Give your reports the best chance at being read, though, by following the tips below. You're less likely to experience the frustration of spending time creating documents that no one reads.

• Make sure you know the goal of the report. Sometimes goals are designed to make sure that things are going the way they should. If that's what's happening, then make sure your readers can easily see that everything's fine -- or where opportunities are being missed. For this type of report, you may be able to scale back and simplify, while still reaching the goal. Sometimes, reports are used to make decisions. In that case, you may need to lay out a lot of data so that readers can find specific answers when they need them.
• Put the important stuff at the beginning. A lengthy introduction may not be needed. If your audience will need quite a bit of background, you may be better off putting it in after the juicy parts. Think of newspapers: they give you the meat of the story first and then fill in with additional information.
• Use visuals. Infographics are popular, in part, because they present information fast. If you can use a chart or a few charts to give readers the gist, they can then choose to read on for more detail. For those who glance at the report and figure they'll read it later when they're less busy, this can help them determine what will be most important and worth their time.
• Think about color. Use company colors or a set of colors that show the message and catch the eye. Maybe you can have red hot opportunities or sunny yellow optimistic projections!
• Sweat the details. Typos, bad margins, math errors -- these things seem like small problems, but they can affect the overall impression and make your report look less worth reading. Make sure your reports have a polished appearance. We like to put each sheet in a sheet protector -- the Avery top loading sheet protectors are easy to move around and remove (no need to open the binder's rings) so you can easily pull out a page to make your point during a meeting or to update data when things are changing fast. The print won't come off on these protectors, either, so they make your report look better, not worse.

Creating reports may never be your favorite part of the job, but there's a lot of satisfaction in making a really great report -- and maybe people will read them after all.

The only thing that's not perfect about Post-Its is that they're so... physical, right? Wrong. Now you can use Post-Its in your virtual world the same way you use them in your physical world.

This app lets you send your friends sweet Post-It notes when they reach a certain location. This works with the human brain's tendencies -- you know how you remember you were supposed to buy dog food the minute you walk into the house, but totally forget it when you're at the grocery store? Send a reminder to yourself that'll pop up when you really need it.

If you like to use Post-Its in the physical world, you're in luck! The Color Collection special is still going on.

Take the Post-It Color Personality Quiz and print out the response form to get your free gift. Buy any two of these great products:

• Jewel Pop super sticky notes or Jewel Pop pop-up notes
• Electric Glow Post-It notes or Electric Glow pop-ups
• Tropic Breeze sticky notes or Tropic Breeze pop-up notes
• Farmers Market super sticky notes

Just send in the order or the UPC codes from the packages, and you'll get a FREE Post-it® Flag+ Highlighter and Pen 3-pack! The offer's good till the end of June, so don't delay -- order today so you'll have plenty of time to send in your request.

Fun at your desk Of course you like your job, so work is fun. You need play time, though -- opportunities for frivolous fun as well as the hard fun of high achievement. Toys have a place on your desk. If your boss doesn't like to see wind-up robots in the office, why not a shoe-shaped tape dispenser or markers in fun colors?

Fun in your break room Get physical during your breaks if you work at a desk. We play ping-pong -- it wakes you up and reboots your brain! Nerf basketball, Twister, or a little dancing can help, too. Obviously, you need coffee and tea, and you may also have to have candy, but do consider healthy snacks like fruit and nuts as well. You may see less of a mid-afternoon slump if your break room isn't all about caffeine and sugar.

Fun on your calendar Have you planned a vacation? Even if you're busy, even if you're the chief cook and bottle washer of your business, you still need some down time to re-energize for work. If a real vacation isn't on the cards this year, you can certainly take a long weekend and go camping, or enjoy a staycation (that's when you stay home but make it a vacation and act like a tourist in your own city). Put it on your calendar now, and make a firm commitment to it.

You may be surprised at how much more you can get done once you've added a little fun to your workday!

It's a silly song, but it refers to something that can be a real problem in the office: that feeling people get that office supplies will somehow reproduce themselves and always be there when needed, even if you don't buy any more.

In offices all over the nation, people are standing around saying things like, "What happened to all the pens?" and, "There used to be a whole drawer full of legal pads!"

