Tag Archives: Productivity

Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

How To Easily Create An Efficient Workspace

The more efficient you are, the more effective you are.  That’s true whether you’re working from the office or from home.

Fortunately, most office environments lend themselves to being efficient, so there’s probably not much you need to do on that front. So, the tips below are aimed mostly at those who are working from home.

Having said that, if you want to try and squeeze out a bit more efficiency from your office setup, you can certainly apply these ideas there too!

1 – A second monitor

One thing that’s true about modern work life is that it’s complicated.  On any given day, depending on what you do for a living, you need to access a stunning range of online resources.  So many in fact, that it can be a little overwhelming.

The advent of tabbed browsing has helped somewhat. However, if you find yourself having to access your email system, several locations on your company’s network, and several online applications during  a typical workday, having a second monitor can be a real lifesaver.  Consider it a matter of “dividing and conquering” digital style.

2 – Remove distractions

This is a big one for anyone working from home.  Most offices are inherently designed to minimize distractions. If you’re working from home and have decided to set up shop at the kitchen table, you could find your work day to be absolutely riddled with distractions.

Far better than the kitchen table would be a seldom used spare room if you have one.  A place you can go and shut the door as needed so you can focus on the task at hand.  If that’s not possible, then communication with and understanding from your family is key so they know that when you’re working, you’re working.

3 – A visually interesting space

Our minds don’t tolerate monotony and drudgery very well.  Most people need at least a splash of color to make a space visually interesting to work at something close to peak efficiency.

That will take different forms for different people.  Some might be enchanted by the idea of a small deskside plant.  Others will want a visually interesting picture on the wall or on their desk.  Find your thing.  Find that component that puts your mind at ease and add it to your work environment.  You’ll be amazed at the results!

Efficiency is as much about organization as it is a state of mind.  Both of those elements need to be working in tandem if you want to maximize your efficiency and your productivity.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Conflict Resolution In The Workplace

Conflict in the workplace is sadly inevitable.  Put a group of people in a room together for eight hours or longer every day, week after week. No matter how well they get along, sooner or later, it’s going to happen.

Since it can’t be completely avoided, the next best thing is to have a plan for when it occurs. That’s because if left unaddressed, employee conflicts can ruin morale and permanently damage your company’s culture.  Simply put, letting conflicts in the workplace fester is a very bad idea. The question is what can be done about it?

You’re in luck!  Just below, we’ll outline a few simple things you can do to resolve workplace conflicts before they get out of hand and cause lasting damage to your company.

1 – Address It Head On

When you see two of your employees feuding, they will most likely be sniping at each other with barbs or insults and it may be either in person or via email. No matter what, it is important to address it right away.

Meet with all the participants of the conflict and find out what’s behind it.  There are only two possibilities here and it’s either personal or it’s professional.

2 – How You Address It Matters

In the case of personal differences driving the conflict, you can likely just meet with both parties at the same time.  Sit them down and remind them to keep the personal stuff out of the office.

If it’s professional, it may be best to meet with each side separately so you can get each party’s side of the story and assess from there. Then, involve HR at that point if necessary.

3 – Listen and Seek Input

After hearing from the parties involved about what’s driving the conflict, ask each of them how they’d like to see the issue resolved.

Sometimes, nothing comes from this when both parties may have unrealistic expectations. However, more often than you might think, a solution presents itself from that conversation.

There are several other things you can do to help resolve workplace conflicts, but if you do nothing more than adopt the suggestions above, you’ll be miles ahead of most managers!

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Conduct More Effective Meetings With These Simple Tips

Do the meetings you hold tend run off the rails?

Do you find that they frequently run far longer than you intended and that very little actually comes out of them?

If those things are true and if you’re looking for ways to improve the structure of your meetings, here are some quick tips that will help make them more effective:

1 – Consider Your Attendees Carefully

Unless someone’s presence is essential at any given meeting, don’t send them an invite.  Keep the circle as small as possible.  The fewer people, the easier it is to keep the meeting on track.

