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Work Smarts Tagged Articles
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5 big myths about your time
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| Some people have told me privately that they would love to be more organised and in greater control of their time but they are worried about the negative side-effects. Side effects? What could possibly be wrong or negative about having more time and better personal and professional organisation? |
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Applying the 80/20 rule
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| While surveying land for taxation purposes, he discovered that roughly about 80 percent of the land in any region he visited was owned by about 20 percent of the town or village population. Regardless of the location the ratio was about the same. This is known as the 80/20 Rule. |
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Are you crazy busy?
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| In the age of information, things are moving faster than ever before – and if you can’t keep up, you’ll find yourself obsolete. But how do you keep up when there are hundreds of emails, text and instant messages flying your way every day? |
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Be flexible. Things can change
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| Contrary to popular opinion, good time management is not about cramming every second of your day full of ‘stuff’. In fact, it is quite the opposite! Realise that even the best plans can fail and sometimes, despite your best efforts, hings will go wrong. Be prepared to adapt and change when you need to. |
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Do you use a spiral notebook?
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| I suspect the ‘hunting and pecking’ for something to write on is a common scene in so many workplaces. Jotting notes on loose pads of paper, using sticky notes for phone numbers and scrawling a customer reference on the back of an envelope or business card are all symptoms of poor personal organisation. |
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Get that monkey off your back!
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| Whether you’re the CEO of a multi-million dollar business, a manager of a large team, a supervisor or a hard working employee, chances are there’s someone in your working life who will try to load extra things onto you. These ‘extra tasks’ are often called the ‘monkey on our back’. |
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How do you eat an elephant?
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| Do you have projects or tasks that take many hours or even weeks to complete? Do you also have to complete day-to-day activities as well? If so you might find yourself feeling overwhelmed or stressed just thinking about where to start and how to get everything done. It’s like there’s an elephant in the room and you’ve got no idea what to do with it. |
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How to beat procrastination
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| Procrastination. Most people learned all about it in school and perhaps you’ve let it slip back into your working habits. Many people in workplace have become so good at it that they are now procrastination experts. |
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How to hold effective meetings
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| While many workplace meetings are productive and useful, some are a complete waste of resources and time. I believe that’s possible to slash hundreds of hours a year from your organisation’s meeting time by thinking differently about your meetings. |
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How to organise yourself for daily success
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| Time management doesn’t kill spontaneity, it gives you the freedom to be spontaneous! While it’s true you will be more aware of your time and priorities, you’ll also have more time! This means you’ll have time more for the things that are important to you. |
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Is your desk a war zone?
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| A recent study in the office habits of workers and the associated costs to companies conducted by the Butler Group stated that employees are suffering from both information overload and information underload. As a result, a typical worker now spends up to one-quarter of his or her day searching for the right information to complete any given task. |
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Learn to say
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| Do you ever find it hard saying “no” to colleagues? Sometimes saying “yes” seems like the easier option, however by saying “yes” to extra work, you could be setting yourself up for added stress and possible failure. There are only so many hours in your day and you can only get so much work done. Saying “yes” when you mean “no” can be dangerous. Who would have thought that “yes”, that little three-letter word could cause such trouble? |
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Managing time while commuting
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| According to some interesting statistics that I was reading recently, the average worker spends at least an hour a day travelling to and from work, with some people spending more than 8 hours a week commuting. That’s an entire work day every week! Believe it or not, commuting on public transport or travelling to and from work can actually be one of the most productive times of your day. |
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The 6D system for prioritising
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| Organising yourself can be a very overwhelming thought at first. Many people who have desks, work areas or a head full of clutter might want to get organised but simply don’t know where to start. |
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Reduce your personal stress
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| Most of us experience some level of stress in our lives, especially from our work. The stress of urgent deadlines, demanding clients, meetings, families and bills all add to stress levels There doesn’t seem to be any end to the modern day disease of personal stress. So, what can you do to overcome stress? |
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The power of using a daily 'Action List'
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| Write up your list after you arrive at work in the morning and use the power of Triage to prioritise your work. If you’re not familiar with Triage, it’s a battlefield term, referring to the sorting and allocating of medical treatment, food and aid on a needs basis. |
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Tick tock your body clock
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| Are you a morning lark or a night owl? Regardless of whether you wake up early or stay up late, these patterns of waking up and sleeping are governed by your personal internal body clock; your Circadian Rhythm. What is a Circadian Rhythm? The Latin terms ‘circa’ and ‘diem’ is literally translated to mean ‘around a day’. Studies have shown that humans have a Circadian Rhythm of roughly 24 hours. |
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Why a diary is your most Important business tool
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| Your diary is where the daily magic happens. It’s where you plan your time, develop your goals and decide on the direction of your day, your week and your personal life. In fact, the quiet time you spend with your diary (and a coffee) every morning is some of the most important planning time you have. So – how much quality time ARE you investing using your diary each day? |
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Where are you going today?