People, office supplies get used up and have to be replaced. When you buy them in bulk, it can seem as though you have a never-ending supply, and of course many of them are reusable. A good pen or marker can last a long time, and people keep their staplers for years.

Eventually, though, the markers dry up, paper clips walk out the door on reports, and staplers have to be refilled -- even replaced. Right now, America's Depot is having a spring sale. $10 off any order of $50 or more when you use the code SPRING as you check out.

Visit America's Depot and stock up on all those office supplies you really need, and quit wasting time wailing and moaning.

Are these the things you're out of?

• Pens
• Paper clips
• Packing tape
• Stapler and staples
• Post-It easel pads
• Post-It notes
• Rubber bands

Whatever's missing, we've got it.

Right now, as you're calculating grades, giving exams, and purging papers, go ahead and plan how to set up your classroom for next year. Get everything in order now, and you'll be relaxing while the teacher next door is stressing out.

Start with this great 3-drawer organizer. It's cute and bright, rolls around to wherever its needed, and it's just the right size for all the little tools and supplies you need to have on hand.

There's a 10 drawer organizer, too, if you need something more capacious. If you like to keep things visible on shelves, go with clear bins to keep everything sorted, organized, and visible. Colored bins look good if immediate visibility isn't a plus.

Sorting papers? Cubbies like this one from Safco let you sort out different kinds of papers, or have one for each student to keep assignments and resources handy. Pacon's Construction Paper keeper is an economical option with 15 compartments.

If the papers you need to organize are mostly on your own desk, check out the Tidy Tower. It has plenty of highly organized drawers and shelves to keep track of the roll book and the permission slips and the lunch count and everything else. The Smart Solutions Organizer has vertical storage for file folders plus trays below, a pencil cup, and smaller spaces for notes and paper clips and such.

Next, you need a spot for those bulletin board sets and other oversized items. Whether you buy them or make them, it's an investment, and it's frustrating to get ready to decorate your room and find pieces missing or damaged. An art portfolio keeps everything in good condition. That first link takes you to a vinyl and steel beauty; you might prefer economical cardboard portfolios so you can have one for each season, or one for each subject.

Finally, get all those CD-ROMS, DVDs, and CDs into a media storage binder. We know you're tired of those stacks of jewel boxes or towers of disks you have to take out and put back every time you need one. Get all the classroom disks into a storage binder, and you can easily store them alphabetically or according to theme -- whatever works best for you.

Get everything tamed before you leave for the summer, and revel in the sense of accomplishment!

This desk, the Safco Xpressions computer workstation, holds your laptop or you can use a modern lightweight monitor with the tower on the low shelf.

The work surface is glass, and makes a dandy notepad with a dry erase marker -- and the link takes you to a cool one, the Expo Click, which clicks open and closed like a ballpoint pen and has an excitingly chunky shape.

If you work at your desk, rather than just perching there for a moment to check your email, you need a good ergonomic chair. But why not a bright red desk chair?

These particular things may not be your style. The point is that your office really can look cool -- whatever "cool" means to you.

Manufacturers of office furniture and supplies are thinking outside the box, so you can do the same.

Will a cool office increase your productivity? We think it will. We've got no proof, but we believe it. How about you?

Is it a good idea?

The main problem with multitasking is that we just feel as though we're doing two things at once. What we're really doing is switching our attention back and forth very fast.

Your brain is occupied with your email, and then switches to being occupied by your coffee, and then back to the email, and then over to the report, back to the coffee, and so forth.

It happens fast enough that you don't notice the shifts in attention, but probably not so fast that your attention and performance don't suffer. When you're folding laundry while watching TV, it doesn't matter. Folding the laundry with precision and speed probably isn't high on your list of goals, and you can watch TV very badly and inattentively before it keeps you from enjoying the show. Neither the laundry folding not the TV watching is done very well, but you don't care.

Revising that report while you read the email? A different matter entirely. If you concentrated on the report till it was finished and then concentrated on the email till it was finished, chances are good that you'd finish in the same amount of time as when you multitask it, but the results would be better. When you've got both finished, enjoy your coffee -- it'll definitely be tastier and more satisfying if you pay attention while you drink it.

When is it a good idea to multitask?

