Tips Exchange: What productivity tools do you use in running your small business?

Posted on October 15, 2012 by Vickie Laliotis — 5 Comments ↓

Small Business Week is here, which is a good time to think about making our businesses run more smoothly. That’s why this week’s Tips Exchange is asking small business owners to share how they increase productivity.

What tools do you use to stay on track and what advice do you have for others looking to enhance their productivity?

Here’s what we’d like you to do:

1. Use the comments field below to share your tip with Capital Ideas. We will choose the best advice and publish it in the Edmonton Journal later this week. (It will look something like this.)

2. If you know an Edmonton-area business owner who would have great advice on this topic, send him or her a link to this post.

To comment, you’ll need to sign in to Disqus so we can see your face and your real name. You can sign in with Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or your name and email address. You can also reply to specific comments, or vote comments up. If you have any questions, ask us.

Want more shared expertise? Check out past Tips Exchanges.

Speaking of Small Business Week, we are pleased to be partnering with The Business Link for their Open House and Start-up Expo on Tuesday, Oct. 16. We will also be featured at Scotiabank’s Small Business Week presentation throughout the week at their downtown branch. We hope to see some of you there!

(Illustration courtesy of Robert Basil, shared under Creative Commons License.)

http://twitter.com/_aj___ Alyson Hodson

I am a firm believer that process and organization is the key to productivity. It’s not about being so process driven that you drown in it, but rather providing the tools to the people in your organization so that they can be productive. If you give them the base to work from, you increase their chances of success a great deal.
David Bailey

Book time in your calendar for production work just as you do for meetings. Stick to it and make sure this time is uninterrupted. Doing so allows for a focused, positive period of productivity.
http://twitter.com/FlourishDesignM Flourish – Melissa

For Retailers, it’s about focusing on one task at a time instead of trying to do several things at once. Often times we have the urge to try and build a display while unpacking merchandise, tidying, and helping customers. Do one thing at a time and focus on that one thing. (Of course you have to drop what you’re doing for customers, but drop it completely so you can help them in the best way possible.) You’ll find that when you’re focused, you can actually accomplish things faster.
http://twitter.com/DennisMichael_1 Dennis Michael

iCal has been my saviour. Anyone with a smartphone should be using a calendar app with alerts. Also for those who hate book keeping and need something simple, powerful and easy to use, XERO has become my best friend. I love it to pieces.
http://twitter.com/Drewforward Drew Forward

Get your checklist out of your head and on paper. If you try and memorize everything you need to do, you will likely end up forgetting some of it, and stressing out over trying to remember everything.

I had this problem before and I recommend is “Getting Things Done”:
http://www.davidco.com/about-gtd

The program I use is:
https://nirvanahq.com/

Although there are many out there that can be adapted.