The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur put a call out to its readership for lessons entrepreneurs learned from the latest recession and then published 206 of them. The overall theme of the submissions was people will buy what you are selling if it’s a quality product. If you are serious about being an entrepreneur you can likely find the motivation to continue, the patience to wait, and a solution to get you through the tough times.

The post offers some great perspective on the obstacles other business owners had to overcome in the last couple of years. Some had to deal with people being more careful with how they now spend their money while others accepted the fact that it is now more important than ever to work hard.

There will always be ups and downs in any business venture. It seems we have seen the worst for a little while and we can now take the time to be better prepared for the next slump. A great tip found throughout the post is to depend on cash more than credit so your debt will be lower for the next recession. Having your finances in order will provide comfort when the money coming in is less than you are used to.

Sean Horrigan of PR Guy reminds us that while many people are stressed out about the economy, wheels are still turning. Keep marketing because there are potential clients out there looking for your services. Your name will stay current and it shows you are ready for business instead of being afraid and hiding.

While you are reinforcing your company’s bones, make sure you are invaluable to your clients. People will always need to purchase products from someone else and you can be the company of choice. For example, Oana Hogrefe of Oana Hogrefe Photography says clients keep choosing her studio because they offer a great experience for the whole family with a great product at the end of the day.

The top tip is from Mitchell York at Maui Wowi Coffees and Smoothies. He reminds us to stay away from sensationalizing the event; recessions happen.

Infomatix submitted a tip on shifting your focus on growth instead of sales and made it to #38!

There are fewer people in the office, everyone starts daydreaming in the late afternoon heat, and holiday energy is vibrating from people leaving for a couple of weeks. Even if you’re not going on vacation this summer, there’s no doubt that productivity stops as soon as the sun’s rays hit you through the open window. 

One of my favourite blogs, Unclutterer.com, has some great ideas to make sure your summer months aren’t wasted.

Sit down and make a list of your regular tasks and when they need to be done and write them on a calendar. This will make sure you don’t fall behind and the visual cue will help you plan out the rest of your time.

Start your Mondays with a cup of coffee and the aforementioned calendar before turning on your computer and ask yourself:

What calls you have make
What meetings you have and the items you need to prepare
What deadlines do you have and what do you need to do to meet them
Anything else you were hoping to accomplish this week

Talk to your supervisor about shifting your working hours. Instead of going in at 9 am, try getting there for 7 and leaving at 3 to enjoy the end of the day. The office is quieter before working hours and there are fewer distractions so you will get more done.

When all else fails and productivity grinds to a halt, try these tasks to find a sense of accomplishment:

Return anything in your office that shouldn’t be there
Clear bulletin boards, monitors, note pads, piles of paper, etc. of unnecessary info and old sticky notes. Shred what’s useless and file what you need to keep
Throw away inkless pens, dried highlighters, old white out tubes, and anything else taking up extra space
Dust your desk and your shelves to breathe new life into your area
If anything on your to-do list can be completed in less than two minutes, do it.

Infomatix believes in keeping things simple for better efficiency. We just blogged about the Pomodoro technique, a method to help you focus on one task at a time in order to complete those projects.

Multitasking is a result of piling too much on our plates. It’s human nature to want to help which leads to coaching your kid’s soccer team, taking the lead on a project at work, driving an extra day in the carpool, and sitting on an advisory board. You’ll be burned out, tired, and wondering when you’ll get to have some time for yourself.

Zen Habits says we need to be better at saying no. While we attain satisfaction from helping people, we are often cluttering up our schedules doing things that other people didn’t want to do.

Their blog post says we say yes because we’re afraid of missing out on opportunities or creating conflict. These are just short-term worries and will have little impact on your future. Another opportunity will come along and if someone gets their back up because you can’t possibly miss any more sleep/put off this project/neglect your family any longer, they don’t deserve your help.

If your team is getting burned out by picking up the slack, hold weekly meetings to discuss what’s on everyone’s agenda. We hold BlackJack meetings to discuss our time. They take 21 minutes and follow a clear agenda so we walk away with a sense of who has a lot to do, who needs help, and who is available to help. Contact us if you are interested in learning more.

