NAPO by the Numbers NAPO2018

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napo by the numbers

 

As the NAPO President, I have the honor of sharing the “State of NAPO” address during our Member Meeting.  This year #TeamNAPO has reached and exceeded many milestones. Together we have accomplished so much!

 

 

Media coverage by eight (8) of the most respected National media leaders

There is especially powerful media interest in NAPO this year.  Requests have flooded the HQ office from CBS Sunday Morning, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and other highly respected media leaders.  CBS Sunday morning will feature NAPO and NAPO members in the near future (exact air date to be announced).

Here’s just a sample of where NAPO is mentioned this year:

  • Wall Street Journal
  • CBS Sunday Morning (with support from our Member Survey and Stats Database)
  • Huffington Post
  • New York Times
  • Prevention Magazine
  • House Beautiful
  • Boston Globe
  • NBC News

 

5 Golden Circle Masterminds and 30 monthly Toot Your Horn posts

In the Golden Circle POINT community, we’ve learned so much from each other and celebrated each success!

 

 

30 Acceleration Learning Series Classes with more than 400 members taking these classes.

Our free classes by members for members starts this year as a download and podcast.  Thank you to our NAPO Membership Committee for keeping our classes engaging and informative!

 

 

24 Stand Out Podcasts with 5251 downloads so far for our 6 current podcasts

By the end of this year, our amazing Stand Out podcast will have 24 podcasts available to help you build and grow your business. Thank you to Sarah Karakaian and our NAPO Marketing Committee for getting our podcast  up and running.

 

 

6 membership categories in our streamlined Bylaws

This year we streamlined our NAPO Bylaws to reflect the dynamic changes going on in our industry.  Our membership includes these statistics.

  • 646 New members in past 12 months
  • 54% of membership belongs to Chapters
  • 47% of membership are Golden Circle
  • 68% of our membership are Professional Members
  • 11% of our membership are CPOs

 

 

 

1 fabulous new NAPO logo

Thank you to our Logo Task Force in creating a dynamic new image that represents NAPO.

 

 

 

26 Business Partners, including our visionary business partner members Smead and Brother

Thank you to our business partners Smead and Brother for your attendance and sponsorship at NAPO2018.  

 

 

3 specialist certificates available for our members now

Our members are prolific learners!  Here’s how many certificates we have! There are 240 members with the Residential Organizing certificate, 159 members with Workplace Productivity certificate, 12 members in just one month with the Life Transitions certificate.  And 129 members have 2 certificates and 7 have 3 certificates.

 

 

38 on demand classes and 98 Conference Recordings available on  NAPO U with 11,420 classes taken and 354 bundles sold to members

Our educational offerings are growing and growing each year, meeting the needs of our every expanding specialties and expanding our business growth.

 

 

11 Chapter Visits

Last year NAPO Board initiated a 3 year rotation for board visits. Each year board members visit 1/3 of our chapters sharing our presentation, Leveraging Your NAPO Membership. Sharing all the updates from NAPO, meeting our chapter leaders and getting to know our members is a joy for each of us.

 

 

8 Scholarship Recipients

Thank you to our scholarship committee for supporting the Barry Iszak/Glorya Schklair Scholarship.

 

 

5 Independent Research Projects

Advancing industry research is one of the four pillars of NAPO.  This year one of the five projects is the Dark Horse Project, a Harvard Graduate School of Education study, chronicling the journey people take to gain expertise in emerging professions.

 

 

 

365 days of  NAPOCares

NAPOCares is now an on-going, year-long initiative with no end in sight! The goal is to let the world know that NAPO Cares and to show how NAPO members give back to communities each and every day by sharing time, talents or treasures.

 

 

Over 41,000 POINT posts and 14000 new discussion threads with 1000 member to member referrals

If your not on POINT, it’s the place to be!  There have been over 1000 member to member referrals on POINT in Member Connect and Chapter Member Connect.

 

 

15 Monthly POINT posts for Product Push and Service Splash

We’re started a new way for our members and business partners to share their products and services. Check out these posts on the first Wednesday of the month.

 

 

2  consecutive years of balanced budgets

One of our most important values is to be fiscally responsible and sound.  In FY2015-2016 and FY2016-2017, we ended our fiscal year in the black. This year FY2017-2018 is looking good!

 

 

 

Let’s get social

NAPO uses 3 primary social media connections. There’s powerin connecting all year long! Please share, tweet, and like each and every day. Check out NAPO’s Get Organized and Be Productive Blog.  NAPO is providing content that engage everyone for public awareness and what professional organizer and productivity consultants do. This benefits you and your clients, who also get this quality content to share.  Remember to follow and share from your business accounts. For me its a way to be connected all year long and carries forward the contacts I make at our NAPO retreat and conference.

 

 

350 + Volunteers Collaborating

This is the most significant number to me! Volunteer leaders are a driving force in our industry. Our passion, commitment and expertise drive our association and fuel our leadership.  Thank you to all our member who are a part of TeamNAPO.

 

Learn more at www.napo.net

Empowering Creative Solutions for ADHD Challenges

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empowering creative solutions for ADHD

 

My clients with ADHD are brilliant and creative.  They have often found innovative solutions to some of their ADHD challenges such as being on time, managing paperwork, or eliminating tedious, boring tasks.

