It gives a full comparison of over 20 different workplace productivity tracking tools.

As you can see from that list, there are many different ways of measuring workplace productivity and it’s easy to get a bit carried away with technology and then getting really anal about making people enter time against tasks and so on.

Have you thought about using applications such as Fruitfultime or Rescuetime (and can read the reviews at those links) to effectively spy on yourself to see what tasks you’ve completed on your PC each day and then combine the results with colleagues.

Have you also thought about using spreadsheets – especially within Google Docs so that they are easily shared are another way? Accounting applications such as Sage often have timesheet applications within them which integrate into the company accounts.

Here’s the key point – if employees see you acting on results you’ve discovered, they’ll be more likely to participate in inputting time as you need it.

So – you can lock yourself away in an office, put phones on vibrate, put a ban on meetings in open areas and give the place a lick of paint and sign up to the increasing workplace productivity trial e-course – that should all help you get more done – but you are missing another trick.

Floral arrangements…

According to this article, research by Texas A&M University conducted an 8 month study to explore how adding flowers (yes flowers) to your office can boost productivity.

During the study, both males and females were shown to demonstrate greater levels of innovative thinking, resulting in the generation of more ideas and original solutions. More ideas and solutions led to greater productivity, and therefore a greater motivation to achieve.

So there we have it – it’s official – we’re off to buy a bunch or two now as there’s a couple of guys in the corner slacking quite frankly…

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Image courtesy of procsilas

Getting more out of your day is an obsession to the team here and when we took delivery of the Livescribe Pulse a couple of months ago – it really didn’t get much better. This is definitely one of the coolest gadgets known to man. It  was actually launched in the middle of last year – but is really starting to get traction now, especially with the launch of Mac support just before Christmas.

So what’s it all about and how does it make you more productive? Well, it records your notes and doodles in two different ways:

1) It creates digital copies of everything you scribe by hand on that age old medium – paper… whilst you’re scribbling.

2) It will also record audio at the same time so that you can then quickly access that audio at the relevant point of your note taking.

Once you’ve finished taking your notes – you then upload the digital version onto your PC where the included Livescribe Pulse software goes on to archive your notes and here’s the really cool part – makes them completely searchable, as it converts your scribbles to text.

As an added extra – just if that wasn’t enough – it provides you with a calculator, translator and … a piano

It uses specially formatted, dotted paper so that it recognises where you are drawing on the page, so that it can then recreate things digitally. You can print your own – or buy from their site of course. Printing your own is going to save you in the long run.

For a full review with images, take a look here, or at this Youtube video for some of the Livescribe Pulse promo material . For other ways technology can help you on the subject of increasing workplace productivity, take a look here.

Ther’s currently free shipping on the livescribe.com site, plus click here to check out an uptodate coupon code…

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We were wondering which is best for increasing workplace productivity - is it focusing on one project, or having multiple on the go… We realise that you don’t necessarily have a choice in the matter – but IF you could choose – which option would be best?

There’s some differing schools of thought.

Some believe focusing all of you time to get a single task done for hours or days ensures the task gets done to the best of your ability. Others would just not be able to focus for so long on one single thing, their mind wanders, and they’d be much better off focusing on something different for a while and coming back fresh.

Dads always know best don’t they? The suggestion here is that one way of keeping busy and entertained is to start three things at the same time… and switch between the one which best suits your mood. When you’ve got noone pushing you for deadlines I guess that’s OK.

These guys provide academic evidence to suggest it’s not such a good idea and that focus is a much better thing.

“When you really study precisely what people’s brains are doing at any moment, there’s less concurrent processing than you might think … The brain is more of a time-share operation – when fractions of a second matter, we’re better off not doing another task.”

Hal Pashler, a professor of psychology at the University of California at San Diego.

So what do you think – given the choice – how would you run your day – focusing on one thing until it was done… or good old fashioned multasking?!

Leave a comment below.

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Image courtesy of kateatyrownrisk

FruitfulTime ProductivityMeter Personal Edition (catchy title guys) automatically tracks your PC activity (note it’s Windows only) so that over time you can get a clearer picture of how you spend your time and adjust your activities accordingly.

Once installed the software sits in the background and keeps a Big Brother eye on what you are up to – including the split between idle and active time and then splits the active time between the applications you are using, which sites you’ve browsed and for how long.The important thing of course is not to just look at the pretty graphs, but to actually do something about the information you are seeing and see how you can be increasing workplace productivity.  You can view reports for the last day, week, month or a user defined block of time and if you add tags to your applications and list of sites, you can get get more granular in your reporting.

The other interesting decision they’ve made is to keep your activity data stored locally, as opposed to online, ensuring that data is always available and there’s no security dangers. This is in contrast to some of their competitors, like Rescuetime (check out that review here) who choose to store and analyse their data online.

For more advanced users the timesheeting functionality is a real added bonus too – more and more we are going to become more accountable for our time and if your business doesn’t have a timesheet solution now – it won’t be long…!
The program is free for personal use with a business version being launched in Q1 of 2009.

You can download it here.

