I Done This Blog

Have You Heard Ashton Kutcher’s Super Simple Email Tip for Getting More Done?

October 24, 2017 by Evan Leave a Comment

Email is more than just a communication method — it’s a productivity hack endorsed by a Hollywood superstar. Actor and philanthropist Ashton Kutcher recently said that email is “everyone else’s to-do list for you” — a schedule of tasks from friends and family that you need to complete.

Talking to the Thrive Global podcast, Ashton revealed his simple strategy for more productive email communication. He doesn’t spend the first hour of his working day browsing his inbox. No, he writes out what he wants to accomplish over the next few days instead.

The result?

Less time wasting and more productivity. “All I was doing was other people’s work all day long,” Ashton says. “I never actually got to the things that I wanted to accomplish.”

It sounded great on the Thrive Global podcast, but does Ashton’s email timesaver actually work? And does it lead to more effective communication? Read on to find out.

5 Ways to Boost Happiness at Work — and Increase Productivity in the Process

October 18, 2017 by Evan 1 Comment

Happy employees are more productive employees. Research shows that happiness boosts productivity in the workplace by as much as 20 percent. Unhappy employees, on the other hand, are unproductive — and costly. Every year, disengaged workers cost the U.S. economy between $450-550 billion. Don’t make the same mistakes as other companies. Here are five ways to boost happiness at work and increase productivity at the same time.

Science-Backed Tips to Boost Energy at Work

October 10, 2017 by Evan Leave a Comment

Fighting mental or physical fatigue at work can be a losing battle if you don’t have the right tools. Both can affect productivity and your overall health. While many of us quickly reach for a coffee or energy drink, these aren’t sustainable solutions to the problem. GetVoIP outlined these ways to boost your energy at work naturally.

The main takeaways are:

1. Pay attention to your chronotype: Each of us has a specific chronotype that syncs the bodies internal clock. Tapping into this chronotype will help you take advantage of the most productive times of the day, and keep you aware of when you might need an energy boost to stay on track. There’s no reason to fight it if you are a night owl!

2. Start Strong: Drinking lemonade, eating a protein-rich breakfast and taking a cold shower have all been scientifically proven to get the day off right. If you are a coffee drinker, wait two hours after you wake up to get drinking.

3. Take breaks: Take micro-breaks every 20 seconds to close your eyes and reset to help prevent screen fatigue. Taking an even longer break to go get the blood flowing will help naturally increase energy levels. You can try working out or just a brisk jog.

4. Hydrate: Be sure to drink enough water. If you are a coffee drinker, it is easy to become dehydrated quickly and dehydration is the leading culprit when your energy is low. If you need caffeine, opt for green tea. It has less caffeine than coffee and is full of anti-oxidants.

You can see the rest below:

How to Build Company Culture with No Time, Money, or Experience

October 3, 2017 by Sasha Rezvina Leave a Comment

Startups are depicted as workplaces with pool tables, lego-speckled break rooms, desks adorned with Star Wars memorabilia and even in-house cafeterias. In reality, startups are two sleep-deprived founders squeezed into a co-working space with a small team and a bunch of strangers, trying to make something out of nothing.

build-company-culture

In the early days, it’s difficult to focus on how to build company culture. You don’t have the cash to invest in an office space, the time to invest in employee growth, or the experience to deal with interpersonal problems. Under these constraints, most founders focus on everything but culture and leave it as a problem to be addressed later down the line.

But the biggest existential threat to your company isn’t lack of planning or lack of resources — it’s people problems. Two-thirds of early-stage startups fail from interpersonal issues, according to Harvard Business Professor Noam Wasserman. If you don’t put effort into cementing a strong team relationship now, your company will fall apart at the first stumbling block.

Here’s how you can lay the foundation for a healthy culture early on.

The 15 Top Email Productivity Software Tools

October 3, 2017 by Julia Melymbrose 2 Comments

You spend over half your workday checking email—4.1 hours a day, to be exact.

That’s no overblown generalization—it’s a disconcerting fact revealed in a recent study by Adobe Digital Insights (ADI).

Time spent checking work and personal email in 2016. Source.

