Ashley Chiasson, M.Ed

Instructional Designer & Consultant

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3 Ways to Improve Your Workflow

Any small business owner (and I would hazard to say employee) wants to be efficient in what they do; dragging tasks out is no fun, and our to do lists will thank us if we take steps to improve our workflow. Here are three suggestions:

1. Streamline

Some people call this using shortcuts or cutting corners, and that’s not right. Your goal is to streamline your workflow and make it more efficient. Not to cut out key steps. In any event, you can easily streamline your workflow by using to do list applications (or writing them out on paper), prioritizing these items, and focusing on the task at hand. If you work within software for much of your day, learn the shortkeys and use them whenever you’re using the product – trust me, it will save you so much time. Those seconds add up! Use a project management tool – believe me, it will save you SO MUCH administrative time (because I know I don’t like being stuck in the administrative trenches).

2. Remove Distractions

This might seem obvious, but a lot of people can take a quick break that turns into a 45 minute rabbity hole into the Internet. Pause your inbox, close all irrelevant (to work) browser windows, or even turn off your wifi access! You’d be surprised how effective removing distractions can help when trying to focus and cross items off your to do list. If you have a beagle, don’t schedule important conference calls on garbage day. If you have a beagle, maybe you just need to work at a cafe. Regardless of your beagle status, you should ensure you have a dedicated and quiet workspace.

3. Create a Calm Workspace

I’m guilty of not doing this 100% of the time, but I do find myself to be a lot more productive when I’m feeling relaxed. Ensure you start your day with a clean and (somewhat) organized workspace. At home, I like to brew a pot of herbal tea, use dim lighting (I have a table lamp with 40 watt bulb), and light a scented candle. I tend to vary between Mellow playlists on Songza and ambient sounds as background noise, but I do whatever I can to just zone out and feel inner calm. You already have deadlines, your workspace doesn’t need to be a stressor!

E-Learning Challenge #67 – How Do Instructional Designers Work?

Alright folks – I’m riding on a high over here because my VERY FIRST BOOK (!!!!) just became available for pre-order (GET ON THAT!) – EEEE! You’ll have to be patient with me and not judget the abundance of exclamation points. Some buzz on Twitter had me worried for this challenge, but then when I found out it was a podcast challenge, I WAS SO EXCITED!!! I love the podcast challenges. It makes me feel so much closer to my friends (aka the e-learning community).

The Challenge

This week’s challenge was to record answers to the following questions:

  1. What’s your job title? What title do you think really captures your roles and responsibilities?
  2. What software tools do you love?
  3. What’s your workspace setup like?
  4. What is your creative or design philosophy?
  5. How do you stay fresh and keep building your skills?
  6. How do you avoid burnout?
  7. How do you save time and boost your efficiency day-to-day?
  8. How do you manage your workflow? Do you have a project management tool you love?
  9. What books or blogs have been influential to you?
  10. What kinds of tasks do you love to do? What gets you excited to sit down at your desk?
  11. What do you like to do least? How do you keep yourself motivated to do that stuff?

The Method

I wrote out all of my responses in notepad because I’m not great at winging it, and then I recorded and edited each response in Camtasia, exported, and uploaded to Sound Cloud – EASY PEASY!

The Result

E-Learning Challenge #66 – Creative Invoice Designs for Course Designers

This week’s challenge entry is probably my least imaginative, but I’m not feeling 100% and I gave it a go anyhow. For 2015, I’ve resolved to try to be less hard on myself.

The Concept

This week we were tasked with sharing a creative example of an invoice or invoice template. Invoices – exciting! No, but really…if you’re doing any sort of independent work, you need to have some sort of invoice or else you run the risk of not getting paid (or having a harder time getting your ducks in a row come tax time).

The Method

I developed two examples, one of which only involved modifying the information on my current invoice template for my own small business. The other was modified based on a word invoice template I found awhile back. Neither are particularly wow-ing, but they get the job done, and I can tell you first-hand that my first example gets me paid. Effective? I’d say so!