Having a clear outline for the week and knowing who to turn to in a pinch helps eliminate multitasking and clears up your brain to accomplish more.

Remember, you control your time and you should use it wisely. Saying no is not an indicator for a lack of respect or insensitivity. Continuously expecting people to push their limits is rude.

Kolbe says we can spend a lot of time performing tasks or learning about things that appeal to us but are less willing to devote time to things we find less interesting. Similarly, while your Unique Ability might give you energy, life dictates that you still need to do things that fall into your less than Unique Ability categories. 

Clay Johnson at InfoVegan.com has written a post on training ourselves to pay better attention. He says writers need to work on managing attention instead of managing information. The post also offers some drastic measures you can take if you find you are just not able to concentrate (these are great to pass on to kids for studying as well).

We are quick to blame our environment for deviant behaviours, but Johnson says “It is as much Twitter’s fault that you have a short attention span as it is your closet’s fault it doesn’t have any running shoes in it.” The onus falls on us to follow through on things we consider to be important.

He offers a lot of tips on how to train your brain to pay attention much like training to run.

One of his tips, the Pomodoro Technique, is one we employ around Infomatix. Steve’s 7 Quickstart allows him to get distracted if something more interesting comes along. He started using the technique a while ago when he found himself under the wire and found it was very helpful.

You start off setting a timer (either physical or virtual) for your desired amount of concentration time. When the timer beeps, set it again for a short break then go back to work when the timer sounds again. I know this means setting a timer up to 16 times a day but taking a moment to think about why you’re spending a small amount of time to set it reminds you of its rewards.

The Pomodoro Technique website has a lot of great resources from a book (also available in PDF) to materials you can use to map your day to cheat sheets for getting started. The taglines are “Eliminate the anxiety of time” and “Enhance focus and concentration.”

There are also a few iPhone apps that can track your tasks and keep you on the straight and narrow.

We can often get lost in doing and forget about appreciating our creative efforts. It’s always on to the next one, bigger and better, into the wild frontier. This makes us feel like we’re always running on a treadmill, never accomplishing much but always busy.

They suggest we take a tiny bit of time, just 60 seconds, to list all of our creative achievements. Anything you can think of that you ever did. Write down any moments of epiphany.

Reflecting on this list will help boost a creative slump or simply invigorate you for a project yet to come. Thinking about our personal achievements makes us feel happy in life. Thinking about creative achievements makes us feel valuable.

Try it out and let us know if it works!

It’s worth getting distracted for 15 minutes to learn how to be more productive and feel more accomplished at the end of your day.

The eastern half of Canada has seen its share of cancellations over the past couple of days due to a gigantic winter storm. Thanks to the Internet, I have lost the priviledge of snow days. It’s difficult to claim you couldn’t get to work when you regularly work from home.

On the brightside, you can stay in your cozy clothes, cook a great lunch, and have a very productive, distraction-free day.

If we haven’t already set you up with a office-less office, you have to call them.

You’ll be able to say goodbye to the mountain of paper because you’ll scan everything, it’s automatically OCR’d (Optical Character Recognition), and you can recycle the rest. Faxes come to your inbox instead of piling up in the corner. Your laptop accesses your server as well as your office desktop does. It’s not taking your work home, it’s having the freedom to work anywhere.

Literally everything I need is contained on (or wirelessly connected to) my little Lenovo ThinkPad.

That does mean it’s easier to stay up late and work on your vacation, but we are counting on you to use some self-discipline and enjoy your life when the work day is done.

Lifehacker is also preparing for winter emergencies and has made a guide to staying connected when the power goes out and your electronics lose steam. While we hope nobody’s power is gone long enough to need multiple backup cellphones, it’s good to remember to charge your devices if you know inclement weather is on the way and maybe consider a few “outdated” options for those situations.

Are you using the no-office solution? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section!

Dpbestflow.org suggests the 3-2-1 rule. It suggests you save:

3 copies of any important file (a primary and two backups)
2 physically separate onsite copies (either on different computers or media types such as hard drive and optical media)
1 offsite copy
We are big fans of Windows Home Server to automatically backup all of our local PCs and Macs and we use Symform to automatically back up our critical data offsite.