Whether we like it or not, email has now transitioned into an “always-on” convention that dictates how we spend a significant portion of our time at work.

6 Most Effective Ways to Increase Workplace Productivity

September 26, 2017 by Evan 2 Comments

Workplace productivity is a problem. American workers say their co-workers are unproductive for at least an hour a day, according to one study. Stress, lack of motivation, procrastination — these are just some of the causes of the productivity pandemic. Here are six ways employees can boost productivity in the workplace.

1. Reduce procrastination at work

A sizeable chunk of the American workforce procrastinates at work, according to research. The annual Wasting Time at Work Survey, conducted by Salary.com, found that 70 percent of employees wasted time at work on a daily basis in 2013 — up from the previous year.

The reason?

12 Startup Leaders on What They Love about Their Company Cultures

September 19, 2017 by I Done This Support Leave a Comment

Startup founders begin with building new products and end up building new companies. Ultimately, some of the most successful companies not only reinvent a product or market, they change the way people work in a way that’s reflective of what they value most, and that’s embodied in their company culture.

To find out how startup leaders think about building companies that they themselves enjoy working in, we surveyed the founders of some of the most innovative startups out there to ask them one simple question:

What do you value most about your company culture, and what’s one important way that you contribute to it?

We received some amazing, proud and insightful responses from startup founders personally, another individual within the company who was eager to chip in, and the PR or marketing team.

The Science Behind Working Smart

September 12, 2017 by Jonas Fischer Leave a Comment

It’s late Friday, and your to-do list has four items that are all due within the next hour. When you planned out your week, the workload seemed realistic, but in the end you somehow over-promised and under-delivered.

Working Smart Friday

We all have a tendency to overestimate our capabilities, while at the same time we underestimate how long it will take to complete a task. However noble our intentions are to take on more work, our inability to accurately predict our productivity sometimes leaves us scrambling.

By understanding the science behind why we overestimate our capabilities, we can develop a smarter approach that counteracts our planning biases to create manageable workloads and get more done.

How to Sync Items from a Kanban Board to your Daily Standup

September 5, 2017 by Cody Leave a Comment

This is a guest post from Kim Kadiyala, Partnership Manager at Zapier.

A daily status update is only as helpful as it is complete. If your team struggles to log their dones, goals, and blockers, rest assured you’re not alone.

But if you’re using a project management tool like Asana, Trello, or Basecamp to take care of your team tasks and deadlines, it’s a safe bet that the tasks in your project workspace are the same tasks mentioned in your daily standups. Syncing those tasks from your project directly to your daily stand-up entry could help eliminate the manual effort needed to prep for the meeting.

Sound interesting? Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to connect your project tasks directly to your I Done This standup entry, powered by app automation platform Zapier. The best part? It takes just a few minutes to set up these automated workflows and no coding knowledge is required.

How to Motivate Your Female Workforce After Maternity Leave

September 5, 2017 by Kaitlin Macholz Leave a Comment

This is a guest post from Kristen Craft, VP of Marketing at Ovia Health.

Every loss of talent is a blow to a team. Companies spend time and resources to recruit the best people, incorporate them into the team, and rely on their skill and drive to make the company the best it can be. When great team members leave, it hurts.

In particular, a lack of support after maternity leave can lead to major talent losses at a company. According to a study by KPMG, global companies spend up to $47 billion recruiting and training new team members to replace women who leave after having a baby.

Motivation after Maternity Leave

There’s no way this is sustainable for business or successful for team building. But it’s avoidable if you take the right steps.

Have You Heard Ashton Kutcher’s Super Simple Email Tip for Getting More Done?

5 Ways to Boost Happiness at Work — and Increase Productivity in the Process

Science-Backed Tips to Boost Energy at Work

How to Build Company Culture with No Time, Money, or Experience

The 15 Top Email Productivity Software Tools

6 Most Effective Ways to Increase Workplace Productivity

1. Reduce procrastination at work

12 Startup Leaders on What They Love about Their Company Cultures

The Science Behind Working Smart

How to Sync Items from a Kanban Board to your Daily Standup

How to Motivate Your Female Workforce After Maternity Leave

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