Productivity Cafe

ProductivityCafe.com in the New York Times!

The New York Times Fashion & Style section mentioned some of the advice from ProductivityCafe.com today. Read the article here: New York Time Article on Organizing. We welcome writer Michelle Slatalla and invite you to read regularly via rss feed or email delivery. The article Ms. Slatalla mentions is on keyboard shortcuts. That article can be found here: NYT Referenced Article @ ProductivityCafe.com.

 

Hope you're having a Playful & rejuvenating Memorial Day.

Patriotic Celebration of Memorial Day ~ Friday @ 5:00

Let's Chalk One Up for our Country. This Memorial Day weekend you will probably see family or friends with kids – or have more time than usual with your own. To recognize the holiday and make a fun memory, grab a bucket of sidewalk chalk and a kid (or 3) and draw your own themed mural. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• A soldier

• A Flag
• The Liberty Bell
• An American Eagle
• Uncle Sam
• A president (see the head-side of a coin)
  
  

Be sure to take a photo in case the rain washes it away soon.

And, write here or send photos to me of what you did so I can post them for all our readers (and they can use the idea for July 4^th!).

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R & R (rest & rejuvenation) are the intentions behind the Friday at 5:00 entries. Often these are inexpensive and low key because you recharging your batteries can be more easily achieved without running around and doing, doing, doing. Your productivity is rooted in your energy being high. Your energy being high is rooted in recreation!

Wait Time Doesn’t Have to Mean Waste Time

Adding your wait time throughout a day could sum up to an hour or more. Reinvesting that time would allow you to stay in touch (network), finish a report, read a book, or get your car washed.  It could help your career advance and your happiness quotient!

The first step to converting wait time is to recognize where it is wasted time today. Here are a few frequently spotted examples:

• A room is booked for a meeting before yours and those in the prior meeting go over time leaving you and your peers standing outside the door – perhaps pacing outside the door.
• Information meant to get to you is delayed
• The computers are down
• Someone is late to a meeting and the person who initiated the meeting doesn't start until everyone arrives even if it's 10 minutes or more late
• A co-worker is so overloaded that his part of your part of a project takes a back seat for days and you can't proceed without that part
• You wait by the microwave while components for dinner defrost

The next step to converting wait time to productive time is to work to eliminate waste. Let's highlight the waste in some of situations above as a way to identify waste that could be eliminated.

• The room could be made available for only the first 45 minutes of each hour it's bookable. The meeting facilitator of your meeting could show up early and respectfully urge the prior group to leave. Every

Catalogs – stop the overload!

While the holiday shopping season is almost a faded memory because it's month ago and the price of gas has you reducing all your spending the flow of catalogs has probably been reduced but not stopped. Why not stop receiving catalogs you don't want receive and

• Save a lot of time that you would otherwise spend flipping through catalogs
• Save trees that won't be processed into paper
• Save the environment from the waste of processing trees into paper, of fuel to propel delivery vehicles, of landfills that have to hold our waste
• Reduce your stress from feeling you have so much to do as represented by the pile of catalogs you'd like to peruse
• Eliminate the temptation to buy things that you don't need or already have a version of?

We first addressed this issue in 2006 with the article titled simply: Stop Junk Mail. And we still feel that going directly to the DMA is the best way to remove your name from lists. I just found out it is also the best place to put a name of a deceased person on a Do Not Contact List (https://www.ims-dm.com/cgi/ddnc.php).

Another site to stop the flow of catalogs specifically is Catalog Choice. This free resource allows you to submit the names of catalogs you don't want to receive. The benefit of this is: you continue to receive the catalogs you're glad to read and probably purchase from while stopping those that are really clutter.

Catalog Choice is a sponsored project of the Ecology Center. It is endorsed by the National Wildlife Federation and the Natural Resources Defense Council, and funded by the Overbrook Foundation, the Merck Family Fund, and the Kendeda Fund.

Sign up now and breathe a sigh of relief.

 

Consequences of Not Knowing the Rules of the Game

I sat across the table with disbelief and building anger as Pepper waltzed into the business dinner an hour late. I was responsible for arranging this private meeting with Tony - a man with experience and success in a particularly profitable business venture that we wanted to learn about. Tony was in town for a convention and generously offered the evening to us. One of the most experienced people in our organization (Ben) was also able to attend and willing to contribute his expertise from 30+ successful years in other dimensions of our business.

This newbie, Pepper, held us all up. Adding fuel to the frustration was my email from 2 days before the dinner confirming that we all had to be there to be seated and we had only a 10 minute window. Luckily influential Ben worked his magic and we got a table without being a whole party. The final bit of gasoline on the fire of my aggravation was that Pepper invited her best friend to join us – the friend knows nothing of our business and seemed to think this was a cocktail party. Actually, no, that wasn't the final bit. The final bit was the minute when Tony went to the hostess desk to receive delivery of his lost luggage – it had been lost for 13 hours so far. When he stepped away Pepper leans across the table and says, "Give me a brief on this guy. Is he a doctor? What's the topic?" OK now, that was the part that crazed me because a briefing was sent on Tony – as well as a link to his website where particular relevant background information was offered.

You regular readers know that I'm not the type to blow up – and I didn't. Ok, I am blowing up but it's here on paper and the names have been changed to protect those involved. And, Pepper said, and I quote, "I don't read email," so I won't imagine she'll ever cue in online. Our guests made comments, and I made judgments about this Pepper which are possibly wrong – but vivid:

• She's a prima donna
• She's an air head
• She's self-centered
• She's oblivious
• She's a genius – just not at business meeting courtesy

Print Smart – It’s Green & Streamlined

Streamlining, saving resources, and simplifying are some of the foundations of being productive. Printing more efficiently is one of the ways you can do all three things – simplify the paperwork you have to manage, save the resource of paper and all the elements that go into its production and streamline your systems.

