Anne Taintor and all her wit

By now, you have to know of my love for sticky notes, notepads, notebooks and anything related to writing a note. I prefer handwritten notes in any capacity, than those written electronically. I have a moderate obsession with notes; however, after a recent discovery of a new notepad designer, that obsession has reached a new level.



After 3M, my favorite note designer is Anne Taintor. Her products are absolutely hysterical. My good friend turned me on to her when she sent me postcards that were designed by Anne Taintor, then she started sending me notepads and my life had taken a turn for the best.
This is the first notepad I received, so eloquently stating “Just file it under “who cares?””:



Some more of my favorites from my good friend, Anne Taintor and her collection titled “Modern Office Revisited”:



The simple pleasures, like witty notepads, that give me a smile on the toughest days are worth every penny.
Anne Taintor’s products can be found on her website: www.annetaintor.com and in specialty stores or boutiques across the country.




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Take Back Your Life with Microsoft Office 2007

I have recently begun employing a new work organization model. After my to-do list continued to grow and grow and grow I was compensating by working long, long days – getting up earlier every morning, working in the evenings and even on weekends, I decided that this is not a healthy lifestyle choice I wish to continue making.



Though I have a wide-range of natural organizational skills, it is still sometimes enlightening or groundbreaking to read books or articles about organizational strategies that have been successful for other people. One book I am just getting into is called “Take Back Your Life with Microsoft Office 2007.” The main idea of the book is becoming far more organized in your daily work routines by prioritizing and scheduling out your time efficiently and effectively. My hope of a takeaway from this book is to be able to be more productive in 8-9 hours per day than I was in 9-11 hours per day.

You can bear witness to me surrendering my old habits and bowing down to a new work organization model. I will accomplish my priorities in a smaller amount of time and really be able to focus and work towards my daily objectives, which I will spend time each morning outlining.

I will continue to write more about how my office organization is taking off, as well as what you can do to make your work-life more organized.

P.S.: I heard a great interview question recently that I am going to start asking: “Describe the organizational style of your sock drawer.” There’s a freebee if you ever interview with me!

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Online Document Management

I am always looking for new ideas for storing files on my computer. I have a very meticulous organizational system of my documents; however, there are several inter-office documents that I refer to regularly and share with several members of my work team. I recently looked into Google Docs, as well as a few other document sharing websites and think I have found the Golden Ticket.




Check out Google Docs at: www.docs.google.com and you can see for yourself how great it is.

Why I like Google Docs: it is so easy to share documents and for others to make amendments to those documents without having to e-mail them back and forth, as well as the document that is on the screen is always live. You can control if other people can edit the document or if they can just view it.

Ideas for what to share on Google Docs:

• Spreadsheets
• Inter-office documents or information
• Travel plans and documentations
• Event logistics

How to upload & share a doc:
• Visit www.docs.google.com
• Log in (you don’t have to have a gmail/google account – you can use whatever e-mail address you have) or create a log in.
• Click “upload” on the upper left-hand side
• Click “select file to upload”
• Select the file you wish to upload
• Click “start upload”
• Click “share” and insert the e-mail addresses of friends/colleagues you want to share with
• Determine if the people you’re sharing with can view or edit the document(s)
• Save & close – and you’re set!
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New Year, New Resolutions

Wow, has it really been almost 5 months since I’ve last written? In those last 5 months my time has been really precious. I can come up with every excuse in the book for why I haven’t written, but the best one is that I didn’t make time to write. Really, I sit in front of my computer for 8-10+ hours at work, and why would I want to come home and only sit in front of my computer again? Well, read on to hear about my new years’ resolutions as they relate to you.



2009 was a great year for me. I got a new job followed by a promotion, which I love; I had three powder ski days and took a ski trip to Deer Valley and Whistler; I found out the hard way I am allergic to shellfish – but am forever grateful that I have remained very healthy throughout and even lost 8 pounds! With all of that and much, much more, 2009 has been one of the busiest years ever. I had to put new systems into practice in my own life and would love to share some things that have worked well for me and some things that have not worked out so well. At three days into the New Year, I have much anticipation that 2010 will be about 4 times busier than last year.

In the last 4-5 months or so my job became a lot busier. During that busy, stressful time I learned a lot about myself, what I do to control stress and how to manage my time more efficiently and the ways that work best for me to organize and use my time efficiently. In the next several posts I will be writing both about some new years’ resolutions I made with regard to organization of my life, as well as writing about being more productive in the workplace.

Effective immediately I will be limiting my workday to 9 hours at the most per day, which means that I will have to be extra productive, use my time in the most efficient manner and prioritize. More to follow in another post… My home life will need to become a little more planned, also. Instead of exhausting myself during the workday and coming home at 8:00, fixing dinner and vegetating on the couch in front of HGTV I will be coming home promptly by 5:30 whenever possible and making the most out of my evenings at home, either sitting in front of the computer writing my beloved blog, working on growing (ok, starting) my calligraphy business, reading a book for fun, exercising, spending some time outside, getting things done around the house, productively running errands, or preparing a delicious and healthy dinner. Of course there is much more that encompasses my life than that, but I am focusing on the organizational elements of maximizing my time at work and at home in order to fulfill my responsibilities and routines.

The last 4-5 months have been very enlightening for me. I feel like I’m actually a real person living in the real world now that I have seen the stress and heavy work-load that I did. This makes me even more equipped to write this blog.

I am so excited for the new and exciting challenges that this New Year will bring. I look forward to sharing with you how I deal with the organizational challenges and dilemmas I face along the way.

Cheers!

-Alison

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