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The
   Entrepreneur Files

​A UARF weekly blog series featuring articles written from the UARF team members.

Learn about new ideas, business tips, and hear our personal stories about 
the things we learned from you, the entrepreneurs!
Scroll down for the latest article!

The Fundamentals

2/17/2022

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Written By Shannon Marshburn

When you start your entrepreneurial journey, things can seem pretty scattered. Everyone's situation is so different. While your experiences are unique, we know how to help. Here you’ll find a curated list of fundamental resources and building blocks that can help you through long nights, brainstorming sessions, and times when staying motivated is tough.

Create Your Perfect Music Playlists
There are many scientific studies that praise the benefits of listening to music while working. Some of the benefits are improved brain function, boosted concentration and a happier mood. You can read more about it in a previous UARF blog. Take a minute to create your personalized playlist with your favorite songs to energize you and keep you working towards your goals. Click here to find some playlists that we created to share with entrepreneurs!
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Video games might be onto something

9/16/2021

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A scientific look at music and productivity
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By Shannon Marshburn
I am a busy person with a busy mind. When I am working my train of thought often derails and questions of when I need to do laundry and what I should make for dinner float by as I pick the font for promotional posters. This is not too much of a hit on my work productivity, but I am not working at my full potential. One thing that helps fill my busy mind is playing music while I work. This is effective for me, but is it effective for you? I set out to find some scientific back up and here’s what I found. 
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In a study by Teresa Leesuik of the University of Windsor, Canada, she examined a software company of 56 developers on music and productivity. She found that when music wasn't present in the work environment tasks took longer and quality of work was at the lowest. When music was present, that’s when moods and productivity increased. 

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The Entrepreneur's Tool Box

7/29/2021

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By Shannon Marshburn
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As a busy designer filling many roles and many design jobs, I often start my mornings with some tools and resources to get up to speed for the day. Whether it is for design inspiration, to spell check an event description I wrote the night before, or to learn something new, I use these tools everyday. So work smarter not harder and check out and add these websites and resources to your bookmarks:
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Okay, now I get it!

6/16/2021

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By Faye Nicholson
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So what? Who cares? Why does it matter? These are all great questions you should ask yourself when explaining or describing your new technology or innovation. Whether a 90-second pitch, a 30-minute presentation or trying to get media attention, remember creating understanding matters.  

If you want to make your message clear and understandable to the non-scientist and non-engineer, here are a few tips I recommend:  


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The early bird gets the worm, but at what cost?

6/10/2021

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By Shannon Marshburn
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Which one have you heard? There is the 5 a.m. warrior. - Rise and Grind. - The early bird gets the worm, or better yet, the even earlier bird gets the gummy worm.During the first three years of my time at college, my art studio was open 24/7. Pulling all-nighters were encouraged and even expected by faculty. It was even written in our syllabi. When a new president took over the arts college in my senior year and changed the studio hours to close at midnight during the week, and even earlier on the weekends, you would have thought we were going to start a riot. The battle scars of shaky, caffeinated hands and sleep deprived twitchy eyes were a right of passage in our minds. If we slept then did we really work that hard or could we have gotten a 2 a.mm-coffee and plowed through the night and morning?

Lack of sleep is such a societal norm, but lack of sleep is really a flirt with death. It’s not new to hear that sleep is important, but really just how important is sleep?

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27 Seconds

6/2/2021

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By Anna Radachy
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What can you do in 27 seconds? Tie your shoes, sneeze a couple of times, maybe write a text? How about making a good impression? According to new research, it takes an average of 27 seconds for someone to form an opinion about you, and 69% of Americans report that they form their opinion before the person even speaks. It is incredible to think that such a small amount of time can make or break how someone thinks of you, and these opinions can potentially affect your business. So how can you make sure that those 27 seconds work for you? 

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Digital organization

2/10/2021

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By Nick Glavan
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 I consider myself a very organized person. Family and friends alike are aware of my specific preferences when it comes to everyday situations like loading the dishwasher, retrieving the emergency pack of gum from the passenger-side glove compartment, or simply stacking and prioritizing pieces of mail.

And while I am far from the beacon of organization and order (I bow to you, Marie Kondo), being able to logically place items around my dwelling, and being able to locate and retrieve them when necessary, has been a much appreciated life hack. 