Both invoices were created in Microsoft Word and then saved as a PDF format.

The Result

Screen Shot 2015-01-21 at 8.31.47 AM

View the Full PDF Here.

Screen Shot 2015-01-21 at 10.18.46 AM

View the Full PDF Here.

Terminology Tuesday: 45/15 Rule

I am no stranger to procrastination…by any stretch. So much so, that I tend to factor procrastination into my workflow and feel as though I produce better work under pressure…probably not true, but I’ll let myself believe it. Whatever you choose to believe, you should make an effort (like I do) to be more productive. That’s why I subscribe to the 45/15 rule!

The 45/15 Rule

The 45/15 rule is a great model for productive workflow (in my opinion) because it encourages you to break up each hour into 45 minutes of productive work and 15 minutes of procrastination, distraction, or time spent otherwise not working. For me, this rule works really well because I see it as a challenge – how many pages can I write in 45 minutes? How many emails can I respond to in 45 minutes? How much of a course can I author in 45 minutes? And then, I reward myself by 1 – ticking items off my to do list and 2 – watching cat videos or surfing social media for 15 minutes!

This rule helps me channel my productivity while still allowing me to indulge in the procrastination I’ve grown to love and appreciate (and whom I have nurtured for many years).

If it helps, you can use an alarm – I did this at first. However, I tend to find the actual alarm sound to be jarring, so I’ve opted to calculate my hour by using even hours on my clock.

Resources

A Little Doodle Love

So, a few months back (gosh…it’s been many months, actually), I purchased The Doodle Revolution on recommendation from many e-learning professionals. I have yet to finish it, but largely because I did a lot of the reading, but not as much of the exercises. Anyhow, the book is amazingly well-written and is not about making you good at drawing. It’s about making you think differently and communicate in a more visual manner. It’s awesome!

However, as I previously mentioned, it’s been slow-going because I’ve been wanting to do the exercises and haven’t been particularly motivated to do so…that is until I discovered Pencil and Paper by Fifty-Three. Pencil is a stylus type of tool, and is meant to work with the app Paper (free). Last night my Pencil arrived and I promptly had my husband download the app on his iPad. I asked him what he wanted me to draw, and I ended up drawing this cat as my very first doodle:

Drawing_1

IT WAS SO MUCH FUN! I cannot quite explain (except in all-caps) just how friggin’ fun it was to make that doodle. I didn’t need to be good at drawing. All of the tools I needed and colours I needed were there. I didn’t need a desk full of implements and other crap to choose from. I just needed to DO IT. My favourite feature is the watercolour option; it makes all of my artistic endeavours seem that much more artistic. Now my motivation for completing the exercises in The Doodle Revolution have been reinvigorated, and I’m excited to get moving!

In any event…I just wanted to share these products by Fifty-Three with you (they aren’t paying me to tell you how awesome they are), because my husband and I honestly had the most fun in recent memory sitting beside each other and making silly drawings (his is less silly and more realistic, but it was so much fun)! Definitely check it out; I’ve added these items to my Resources page.

E-Learning Challenge #65: E-Learning Makeovers – Designing a Unified Template

After a couple of weeks of relaxation (thanks, David!), this week’s challenge was to develop a unified template, and I really enjoyed developing this interaction. It gave me a break from my regular workload, and now I’m feeling a bit more inspired.

The Concept

Use three different templates to develop a unified template. The templates could either come from something existing you had kicking around on your hard drive, from somewhere online, or from the Articulate Downloads site.

The Method

The three templates I chose to use were:

Using the Clean Resume Template as a jumping off point, I changed the colour scheme, deleted most of the navigation elements, replaced them with accordion blocks from the Accordion Template, and added some headers, using the ball icons from Storyline 2 Icon-Based Template.

It was pretty easy to put together, and definitely practical.

The Result

Screen Shot 2015-01-14 at 9.30.22 AM

To view the full interaction, Click Here.

To download this Free Resume Template, Click Here.