Goals - I Done This Blog

Don’t Let Your Huge Goal Distract You from Small Wins

April 23, 2021 by Janet Choi 2 Comments

Go big or go home. Shoot for the stars. Aim high. Humans love to celebrate starting and finishing big goals but rarely take the time to savor the steps they took to get there. These grand statements could actually be holding you back because they distract you from all your small wins.

In the internet age, accomplishments seem larger than life because people rarely document the processes that got them to the finish line. We think small actions lead to small consequences, and grand motions have the most impact. But that’s not true.

We presume this “consequence-cause matching” because it helps the world seem more predictable and manageable. In return for believing this myth, we’re less happy and successful.

Doing one push-up a day, writing one line a day might seem easy and unambitious. But that’s how you build a practice and, ultimately, achieve a big goal. Celebrating small wins might seem silly, but each one is a step toward reaching big dreams.

3 Stages of Successful Team Bonding

April 30, 2020 by Jonathan Figliolino Leave a Comment

Your team won’t stay together just because they work together. If you don’t give your team a chance to bond, you’ll spend more time handling workplace drama and politics instead of getting work done. You can use team bonding activities to encourage cooperation outside of the office and strengthen workplace bonds.

Team building helps everyone get to know and trust their fellow coworkers, but you don’t build trust overnight. Your team goes through gradual stages as they grow from a collection of strangers to efficient collaborators. Psychologist Bruce Tuckman’s team building model describes three stages — forming, norming, and performing—to show how teams can become more united over time.

The 38 Best Productivity Software Tools of 2019

November 26, 2019 by Sasha Rezvina 41 Comments

Productivity apps continue to pop up right, left, and center. If you’re trying to stay up-to-date, it can quickly begin to feel like you’re wasting time looking for the perfect software rather than actually working efficiently. At I Done This, we continue to improve our done lists and integrations to eliminate the need for meetings — but we realize that there are many more ways that you and your team can get more done in less time. To spare you hours of Internet sifting, we’ve updated our collection of the 35 best productivity software tools for the New Year. Continue Reading

Quiz: What Productivity Personality Are You? How to Maximize Your Productivity in 2019

November 15, 2019 by Kathryn Vandervalk 1 Comment

A habit is something you’ve learned, through repetition, to do 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.

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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. Simply tally up the number of As, Bs, Cs, and Ds you answer and we’ll decipher your productivity paragon.

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.

Your Brain on Dopamine: The Science of Motivation

April 9, 2019 by Kevan Lee 52 Comments

Editor’s Note: This refreshed post was originally written by Kevan Lee in December of 2013, was revamped and updated for currency and comprehensiveness by Willa Rubin in 2017 — and again in 2019.I spent an hour on this opening paragraph.

The hour wasn’t time well spent, mind you. Sure, I was working — writing, deleting, tinkering with words here and there — but my one-paragraph-per-hour pace wasn’t out of indecisiveness as much as a lack of motivation.

I spent five minutes on email, ten minutes on Instagram, and fifteen minutes doing who-knows-what on Tumblr. (Just kidding, I know exactly what I was doing: watching cat videos.)

Sound familiar?

Motivation is a tricky thing to corral. Tricky, but not impossible.

When Is It Time to Move to a Co-Working Space

July 4, 2017 by Jonas Fischer 2 Comments

Google, Mattel, Apple, Disney and Harley-Davidson all have something in common: they started in someone’s garage.

Today, technology disguises the fact that your startup is operating out of your house, which buys you time before you need to start thinking about office space. You can hire a virtual receptionist, employ a remote workforce and implement enterprise-powered tools to run your business like an established company.

This is an amazing time for startups to grow without worrying about burning through cash for rent and equipment. But for many, there comes a point when the work-from-home lifestyle begins to stunt progress. There is no formula based on headcount or revenue to determine when you should consider a change, but there are a few telltale signs.

Here are three indications that it’s time to consider moving your team into a co-working space.

Humor in the Workplace: What’s Funny or Not?

June 12, 2017 by Kathryn Vandervalk Leave a Comment

Sending great gifs to your co-workers gives you more than just a laugh.

Humor in the workplace benefits:

Productivity. Humor replenishes your employees and makes them more productive.
Group Cohesion. Humor can increase a sense of belonging.
Stress Management. Humor is known for its “cathartic” emotional benefits that release stress.

Creating an office culture of humor can help you cultivate all these benefits. Keep in mind that humor can also go sideways fairly quickly, too. The wrong type of funny can lead to serious HR problems—there’s a thin line between goofy and unprofessional or between delightful and inappropriate.

Humor in the Workplace

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You want your company to be a fun place to work, but you also want to make sure that it’s fun for everyone.

Here’s our guide on how to improve office humor that makes everyone feel included and unified.

What Have I Done This Year?

December 13, 2016 by Willa Rubin 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.

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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.

What Michael Jordan Can Teach You About Productivity

November 30, 2016 by Willa Rubin 1 Comment

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

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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.

Why You Should Scrap Your Analog To-Do List

November 15, 2016 by Georgina Parfitt 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.

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?