Now that the kids are all back at school and reinstalled in their daily educational routine, you should consider some opportunities for your own development.
September is fast becoming the new New Year – a time where people’s thoughts turn to improving how they work. Now that the hazy days of summer are gone, you can refocus on your productivity with some practical process enhancements.
There’s still time to work on this year’s resolutions before 2017 comes around, so we’ve rounded up some of the best tips and tricks that you can implement easily and see results fast.
Email enlightenment
If, like most people, you have an overflowing inbox of unread messages and replies not sent, you’ve probably tried every email productivity trick under the sun. Our most recent discovery comes from the visionary CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh and it’s quite a simple trick that he calls Yesterbox.
Check out Tony’s Yesterbox manifesto and his 10 key techniques to get on the path to better email management.
Content marketing contentment
We know that content marketing is a relentless beast that needs constant feeding. So how do you stay on top of everything and make sure you’re producing consistently great content without burning out by Black Friday?
CoSchedule’s Devin Joubert believes a content management workflow process is the key to managing priorities and shares 11 tips that will take your productivity through Thanksgiving and beyond.
The path to a creative culture
You may have a great content management strategy in place but now you need to fill with, y’know, really great creative content. The best place to start is to ensure your company has creativity running through its veins, much like renowned animation studio, Pixar.
Check out the three things that Pixar president Ed Catmull says you need to build truly creative teams.
More creative, less process
Creativity isn’t just about having ideas. The most difficult part is bringing them to life through the back-and-forth process of creative collaboration, which is often where great ideas become bad realities.
But there are great tools that will help you take some of the pain out of the creative process and produce great content every time. Hightail’s Mike Trigg outlines his four favorite collaboration apps.
Channel your content
Once you’ve got that piece of content to completion and you’re ready to publish, do you stick with the same tried’n’tired channel? You know – your blog.
2017 will be the year of going beyond the blog so get ahead of the trend with Impact’s 4 Trendy Content Channels you need to start exploring.
Change to a winning formula
You might wonder whether all this is worth the effort. Is focusing on productivity actually just a form of procrastination from real work? If a process runs fine, why change it up?
Well, according to Charles Duhigg, bestselling author of The Power of Habit, highly productive people actively look to change their processes and systems on a regular basis. Time for you to join them.
Those are our favorite process tips to try out over the coming weeks and months. How are you taking your workflow back to school? Tweet using #CreateBetter or leave a comment below.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Especially this one will hopefully remember me to bring good ideas to life.
“Creativity isn’t just about having ideas. The most difficult part is bringing them to life through the back-and-forth process of creative collaboration, which is often where great ideas become bad realities.”