2 – Laser-Like Focus

Create an agenda for the meeting and stick to it.  Don’t try to do too much.  Focus on one item or two at the most and then hammer out the details and move on.

3 – Prompt Follow-Up

The first two items on this list will practically guarantee that your meeting time is shorter but it won’t necessarily guarantee that the meeting itself was fruitful and productive.

For that, you need quick follow ups, and part of the content of the meeting should be to set aggressive timetables on when deliverables are due.

Once those timeframes are set, it’s on you to follow up and make sure that everybody’s on track and the deliverables will be wherever they need to be by the agreed upon time.

If you adopt these strategies, you may find that you’ll have relatively more meetings than you’re having right now.  The good news is that those meetings will tend to be short, tightly focused, and productive.  In other words, they’ll simply be more effective meetings and at the end of the day, that’s exactly what you want!

Try it and see for yourself.  If you put these tips in practice during your next meeting, you’ll be amazed at the difference.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Organizing May Become Easier With New Google App

Just in time for tax season, Google has released a new app called Stack for Android devices. Stack is functionally similar to a Microsoft app called Lens, which was originally released for use with Windows phones, but has since found a home on the Play Store.

The purpose of the app is to help get (and keep) users organized.

You can scan your bills and receipts with the app, which automatically crops and sharpens them. Stack also uses text scanning capabilities that very much play to Google’s core strengths to single out important details like due dates and total amounts due. It can even categorize and organize your paperwork into similar groups called, predictably enough, stacks.

As with Google’s search engine, the Stack app’s organizational capabilities are impressive, but they’re not perfect. So the app will undoubtedly make a mistake here and there. Even given this, however, it’s a fantastic and free way you can keep your important papers organized, which will make things much easier when it comes time to file those annual taxes.

Even better, it’s got a backup function that’s tied to Google’s cloud drive service, so if you have an account, you won’t ever have to worry about losing track of your receipts. If they somehow vanish from your phone, you’ll be able to pull copies of what you need from your cloud drive.

Best of all, the little app is surprisingly secure. You can augment that even further by enabling biometric sign-in on the phone, so that no one can access your documents unless they scan your fingerprint in.

It’s a good app, and well worth downloading and experimenting with. Kudos to Google for offering up something genuinely useful, especially at this time of year when tax preparation efforts are giving a great many people heartburn and headaches. Download your copy from the Play Store today.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Google Fixed The White Screen Issue On Chrome

Google recently found itself in hot water with corporate IT administrators for rolling out a feature designed to help prolong battery life. The new feature accomplished its mission, but it had an unintended consequence that left Enterprise IT personnel furious.

The feature is called “WebContent Occlusion,” and the idea is simple.

If a user has multiple browser tabs open, only the content of the tab currently being viewed will be displayed.  All other tabs will be “whited out” until a user clicks on a different tab, at which point, the old tab will be “whited out” and the content of the new tab will be rendered. Data that’s not being actively viewed simply doesn’t get rendered, which extends battery life.

Unfortunately, in some Enterprise environments, it caused things to go haywire.  In particular, it proved to be a problem in organizations running terminal server environments like Windows Terminal Server or Citrix. In those cases, if any user locked his or her workstation to step away from the computer, the update caused the displays of all other users currently logged in to also have their screens whited out until the user returned to unlock his or her workstation.

Of course, in any large organization with scores, or even hundreds of people making use of such a system, someone was always locking their computer to get up from their desk, which essentially ground the entire system to a halt.

Most IT managers run pretty tight ships and don’t allow updates or new applications onto the network without thorough testing.  They were categorically furious that Google was able to introduce this change without informing anyone, and that it slipped past their change control and monitoring systems, catching them by surprise.

Google has since backed the change out, so the issue should now be resolved for all users.  Even so, it’s fair to say that the incident gave Google a black eye where system admins are concerned.

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