked if I would be interested in writing for kids. I was intrigued by his comment, went home, and wrote my first poem since elementary school. (The one with the dead tree doesn’t count).
My publisher, the National Center for Youth Issues (NCYI), has been producing storybooks since Mrs. Sapp told me I was a writer. I am writing stories for NCYI to help kids resolve the same issue that adults struggle with – how do we achieve balance?
The writing experience is different for every author. In the lingo of NaNoWriMo, there are plotters (people who outline and plan) and pantsers (those who write by the seat of their pants). What are you? How did Seraphina go from being an idea to a fully fleshed-out little girl with a life of her own?
I’m a dictator. Wait. That came out wrong.
I dictated the majority of Seraphina Does Everything! to my iPhone while sitting in the parking lot of the aquatic center where I live in Savannah, Georgia. My son is a competitive swimmer and I feel like I’ve spent a lifetime in that parking lot.
The story took several weeks to flesh out, and no, I’m not really an outliner. I could “see” the arc of the story in my head, but I wrote (spoke?) the story in no discernible order. Lots of verbiage ended up being cut, and at my publisher’s encouragement, I slip in and out of prose a few times in the book. I’m no Dr. Seuss, after all.
One fun aspect of writing Seraphina Does Everything! was naming my character. I searched baby name sites for hours. [Editor’s note: I neglected to ask if that raised Melissa’s husband’s eyebrows.] I wanted a name that reflected the energy of the amazing girl I’d grown to love. The name Seraphina means “fiery angel,” and that’s just what she is.
What aspect(s) of the book do you think will resonate the most with kids?
The kids who have read Seraphina Does Everything! love hearing Seraphina talk about her many activities. They get excited that Seraphina does some of the same things they like to do, including ballet, soccer, karate, art classes, and music lessons.
What’s interesting is to see them become a little pensive when Seraphina confesses to her dad that she is feeling sad. But my favorite part is when kids get a knowing smile on their face at the end of the book, just like Seraphina has. Kids are wiser than we sometimes give them credit for.
What’s in Seraphina Does Everything! for adults?
There are three words I hear most often from the teachers and parents who have read the book:
“I am Seraphina!”
Who doesn’t fall into the FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) trap from time-to-time? Many of us get overscheduled and overcommitted. We all must step back and re-evaluate our lives and work.
What is your favorite passage or section of the book?
I loved writing Dad’s responses to Seraphina’s dismay in the middle of the book. I could feel his affection and admiration for his daughter when she was crying in the back seat of the car.
Parents are demonized in the world too often. We are berated for both doing too much and not enough for our children. Most of us are just people who want the best for our kids. We want them to have options and opportunities. Seraphina’s dad is one of those people. He doesn’t drive her around to her activities for his own benefit. He loves his daughter. He wants her to have a good life. I relate to him.
The illustrations in Seraphina Does Everything! really make your great story pop off the page. What is your favorite illustration?
My publisher found the most amazing illustrator, Sue Cornelison. We selected her because of her ability to draw beautiful, diverse characters that communicate energy and emotion to the reader.
My favorite illustration is in the middle of the book when Seraphina is eating dinner in the back of the car. You see Seraphina’s thought-filled face on the left and the reflection of her face in the car window on the right. Behind the reflection is a girl in her driveway petting her dog. This image perfectly captures Seraphina’s internal struggle: Am I doing the things that really bring me joy?
Do you think there’s a stealth message for overextended parents in this book?
I’m hearing the theme song from Mission Impossible in my head right now…anyone else?
Yes, there is a message for us grown-ups, and it’s probably not very stealthy. After all, it is a storybook.
We all have busy seasons in our adult lives. It is easy to get carried away by our multiple commitments. If we are lucky, there will be someone to help us prioritize what’s important. And, like Seraphina, we can learn that “everything” isn’t something you do…it’s something you are.
[Editor’s note: The book also has tips for educators and parents, to help them guide children toward better balance and time management.]
How to Meet Seraphina
Seraphina Does Everything! is available in both softcover and hardcover. Grownups and tiny humans can read Seraphina and then create some breathing room for themselves in every day.
If you’d like a really special experience, you can also purchase the book directly from Melissa’s site. You’ll get an inscribed and signed copy of Seraphina, plus a not-available-anywhere-else essay by Melissa on how to teach life balance to children and teens.
Seraphina Does Everything! But you (and the tiny humans in your life) don’t have to do it all! Seraphina is a great role model for grownups and kids for prioritizing the best, and leaving aside the rest.
