gina trapani | Fast Company

No Interruptions Day

BY Fast Company CalendarFri Dec 31, 2010

The bad news: The average office worker is interrupted -- by coworkers, emails, or phone calls -- every 11 minutes. Even worse is that it takes basically that much time to refocus on the task at hand. On this last business day for ...READ»

WORK SMART 2 | Comment

Work Smart 2: Time Management Tips for Mac Users

BY Gina TrapaniWed Nov 17, 2010

Want to get organized? First you need to find a great task manager to organize all your to-do's in one place. In this week's episode, entrepreneur, student and Mac user Quintin Carlson asks for the best to-do list application to organize his busy life.READ»

WORK SMART 2 | Comment

Work Smart 2: Improving Your Organization's Social Media Presence

BY Gina TrapaniWed Nov 10, 2010

Organizations using social media, there's something you must know: getting thousands of Facebook fans or Twitter followers isn't as important as what you do with them. In this week's episode of Work Smart, an important charity in my town asks how they can improve their online presence.READ»

FCC | Comment

Field Notes From the FCC's First-Ever Hack Day

BY Gina TrapaniTue Nov 9, 2010

On Monday, over 100 developers converged at FCC headquarters for a 9-hour collaborative hack day, with the goal of making software that employs the APIs and datasets the FCC makes available to the public.READ»

WORK SMART 2 | Comment

Work Smart 2: Best Blogging Tools for a Beginner

BY Gina TrapaniWed Nov 3, 2010

Starting a blog in 2010 involves a tough decision: what publishing system to use. Today, a plethora of mature blogging tools produce beautiful websites and involve a range of features, from simple, no-nonsense ...READ»

WORK SMART 2 | Comment

Work Smart 2: How Do You Know When to Kill a Project?

BY Gina TrapaniWed Oct 27, 2010

The toughest thing an entrepreneur has to do is admit a company or a product is a failure and move on. But the longer you work on something that's not working, the more time you lose that could be spent working on a ...READ»

WORK SMART | Comment

App Store Politics: Dictatorship Versus Democracy

BY Gina TrapaniFri Oct 22, 2010

Two big announcements this week will change the way you get software on your desktop and in your web browser. Apple's Apps for Mac you may know about. But Mozilla (developers of the Firefox browser) also revealed plans for its webapp store.READ»

WORK SMART 2 | Comment

Work Smart 2: Perfect Your Digital Document Filing System

BY Gina TrapaniWed Oct 13, 2010

Scanning your stacks of paper to digital documents is a huge project, and you want to make sure all that information will be as easy to find on your hard drive as it is in your filing cabinet.READ»

WORK SMART | Comment

Work Smart 2: Stop Wasting Time Getting Productive

BY Gina TrapaniWed Sep 22, 2010

If you're watching this video series, you're interested in new ways to be more productive--but when does your obsession with efficiency become a waste of time? In this week's episode of Work Smart 2, Bill Clark asks how you actually work smarter when you spend time learning new productivity tricks. I share my favorite tool for keeping yourself honest, and then asked author of productivity bible Getting Things Done David Allen for his thoughts.READ»

WORK SMART | Comment

Work Smart 2: Password Protection

BY Gina TrapaniWed Sep 15, 2010

Think about the number of passwords you use. If it's just one or two, you're not storing your data securely. More likely, you've got anywhere from six to a dozen. But how do you strike a balance between convenience and security?READ»

WORK SMART | Comment

Work Smart 2: Staying Organized After Being on the Road

BY Gina TrapaniWed Sep 8, 2010

Welcome to another edition of Work Smart with Gina Trapani. This week, Daniel Beck, a technical writer for WebFaction in Philadelphia, PA, asks for advice on how to get and stay organized after traveling. ...READ»

WORK SMART | Comment

Work Smart 2: Get a Personal Skype Consultation with Gina Trapani and Friends

BY Gina TrapaniMon Aug 9, 2010

Have you got a nagging question about technology and productivity? If my experience is any guide, you do. That's why my next batch of Work Smart videos is going be a Q&A series based on your questions.Here's how it works: Email me ...READ»

TECHNOLOGY | Comment

Work Smart: Best Telecommuting Tools

BY Gina TrapaniMon Jun 28, 2010

Just because you're not physically located in the office doesn't mean you can't be a present, productive, member of your team. These days, working remotely is easier, cheaper, and more necessary than ever. More companies allow ...READ»

INTERRUPTIONS | Comment

Work Smart: How to Avoid "The Busy Trap"

BY Gina TrapaniWed Jun 23, 2010

In an ideal world, you'd arrive at the office, sit down in front of a list called "things to accomplish today," and calmly work through each item until it was time to go home. But most of us can only dream of having that much ...READ»

TIME MANAGEMENT | Comment

Work Smart: Take Back Your Calendar With Defensive Scheduling

BY Gina TrapaniFri Jun 11, 2010

When it comes to productivity tools, next to your to-do list, your calendar is your best friend. You already use it to track meetings, appointments, and events with other people, but you should also organize and schedule your own ...READ»

APPS | Comment

Work Smart: Must-Have Mobile Apps for the Road Warrior

BY Gina TrapaniTue Jun 8, 2010

If you've got a smartphone that can run apps like the iPhone, BlackBerry or an Android phone, you've got a pocket computer--and when you're on the road, you want to load up on the apps that can help you get where you need to ...READ»

E-MAIL | Comment

Work Smart: How to Power Through a Mountain of Email

BY Gina TrapaniTue Jun 1, 2010

It's your first day back at work after a week-long vacation and you're staring down an email inbox stuffed with 1,600 unread messages. Or--forget vacation--you've just been busy outside the inbox and now you've got a mountain of ...READ»

CREATIVITY | Comment

Work Smart: Brainstorming Techniques to Boost Creativity

BY Gina TrapaniMon May 24, 2010

Coming up with good ideas is a major part of your job, so you want to have the right tools on hand to generate as many ideas as possible during a brainstorming session. Here are some tools and techniques for doing just that.READ»

TIME BLOCKING | Comment

Work Smart: Defrag Your Calendar by Batching Tasks

BY Gina TrapaniTue May 18, 2010

Every employee has certain obligations throughout the workweek on top of their core job: like attending meetings, taking phone calls, replying to email, and filling out paperwork. It's natural to want to tackle these things as ...READ»

MEETING PLANNING | Comment

Work Smart: Unconventional Cures for Meeting-itis

BY Gina TrapaniMon May 10, 2010

No one on their deathbed ever says they wish they'd attended more meetings.READ»