New Year's Resolution Ideas

Celebrating the New Year with your church family can be a fun way to ring in the new year. It's also a safe way to spend it with the people whom you care about the most (family and church family/friends). By getting the young people in your church and some adults involved, you can ring in the new year safely while still having plenty of fun.

I have compiled together some New Year's Resolution Ideas for improving church or personal office productivity in this newsletter. This is great way to start off the new year.

I have decided to keep running the Christmas/New Year Special for Shepherdbase (Church Membership Database) of $29.99 through the end of January 2011. You can click here or see below for more information regarding Shepherdbase. I'm hoping more churches will take advantage of this special to help organize their church office and productivity. Shepherdbase will give you an easier and more convenient way to track church members and their contributions and more.

Contents-At-A-Glance

New Year's Resolution to Improve Office Productivity
Making a New Year's Resolution List
"Top Ten Tips on How to Organize Your Office" eBook
Freechurchforms.com Table of Contents
New Free Church Forms Web Pages
Shepherdbase & Bonus

New Year's Resolution to Improve Office Productivity

If you work from home, the central part of your work life is the home office. For some, that means the kitchen table, but most of us assign a specific room to be the base of operations and (try to) do our work from there each day.

With this in mind we must take into consideration strategy before tactics, it stands to reason that we should make it a room we enjoy being in, and a room that gets us in a productive mood, and by considering these things provide a strategic framework we can apply in the office.

What puts you in a productive mood?

If you can't identify the things that trigger a productive mood for you, then you'll have a tough time improving your work space on anything more than a cosmetic level. Spend some time on this and get it right! Here are some ideas that works for me:

• Get some good tunes going. Get some high-quality speakers for your computer and have specific tunes for different kinds of work and concentration levels. Statistics say that listening to music while working and studying gives you a boost in productivity, creativity and memory retention.
• Keep a distraction around, but out of the way.It's important to have distractions around. When you take a break, doing something that is just for fun can help you wipe mental RAM and begin afresh when you return to work. Remember though you have to keep them out of reach and out of sight when working because you might end of spending more time distracted and playing than actually working (been there done that). Hide them, or develop serious self-discipline (I hide them).
• Never be without a way to quickly catch an idea. There has been times that I've had a sudden idea and by the time I could get MS Word open, the idea was completely gone (until I upgraded my RAM!). Always make sure that if you have an idea, you can get it down immediately - straight away. Your home office is where you're most likely to get in the head-space of your work and produce new ideas, so not having an immediately accessible idea receptacle is unproductive.
• Upgrade your computer RAM. This is very important if you can afford to do so. The time you save not having to wait on your computer to upload is very valuable time. Make sure you have plenty of RAM to keep your computer running fast and smoothly and this will indeed increase your productivity.
• Use your work space to hack your brain into focusing. What's the first thing you do when you sit down to write? Open your word program? Go browsing? Then you need to hack your brain into focusing.

  I recommend doing email at the beginning of the day, but you're the kind of person who should do email at the end of the day do whatever works best for you. Just set aside boundries and a firm daily routine.

• Get a plant. Plants are a way to create a much more pleasant oxygen variety and livens up the office. If you don't have plants then open a window where you can see the beautiful green grass, trees, garden.
• Lighting and color. Okay I have to agree that the color of the walls in a room can influence your mood and mindset.

  If your office walls have been painted with an aggravating color, re-paint it. Find a color that puts you in a relaxed, productive mood and paint it. One room doesn't cost very much to paint, but if you rent, please ask first!

• Declutter. Even if you are anti-minimalist, you should declutter. Clutter is defined as distracting material, including mess. Nothing could be worse for your mental state than living and operating in a mess.

  Anything you don't use on a daily basis should be put away in filing cabinet, etc. and organized, and anything you don't use should be thrown away.

• Get away from office. You can improve your productivity by leaving your office once in a while! Go to Starbucks or your favorite department store for an hour then come back and hit it hard - very refreshing!
• Do what makes you happy. This works for me, but may not for you. That's fine - experiment until you find what works for you. The important thing is that you're happy, relaxed and motivated in your work space, and that you never stop trying to make it better, because it'll never really be a 100% optimal place to work.
• Find software that simplifies your work. Last but not least find whatever software you can afford or create one to help simplify your everyday work tasks. If it can save you any time out of your day it's worth checking out. If you are looking for an affordable database that will track church members and their contributions and more you can click here to see more information on Shepherdbase (Church Membership Database).

Making a New Year's Resolution List

Here are some steps to come up with your best resolution list:

• Think of all your good qualities and bad qualities. Write down the good ones on a sheet of paper and the bad ones on a separate sheet of paper. Ask input from other people as well. You may be doing some things that look bad or may be offensive to other people without realizing it.
• Summarize your qualities. Take the sheet of paper with all your qualities and group all the similar characteristics under one category. Example: Lose some weight, eat healthier...then you can choose which is the higher priority.
• Rank the groups of qualities. Rank the groups according to how much you want to change or improve each of them. The list should be ranked according to how important they are to you. Don't allow others to influence your judgement as this change should come from within.
• Helping others. Choose from your list of good qualities and see what you can use to help other people. You may spend more time in charity work or you may choose to learn or experience some new things.
• Start with only 1 or 2 resolutions. Choose only the top one or two on your list and put it into action. It's just a waste of time to make your New Year's Resolution if you don't act on it. Make sure you set a goal and stick with it until the end of the year.

"Top Ten Tips on How to Organize Your Office" eBook

This eBook is free to my newsletter customers/readers as a "Thank You" for subscribing to my newsletter. I have worked in several different secretarial areas with different jobs and I have learned the hard way how to organize more than one office. Take advantage of these tips in this free eBook and they will you to get your office organized. There will be other benefits you will find in my newsletters as time goes on so always open and read them so you don't miss out! The "Top Ten Tips on How to Organize Your Office"eBook is available to download. Just click on the link below that leads to the page where you can download and receive your free copy today.

Freechurchforms.com Table of Contents

The FreeChurchForms.com Table of Contents is available here. You now have access to more than a 180+ free church forms listed in alphabetical order. I keep it updated with new church forms as I create them. I have them in categories so that you can just click on the form you want and it will lead you to that page.

Just click on the link below for the free FCF Table Of Contents. Enjoy! :)

New Free Church Forms Web Pages

• New Year's Eve Flyers & Jesus Bingo

I will be adding to these pages and adding new web pages as time goes along but I will let you know through this newsletter so don't miss an issue!

Shepherdbase has a Christmas/New Year's Special Price of only $29.99 through end of January 2011 and you will receive 2 Offering Envelope Templates free as a Bonus! Hurry and Enjoy these Savings - Happy New Year!

Shepherdbase (church membership database) will:

• Track member's information
• Track member's contributions and automates Annual Contribution Letters
• Filter church member's information with the click of a button
• Track Youth Camp Tuition/Concession

If you purchased Shepherdbase in the past and would like to receive these Offering Envelope templates free, please just contact me and I will email them to you.

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You can easily contact me through the my email: terressa@freechurchforms.com. I will get back promptly with any questions you might have. God Bless You & Happy New Year!