Be a Productivity Consultant

A productivity consultant helps individuals or companies use their time and resources more efficiently. To become a productivity consultant, get a college degree in a field related to your intended area of expertise. Then, register as a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers, or NAPO, to develop professionally and become an expert in your field. You can choose to work at an established firm or open your own consulting business, and once you have some work experience you can become a Certified Professional Organizer.

Steps

Studying and Developing Your Skills

  1. Learn how to be organized in your daily life. Productivity consultants must embody the skills that they hope to teach others. Become organized in your personal life by de-cluttering and simplifying the systems and tasks that you use every day. File paperwork and receipts quickly, never leave things laying around, and organize your workspace and home to be as clean and neat as possible.[1]
    • Keep a detailed calendar and update it every day. This is one of the easiest ways to ensure that you keep track of things and stay organized consistently.
  2. Manage your time productively to be efficient. Prioritize goals and tasks based on their urgency and difficulty. Tackle hard objectives early in the morning when you’re most alert and productive and never push deadlines back. Train yourself to stop procrastinating by removing distractions from your environment and stay off of social media during the workday.
    • Journal daily by writing down what you’ve accomplished during your day. This will help you recognize patterns in your behavior that may be preventing you from getting things done.
  3. Get a bachelor’s degree in finance, business, design, or communications. While there isn’t a specific major designed for careers in productivity consulting, there are several majors that will prepare you well for the profession. Majoring in finance or business will teach you everything you need to know about economic productivity in a professional setting. A degree in design or communications will help you build the organizational and verbal skills needed to become a successful productivity consultant.
    • Minor in a foreign language like Spanish or French to give yourself a bigger potential client base in the future.
  4. Become a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers. The National Association of Professional Organizers, or NAPO, is a professional organization that provides education, networking opportunities, and research for productivity organizers. It is important to become a member if you want to become certified or market yourself to potential customers and employers. To become a member, you’ll have to complete an online class that teaches you productivity strategies, provide examples of your work, and pay a small fee.
    • You’ll have to pay a yearly fee to remain a member of the organization.

Finding Your Niche

  1. Focus on financial productivity if you enjoy working with numbers. Some productivity consultants aim to help people become more productive financially. As a financial productivity consultant, you may help clients develop budgets or create systems to track income and expenditures. If you’re good with numbers and enjoy helping people earn money, go into financial productivity consulting.[2]
    • It’ll be easier to become a financial productivity consultant if you have a degree or work experience in finance.
  2. Go into organizational productivity if you love fixing messy offices and homes. Become an organizational consultant if you want to help people organize. You will create storage systems and provide advice about how an office or home should be arranged to keep clients from wasting time by looking for files or digging through cabinets. Become an organizational consultant if you’re good at prioritizing tasks and designing functional storage systems.[3]
    • Take a look at your own home and office. If it’s consistently neat and organized, you may have a knack for organizational productivity!
  3. Become a time management consultant if you spend time wisely. As a time management consultant, you will help people maximize their time to make them efficient and purposeful. You will help track how a client’s time is spent and provide feedback and criticism surrounding how the client deals with tasks. Time management consultants help people stay organized and get things done, and could be a good path for you if you enjoy helping people become efficient.[4]
  4. Become a personal productivity coach if you want to work one-on-one with people. If you want to work with single clients to help them maximize their potential at home and work, become an individual productivity coach. As a one-on-one coach, you will check in with clients regularly and provide concrete, critical feedback to help them adjust to new routines, practices, and procedures. Consider working with individuals if you enjoy developing personal relationships in your work.[5]
  5. Emphasize structural productivity if you want to work with companies. Become a corporate productivity consultant if you want to work with large companies to focus on larger elements of a specific business. You will deal with the structural components of a company, like how employees clock in and out, how departments divide labor, and how a company’s mission statement guides business decisions.[6]

