Become a Productivity Specialist

I always keep looking for opportunities to be more effective. I am going to share a few things I have done in this area in last few months. You can see whether you can apply them to your personal experience.

Though I am not a developer by profession, I have learned web development skills. This helped me a lot in implementing simple web based tools that improved my team's productivity. I applied these skills not only at work but in other areas also. I volunteer for a non profit organization and I used my little knowledge to implement very effective online tools.

• I developed a web based issue and task tracking system for my team. It took me very little time but helped team to be more effective. Issues can be logged and updated using web forms and e-mail notifications ensure communication is proper
• I designed and enhanced intranet website for team and implemented simple features that allow efficiency. I built a notification tool whenever a new document is posted on the intranet site. I know there are tools which enable this. Instead of going through a
• I recently upgraded my Office 2000 system to Office XP. In general Microsoft Office system boasts of productivity improvement with each new version. After upgrading I spent enough time to go through What's new in the new system and how to make use of them. Examples of features in Office XP I found useful are

  Outlook does auto fill of e-mail address.
  Calendar allows to highlight some meetings with color coding.
  Task reminders in Outlook come in one window instead of multiple windows which is very annoying.

What I mean being a productivity specialist

- Constantly look for opportunities to eliminate inefficiency by making improvements
- Stay on top of technology changes and implement them at the earliest opportunity
- Share the improvements you made with others. 

However good a process or technology we are using, there is always scope for improvement