A good number of the calls I get during an average day at work fall into two categories;   customers who call to have something installed in their electrical system, and customers who tried to install it themselves and are calling me to come and fix the mistakes they made.  There’s certainly nothing wrong with trying to perform basic electrical work yourself if you have a good grasp on proper electrical safety techniques and what you’re doing.  On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with calling a top Dallas electrician to do the work for you either.  The best way to ensure the job is done right every time is to hire an honest, hardworking professional electrician who’ll stand behind his work.

Even tasks that can seem quite simple can be treacherous if you’re not sure what you’re doing.  This comes into play a lot when a homeowner is trying to perform a three-way switch installation.  It seems a lot easier to install than it really is; I generally recommend homeowners not attempt to install three-way switches without at least a electrician on the phone to walk you through the process.  Keep the following in mind:

There are tasks well suited for the do-it-yourself minded homeowner, though.  The easiest is wall outlet replacement, which is usually a very simple, straightforward procedure.   That doesn’t mean the haystack isn’t free of the odd needle that you can hurt yourself on, though.  Here are some of the more common problems I run into, along with some typical solutions or hints to keep them from happening to you: 

Recently, the Obama administration adopted a new gas mileage standard for cars made in America — 54.5 mpg by 2030. That’s a big jump. The most recent figures — 2009 — show that average gas mileage for American cars manufactured in that year was 33 mpg.

Well, the new standard is good for reducing dependence on foreign oil and good for our pocket books — it’s supposed to save us $45 billion annually at the gas pumps. It’s probably also good for American competitiveness in export sales — people in other countries seem even more concerned about gas mileage than we have become. The 2009 cars we imported got 35 mpg, 2 miles better than American-made.

Most Americans support the idea of upping gas mileage. Consumer Reports found in a recent survey that 77% of Americans feel that Detroit should produce more fuel-efficient cars and the government should increase mileage standards. So, everything’s good….

BUT wouldn’t it be better to run our cars on ZERO gasoline? Wouldn’t it be better to go electric? I’m not talking about the government telling Detroit to manufacture only electric vehicles (EVs). But when we buy our next car, if we made it electric or hybrid, we would be asking Detroit to manufacture the kind of cars that emit zero pollution and don’t eat any Middle Eastern oil.

You might be thinking — yes, but where does the electricity come from? That’s a good point, but here’s the neat thing about electricity — it can come from clean sources. In Los Angeles, 40% of the electricity supplied by the Department of Water and Power is generated from coal — not clean. But that means that 60% is generated from cleaner sources like natural gas, hydropower, nuclear, geothermal, wind, and solar. DWP expects that by 2020, 0% will be generated from coal and 40% will be generated from renewables. Those are the facts about electricity in L.A. — and, I assure you, my being an electrician doesn’t give me any bias on the subject!

My next car will be an EV. In the meantime I’m lending my support to the cause by installing EV chargers for those in L.A. who are beating me to it and have already bought their electric cars.

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Any business knows that productivity is key to growth, let alone staying afloat. Whether you are talking about a production line, a traveling salesperson, and yes even your office space; productivity is going to be the main driving factor which will allow your business to not only stay in business, but also experience growth year over year, month over month.

Here we are going to describe 23 ways to improve office productivity which will in turn allow you to realize higher profits, more output, and less money being wasted to lost productivity.

First on the list? Improving office productivity through computer applications:

Science proves that taking more breaks allows us to be more productive.

How does that work if we technically will have less “work time” by taking all these breaks?

It gives us time to collect our thoughts, time to let our mind roam, and even some time to talk and bounce ideas off of others.

So, instead of making employees hate working because you limit them to one break a day; let them take a short one every hour or two and watch the ideas and productivity outputs increase!

Not only should you be organizing your desk, but also the entire office.

A cleared out area allows for a clear mind to work at much higher levels of clarity. Whether you have a cubical office design or a more open concept; requiring all areas of the office to be clear on either a weekly or daily basis should be a must.

Sure, not everyone likes to clear. But, if you give employees 10-15 minutes to clean their area at the end of every day I’m sure most people will be happy to do so (especially if you explain it is part of your initiative to improve productivity in the office)!

Some people have a habit of checking their email every 10 minutes while they are waiting for someone important to get back to them.

