What a great event the NAPO 2015 Annual Conference in Los Angeles was!

Over the last 3 days, more than 500 attendees from the USA, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Finland, the Netherlands, Nigeria and Dubai (that’s me!) soaked up the latest trends in the organisation world, exchanged tips and tricks and formed a powerful network. I’m so proud to have become part of this mighty group!

• Did you know that the average US American household contains about 300,000 items (the average European only has 10,000 items)?
• According to Joshua and Ryan from The Minimalists, the 3 most dangerous words in the English language are “Just in Case”. You keep stuff for this “just in case” but when will this “case” ever happen?
• Have you ever thought of taking the Lean Principles from your office and apply them to your home, too? Remember Julia Childs, the famous chef, drew the outline of each pot and frying pan on a peg board. She and anyone else who worked in her kitchen would easily know where everything belonged.
• Do you account for all hours in your workday? If you’re unable to identify 2 hours per day and are charging $50 per hour, this costs you $26,000 in income per year!

The conference also included an exhibition of fabulous organising tools:

SMEAD presented their colourful organising tools. Terrific for the visually oriented as well as for everyone else, simply assign a colour to a topic (e.g. blue for insurances, green for bills and red for medical records) and you can save 30% of time looking for files. Isn’t it great that research has proven the time savings for colour coding your files?!

Agni Skafidas’ SMEAD organising tools

Adam Levine from Wrapit invented this super handy gift wrap organiser. You can hang between 13 to 26 roles of gift wrapping paper and keep your ribbons and gift bags in the clear organiser, too. If you don’t want to keep it in your closet, you can also store it flat. Genius!

Me and Adam Levine

Barbara Hemphill, who was my conference buddy (how lucky was I!) and Alan Brown shared their productivity hacks. If you are stressed and need to find focus, look at some pictures of puppies. They are boosting positivity more than images of rocks, water or adult animals. Be intentional when you are working. You may not be able to get lost in your activity for the next 4 hours, so make every time slot (whether 15 minutes, ½ hour or a full hour) you have count!

Me and Barbara Hemphill

I’m looking forward to writing more about the striking insights and share them with you.

Until next time,
Agni