• When results don't matter. Folding the laundry and watching TV  are the perfect example. When you have work that doesn't really matter and the quality of the outcome is unimportant, you can multitask. On the  other hand, why not just leave the work undone entirely and spend that time doing something that does matter?
• When you're not really the one doing both tasks. For example, you can check your email while you print a report, because the printer is actually printing the report and you are merely waiting for the report to print.
• When one of the tasks isn't really a task. For example, when you're on hold or in the elevator, you can catch a quick game of Hanging with Friends or have a look at the new brochure design.

Be careful about when making this decision, because it's easy to decide that sitting in the meeting being bored isn't really a task, isn't a task for you, or isn't really important -- and that's how you get caught playing Hanging with Friends in the staff meeting.

Now let us share with you the startling statistics about your customers' perceptions of cleanliness in your office.

If someone comes into your office and decides that it's not clean, they probably won't come back. If they use your restroom and get that impressions, they will not only cross you off their personal list, but they will tell an average of five other people that your place of business is dirty.

You wouldn't think that a grimy restroom would matter much, as long as you're not in health care. Who cares how clean a lawyer or a seamstress is?

Everyone. Research shows that people do care about this, even though you'd think they wouldn't. In fact, people whose own homes are squalid will still react negatively to a business -- and business -- that seems dirty to them.

What makes people think that your place is grubby?

• Paper waste. Visible paper waste is one of the most obvious signs of a failure to keep up with restroom cleanliness -- or office cleanliness. A touch-free paper towel dispenser with an automatic wastebasket close by makes people feel safe.
• Odor. All-purpose cleaner and a good sponge or mop will take care of most odors and give your place a fresh scent. If you need special restroom products, use them. Open a window sometimes, too, or use air fresheners if you have people working hard, strong chemicals, or cooking odors.
• Wet or sticky surfaces. Wipe down hard surfaces with disinfecting wipes regularly during the day, and glance into the kitchen, restroom, and break room and make sure there aren't any spills.

With the right tools, keeping your place of business fresh enough to make customers happy and keep employees well doesn't have to be a tough job. See some of our favorite all-purpose cleaners for a good start.

You can certainly put some time and thought into figuring out what makes you feel that way, develop systems to make things run more smoothly, and otherwise try to limit the times you get flustered and frayed at the edges, but there will be times like that anyway. Interruptions, changes, too much work in too little time, conflicts, miscommunications, and all the little things that happen in the course of the day will affect you sometime.

When this happens in spite of your best efforts, you need to reboot your brain. Where's your personal control+alt+delete button combination? For most people, one of these things will do this trick:

• Exercise. Run up and down the stairs, take a brisk walk around the hallways, or get outside and powerwalk around the block. Research shows that even a few minutes of movement can get you out of your funk and back to productive work.
• Play. Play can involve exercise (got a Nerf ball?) but it can also be a matter of taking some time for a crossword puzzle or a little Post-It origami.
• Laugh. Just like play, a break for laughter can help you reboot your brain. When you think about one thing extensively, the same synapses fire repeatedly along a path in your brain. They get tired, just the way your arm gets tired if you hammer for a long time. Giving your brain something else to think about lets the synapses rest and then they can get back to work more effectively. Watch a clip from your favorite comedy on YouTube -- three minutes is enough!

Cup of coffee or tea? Sure. Coffee breaks, especially if they involve visiting with a friend or getting out into the fresh air, can be great. Just don't rely on sugar and caffeine to keep you going artificially when you really need to reboot your brain.

Some people resist innovation in Post-Its. They like the eye-friendly original yellow color, the handy original size, and the simple shape. They don't want a fancy-schmancy highlighter pen with Post-It flags in it. They don't need special holders for their desks.

I think that even these die-hard Post-It minimalists will like Post-It's Super Sticky notes.The adhesive is updated; in fact, 3m calls it a "revolutionary new adhesive technology," and I have to agree that these notes are super sticky.

I also have to admit that the link above goes straight to Tropic Breeze Super Sticky Post-Its. Maybe some Post-It minimalist will be inspired to try out some new colors. If not, go with the good ol' basic yellow super sticky notes. No one will know you tried something new with your Post-Its -- except you, when they stay where you put them till you take them off. Period.