Entries Tagged 'productivity' ↓

The Results Only Work Environment is a system implemented by BestBuy’s corporate offices. It is fairly self explanatory, but in short, employees are just expected to produce good quality work on time, they are not expected to be at work for a set amount of time.

For the longest time, working 7.5 hour days was expected of you. This is becoming optional in a lot of businesses as of late. BestBuy’s experiments with this system has shown about a 35% increase in productivity, and a decrease in turnover rates. Some employees at BestBuy are even working from home, and only go into the office for meetings, which are also optional.

Face it, meetings for the most part are a gigantic waste of time, and usually can be resolved by a simple e-mail, phone call, or a short face-to-face conversation. I suggest reading Kill Meetings to Get More Done at Lifehack.org.

I personally think that this is a system that we are going to see more and more in the workplace. This system empowers employees, and allows them to manage their own time without the feeling that someone is always checking up on them. I hope that I have some of this flexibility when I move into the workforce permanently because I personally work more productively in the morning. By 3pm I’m usually in the mindset to call it quits for the day.

Has your workplace adopted anything like this yet? Is this something you would want to do?

Yesterday I read a blog post on Lifehack regarding 5 Uses for a Wiki at Work. Without even reading much into it, I set one up for my projects at work and have started to use it today. Considering I’m collaborating with more than one person on a regular basis regarding different projects, a wiki seems like an ideal solution. Having random papers in handwriting thrown on my desk throughout the day causes me to get behind eventually. It is nice having one central, electronic medium for me to collaborate with my co-workers.

For instance, just the other day I received a note on my desk to make a change on the website regarding, what I had interpreted to be “the flowers of haly.” It turns out that the note actually said “the flavours of Italy.” Clearly something had to be done, fast. I’ve used MediaWiki in the past for doing similar things. It seems to be the best wiki solution out there right now.

As far as keeping hard copies of important work documents handy, I quite enjoy the current setup I have. It will have to do since I don’t have a filing cabinet.

Upon reading a post on Jake Billo’s blog, I decided that it’s been far too long since I’ve written a post. School has been finished for a while now, therefore it is time to start updating on a regular basis. I find that if I put off writing blog posts, it just makes it harder and harder to start posting again. I would like to thank the Waterloo Wellington Bloggers Association for not booting me for being an inactive blog for a while.

I’ve actually been up to a lot lately. There have been many projects I’ve been working on.

• Jake Billo, Warren Gray, and I have registered our business EdgeLink Consulting
  For the past few years the 3 of us have been doing computer repair and consulting for several of our clients in our spare time. Now that business has picked up and we are conducting more sales, we decided to register the business and started operating officially. If you have any computer repair or consulting needs, please contact us through our website.
• At the end of April I started doing full-time consulting for Household China & Gifts in Waterloo
  Throughout the school year I was doing consulting on a part-time basis. Now that I am done school for the summer I have been consulting full-time. I have been working on several projects for the store, due to the fact that most of their systems are very out of date. Apart from the computer side of things, the store has undergone huge changes since it has changed ownership. The store now features a new Flower Shop, and a kitchen loft, where our full-time chef teaches cooking classes to groups. Just a few weeks ago there was a wine-tasting in the store for a group of about 25. If you haven’t been in the store lately, I urge you to check it out.
• Continuing to learn Ruby on Rails and AJAX
  I’ve been trying to keep up with all of these Web 2.0 technologies. I’m aware that Ruby on Rails doesn’t exactly match up with the power of PHP, but it has proven to be very useful in some internal web applications I’ve been developing at Household China. For the amount of users of the applications, Ruby on Rails is a perfect solution. As a result, I’ve been devoting a good portion of my time to gaining more knowledge on the framework.
• Maintaining Organization
  I’ve also been setting aside time to keep myself organized. The starting of the business has added a lot of paperwork to my calendar, and a lot of files to my filing cabinet If I don’t keep up, I can easily get overwhelmed. I’m currently using iGTD in combination with Google Calendar to try to keep track of everything. I can’t wait for the release of OmniFocus. It should make the task of keeping organized a lot easier.

I think that is about the extent of the current projects I’m working on. I’m aiming to post 4-5 times a week. We’ll see if I can keep up with this. I will make this my June Challenge.

Do you often get very tired during work? Don’t think you can make it through your day? Well, if you live in New York, MetroNaps is the answer. This service is available to allow people to have a 20 minute nap for $14. The rooms are dimly lit, and the sounds and smells are kept constant. They are trying to create the best environment to take a nap. You are even provided with very your own napping pod.

Once you have awoken from your nap, they provide a wake-up station where you can freshen up and get ready to return to your work day.

They are currently leasing the pods to workplaces and universities. However, this is very costly and can set you back about $7000 per pod. I wish WLU bought some of these. I could use a nap from time to time.

Being a computer consultant in my spare time, I have quite a few clients that I have to keep track of. In the past few years I’ve found this somewhat tedious, as a simple Excel spreadsheet or random word documents just don’t cut it. Since this whole new ‘Web 2.0′ boom on the internet, I’ve run into quite a few websites that have made my life much easier.

Probably the most significant in the past month or so is called SideJobTrack. This is a Web 2.0 site designed to help ease the stress of part-time consultants by helping to organize all of their side jobs. This website lets me organize by clients, projects and jobs. Once I have a specific project or job completed, I have the option of sending an invoice straight to that client, or printing one out to give to the client. The great thing about the invoicing feature is that the invoices are very detailed, which most of my clients greatly appreciate.

I strongly suggest checking this site out. What sorts of tools or websites do you use to keep track of your side jobs?