Naturally the first consideration is whether you need to print an electronic document in the first place. A local company appends this to the end of every email:

Save a tree! Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. 

A client prints every PowerPoint just before she races off to meetings because she's so overbooked. Until we get the booking issue streamlined, here's a hint for printing more effectively that will work for her and perhaps for you – print 2 pages per piece of paper. This practice also saves time – printers are only so fast so printing 2 pages per sheet of paper will print in half the time!

Here's a sample - click on the thumbnail to see a full-size version.

You've probably seen it before but haven't bothered to figure out how. So, here's a Productivity Café 'how to'.

When you're ready to print, open the Print Dialogue box (start printing) with ctrl-p (we love shortcuts...) or click on file, print, print. Match your dialog to the sample below, select your 'page density' or how many pages will go on each sheet of paper and print it in the 'zoom' area in the bottom right of the dialog box. Print, read, and enjoy being a greener printer!

 

Building Lasting Impressions with Friends - Friday @ 5:00

 

This weekend solidify the group you're part of, the team you play on, the circle you travel in by buying something inexpensive ($ <5) for the members. Tie a bow around the item or put it in a brown paper bag and distribute them to your circle. Why do this? Because it's bonding and marks this chapter of your life. Here are some ideas to trigger your own:

• Nancy, a potter, makes ornaments with this year's cycling club jersey design
  
  
• Dave gave the 5 guys in his MBA program workgroup G.I. Joe figures to represent the unity and teamwork they had for the 3 years of their program
  
• Maureen gave us a croquet miniature after a year of regular 'killer croquet games'
  
• Marty got these special sweatbands for teammates and gave one to each of his sweaty buddies
  
  
• Barb got her 2 sisters a special pin of 3 girls
  

What could you get for your circle?

 

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R & R (rest & rejuvenation) are the intentions behind the Friday at 5:00 entries. Often these are inexpensive and low key because you recharging your batteries can be more easily achieved without running around and doing, doing, doing. Your productivity is rooted in your energy being high. Your energy being high is rooted in recreation!

Productivity & The Grave Part 3 – The Resources

The third part of this series on having your estate in order we're going to look at some resources that will contribute to being proactive and thereby, productive. In Part 1 we looked at the whole idea of getting our heads out of the sand and collecting the information on the things that we should handle in our will and trust. In Part 2 A&B we look at the conversations that need to be had within a family and with experts. Here we're going to overview the resources that could help you a lot and how to locate them.

The short list of resources that should be of value to you are:

• A couple of good books so you become educated
• An Estate Lawyer
• A Tax Accountant
• A Friend or Family Member to be your executor and trustee.
• A Financial Advisor
• A Great Filing Cabinet & Filing system (that's covered in Parts 4 & 5)

On why they're important and where to find them:

Books  Book learning is vital to you being prepared because there is so much to learn that a professional would be outrageously expensive and

Keyboard Shortcuts Everyone Should Know

How to use a computer effectively was a 5 minute interlude during a meeting on Holding Effective Meetings with a client on Monday. That discussion resulted in this quick, and hopefully relevant & useful, pair of tips because these seasoned computer users were eager to learn the tips and hadn't learned them in all their years using PCs.

Searching your folders is often done via Explore in windows. The quick way to open the explore window is to hold down the windows logo key (between the ctrl & alt keys on most keyboards) then tap the e key (for explore).

  Try it now!

 

The quick way to open the find dialog is to type windows key then tap the f key (for find).

Try it now!

Will that save you time? Keep you on the keyboard rather than grabbing the mouse?  If yes, use it at least 3 times every day for the next week and they'll be as automatic as typing words are today.

Setup a New Address - Friday @ 5:00

Create a non-work email. Yep, you guessed that this is written for middle-aged folks because our kids have 2, 5, or more email addresses and don't need this advice. Too many of us are using work email for some things that we really shouldn't. Some of you can't believe I'm writing this because it's so obvious to you. But, reality offers better stories than fiction – a very high level executive client of mine is literally looking for a job using his work mail. Remember that a company has the right to read, review, and act on any and every piece of email that is sent through the company system. So, this executive's activities may be uncovered before he has his next position resulting in unlimited time to look for the next position. Ow.

Additional reasons to have a universal email account are:

• Your email address will be the same no matter where you are working or who your ISP (internet service provider i.e. @comcast.net or @verizon.net) is.
• This address should be used for online purchases, e-zines and newsletters, and other public purposes.
• It's easy to walk away from a universal email address by simply ceasing to check it.
• No corporate overseer has the right to read your email or act on it (as long as you're not using a company computer to check it).

Universal email are web-based or on your own domain. A few popular options are:

Gmail

Yahoo! Mail

AOL (American OnLine)

Mail.com

Fortunately setting up a new email account at any of these providers takes less than 10 minutes – often less than 5. You simply click on 'Get A New Account' or 'Register' and follow the steps, answer the questions, write a password and you're ready to go.

If you're feeling very accomplished, set up Outlook to retrieve your email into a central mailbox. Again, if you do this on your work computer, they have the ability and right to monitor your email. Do it on your home computer. I have Outlook checking 2 Gmail & my ProductivityCafe & my OrganizersInc e-mailboxes – very convenient and all the emails are in one inbox.

Then be sure to use it and check it at least weekly. Use it for the contact email on services you use, use it for personal correspondence, use it for job hunting, and write below to share with other Productivity Café readers how you use your alternate email.

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R & R (rest & rejuvenation) are the intentions behind the Friday at 5:00 entries. Often these are inexpensive and low key because you recharging your batteries can be more easily achieved without running around and doing, doing, doing. Your productivity is rooted in your energy being high. Your energy being high is rooted in recreation!