Working as a Productivity Consultant

  1. Search for entry-level contracts or positions at companies in your field. It will be difficult to get clients without any work experience after you graduate. Build a resume that emphasizes your interests, certifications, and experiences in school and search online job postings to look for openings for productivity consultants. Send your resume to as many potential openings as possible.[7]
    • The job postings that will be available may not specifically use the term “productivity consultant.” Try searching “organizer” or “life coach” for more options.
    • Be open to accepting offers that don’t necessarily fit your desired title. Everyone starts somewhere!
    • Some firms will help you get your productivity consultant certification while you’re working there.
  2. Register online with the NAPO’s online registry so that clients can find you. The NAPO has an online index of all registered productivity consultants. Registering online with them will let you list your services, and they’ll help you find clients based on your experience and area of expertise.
    • The NAPO index is an excellent place to find potential business partners in your area as well.
  3. Create a business plan if you want to open your own consulting firm. A solid business plan will help you develop all of the structures and elements required to open a business. They include information on your services, your marketing plans, and your projected income in the future. A business plan is required to get a business loan or appeal to a potential investor.[8]
  4. Build a personal website to highlight your individual services and accomplishments. Creating a personal website makes it easy for potential clients to find you online. It also allows them to look at your specific qualifications to determine whether you’re a good fit for them.
    • A personal website is a good place to prove that you are efficient and organized. Lay out your website so that it is easy to use, and keep the design minimalistic to emphasize your efficiency on a visual level.
  5. Network with other consultants in your field to grow a unique client base. Building relationships with other colleagues in your field is an excellent way to get the word out about your specific services. If you specialize in a certain kind of productivity consulting, you’ll get referrals from other consultants that don’t offer that service. It’s also an excellent way to learn about conferences and professional development opportunities.

Getting Certified

  1. Meet the requirements as a NAPO member to take the CPO exam. To work as a professional productivity organizer, you’ll want to get certified. To become certified, you’ll have to pass the Certified Professional Organizer exam. The CPO exam is administered through the NAPO, but you have to meet the preliminary requirements before you can take the exam. You’ll need, at the bare minimum, a high school degree and evidence of 1,500 hours of paid work experience.[9]
    • Evidence of work experience include a timesheet that tracks your hours, pay stubs, and letters of recommendation from your employer or clients.
    • Once you’ve submitted your materials, you’ll have to complete a short preliminary interview that deals with your credentials, goals, and work experience.
  2. Prepare for the CPO exam by taking a prep class. The NAPO offers online courses that allow you to earn additional certificates in addition to preparing you for the official CPO exam. They can be completed online, and require a small fee to sign up. The NAPO also offers free online materials that are less comprehensive and don’t offer any mock exam questions.
  3. Pass the CPO exam to earn your professional certification. The CPO exam is a written test that will assess your ability to use technology, organize, categorize objects, and evaluate the effectiveness and sustainability of changes to organizational systems. Once you pass, you will submit a model of an organizational plan’s development and implementation. There is also a component of the exam that covers legal and ethical requirements.

References

  1. ↑ https://www.forbes.com/sites/yec/2018/02/01/six-ways-to-get-more-organized-in-2018/#5142b8402c63
  2. ↑ https://pension-consultants.com/the-impact-of-financial-stress-on-workforce-productivity/
  3. ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/16/smarter-living/professional-organizers-productivity-clutter.html
  4. ↑ https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/307464
  5. ↑ https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.napo.net/resource/resmgr/docs/NAPO_Getting_Started_Doc_Fin.pdf
  6. ↑ https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.napo.net/resource/resmgr/docs/NAPO_Getting_Started_Doc_Fin.pdf
  7. ↑ http://money.com/money/5053350/resume-tips-free-template/
  8. ↑ https://www.sba.gov/business-guide/plan-your-business/write-your-business-plan
  9. ↑ https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.napo.net/resource/resmgr/NAPO-17-BCPOhandbook.pdf
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