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Filing, Filing, Who's Got the Filing?

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Everyone agrees that filing in an organized way is better than not filing at all.  Okay, there are a few outliers who don’t, but they’re just being stubborn. 

The real issue here isn’t whether to file, but how to file.  My clients routinely fail to file well because they don’t believe they have the time or wherewithal to create a filing system that will actually work. 

Just Look to Your Kitchen for Guidance

Most people cry, “But I’d don’t know where to start!”  whenever the issue of creating a filing system is brought up.  Nonesense.  Just look to the silverware drawer in virtually everyone’s kitchen.  It’s organized, so it can’t be that hard.  Note, the silverware drawer stands in stark contract to the “junk” drawer which is generally a disaster. 

What’s my point?  Ask yourself which system works better for you.  Read on if you answered the silverware drawer.

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Top Ten Time Management Tips

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Below are the time management suggestions I most often give to my speaking and training audiences.  Whenever I deliver these, I implore people to Adopt, Adapt, Reject any or all of them.  What I mean is:

  •  Adopt. Give the suggestion a try; see if it works for you.
  • Adapt.  If the suggestion isn’t working for you, but you like the idea, try to Adapt it to your way of working.
  • Reject.  If you can’t Adopt or Adapt a suggestion, toss it out and go to the next one.  We’re just looking for one or two ideas to help you regain command of your day.

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Spend Now, Receive Later – The Ongoing Value of Documented Processes

Saturday, March 12, 2011

I own two businesses – my consultancy and an e-tailer of kayaking gear. The latter, Outdoorplay, migrated to a cloud-based software package called NetSuite in early 2010. From the very beginning we required everyone to document the various business processes they learned about the NetSuite system. Google Docs was used to share the process sheets amongst ourselves. Now, one year later, we have a complete library of How-Tos on almost every feature we use in NetSuite.

When we hired a new employee recently, we had her review the applicable process sheets before digging into the software. Then, while she was coming up to speed, she referred to the process sheets to guide her way. The net results were faster learning by her and fewer questions to be answered by others = 2x productivity! 

Here are the basic steps to getting this right the first time and keeping it right over time.

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Power Processing Your E-mail – Q&A – Follow-up to RocketMatter Webinar

Thursday, March 10, 2011

On February 18th, 2011, I delivered a Power Processing Your E-mail webinar to clients and subscribers of RocketMatter.  RocketMatter is an online legal practice management platform.  Larry Port, RocketMatter’s founder and CEO, had invited me to present to his clients and those interested in learning more about how to better manage e-mail via webinar and I was thrilled to oblige. 

The 60-minute, CLE-approved seminar was well attended and we ran right up against the 60 minutes leaving time to answer only a few questions.  However, Larry’s presentation platform was able to capture all the questions posed and this post consists of my responses to the many great questions raised during the webinar. 

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