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| For the majority of managers and staff they simply come in to work and get on with whatever think they have to do. Very little planning or prioritising takes place. Is it any wonder so many people get caught up in problems, emergencies and find themselves juggling two, three or four different things at once within the first hour or two of the day. |
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Why the first hour of your day is the most important hour of the day
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| Do you sometimes find yourself spending the first hour of your day making coffee, chatting to co-workers and checking through your huge inbox while answering a few emails? Do you sometimes find it hard to get started in the morning? If you answered “yes”, you’re not alone. Many professional people tend to write off the first hour of their day as unproductive preparation time – but this can be a disastrous mistake. |
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Why your first hour at work is the most critical hour of your day
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| Do you sometimes find yourself spending the first hour of your day chatting to co-workers and checking through your huge inbox while answering a few emails?Do you sometimes find it hard to get started in the morning? If you answered “yes”, you’re not alone. Many professional people tend to write off the first hour of their day as unproductive preparation time – but this can be a disastrous mistake. |
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How to get control over your email
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| Controlling your email is like any other aspect of your job, you need to be really good at it and if you’re not, you need to learn some new strategies so you can become better. Letting your email get out of control is no different to having piles of paperwork spread from one end of your desk to the other. It’s messy, it’s disorganised, it causes you to lose time searching for things and it ends up causing you stress. |
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How to Manage Your Email & Inbox – Lessons 1-5
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| I intend to put together a number of articles where I extract these tips, ideas and strategies from the book for you to read. Each article will have five different tips and insights. You will notice that these tips and insights are simple, straightforward and useful in helping you manage an ever increasing inbox. |
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How to Manage Your Email & Inbox – Lessons 66 – 71
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| Success leaves clues and that one way of becoming more organised regarding your e-mail is to find out what other successful people are doing in their inbox |
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How to Manage Your Email & Inbox – Lessons 61 – 65
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| there are more important projects and tasks that we have to undertake. While e-mail is an important tool, many professional people had never learnt the strategies in managing their inbox. |
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How to Manage Your Email & Inbox – Lessons 56 – 60
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| Have you ever taken stock of how many minutes or hours a day you are spending answering e-mail? The average worker in Australia spends around 1/2 to 2 hours a day using e-mail. That really is a significant amount of time. |
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How to Manage Your Email & Inbox – Lessons 51 – 55
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| When you come into work and the first thing you do is log on and start checking e-mails, you put yourself in a reactionary mode to the rest of the day. |
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How to Manage Your Email & Inbox – Lessons 46 – 50
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| If you are a Generation Y employee, you probably grew up with e-mail. On the other hand, if you are a Baby Boomer and e-mail is something that you have only started using the past decade or so, learning how to manage and interact with e-mail could be a struggle. |
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How to Manage Your Email & Inbox – Lessons 41 - 45
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| A few years ago most of us would pick up the telephone and call someone. Today, it's much easier to send them an e-mail. This all sounds very good, but why it is doing is that it is clogging up our inbox and taking us away from doing important work. |
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How to Manage Your Email & Inbox – Lessons 36-40
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| Do you spend the first morning you arrive back at work going through a huge inbox? Would you like to reduce the size of your inbox and feel more in control? |
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How to Manage Your Email & Inbox – Lessons 31-35
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| Do you get withdrawal symptoms if you haven't received an e-mail within 15 or 20 minutes? Do you constantly feel the need to look at your Blackberry or iPhone? If you have answered yes, you might be addicted to e-mail overload. |
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How to Manage Your Email & Inbox – Lessons 26-30
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| I think if everybody had a copy of this book on their desks and read it before they started using e-mail, there would be a fewer problems and issues with e-mail |
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How to Manage Your Email & Inbox – Lessons 21-25
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| Are you looking for a way to better manage your e-mail? Would you like to feel more in control, rather than having your e-mail control you? That's why I have put together my new book called "The E-mail Manual". It is the book you should have received when you first started using e-mail. |
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How to Manage Your Email & Inbox – Lessons 16-20
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| I think if everybody had a copy of this book on their desks and read it before they started using e-mail, there would be a fewer problems and issues with using and managing e-mail. |
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How to Manage Your Email & Inbox – Lessons 11-15
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| I think if everybody had a copy of this book on their desks and read it before they started using e-mail, there would be a fewer problems and issues with using and managing e-mail. |
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How to Manage Your Email & Inbox – Lessons 6-10
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| Is your inbox overflowing? Would you like to feel more in control of your inbox? In this article I will be sharing five strategies from my book |
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