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I am a small business Conversation Consultant and public speaker that uses the power of the internet to leverage your success. Productivity in Context is a web magazine focused on Productivity and tools for organizing. Make this your headquarters for improving your life and work through increased mindfulness, education, and workflow practices.

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There is an excellent thread on Time Management over at Work.Life.Creativity about managing time (and managing up) in an office environment that is filled with distractions, including the boss!

Here is part of the the initial post:

I work with a team in a very small business (I’m one of six FTEs, and we’ve got two PTEs). Sadly, my boss is an entirely distraction-driven person, and many of the folks in the office (I’m not there most of the time - I telecommute) abuse this and make it worse, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t think that they mean to do it, but it’s the way that the business seems to have been set up (to a certain degree, I’m the nOOb to the staff).

As a result of the distraction-driven nature of the business, he constantly misses deadlines and puts projects on the backburner…and then complains about the fact that nothing seems to get done.

Go read the whole thing, and leave a comment, what would you suggest?

This is a great forum, and I am glad to be involved with it again.

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5xqzh7. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

Jared at Technotheory has too many people that he follows on Twitter. He wrote an interesting piece where he thinks about methods of grouping, hi-lighting, or restricting the updates that he gets to only see the most relevant. See ”Fake Following” to avoid information overload in social networks

Personally I’m not just interested in restricting connections’ updates, but also in highlighting the updates of others. There are a few people who I want to stay in touch with but often don’t notice amidst all the noise (on Twitter, Facebook or Flickr, for instance).

Another feature on FriendFeed’s beta would help with my situation: grouping. Grouping allows you to display the updates from a specific group of connections, and no one else. Unfortunately Facebook and Twitter are where I’m most interested in this capability.

What do you think? Is it possible, is it meaningful, to follow 1,000 posters on Twitter?

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5fxvkn. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

I found this little piece of wisdom at Behance Magazine, and felt that it needed a bit more exploration: Tip: References Are Overrated from Behance Magazine

Behance did a very unscientific study of how we use our own reference items. Over the past three years, we have accumulated 4 faux-leather-bound plastic sleeve books full of magazine cut-outs, printouts, and book excerpts on creative people. The first thing we found was dust.

It seems that these invaluable references were not as valuable as they appeared. While we plan to someday flip through them, we seldom do. In the age of Google and some kick-ass blogs, we tend to turn to the mighty might web for information. What is the point of keeping 600 reference items if you seldom refer to them? If you are bored or need to be inspired, and the internet connection is down, then maybe…

When Reference Items are Used Well
However, there was one book that had no dust and was centrally located in our office. “Take-Out Menus” was a compilation of restaurants in the area. It seems that the title for this collection of reference items was specific enough to make the collection useful. If we had titled the collection “Random Mailings” and included the other coupons and marginally helpful items we receive in the mail, then we would probably refer to the collection less frequently. The lesson: tag or title each reference file with a SPECIFIC name, rather than something generic.

No, the lesson is that the staff at Behance Magazine are saving and filing the wrong things. Yes, tagging and titling are important, but like the author says collecting info on “creative people” from magazines and books is kind of silly when this info lives on the web. It is when that info can not be found on the web that it needs to be saved.

I would also recommend to the staff at Behance that they do an annual review each year, and purge or archive those types of files and materials that they do not use or need anymore. Letting things like clippings, books and magazines pile up just causes mental and physical clutter that reduces personal and team productivity.

What are your thoughts on saving things for reference? Do you have a big stack of magazines that you never look at?

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/6aucgk. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen

I have found some great information at Toolkit.com for Setting Up the Home Office

The area of your home where you operate your business — your workplace — will have an impact on the success of your business venture. To make sure that this impact is positive, you will need to organize it so that it becomes an efficient tool of your business. Your workplace should encourage productivity when you deal with customers or clients, suppliers, family, friends and neighbors, and yourself!

Setting up such a work-conducive area requires wise choices of business and communication equipment and information sources, as well as accommodation to local zoning and other restrictions. And to avoid having your workplace unduly drain business profits that may not yet be there, this should all be done on a tight budget. Take a close look at:

* defining your work area
* equipping your home office
* home office safety

If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/59ytoq. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen