How We Host Meetups

by Leave a Comment

When we first started I Done This, getting to know our customers was easy. We also didn’t have a ton of customers.

As our subscriber list grew, getting to know our new customers became challenging. But we didn’t want to give up the close relationships we were developing with our customers. Our customers’ insights have been super valuable. And frankly, we genuinely like our customers and love connecting with them in a casual environment.

I Done This users are now based all around the world—so when we travel, we jump at the chance to get to know local users and have started hosting customer meetups. We carefully plan each step of the way, so that we set ourselves up for success. And by success, we mean having great conversations, really connecting, and positioning ourselves to maintain new customer relationships in the future.

Here’s how we plan our meetups to grow our customer relationships.

Continue Reading

Quiz: What Productivity Personality Are You? How to Maximize Your Productivity in 2017

by Leave a Comment

A habit is something you do automatically, without thinking. You know your personal habits—whether you do the dishes right away, or if you throw your clothes on the floor—but you aren’t always the same person at home and at work.

productivity quiz

We put together this Productivity Quiz to help you identify what your work habits are. At the end of the quiz, you’ll see your Productivity Personality, which gives you personalized tips on how to be more productive by capitalizing on your good habits and eliminating your bad ones.

Whether you schedule every minute or go with the flow, you’ll leave with actionable feedback on how to make the most of your workday.

Continue Reading

18 Best Places To Store Your Team’s Documents

by Leave a Comment

Documentation is to your business what water is to the fishes. It’s everywhere. You need it to survive and grow. A good documentation process prevents information bottlenecks, supports collaboration between departments and individuals, and allows your business to learn quickly and improve.

But to access the advantages of documentation for your business, you need a proper way of storing all those documents. Here’s our list of 18 great tools you can use to store your team’s documents, whatever they may be, and go into the new year super organized. We’ve broken them down into 4 main purposes:

  • For teamwork
  • For operations
  • For design
  • For development

Have a play and explore which tools could bring a new level of productivity to your team.

Continue Reading

Why Your Productivity Software Has # Hashtags and @ Mentions

by Leave a Comment

Hashtags and @ mentions have created a renaissance in workplace communication.

productivity-software

They may have started out as fun tools to help us engage with others on social media, but they’ve changed how we collaborate across channels and even between teams. These tools empower employees to keep their communication transparent, and to collaborate better and smarter.

@ Readers: Here’s a brief history of the # hashtag and @ mention, and how they’ve become an integral part of how we collaborate.

Continue Reading

Lessons From A Year In A Remote Team Culture

by 1 Comment

Every remote worker I’ve seen stumble and fail over the last year has had one thing in common. They weren’t involved in the team culture.

I don’t just mean water cooler talk – culture includes almost everything aside from your actual output. The system you work by, the amount of meetings you have, the very structure of your teams is governed by your culture.

So when an employee doesn’t engage in culture it causes three things:

  • A feeling of isolation
  • A communication barrier
  • A lack of motivation
  • Lower productivity

However, when culture is done right, it powers motivation, encourages communication, and forms a solid, centralized base for your entire workforce to draw from.

Remote team culture

Over the last year of remote work the practices I’ve seen benefit our team the most have been:

  • Assigning mentors
  • Hosting competitions
  • Posing problems instead of solutions
  • Centralizing information
  • Documenting processes
  • Giving structured freedom

Let’s dive right in!

Continue Reading

What Have I Done This Year?

by Leave a Comment

Inching towards the new year means it’s time to reflect on what went well, and what could be improved—especially if you’re thinking about performance reviews. But December means we need to juggle that with immediately pressing projects that must be finished before the holidays. Once we enter tunnel-vision mode to complete those projects, it can be hard to disengage, look up, and think critically about what we’ve accomplished.

At I Done This, we’re all about celebrating small wins and learning from every step of the process. Here are some of our favorite tools that remind us of our professional growth, and prompt us to think about improvement next year.

Continue Reading

How To Plan For Daily Standups During The Holidays

by Leave a Comment

daily-standups-holiday

For many employees, the holidays offer a welcome break in routine. But for team leaders, the last few weeks of December put a pin in their team’s productivity.

When so many people take off at the same time, it leaves the few remaining souls at the office with a ton of work on their plates. They need to get more work than usual done, and in less time.

Every second they spend in their typical in-person daily standups (that would otherwise help them track progress) eats away at time they could be using to pore through their mountains of work.

Frequent checkins are an important part of ensuring individuals are on track to meet their goals and working as a team. But especially when the holidays roll around, managers need to alter how they run standups and create additional support, without sacrificing their employees’ time or autonomy.

Here are some ways to revive your daily standups and simplify your workflow during holiday madness.

Continue Reading

What Michael Jordan Can Teach You About Productivity

by Leave a Comment

Who are your productivity heroes? If Michael Jordan isn’t up there, he should be.

productivity
Most people know Michael Jordan for his phenomenal scoring ability, superhuman dunks, or his starring role in Space Jam. Over a 20-year span, he scored more than 32,000 points, won six NBA titles and was named the league’s most valuable player five times. But to his teammates and coaches, he was notorious for his diligent work ethic.

Jordan’s longtime coach Phil Jackson once wrote that Michael “takes nothing about his game for granted.” He spent so much time preparing for competition that when it was game-time, he didn’t have to think about what to do next. He relied on instinct and muscle memory to dominate his opponents.

Professional athletes have to squeeze as much as they can out of their prime years, making them perfect productivity case studies. Here’s what some of our most famous athletes have to say about getting stuff done.

Continue Reading

The Dangers of Knowledge Hoarding

by Leave a Comment

Just like the poor souls on Hoarders, you may not realize you have a problem.

Think of all those little times in the day when you stop what you’re doing to ask “Emma, how does the copy machine work?” or “Bryan, how many days have you taken off this month?”

They seem like small-fry problems, but they are actually issues of employee empowerment. You stop, gather the information, and move on. But they all add up to a huge productivity drain for you and your company, for one single reason: knowledge hoarding. Information is stored in particular places, and particular people are responsible for it.

screenshot-2016-11-21-11-55-19

Knowledge hoarding is normal but dangerous. Here’s why:

Continue Reading

Why You Should Scrap Your Analog To-Do List

by 1 Comment

Bullet Journaling is the new trend piquing the interest of stationary lovers, productivity seekers, and the wanna-be-organized. Faced with an often overwhelming selection of digital tools in their workplaces, people are turning back to the traditional to-do list: a list of tasks on a piece of paper.

to-do list

The fascination is in its simplicity. Visit the original Bullet Journal website and you’ll find instructions for how to use a system of dots, arrows, and crosses to organize to-do items.

People are now used to downloading apps for work and learning to use them, synching them with a collection of other tools. To see a tool that simply tells you to “go buy a notebook” is such a blast from the past, it’s grabbing people’s attention.

It’s like the rise of vintage clothing and traditional teaching methods. In the quest for perfect productivity, people are tempted by the idea of a simpler time. Could going back to pen and paper really make us more productive than ever?

Continue Reading