What is a Tips Booklet?

  • 3 ½" x 8 ½"
  • 16 to 24 pages
  • 3,000 - 5,000 words
  • Tips, techniques, or strategies
  • Simple design, minimal graphics, photos, colors
  • A marketing tool and income stream for your business

Sample page from "110 Ideas for Organizing Your Business Life" booklet

By Paulette Ensign

DESK TOP/SURFACES

  1. Use a spiral notebook to capture random ideas, to-do lists, and notes of phone conversations. The notebook creates reliability and consistency for storing information and is far superior to “the back of an envelope.”

  2. Move desktop items an inch or two closer to you for greatest ease and use. Sometimes a minor adjustment can make a major difference in the effectiveness of the products and your productivity.

  3. Hang the phone on a wall to create more workspace at your desk.

  4. Keep whatever you use often at arm’s reach — no further and no closer. After a work session, rearrange things so they are ready for your next work session. It will be more inviting and less time consuming to get started again.

  5. Be sure the heights of the desk chair, desktop, and shelves are comfortable for the greatest productivity. This is another area where an inch or two can mean the difference in something working better.

  6. Use a vertical step rack for “hot files” or current project files, making them vertical, in view, and quickly available. Storing paper in divided, upright piles makes projects more approachable and controllable.

  7. Keep an in/out basket only if you tend to it often. Once something is second in a pile, it is temporarily lost. Traditional in/out baskets can often become a magnet for paper in a moment of indecision.

  8. Install lighting at your workspace that is adequate and appropriate for your needs. Inadequate or overpowering light can each have a negative impact on your performance.

  9. Create your “systems” based on your own common sense needs. Modify whatever you read, hear, or see to accommodate your own requirements.

  10. Move around items on a bulletin board periodically so you continue to actually see what is posted.

  11. Display something personal at your desk to make working there more inviting to you — a photo, piece of art, or some item of memorabilia.

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