Get ideas to make it

• relishrelish will email you a week’s worth of recipes every Thursday, complete with shopping lists. The meals take 30 minutes or less to prepare, and the ingredients usually cost $80 or less for the week’s worth of dinners.
• Gojee curates recipes from food bloggers around the web in a visually enticing way.
• Use Allrecipe’s Ingredient Search to find recipes based on what you’ve got on hand.

Buy it

• Multi-task! Use Omnifocus to give an alert to your phone when you’re near the grocery store — reminds you when you have a list and saves trips out!
• Shop at odd times. The less time you spend waiting in line with everyone else who’s shopping is more time for anything else.

Make it

• Choose recipes that take limited time to prepare. Mark Bittman wrote a great NY Times writeup for summer meals that take 10 minutes or less (save for when it gets warmer!).
• Make more than you need. Example: if you make soup, make enough that half can go in the freezer for next week — you can do the same with tomato sauce, and chili. You can even portion soups into 2-cup containers for freezing: the perfect healthy grab-and-go lunch. You can even swap with a friend!
• Use ice trays to freeze tomato sauce, pesto, and soup stock - most regular-sized ice cubes are just about 2 tablespoons, it’s easy to dole the ingredients out later!
• Cooking in blocks of time, as advised by The Pemmican Principle of food preparation. Set aside a 4 hour block of time on Saturday or Sunday, and prepare meals for the week. If you’re pressed for time, simply wash and cut fruits and veggies, essentially turning refrigerator into a healthy salad bar and deli.

Many thanks to theTwitter community for sharing your own tips for this article. We’re please to announce that @DanaCoBar won our very last Time Saving Tuesdays contest for January – congratulations Dana, we hope you enjoy your beautiful new kitchen timer!

LAST WEEK’S CONTEST: We asked you to send your best workday time saving tips. We assembled a blog post of Time Saving Tips for your Workday, based on the answers we sourced from our Twitter followers. Nicole won this gorgeous handstamped NOW clock by M Bart Studios, and here’s her winning entry:

#respectyourtime Do all my invoicing & paperwork in set groups, so that I can pull things out and put them away more efficiently. Consider us impressed.

THIS WEEK’S CONTEST: It’s the end of January, and our thoughts are turning to the SuperBowl this weekend, and the parties that it involves. We decided to turn our time saving focus to food – how do you save time? Either in the grocery store, getting food to your home, or with food prep – we want it all!

Follow @harvest, begin your tweet with #respectyourtime, and share your best time saving workday tips. We’ll be following the #respectyourtime hashtag to keep up with your entries.

This week’s winner will receive a kitchen timer (for pies, and beyond!) by the London-based brother design duo Designwright:

Please share this widely, the more answers we get, the more we can share with you. We can’t wait to hear your tips and tricks!

Managing your time needs to become a ritual, an ongoing process you follow to keep you focused on your priorities throughout the day.

• Do all of your invoicing and paperwork in set groups, so that you can pull things out all at once, and put them away more efficiently.
• Have 2-3 attainable goals for the day. No one is productive w/ endless to do lists.
• Learn to say no to projects where the time investment outweighs the return.
• Find the perfect GTD system out there: there are no magic answers, it’s simply the one you trust and use so your mind is free.

Know the strongest times of your work day. If you can match your best times for work with the most intense tasks, and your least productive times with more routine tasks, you’ll get more out of your day.

• Read emails before leaving for work, mentally process while commuting, then answer on arrival at the office.
• End your day by making a list of things you want to accomplish the following day.

Budget your time. 

• If you find that emails are taking up a lot of time, set yourself a time limit.
• Hit unsubscribe once instead of delete 100 times.
• If a task is taking too long, leave it and come back to it refreshed (leaving for lunch can boost your productivity!)

Many thanks to the Twitter community for sharing your own tips for this article. We’ll announce the winners of our Time Savings Tuesdays contest next Tuesday (along with the new contest theme), and feel free to share your own tips in the comments!

LAST WEEK’S CONTEST: We asked you to send your best time saving keystrokes. We had so many great entries that we decided to pick two winners in two separate categories: everyday tips, and power user app suggestions! We assembled a blog post of Time Saving Keystrokes, incorporating several of the best responses. The winners of the 3-1/2 in computer hard drive clock by pixelthis are:

@AdamHoej, who tweeted this: #respectyourtime ctrl+s.. Saves (pun intended) me from messing up my files! I’ve set it to Incremental save, so instant traceback! Nice touch with the incremental save!

and also @chopmo, who tweeted us with this power user protip: I use Gleebox for webbrowsing using only my keyboard. Huge timesaver. #respectyourtime

THIS WEEK’S CONTEST: Inspired by our Twitter follower @nicolelafave and her #respectyourtime suggestions last week, we decided to dedicate this week’s contest to your best time saving tips for your workday – how do you shave time from your day?