 

Getting to work on time

Instead of leaving late each day and driving herself, my client wanted to be eco-friendly and get to work on time.  Since she lives close to a Metro stop, she decided to ride the bus to work daily to get to work. Not only is she always on time, she has contributed to the greater good.

 

Getting dinner done

According to my client, variety is overrated for dinner! She choose to have a 2 week set of dinners that she could prepare from pantry staples each evening.  A simple meal plan made for happy family dinners.

 

Getting homework done

After school homework time can be a challenge for families.  My creative client partners with 2 other families where they rotate homework time for their daughters.  The girls rotate between homes to complete homework each afternoon. The parent in that home is available to answer questions, check online for assignments and check the girls’ planners.

 

Getting ready each morning

Make your morning easy by creating a “uniform” dress for work.  The uniform for my client is a dress.  Rather than matching tops and pants, she wears a dress every day to make it easy to get ready for work.  Peter Shankman, podcaster of Faster than Normal, wears black shirts and jeans each day. Simplify your dress to make it easy to get ready each day.

 

Keeping one simple task list

Evernote or a simple notebook are  your solution to having your list in one place.  Decide if you are going digital or paper, then keep all your tasks on one list. Having one list for my clients means that you can find all your information easily.

Working with a partner

Organizing and productivity can be isolating.  My client knew that she worked better if someone is in the same space working on a project too.  She invited her assistant in to work alongside her each day for an hour at a time to get her project completed.  She was so surprised to learn this strategy, known as body doubling, could make her work more productively.  It works!

 

What are some of the creative ways you have made a difference and made it easy to get stuff done?

 

 

More on ADHD here! 

 

 

What to do with Meeting Agendas?

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What to do with meeting agendas?

 

If you are like most, meetings are an necessary evil of work life and volunteering.  Each meeting you are either given a paper agenda or a link online.  A well run meeting requires an agenda. It’s about preparation and communication.  But what to do with meeting agendas after the meeting has finished?

 

Meeting agenda general plan

If you meet routinely, a meeting agenda helps you keep a structure for the goals of the group.  Your agenda is the place keeper of your accomplishments, your tasks and next steps.  Having a specific file, file drawer or notebook to keep your meeting agenda, labelled with the meeting name, is generally a good idea for the duration of the project.  Be sure you create a spot to easily drop the agenda in when you return from the meeting.

 

Meeting agenda notes

If you are like most of us, your meeting agenda has next action steps noted on it.  You want to consolidate these action steps on a general capture tool, such as a notebook, task list or digital list to be sure to do the next steps before the next meeting.  Adding the actions to your actionable spot makes sense so that the meeting agenda can be stored away and you can accomplish your tasks.

 

Meeting agenda when you are the meeting leader

There’s a time line to preparing a meeting agenda before the next meeting. You will want to recap what has been accomplished, lead your meeting onto the next steps and be sure your attendees are prepared at your next meeting.  Having a digital template to save as a new meeting agenda keeps you moving forward.  You will want to share this agenda at least 24 hours in advance of the next meeting.

 

What’s best practices for your template?  Here’s what I include: name of committee meeting, date of meeting, call in or other contact information, and who is attending the meeting.  The agenda can be a simple, prioritized list of what you want to accomplish.  Be sure to begin your meeting on time and end within an hour.  Efficient meetings are where best work is accomplished.

 

What about when your comittee concludes?

There’s a definitely happiness to ending a well run, successful project!  At that time, sort through, declutter and eliminate the agendas. You might keep one of the last agendas to finalize the project and move the file to an archive location.

 

You might be wondering, does this apply to conference materials as well?  Conference materials are becoming more digital, rather than paper based.  Generally it’s a best practice to pull the materials you will use to save in either paper files or electronically by topic.  I suggest keeping these materials for 2 years to see if you use the materials.  After this, it’s time to delete or recyle.

 

More ideas on paper management here!

4 Strategies to Increase Productivity

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There are strategies that can help you increase productivity. These are handy acronyms and mantras that help you remember what to do to be more productive.  It’s remembering and applying these strategies that help you get more done.

 

WSD Write stuff down

The most productive person is the one who uses a calendar and a list.  It’s in capturing this information, writing stuff down, that we know what to do and what is the deadline. Capture tools can be analog or digital, in a notebook, in Evernote or on a dry erase board. Regardless of your tool, wrtie stuff down to be more productive.

Plan your work and work your plan

With your planner and list, set aside a weekly planning time to plan your work and work your plan.  When I say plan your work, that’s when you add times and actions to your calendar. It’s more than just meeting dates, it’s work periods.  Let’s say you have taxes to complete. You set up 9 – 10 am on Monday through Thursday to work on chunks of your taxes.  You work your plan by staying true to the plan you set up.   For every task or project you want to complete, you have set a time to do the work.  Even if you don’t know how long a task or project will take, you set an amount of time to work on it.

 

FOCUS Follow One Course Until Successful

There’s compelling research for single focus.  With focus, you work on only one task at a time. Your success depends on it.

 

MITs Most important tasks

There’s lots to do and never enough time to complete all your tasks. That’s why prioritizing is critical.  That’s where MITs come into play.  Set up your Most Important Tasks each day, week and month so that you prioritize deadlines and importance.  Working on an unimportant task can be productive procastination, however delays your success.

 

These four handy sayings will carry you forward with productivity. If you need a reset for productivity, start with a great night’s sleep, a 5 minute stretch and be ready to hydrate.  These essential basics will hold you in good stead!

 

More productivity tips here!