Paper Doll Post:
Project Management Tools To Get It Done in 2019
With a new year approaching, you’re probably looking at all you want to accomplish, professionally and personally. While there may be a variety of tiny tasks, most things (particularly at work) involve projects, and for better or worse, this means project management.
If you’re anything like Paper Doll, memories of dreaded group projects in middle school make the words “project management” set your teeth on edge. So, to look at some of the tools that make project management less stressful, I’m pleased to share this rare guest post. The 6 Best Project Management Tools for Small Business by Grace Miller originally appeared at MyEmma.com, a company that specializes in productively building customer relationships through email communications.
While Grace focuses on the collaborative approach to project management in companies, most of these tools are appropriate for a wide variety of efforts: a group of friends planning a baby shower, a writer corralling her “street team” to launch a new book, a volunteer group working through the steps to develop outreach, far-flung family members planning a family reunion, and more. The keys are always figuring out who will be doing what, and when, where, and how they’ll accomplish it. Let’s see what Grace has to say.
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If you’re involved in the management of a small business, then you know that project management is a task often shared by staff and company owners alike.
Regardless of job title, many small business employees end up handling some project management tasks as they work through their assigned duties.
That means having tools to streamline and organize project management processes, particularly if they’re shared across departments or staff levels, can be invaluable.
To help you increase productivity and boost revenue, we’ve curated some of the best project management tools for small businesses currently available.
The best project management tools for small businesses to increase productivity right now
Marketing and the strategy behind it are the lifeblood of your business, ensuring that revenue flow is healthy and consistent.
While many aspects of small business management can benefit from better project management tools, your marketing staff will definitely get a boost from tools that make their job easier.
In fact, many of our recommended tools can encourage better internal communication amongst staff and between separate departments to aid in developing targeted campaigns and stay on top of metrics and goals with greater accuracy.
Some of the largest start-ups in the world, like Dribble, Uber, CNET, and Kickstarter rely on these technical helpers to keep their staff on target, so using them puts you in good company.
In researching our list, we made sure our picks were heavy on features that are important to small businesses, such as:
- Functionality and ease of use
- Free or sensible pricing options
- Ability to integrate with other systems
- Ability to be accessed remotely
Without further ado, let’s start our tour with one of the most recognizable names on the list: Evernote.
1. Evernote
Image: Evernote
Evernote is a fantastic app that functions as a clearinghouse for ideas, documents, and workflows.
Not only can you grab and save ideas from online sites in clearly organized folders to prompt creativity and idea generation, but you can also design and store templates within the app to further streamline your process.
Best of all, their premium subscription offers team storage, where any member that has access can save and retrieve all aspects of a particular project.
Anything new that’s added to your team’s space is automatically shown front and center, in what they describe as a “virtual bulletin-board for your team.”
Image: Evernote
And companies like Swiss conglomerate Migros know the value of this simple, but incredibly useful, tool. As the largest supermarket and retailer in Switzerland, Migros needed a team to keep their marketing on trend with the food and restaurant industry.
Using Evernote’s apps that spanned web, desktop, and smartphone, the team was able to easily manage and coordinate interviews and data from German, French, and Italian-speaking sources.
Each team member could keep their own photos, sketches, audio recordings, and diagrams shareable with other members for fast access and accurate real-time data, making it easy for Migros’ marketing to stay fresh.
2. Basecamp
Image: Basecamp
Basecamp works hard to bring everything small businesses need into one neatly-designed package with tons of useful features.
Image: Basecamp
You can store and retrieve documents with a simple drag-and-drop, manage schedules, conduct real-time group chats, and even invite clients to be a part of the process without dealing with learning-curve aggravation.
Plus, with features like check-in that allow you to ask your team members basic questions at a specific time each week, you can pare down meeting times.
Image: Basecamp
Some businesses that use Basecamp to keep their teams in-the-know include Groupon and Harvest, but the software boasts thousands of devotees.
3. Trello
Image: Trello
Trello is a wonderful tool for marketing teams, as its visually-oriented “card” system lets team members track each part of a project as it flows through to completion.
Boards can be set up with trigger events in any way you need them. Here’s an example of this in action:
Image: Trello
You can see how easy it is for teams to set up individual project flows and for managers to get a quick overview of project statuses from any department.
Cards are moved using drag-and-drop, making keeping things up-to-date supremely easy, while multi-tiered pricing means you don’t pay for what you don’t need.