Follow @harvest, begin your tweet with #respectyourtime, and share your best time saving workday tips. We’ll be following the #respectyourtime hashtag to keep up with your entries.

This week’s winner will recieve this beautiful hand stamped clay NOW clock by M Bart Studios!

Please share this widely, the more answers we get, the more we can share with you. We can’t wait to hear your tips and tricks!

Some Harvest and Co-op protips, from the Harvest Team:

• Math is allowed in durations fields! Example: 3:00 – 2:23, or :23 + :12. (@bjhess)
• Ctrl+. in Co-op switches between the Co-op and Track time tabs. (@pfiller)
• Harvest Command Line (HCL): Uses Terminal to control Harvest timers. (@the_vole)

Everyday keystrokes:

• Ctrl+F (Win) or Cmd+F (OSX). Finds specific text in the Web page that’s open.
• Backspace (Win) or Delete (Mac). Makes your browser go back one page.
• Windows key + first few letters of a program + enter. Start any program from your keyboard. (via @jkenters)
• Ctrl+z. “People take this feature for granted. Imagine a world with no ctrl+z.” The power of the undo! (via @stevendeeds)
• Ctrl+s. “Saves (pun intended) me from messing up my files! I’ve set it to Incremental save, so instant traceback!” (via @AdamHoe)
• Cmd+q. “Sometimes you have to quit and walk away.” (via @weepapa)

If you want to geek out:

• Win+[n] where [n] is 0-9. Items in your taskbar are 0-9, L to R. Brings that item to focus or launches it. (via @mavickers)
• Instant Text, Windows app that, “Saves me 1000s of keystrokes on documents and transcriptions.” (via @WorkFromHomeMe)
• “I would die without TextExpander.” (via @the_vole)
• PhraseExpress. The Windows version of TextExpander. (via @jkenters)
• Breevy, PC app that integrates with your Dropbox TextExpander snippets. (via @ServerSense)
• Quicksilver, Mac plugin to launch apps, search, and type w/ keystrokes. (via @browncoat and @mbaizman)
• Gleebox, a keyboard-centric approach to navigating the web. (via @chopmo)

Many thanks to the Twitter community for sharing your own tips for this article, we had a great time swapping tips! We’ll announce the winners of our Time Savings Tuesdays contest next Tuesday (along with the new contest theme), and feel free to share your own tips in the comments!

Over the weekend, a friend of mine gave me a tour of Bloomberg’s NYC office. Their 29-floor building is full of huge, open workspaces. Even the company big-wigs don’t get a private office; when they’re in town, they occupy one of the many transparent, glass-walled conference rooms scattered throughout the building. This is a similar set up to what we have at Harvest HQ, though on a much larger scale, and I think the atmosphere promotes equality and togetherness.

While there’s a lot to be said for this type of environment, the inevitable noise and distraction that comes with it can actually hinder what its supposed to foster: creativity through collaboration. Susan Cain comes to the defense of introverts and quiet workspaces in The Rise of the New Groupthink, an article from last Friday’s NY Times. Here’s the gist of it: equality and transparency are good, but collaborative spaces can decrease creativity, especially in introverts.

So what does it mean to be an introvert and why should we be sensitive to their needs? I think “introvert” is often thought of as a dirty word. People associate it with lots of negative things – poor social skills, shyness, nerdiness, or even being boring – but introversion encompasses more than just social skills. In my case, I’m an “intellectual introvert”. When it comes to thinking and refining ideas, I’m energized by being alone. I need a quiet space and few interruptions to do my best work. At Harvest, I’ve been working in quieter parts of the office since I changed over to a notebook computer. The combination of physical and virtual proximity to everyone makes it hard for me to think clearly, and seeking out a private space helps me focus.

I may be biased, but I don’t think we should cater to introverts just because I am one. The goal here isn’t to isolate any one type of person – introvert or extrovert – but to recognize that people have different needs in terms of how they get their best work done. Companies should learn to care for introverts because they are relying on them to make good decisions and produce good work.

My point, and the NYT article’s, is not to say we should go back to a world of cubicles and offices but rather that we need to find balance between solitary work and teamwork. A small bit of collaboration can have an immense impact. In psychology, this is called the zone of proximal development, which is the difference between the level of learning that takes place on one’s own and the increased learning that takes place with assistance. This theory promotes collaboration, though the overall goal is to help people conquer more complex problems on their own over time. While I need solitude to develop my ideas, the feedback I get from Shawn and the rest of the design team always moves my work along much faster than it would have moved otherwise.

In short, I’m all for talking and exchanging ideas for the sake of learning and creativity, but I think people need to be aware that there’s a time and place for it. Cain’s article is an interesting read, and it reminds us that we should always be thinking about how we can #workbetter.

