The idea was beautifully executed by designer Vincent Voorduin of Dutch Designs.

By the end of every week, all the hours must be filled in and my task was to remind everyone about it. So I started to sent reminder emails. It didn’t help much (they weren’t reading the email at all) and people started to dislike me my role.

After a few “standard” email reminders I started to change the content of the email. First of all I changed the standard “pushing” text like: “….you MUST fill in….” to something like: “…PSSSSST….this is Lucia, your personal reminder….” and also provide some project information like project codes etc. Second, every week I took a funny picture of myself and put it in the email and composed it with a nice HTML layout.

And guess what? It worked out great! They didn’t forget to fill in their hours (at least less people did) and they started to like me my role again. I remember sending that first email and hearing some people giggling and asking others if they had read my email.

I thought that after a few weeks it became “normal” again and that my colleagues would fall back into not reading it at all. But….I was wrong. One week I was in a hurry and did not take a new picture and used the picture of the week before. I started to get response of my colleagues that they where looking forward to see a new funny picture of me and that I was “cheating” by putting in an old one!

So being creative and putting in some fun paid off 

Most people aren’t productive because they don’t take action. They have dreams and even plans – but they don’t follow through. Negative thoughts can derail action. It may be that you have doubts about your ability, or that you listen to others who doubt you.

Tip: Look at what you would like to achieve and ask yourself, “What is the smallest step in the direction of my dreams that I can take right now?” Then take that baby step. Now.

Read more on How to be Insanely Productive and Still Keep Smiling from Mary Jaksch (on Zenhabits).

Hat tip: Laurens Bonnema

Zaterdag 6 november vindt WordCamp weer plaats in Utrecht.

Meer informatie vind je op WordCampNL.org.

Photo walk Kasteel de Haar. Go to: digitalluus for a slide show.

Gibson Les Paul Studio Faded worn brown