Time Tamers 1 - Hyperfocus Alarms

If you suffer from ADD you may be all to well aware of the dangers of hyperfocus when you get into a project. Four hours after starting, you pull your head out of the project to find that you are over an hour late for dinner with your boss and you have only worked on a small component of the overall project at hand.

Consider keeping a time tamer alarm close at hand for these situations. Set the alarm for 45 minutes to an hour. When the alarm goes off, get up from your desk, walk around, get a drink to stay hydrated. After 5 minutes or so return to the task at hand and reassess the degree of focus you have given based on your objectives for the time you have to work.

Remember to reset the alarm before you return to work.

Organizing out of Procrastination

Are you a procrastinator? Are you overwhelmed with the tasks at hand and would rather just avoid them?

Here is an excellent, short discussion around procrastination at the office and what to do about it:
http://www.lifeorganizers.com/office/procrastination-at-work.htm

Top 5 Series - Strategies to Increase Organization in your Business

You've been working diligently to increase your personal organization. As the paper clears and the dust settles, you realize your staff are also working in a cluttered, ineffective environment. It's time to change the culture in the office from "No one really cares since these aren't public offices" to "We are proud of the professional environment in which we work". These strategies will help.

1. Set the standard yourself. As head of the organization, directorate or department, your leadership sets the tone. If your office is a pile of disorganized papers, you give your staff the impression you don't care what the place looks like. Why should they? I know, I know. You can find anything you want in the office right? Are you sure? How long will it take you? And if you don't show up tomorrow is that the way you want your leadership role remembered?
2. Start talking about professional presentation and image at meetings. Add it to performance appraisals to make staff accountable.
3. Ensure that every staff member has immediate access to a blue box for recycling; right beside their desk in place of a garbage can wouldn't be tool close.
4. Ensure that every staff has the tools they need to be organized in their work space. Do they have reasonable access to appropriate filing space? Do they have a desk that works? Is there a book shelf or alternative for holding company policy manuals or obligatory preventative maintenance reports? If you aren't sure what is missing or why an employee is so disorganized, consider having a professional organizer conduct an assessment of the work space in question. There may be more complex organizational issues that the employee is struggling with.
5. Schedule a semi-annual clear out day. The rules for the time are simple. Everyone participates in a clear out of their work space on this day. No other meetings or activities are booked. Order lunch for the gang.

Managing Email 3

I am going to stay with the email theme. A common challenge for all of us is dealing with the email messages in the Inbox that have been read but not deleted or filed. Some days/weeks/months later there is a significant backlog and clearing it out is such a huge task we all avoid it.

Try this: Dedicate 10 minutes every working day for a month to email clear out. Start by changing the sorting criteria for your Inbox (just for clearing out purposes). If you have email sorted by Date Received, switch to Sender or Subject. Start anywhere at all, it doesn't have to be at the top, and quickly scan the messages in the reading pane. Notice how your perspective on the messages changes?

By changing the order of the email on your screen, you change the perspective for your brain which is often all it takes to boost the Keep or Delete decision making process. In organizing, its the equivalent to moving all the material you need to sort through out of its usual living place and sorting it in a completely different environment. Try it and remember: 10 minutes a day.

Managing Email 2

Congratulations - you turned off the email alert and scheduled yourself to clear email after 11:00 am - didn't you?

Messages are easily lost in the Inbox. To avoid forgetting about a message, learn to use your flag alerts. If you are visually oriented, chose a different colour for different types of alerts: e.g. follow up from your VP could be blue, follow up for you subordinates could be green. Your computer will keep track of the messages that are flagged.

Meanwhile, try and delete messages as soon as possible and file those messages that you need to keep but don't require any further action. The filing system in your email should mirror that of you paper files. That way, your brain only has to remember one system and is more likely to remember where items are located. Finally, in the worse case scenaria affectionately known as the "beer truck phenomena" (what happens if you don't show up tomorrow because you have been hit by a beer truck?) the risk to your company that something important is lost, is reduced, as the likelihood of finding material in your computer is increased.

The Disappearing Desk

Are you feeling hemmed in when sitting at your desk?

Take a quick inventory of what's on it: computer CPU, printer, screen, keyboard, telephone, several "In" piles, three projects in process (at least that's what you can see well enough to count).

Move all the hardware off your desk. Do a quick sort of your In piles into four file folders: read, call, write, decide. Put them into a vertical file holder on your desk, to the left if you are right handed, (vice versa) with the labels facing toward you. Make sure the three projects are in some form of file holder and add them to the vertical file holder.

Take a quick inventory of what's under it at your feet: computer CPU, printer, several pairs of shoes, gym bag, handbag, assorted brief cases or other business cases, recycling box.

Move the CPU and printer. Put the shoes, gym bag and any other clothes in the closet or in a bag hanging behing the door. Put the business cases in the closet. Use the recycling box for the sorting in the second paragraph above.

Enjoy your space.

Managing Email 1

Overwhelmed with email? Many of us are. Many of us are also concerned with the amount of time it can consume. Have you ever found yourself still clearing email several hours after you started, not having realized the time that was eaten up?

To begin taking back control, turn off the email alert on your screen. Very few of us really need to know when emails are coming in unless we have a time-sensitive message for which we are waiting.

Avoid clearing email first thing in the morning. Having planned your list of things to do the night before, you know what your top priorities are: let those have your best hours first thing in the day. Schedule time to clear email towards the middle of the day and again later in the day. Allocate a certain amount of time and stick to it.