This back up plan should be automated so you won’t forget what needs to be done. Contact us if you would like some help creating a solution to make this as easy as possible for you.

Source: www.dpbestflow.org

We thought it might have been over; the sun was making appearances, the birds were singing their spring songs, and jackets were being left at home. Then—BAM—Mother Nature sends snow across the whole country.

It’s easy to start feeling unmotivated around this time of year. People start flocking to Caribbean islands and Disney World to recharge.

If you’re unable to get away, for whatever reason, trick your brain into forgetting about the weather by setting your desktop to a great photo of another city you’d like to be in or an image of something that makes you think of warmer weather.

Lifehacker has published a bunch of great cityscapes for your desktop or mobile device.

Smashing Magazine gives us a bunch of new wallpapers each month. Have a look back through last year’s temperate months and get into the summer groove (May, June, July, August).

If that fails, go out and get a big ice cream cone on a sunny day and eat it in the car with the heat on. It will do wonders for your mood and give you a little extra excitement to get through these last few days of winter.

At Infomatix, we tend to work with people who are doing jobs they love to do. Most of our clients are entrepreneurs and there aren’t many business owners who get into a field they cannot stand. This means a lot of them work more than they should (or, at least, more than their families think they should). They may choose to spend their free time working but they’re not recharging their batteries. It’s important to remember to take a break and let a few emails go unread for a few hours or a couple of calls go to voicemail.

It’s nice when we’re attached to the people in our lives and want to fill our time with them whenever possible but we need to know when to take time for ourselves. Responding to emails right away sets the precedent that you’ll always get back within minutes. For most people, getting back to them once or twice a day is sufficient. If it’s not an important email, don’t let it disrupt your flow and get back to it later.

It’s also important to recognize when you’ve become addicted to your device. Jane Vincent says you’re addicted to your devices with you feel anxious and panicked if you can’t use it and you get a thrill from using it and feeling like you can multitask (you probably can’t and are sacrificing quality for task quantity).

Make sure you use your devices with intention, not impulse. Constantly flicking between social media sites, checking your email, and switching focus mid-task slows you down and doesn’t add much value to your work.

Taking time to turn off your BlackBerry at the end of the day (or at least overnight), finish a task before moving on to the next one, and turning off your instant email notifications will help keep you organized and calm throughout the day instead of frantic and unproductive.

Well, no so fast.

Check out this email:

Here are a couple of tips that alerted me and that you can keep an eye out for:

The numbers don’t make sense:

• I owed (and already paid) CRA money this year.
• The CRA doesn’t ever send me email.
• The CRA and any other reputable bank or financial institution would never send my “Client number” in open text - I am not client 10293911.

But the real kicker was when I moused over the hyperlink that they wanted me to visit:

That certainly doesn’t look like the CRA! I bet once you get to this magical site, they ask you for your name, address, Social Insurance Number and telephone numbers. And in a few weeks, the creditors will start calling. For credit cards and loans that you did not open.

Save yourself the trouble!

Hopefully this helps you to avoid this scam and gives you some ammunition to keep yourself away from the baddies out there.

Big rocks are the day’s most important tasks. They need to be completed. The sand represents time wasters or things that don’t aide productivity and the pebbles are more significant but not time sensitive or red flags.

It takes some practice to determine how many of each will fit in your daily pail. The 99 Per Cent recommends this interesting experiment: take a 3X3 Post-It note and write down your big rocks first. Then fill up the rest of the paper (one side only!) with other things that will accentuate your day but could also be done tomorrow. You should feel good about leaving work when that list is completed at the end of the day.

In their post, Mark McGuiness says he used to use digital to-do lists but they allowed him too much flexibility with the limitless space for tasks and he wound up with a wish list instead of a daily plan. “The solution turned out to be counterintuitive: I got more done by making my to-do list shorter.”

We offer an InviCoach Expander session to help you identify your priorities at the beginning of each day in a way that gets a lot accomplished instead of checking your email to see what’s on fire from last night and getting to important things later.

Contact us to learn more!

Image source: Pixabay