Whiteboards as an aid to productivity

The whiteboard as an aid to productivity

I would really welcome your views on this topic, whether you are someone who benefits greatly from some items, and from anyone who has a role in designing office spaces and does not consider provision of adequate whiteboard / blackboard space as essential for improving staff productivity, or, indeed, if you don't accept that it enhances productivity!

I work from home now and invested in a large whiteboard (unfortunately not as huge as I wanted as they were out of stock!) a few months back. I love it, it boosts my productivity no end, if I have a client at home, instead of feeding back verbally what they say, I use it to write up what they say - maybe in 'mind map' style and their minds explode with new insights. I use it for planning, all sorts. I keep a standard daily tick list down the right hand side and use the rest for my scribble.

In my last corporate place of work, we were in big open plan offices with zero wall space and had nowhere at all to work out options, plans, make links between different things, blast out ideas, brainstorm etc other than by booking one of 3 meeting rooms in advance, so no sponteneity. I was forced to do anything like that on A3 pieces of paper sitting at a 'breakout' table in the back of the office or at my desk.

Since getting my home whiteboard, I realise that the lack of availability of a whiteboard in my last job had a detrimental impact on being able to do the best job I could (though I was pretty darn good anyway!) and probably on a lot of other people in jobs requiring deep thought.

Anyway, purpose of my post, I am writing an article on the whiteboard as an aid to productivity and what to get the thoughts of you good people! What are your experiences?

(If you use a blackboard, that's just as relevant, anything you can scribble on 'large' and rub out easily!)

I'd love it if you comment below or here on this thread on Steve Pavlina's forum.