Best of all, Trello integrates seamlessly with Evernote, Slack, Jira, Google Drive, and other software. Companies that use Trello include National Geographic, Adobe, the British Red Cross, and others.
4. Slack
Image: Slack
Slack has wonderful workflow possibilities for every business, but marketers will love its user-friendly integrations.
Email marketing, in particular, gets a boost from the Slack workspace, as Slack seamlessly allows you to manage email campaigns directly from your Slack command center using minimal keyboard commands.
With integrations for most common marketing apps and tools, Slack can give marketing professionals real control and sharing options with their team, including performance metrics.
Besides fostering collaboration, Slack offers savvy marketing teams a great way to keep on top of changes in direction.
Conversations are automatically archived and indexed, so information is available when you need to reference it. Having a cohesive space for team collaboration and cooperation is a wonderful way to nip problems in the bud or share successes!
Image: Slack
Slack’s clean, easily-integrated format makes it a winner among the best project management tools for small business.
Companies that use Slack include NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labs, Zapier, Emma, Benefit Cosmetics, Autodesk, and more.
5. Flow
Image: Flow
Flow is project management software that offers a simple, beautiful user experience (UX), and powerful tracking and integration.
Kanban boards allow managers to track entire projects, team tasks, manage resources, collaborate with teams, and integrate with other purpose-driven software, like Slack.
Marketing teams will love the way Flow allows them to share project milestones for feedback, as in the example above. In this way, an entire campaign can be vetted, edited, and even changed on-the-fly for faster production.
Here’s an example of a marketing team’s roadmap for several goals as seen through the Flow workflow model:
Image: Flow
Companies that rely on Flow to help them stay on track include Shopify, Bumble, and TED.
6. Asana
Image: Asana
Asana gives project managers several ways to visualize their workflow, from Kanban-style boards to other bright visuals that keep marketers and other teams on track.
Image: Asana
The example, above, shows the status of several projects at-a-glance, showing which are on target, how close to completion each is, and assigning each a priority level.
Having these metrics at your fingertips allows for quick re-assignment when necessary to avoid missed deadlines.
Asana’s pricing is flexible, but at a minimum of $9.99 per user per month, it might be a bit steep for smaller businesses.
They do offer a free trial, however, so you can explore the product for 30 days to see if it’s worth the splurge for your business.
Asana is used by the New York Times, Deloitte, Red Bull, the United Way, among others.
Wrap up
Now that you’ve gotten a taste for what these elegant tools can do for your small business, all that remains is to choose the one that is the best fit for your staff and your business goals.
If you’re on a tight budget, check out the tools that have a free option like Slack, Evernote, and Trello. If you decide they’re on target for your needs, you can always upgrade on down the line if you need more features or if your business expands.
Most of our other recommendations have a free trial period that you can use to determine if the tool will provide all the functionality you require. Remember, you’ll be saving money by using a project management tool that helps organize tasks and streamline processes.
Any way you look at it, these project management powerhouses represent some of the best project management tools for small business on the market today.
Why not take a risk-free trial, capture some of that power, and take your small business to the next level of success?
About the Author
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Paper Doll has some familiarity with all but one of these platforms. For example, I use Trello‘s simple card-and-board approach to plan my blog research and marketing, but also to follow up with prospective professional organizing clients. I also have me-only boards like “Be a Grownup” which reminds me to take care of personal and home-related tasks, as well as collaborative boards I share with clients, volunteer committee members, and friends. (Hey, baby showers don’t plan themselves!) I like that Trello has some great video tutorials as well as a cheat-sheet tutorial board.
Of the six tools Grace mentioned, the one I’m most familiar with is Evernote, and I’ve written about Evernote many times on these pages. As an Evernote Certified Consultant, I often find myself evangelizing for all the ways Evernote can be used for capturing and maintaining information, as well as for collaboration (though much more so at the premium and business levels vs. the free level). Features and pricing change over time (as with all software-as-a-service options), but it’s definitely a standard-bearer.
Although I’ve tried both Basecamp and Asana when I’ve been brought on-board to collaborate on other team’s special projects, I lack the familiarity you get from working day-in and day-out with a software tool. And while I am familiar with Slack as a concept, I have never used it. Flow is completely new to me, but I see it has a very Trello-like visual appeal.
Readers, do you use any of these project management tools, either in business or for your own projects? Do you have other tools you love? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.
Disclaimer: The above post includes some affiliate links for which I may get some small payment if readers make a purchase via a link I’ve provided; this will have no impact on your costs but will help support the ongoing research and development of this blog.
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