In reality, the likelihood of them replying back right away even if you get back to them quick is slim. On top of that, it seems down right desperate.

By implementing 2-3 time periods (again, depending on the department) that people should check their email; you will end the constant refreshing of email pages by a lot of your work force. This allows people to get back to work and pay much more attention to their work at hand.

There can be multiple things wrong with your lighting system that might be throwing off people in the office.

First of all, if you have fluorescent lights then you might just have a few (or a lot) of lights in your office that flicker or even worse, buzz. This can cause eye stress, annoyance, and a general distraction.

On top of that, you may have either an under-lit or over-lit office. Both are bad, and it’s up to you to find the optimal light output for your office. This can be done by surveying employees on your lighting system and going from there.

Lastly, low quality light can be an issue. An easy way to not only improve the quality of light but also get rid of flickering and buzzing light issues is by upgrading your reduce your energy usage by up to 30% or so. Sounds like a win-win situation here!

Not only will they help with productivity, but they will also clean the air of toxins which will keep the air fresh and not-so-stuffy.

Stop making it so difficult to get around. Make it easy to get to the bathroom, to the trash, or even to an outlet.

Time is money, and if people are having to spend time just to get to the most basic things you aren’t setting up your office for success (literally).

Using office design to increase productivity can be difficult, sure. But it doesn’t have to be all that complex. You could even get some people together to brainstorm what could be done to best optimize the space you have to best serve efficiency in the office. So while there will never be the “best office design for productivity” hack or tip (due to all offices being different), you can always use some general guidelines and common sense to help you out.

Wherever the noise may be coming from, while it may not effect everyone it may be effecting some people.

Now, this can be an easy fix if the noise is coming from within the office. To solve this issue, all you need to do is address the area of concern and fix it. But, what if the noise is coming externally on a frequent basis?

Well, you can do either of two things. Firstly, you can try to address or confront the external noise producer and see if there is anyway for it to stop at least during your time of work. If that doesn’t work, then you might need to install sound proofing technology into your walls. This can get pricey sure, but you’ve got to weight the benefits of having less noise in the office versus the cost it is going to be to make the upgrade.

Although you might think that you won’t be able to get everything in if you shorten meetings, you would be mistaken!

In fact, having shorter meetings make them much more focused and thus; more productive. Even if you have two meetings over one a week because they are shorter, it is much better to have two 10 minute meetings over one 30 minute one that lacks purpose.

On top of that, do you really need to have a meeting? Or, are you just holding meetings to “have a meeting?” If it is the latter, try scheduling meetings only when they are needed, rather just out of habit.

Looking for ways to motivate the office into getting stuff done? 43Folders.com and it’s a simple concept: work for ten minutes, break for 2, then repeat this 5 times (or an hour).

You might say, “are you mad?! No way I’ll let my employees take a break every 10 minutes.” But here it out…

Maybe you shouldn’t implement this tactic specifically, but make a variation that works for your needs but still allows for productivity to be most optimal. And yes, there will be times when extreme concentration is required for more than 10-20 minutes, and obviously this doesn’t have to be a “set in stone” type deal. Instead, make it a generally accepted practice to partake in such method of break and work balancing.

(We already talked about more breaks in #3, but we thought this hack was worthy of its own).

Have you ever listed a job listing opportunity with one of the qualifications as “multitasking?” If so, you’ve got it all wrong. In fact, you should be listing a qualifications as “the ability to be laser focused on one thing at a time.”

Multitasking Parkinson’s law” in short says that we will fill whatever time is allotted to complete a given task.

Why do you think people with a 3 month deadline to get a presentation done still find themselves struggling to get it ready to go last minute? Because they will fill the entire time they are given to finish it. This goes with any task, and if you shorten the time allotted to finish tasks you will see more getting done because people will work to fill the allotted time given.

This of course can be used too far and not given enough time to get things done with all the proper due diligence required. Finding a good balance of long enough but not TOO long will be difficult, but start looking into deadlines and what exactly defines how far out they get set and start thinking about setting shorter (yet still doable) deadlines.

Studies show that standing will not only improve health, but it will also improve productivity. Focus goes up and thus more work can get done.

call center workers showed that pollution in the office reduced productivity levels. As you can imagine, pollution is a major issue in a lot of places, especially in bigger cities.