LAST WEEK’S CONTEST: We asked you to send your best time saving tips you use on your commute. We got many creative submissions (thank you all for Tweeting your suggestions!) and we assembled a blog post of Quick Time Saving Tips For Your Commute, incorporating several of the best responses. The winner of the Harvest orange slapwatch from Winky Designs is @jorydayne, who tweeted this: #Respectyourtime: I walk to work. It takes 4x as long, but building my sched with that constraint in mind forces efficiency everywhere else. We really liked how Jory combined two activities (exercise and commute)  instead of trying to skim time off of either on.

THIS WEEK’S CONTEST: We want your best time saving keystrokes, one of the most universal time savers. We want to know your most relied upon keystrokes.

Follow @harvest and tweet your best time saving keystrokes (and what they do!) using #respectyourtime. This week’s winner will win this sweet clock made from a real 3-1/2 in computer hard drive by pixelthis!

Please share this widely, the more answers we get, the more we can share with you. We can’t wait to hear your tips and tricks!

A huge part of Harvest’s successful distributed team is our use of Co-op, a free online collaboration tool built by the Harvest team. Co-op is a private status update stream that is seamlessly integrated with Harvest (naturally!). The original intent was to create a water cooler that was less invasive than group chat. However it has become absolutely vital to the operations of this business as well as to the culture.

The reason Co-op works is that it enables one-to-many communication in addition to one-to-one communication. As a marketer, I shouldn’t be surprised that communication should vary if speaking to many people versus one person. It just never occurred to me that successful distributed teams need tools that enable multiple types of communications. It’s quite obvious now.

I’ll admit, when I first got here I was a bit overwhelmed by Co-op – it just seemed like one more continuous stream of chatter that I needed to pay attention to. I have now come to love it. In addition to keeping me up to date on what everyone is working on it has helped me build relationships with my co-workers both in and out of New York. Personalities come through in Co-op in a way that they don’t on email. It has helped create and maintain the sense of culture in the office.

If you have a distributed team, or even if you don’t, I recommend you check it out here.

Save Time

• Shift your commute to a less travelled time. This means you may come in earlier, but you leave earlier too (avoiding the evening rush!).
• Skip the commute. See if it’s possible to occasionally work from home.
• If you drive: use the HOV lane.
• If you’re based in DC/Virgina and you drive, here’s how ride sharing, a.k.a. slugging works. Being a “slug” saves you money, and being a driver allows you into HOV lanes.
• On the train or bus, use mobile apps that work offline & sync later, like Evernote.
• Take the NYC subway? Walk to the spot on the subway train closest to your exit – there’s even an app for that!

Invest in Yourself

• Make a to-do list of all the personal tasks you need to do that day, to help organize your thoughts.
• Listen to audiobooks, learn a foreign language, or watch downloaded screencasts on your iPod or mobile device.
• Save interesting articles on Instapaper, and read from your smartphone while on the train.
• Knit (only on subways or buses, do not attempt while driving!).
• Skip work altogether, and unplug – clear your mind to be more efficient during the day.
• Combine your exercise routine with your commute:  it may make the commute longer, but it may be shorter (and more efficient) than doing both separately.

Many thanks to the Twitter community for sharing your own tips for this article. We’ll announce the winners of our Time Savings Tuesdays contest next Tuesday (along with the new contest theme), and feel free to share your own tips in the comments!

LAST WEEK’S CONTEST: We asked you to send your best time saving tips for making meetings more efficient. We got many great submissions (thank you all for Tweeting your suggestions!) and we assembled a blog post of Quick Time Saving Tips For Meetings, incorporating several of the best responses. The winner of the set of 8 colorful and lovely “You’re Very, Very Late” tatt.ly tattoos is @svpino, who tweeted this: If you want to keep your meetings short, get rid of chairs / coffee / donuts. #respectyourtime

We have to mention that we got a suggestion from @fulljames that tickled us: I want to get a TIM (Time Is Money) clock to show how much our meetings are costing. #respectyourtime

We thought that was a great suggestion (in addition, of course, to checking your Harvest time reports!), and we thought we’d make his day by sending him the TIM clock – congratulations to both Santiago and Stephen!

THIS WEEK’S CONTEST: We want your best time saving tips and tricks for your commute. Most of us have to leave the house to get to work, and we want to know: how do you save time while you’re en route?

Follow @harvest and tweet your best time saving tips for your commute using #respectyourtime. This week’s winner will win this Harvest orange slapwatch from Winky Designs! No longer available on their website, we’ve got one of their last slapwatches here at HQ, just waiting to be scooped up by this week’s winner!

Please share this widely, the more answers we get, the more we can share with you. We can’t wait to hear your tips and tricks!