So, while I’ve been pro at organizing my physical space for many years, I have not always been so spot-on when it came to my digital environment. I have been guilty of saving many documents to the “Downloads” folder or to my desktop, and then scrambling to recall the difference between “Presentation 1 (1)” and “Presentation 1 (2)”. I’m pretty sure I am not the only one.

In an effort to enhance my digital organization, I have created a few rules that have helped me to file away emails and documents alike, with a better sense of how to search and find almost anything on my computer. I am still far from perfect, but these are a few things that have vastly improved my process. 


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How following UARF’s 100-year-old productivity tip made 2020 a surprisingly productive year

2/4/2021

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By Elyse Ball 
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​First, a confession: I don’t always try out the tips and hacks that we include in our UARF email newsletter. I should… but I have to admit that I don’t.

But every so often, a hack comes along that is so well suited to solving my problems that I immediately give it a try.

In February 2020, we published a blog written by our talented UARF intern Kenny Aronson on a 100-year old productivity tip used by captains on industry in the early 1900s: the Ivy Lee Method for Increasing Productivity.
Here’s how it works:

1. At the end of your workday, write down the 6 most important things you need to accomplish tomorrow.
2. Next, rank the 6 items in order of how important they are.
3. On the next day, focus on only the first task. You can only move to the second task after finishing the first.
4. Work through your entire list the same way. At the end of the day, create a new list of 6 tasks (including any you didn’t finish).
5. Rinse and repeat.

I know that this seems super simple, and it is. It just requires discipline to do this every day and intellectual honestly to rank which tasks are really important.

Why did this tip seem relevant to me?
  •  I have a lot of competing priorities – requirements from UARF’s funders and requests from startup companies – that feel like a sandstorm engulfing me.
  • My task list is always crammed 100 things to do that are supposedly urgent, but might not actually be important.
  • I know that I sometimes fail to do small, straightforward tasks that will really “move the needle” toward long-term success.

If this sounds even a little bit like your life, I’d recommend giving the simple, old-school Ivy Lee Method a try. I’ve been using this method for almost a year now, and I’ve found it has helped me tremendously to:
  • Set my own priorities, rather than letting others set them for me.
  • Cull my task list down to a manageable number of items – both by being more productive and by eliminating some stuff that doesn’t matter.
  • Get the most important, most impactful tasks done now.
  •  Feel a greater sense of accomplishment.

In addition to the straightforward method outlined above, here are a few tips from
my experience implementing the method.

6 isn’t the only magic number:
Not everyone has a job or the kind of task list that allows you to get 6 tasks done a day. That’s okay. I had actually tried this method out in 2018 with 3 tasks a day, and it didn’t work for me at all. (I’m an eternal optimist and 3 tasks didn’t seem like very many, so I’d just put my 3 tasks off until the afternoon and then not get them done.) Different numbers of tasks are optimal for different people, and you might need to play around a bit to figure out what your magic number is.

Actually write down the tasks:
A mental list is not a substitute for an actual written list. You can keep your list digitally in an app like Things or Google Tasks, or you can write them on a sticky note. But I’ve found that actually writing the tasks down triggers some mental switch that helps me commit to doing them.

Delete stuff off your task list:
Prioritizing is great, but focusing is even better. Each Friday, I look at my list of potential tasks for the coming week. For each task, I ask myself: Is this important? What will happen if I don’t do this task? Any task that I don’t think is important gets deleted from the list, and I’ve found that most of the time nothing bad happens.

Be kind to yourself:
No one – I mean, NO ONE – is going to get all 6 tasks done every single day. It’s great to strive, but also remember to be kind to yourself when you don’t reach your goals. Just move anything you didn’t get done to the next day, and move on. No big deal. So to wrap up, try the Ivy Lee Method out. It’s a super simple method that works surprisingly well in a super complicated world.

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How to Be Productive without Feeling OVerwhelmed

11/19/2019

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A common problem I hear from ambitious students and entrepreneurs is they’re feeling overwhelmed every day. 

Too many meetings, too many tasks, and too many things to accomplish. 

Especially if you’ve got huge goals as many of you do… it sucks feeling like you’re not making enough progress.
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So ask yourself...

Even though I'm busy, am I being productive?

In this post, I’ll share with you a sweet tip on how you can make more progress without feeling overwhelmed… Let's get to it!

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