As a sole practitioner in your Reiki practice, it is important to effectively manage your productivity so that you can undertake all of the tasks you need to do in your business. Increasing your productivity helps improve your work output and reduce frustrations by identifying time wasting activities.

Productivity tools can also help automate tasks to save time. In a digital environment, productivity tools can be accessed across multiple platforms such as our computers and mobile devices, as well as allowing access to third parties.

Productivity tools can eliminate redundant manual work. Productivity tools can also provide analytics which can assess our task effectiveness so make necessary changes to our work tasks.

Increasing productivity can improve the financial outcomes in your Reiki practice through eliminating unnecessary expenses.

Productivity tasks can be identified by four main categories that summarize the type of work tasks that we undetake. In this blog post wee provide a list of 10 tools to help improve productivity within each category.

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There are 4 main types of productivity often referred to by productivity specialists. These include:

• Idea Generation – the strategies to determine the services and products that you sell in your business. Record your initial ideas and then organize them into a structure so that you can execute your ideas.
• Idea Execution – occurs once you’ve generated your ideas. Productivity tools can help implement the tasks required to operate your art therapy practice.
• Measurement – this refers to measuring the effectiveness of your ideas. Measuring your idea execution should be automated so that you can focus your time on assessing the effectiveness of your ideas. For example, generating automated expense reports so that you aren’t wasting time sorting through unorganized paperwork to assess your expenses.
• Motivation – motivation is an important component of productivity. Productivity tools can provide mood boosting activities or help facilitate habit forming activities.

Below is a summary of the most useful tools based on each type of productivity:

IDEA GENERATION

• Trello – organises your projects and tasks into boards using cards. It is great for users who like to view their projects visually. Available as a web application tool to use across all devices.
• Pocket – you can save articles, videos and most media into Pocket. You can save from your web browser, your email and from over 1500+ apps.

IDEA EXECUTION

• Evernote – is used as a writing tool, however, it can be used in a planning capacity. Evernote’s organization system is based on notebooks with each notebook containing notes. Available as a web application tool to use across all devices.
• IFTTT – is an automation tool that provides a communication channel between your software, tools and apps. The name is an abbreviation for If This Then That. For eg, IF I post an article to my blog, THEN, share it to my Twitter Page.
• Wunderlist – is a web-based to do list. You can create an actionable list that doesn’t require complex task managing. Useful features include reminders, sharing and copying. You can also email and print your lists if you want to work with a physically printed list during the day.

MEASUREMENT

• Stay Focusd – is a productivity extension for Google Chrome that helps you stay focused on work by restricting the amount of time you can spend on time-wasting websites.
• Excel – is used for numeric data and calculations, however, it can also be used as a useful planning and scheduling tool. This is because of its structure using rows and columns which will allow you to easily enter and manipulate data.
• Daily Planner – If you like the idea of using an offline tool to record and measure your productivity, then you might be interested in a planner. Most planners come pre-designed to follow a specific daily, weekly or monthly format for planning.

MOTIVATION

• Pomodoro Apps – is a method of time management that suggests working in limited periods followed by a short break. This process of a work period followed by a break is called 1 Pomodoro. Ideally, you will repeat this Pomodoro pattern approximately 4 times and then take a longer break of approximately 30 mins.
• Headspace – taking breaks is an important part of staying productive. Your idea of a break should not involve looking at other work tasks or checking email or social media. Ideally, your breaks will involve some kind of mental relaxation techniques or physical movement if you have been sitting for a long time. One suggestion is to use a quick meditation session to facilitate deep breathing and mental downtime.

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Evernote products in the store:

• Blogging Package for Evernote
• Course Planner Package for Evernote 
• Reiki Practice Admin Package for Evernote