Your Whiteboard – A Small Key to Business Success

There is one personality trait about myself that most of my friends and family make fun off, I’m extremely organized and clean. Mock me as much as you want, I may like my cereal boxes in order of size, my house ornaments always in the same exact spot and my shirts color coordinated in my closet… but my organization has been one of my biggest assets when its come to every single job I’ve had in my life. Yes a clean desk will boost your productivity as well as a nicely organized filing cabinet, but there’s one tool that I have used for many years that has been the secret of my success… my whiteboard! To-do lists, reminders, deadlines, calendars, we all have our different ways of organizing our work days, a whiteboard does it all for me and here’s why:

- Whiteboards are open, they’re free and they can be used for yourself or in a group. Working in a large advertising agency it was important for me to do a quick “status” with my team every morning, the whiteboard was our world, 5 minutes together in front of it gave us that boost to get going with all pending matters of the day.

- We had a name for my board, “The D List”, she was our guide, our daily reminder, our friend. Give your whiteboard a funny title or a personality, it helps you make it part of your team.

- Brainstorming as a group or on your own can become a real headache, if you have a huge whiteboard, dedicate part of it to brainstorming. I’m a creative person, I use drawings, notes, boxes, or whatever helps me get those creative juices flowing. Once I’m done, I have all the scribbles that remind me of the many ideas when I need to narrow them down into a written report.

- Now my lists sometimes became way too long so I came up with a system where I had a small list of no more than 3 general goals. Then I had shorter lists per day, per project and even some weekly and monthly lists, all in order of importance. If by chance I got sidetracked during my day, I could easily look over and remind myself of what needed to be done that day.

- I’m a geek at heart and I do my best to be as green as possible in anything I do. My whiteboard together with my computer, they help me save on paper.

- A daily job that forces you to pull 12 to 14 hour days can become a little unbearable, my whiteboard was a great outlet to be creative. People would come by the office and leave little notes and messages, we’d post funny photos of each other or add post-it notes to our chores… anything to bring a little fun to the day.

- I once had this great little book full of positive quotes for women, I got into the habit of looking for a quote every day and applying it to my life, I’d repeat it, tweet it and post it. Eventually I began to add my quotes to my whiteboard and people began to walk by every morning just to ready my daily quote.

- What’s the next best thing after having a great whiteboard? Having a big set of colored whiteboard markers! Color coding your lists and chores helped me organize myself visually, I could take a quick glance at my board and find exactly what I needed… they were fun for brainstorming too!

- Last but not least, the best thing about my whiteboard was crossing off pending matters. Once Friday arrived, looking at many chores crossed off gave me a great feeling of satisfaction before going off for the weekend!

If you need more great tools and resources for your business, whether it’s a startup or not, I invite you to review “The 12 Roads to Success – How to Start a Business”. This will give you a step by step blueprint on how to build your business and become successful at it. Learn more at How To Start A Business