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QuickTip: Three Uber-Effective Tips for Home Offices

Thursday, March 3, 2011

We just moved into our next “forever” home.  Seems like the only “forever” is the moving part.  But that’s not the point of this missive. The point here is to describe THE three characteristics every home office should possess to be highly effective.

The background on this is that I work from home when I’m not on the road.  In the last seven years of working from home, my “office” address has changed five times.  Thus, I’ve become quite an expert at setting up home offices.  Here are the three characteristics I found to be crucial to creating and working effectively in a home office. 

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Three Small Steps to Greater Control of Your Day

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Change is easy; deciding to is hard.  That’s because we all know that we need to make changes to improve our lives.  However, the inertia of the status quo is a very powerful force to overcome when the moment to effect those changes arrives.  My personal and professional experience is that small change is, indeed, the most effective strategy for accomplishing all types of goals.

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Three Simple Ways to Direct Conversations in Multiple-Recipient E-mails

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

One of the greatest benefits to using e-mail is the ability to converse with a group of people asynchronously over a large geographic area.  Just add any number of e-mail addresses into the To:, CC: and BCC: fields, write your e-mail and hit Send.  Off goes your message to be read and responded to by everyone everywhere at any time. And that’s when the trouble begins.

Spaghetti on a Plate

Unlike real-time environments such as conference calls or meetings where the directionality of a statement can be implied by the circumstances – “She’s asking me that question because she’s looking at me.” or “That’s a question for the entire group.” - e-mail messages rarely queue the directionality of comments or questions.  Consequently, any and/or many of the people on the thread begin weighing in … via ”Reply All” of course.  Now, instead of a communication that was intended to keep a group informed while also directing certain comments to some and seeking specific answers from others, you have spaghetti on a plate.  A whole bunch of unorganized information is being delivered to a large group of people with no one directing traffic.  Think Tokyo train platforms at rush hour.

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Keeping E-mail Under Control

Thursday, February 3, 2011

This is a guest post by Stephanie Calahan.  Stephanie is a nationally known speaker, productivity consultant and founder of Calahan Solutions.

“Some firms report that e-mails account for up to 40 percent of data-storage costs, with an estimated one in five defined as non-business-related”

– Source: Hitachi Data Survey of 630 IT Directors, via vnunet.com

Are you like most executives?  Statistics report that the average exec averages at least 100 emails daily.  Add to that, the National Association of Professional Organizers reports that e-mail has added one to two hours to each person’s work schedule per day compared to 10 years ago!

Today I’ll cover some tips you can use to keep your in-box under control.

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