Productivity to an improviser means communicating quickly and clearly to the audience in a way that elicits a powerful emotional response. In business and law, productivity is achieving the highest level of output (quality product) with the lowest number of input (time/resources).

The strategy used by improvisers also works in other forms of productivity. When a scene begins, we have nothing; no script, no set, no props or costumes. Improvisers immediately identify some fundamentals. Who are we? What is our relationship and history with one another? Where are we? But most importantly, what do we want? A character in a scene does not come to life until she wants something. If Romeo doesn’t want Juliet, the story is never told. If your want is not compelling, you will never be motivated to be productive. (more…)

I was faced with a challenge recently: Create a forum where members of a national association can view and comment on documents. Thing is, the documents had to be private and available to association members only.

I put out a request on the social media channels for advice, but received scant feedback. I ruled out Google Docs after privacy and other concerns were raised by the association committee members. I briefly considered Evernote, but though a great application, it wasn’t the right one for this project. It was now up to WordPress.

The association had recently created a blog hosted on the WordPress platform so the tools were in place. (more…)

The best things in life are free.  But then there’s a whole ton of stuff you gotta pay for.

And when it comes to milking every last ounce of productivity out of your day, you don’t need to shell out for fancy executive coaches, sophisticated day planners, and related tools.  In fact, below’s a list of great purchases that can get you organized, make you more relaxed, and focus your brainwaves on providing the best service to your clients.

1) Behance Action Method Notebook @$15.00

I’ll admit: fifteen bucks is a bit much for a notebook.  But you only have to buy one Action Method Notebook once, then any spiral bound dime store notebook can be converted into a killer system. (more…)

Email is a necessary part of our work lives, but it takes up a lot of our time and our readers’ time. Here are some hints to make your emails more effective. Your readers will appreciate your efforts.

• First, should you be using email at all? If you are communicating something sensitive or confidential, should you pick up the phone or (when possible) walk down the hall?

If you are writing an email while angry, delete the recipient’s address from the “TO” line before you start writing. (I paste it at the top of the email’s body so I don’t have to search for the address later.) After you’ve finished writing, put the email aside for a few hours, or a day. Then decide whether you should send it out. Email is usually not the best way to deal with disagreements. (more…)

Producing consistent, relevant content is a challenge for many bloggers as the thousands, even millions of outdated blogs can attest.

Evernote can help. The popular application is used for a host of productivity enhancing functions, with one of the more useful being a repository for blog posts ideas.

Getting started

Create an account and download Evernote to your computer, then download the mobile app to your smartphone. Now you have three places where your data resides, auto-synced as you type — the browser, desktop application and mobile app. Evernote is free, but there’s also a premium version for $45/year with bigger upload capacity, greater sharing options, and more. However, for most, the free version will do. I’ve been using the application for a couple of years and the free version still does the job. (more…)

The popular Gmail is one of the best email clients. You can use the ubiquitous @gmail extension or set it up to work with your own unique domain, like name@yourdomain.com. And it’s free!

Google engineers are forever tinkering with the product, providing us with new tools and shortcuts to improve functionality for an optimized user experience. Here are a few:

Keyboard shortcuts

The user interface in Gmail is pretty streamlined and intuitive, but you can speed up the process with keyboard shortcuts. First, enable “Keyboard Shortcuts” in your Gmail settings. (more…)

We’ve gotten strong responses for our wellness content so we’re going to step up the pace with a whole hour of free fitness advice for busy lawyers!

When: February 23, 2012, 12:00PM – 1:00PM, EST
Speaker: Marc Perry, BuiltLean

Limited space. Click here to Register!

Do you find it hard to lose fat with a busy office job? Are you confused what to eat and how to exercise to change your body as fast as possible…and keep those results? This special presentation by renowned fitness expert and BuiltLean founder Marc Perry will simplify the how you can lose fat fast with short, efficient workouts and easy to implement nutrition strategies. (more…)

A recent post on Time Management, To-Do Lists, and the 3 + 2 Rule resonated broadly, suggesting that many of us continue to struggle with how to manage the 50, 60, 70 (and more) hours of work we face every week.

Summarizing the 3 + 2 Rule:

Identify only 3 big things and 2 small things to do in a day. Write down the 3 main activities you need to accomplish, each taking 2 to 3 hours, and 2 minor ones that take around 20 minutes each.

In addition to prioritizing your challenging list of tasks to a core five, or for those long days when deadline looming tasks demand a longer To-Do list, here are a few additional time savers to employ: (more…)

Within minutes, I came across these two status updates from friends who work at law firms:

“I have too much going on”

“I haven’t even gotten to my to-do list yet”.

We can all relate. It’s impossible to escape the nonstop online (and offline) flow of Twitter and Facebook, email, voicemail and text messages, the office pop-in and water-cooler chats. How can we ever keep up? Should we even try to? Can we really get everything meaningfully done…today?

No. And trying to do so can lead to frustration and feeling overwhelmed, and ultimately, procrastination. (more…)

Are you the most effective manager you can be? Do you unleash the most productivity from your workforce?

I finally got around to reading and article I ripped out of Harbard Business Review from March of last year: it was shuffled from my inbox to a “To Read” file and back a dozen times. Boy am I smacking my forehead now, as the piece, “The Power of Small Wins” contained some of the best management advice I’ve come across.

The core idea of the piece revolves around increasing employee productivity, and you do this by being in synch with motivation. Unfortunately, even the most well-intentioned of us don’t really understand what motivates employees to perform at their highest level.

Theresa Amabile and Steven J. Kramer, who spent more than 10 years conducting research in employee motivation, sum up their findings by saying:

What motivates people on a day to day basis is the sense that they are making progress.

And in a virtuous cycle, the more progress they make, the more satisfied they are. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true: obstructions, toxins, and problems de-motivate people. (more…)