Until recently, creating impressive presentations and documentation with professional looking imagery meant contacting your marketing agency or paying large fees to the likes of Getty, however web 2.0 has changed all that.

Disintermediation has kicked in and has brought together amateur photographers and businesses around the globe giving users huge choice, wonderful creativity and affordable (as well as free) imagery. This of course benefits both originator and purchaser. Aren’t win-wins great?

There’s an excellent 7 minute video below which is taken from The 845 Club’s course on increasing workplace productivity. It takes you through:

• The basics of licensing – so that you know you are being legal
• How and where to get free imagery
• How to browse for imagery more easily with a very cool free tool
• How to download and convert YouTube videos for use in Powerpoint – not straightforward – but this makes it straightforward.

If you like what you see – you may want to check out the full course on increasing workplace productivity. We’ve heard it’s currently on special offer for January and your New Year’s resolutions…

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2009 is the year to be more productive. Getting more done with less will help to ease some of the stresses and strains of the economic downturn. Increasing workplace productivity through simple changes in your working habits can impact the bottom line in a major way if you and your team take a disciplined approach to your day.

Here are our top 10 suggestions for 2009 …

1.) Create a list called follow up

When someone asks you to do something via email or telephone, add it to the list. Schedule times of the day or week when you action follow ups. You decide how you run your day.

2.) Turn off your email client.

Only reach for that Outlook button two or three times a day. Do not become a slave to email.

3.) Abandon all forms of paper signatures and contracts

Get things signed faster and smarter – avoid delays in contract signature by going digital. It is legal and seriously cost effective. Take a look at how easy it is here.

4.) Learn what RSS is and use it

If it doesn’t make you a better, more efficient business person within hours, then leave a comment below and we will write to you personally to explain more.

5.) Stop spending hours searching for files and data

Stop right now, reorganise your data structure if its not working for you and if in doubt, seek advice on how to do it.

6.) Put an out of office message on your email which reads like this:

“Thanks for your email. Today, Tuesday, I will only be accessing email 2 or 3 times a day during the day and so may not reply immediately. If you request is urgent then call me on…”

Update the message every day. People will soon get the message.

7.)Leave the office when things get tough

Leave your working environment – go for a walk, run, drive or cycle for an hour to clear your mind and give it time to think. You will be more productiv and more creative when you return.

8.) Shortcuts can shave hours of a week

Learn some basic PC shortcuts – stop doing things the long way round. Multiply up the time savings across your office and you will be surprised.

9.) Talk to your team

You are always looking at way to cut costs right? When was the last time you looked at how your business wastes time with unecessary process? Schedule a meeting right now and kick off the trimming process immediately.

10.) Make a promise to you and your team …

… to make 2009 the year to really focus at increasing workplace productivity. Places like this can really motivate you and your team to become more efficient as an organisation for virtually no cost.

Here’s to a productive 2009.

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Image courtesy of Hawkexpress

PULSE5A08

Let us know in the comments if it still works for you…

As home lives and business lives begin to merge whether we like it or not, at least technology has become more accessible and virtually free, there really is no excuse now for getting organised!

For us, the hard bit is not the technology – it’s about working out which data you need where and also which of that data is important and timely and so will be in use a lot. Get that right on a piece of paper first and you won’t go too far wrong.

This post is about Windows Live Mesh, which has recently become available as a beta tech preview (whatever that means.) It was launched earlier in 2008 to a great fanfare essentially in competition to Google Apps.

It’s still very much a work in progress, however with 5GB of free space available to everyone, it shouldn’t be ignored and over time will almost certainly integrate into Windows Vista seamlessly, which will be where they will be able to steal a march over Google. I guess they have to start somewhere

If you go to the Windows Live Mesh site, login with a Passport linked email address on a Windows Vista PC and go andtake a look around. It’s serious intuitive.

The interface allows you to upload files to folders (no drag and drop as yet – it’s coming) and stores those documents in the ‘Cloud.’ If you then login from another Windows Vista pc, this time perhaps at home and connect that PC, you will then be able to see and connect to those files. Which is pretty convenient to say the least.

If you go to greater lengths and install the Live Mesh software on each PC you use, the service is improved once again – and verges on a seamless connection between PC and Cloud.

Mesh folders appear as normal Windows directory folders and so synchronisation is a breeze.

There is an automated posting system which tells users of your particular mesh what files / folders have been created which is a nice touch.

Go try it – it works.

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Here’s some of our favourites for Internet Explorer 7 – there are plenty more out there – but these should get you going if you’re new to the shortcut game.

Print this list out and stick it next to your PC!

Open link in a new tab – CTRL+LEFT CLICK

Go back a page – BACKSPACE

Go full screen (remove the toolbars) – F11

Zoom in or out of a page – CTRL+ or CTRL-

Select next tab – CTRL+TAB

Delete auto-complete entry (previously visited addresses in the address bar) – SHIFT+DELETE

View Bookmarks – CTRL+B

Open a new browsing tab – CTRL+T

Scroll down a webpage – SPACE

Happy browsing!

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