What An Experience
Wow, I just returned from an incredible trip to Arizona!
The trip started in Tempe where I competed in Ironman Arizona. What an amazing journey! I started packing a week before leaving and had all my lists ready to go. Between the swim gear, bike gear, run gear and all the special needs items, I needed one suitcase just for race day. I am so thankful that I am extremely organized because it took a lot of the stress out of what is normally a very stressful event. With all the items checked and bags packed, we were ready to go!
The swim was cold, dark and choppy (2.4 miles), the bike was hilly and windy (112 miles) and the run was perfect (26.2 miles). My family was at varous points throughout the day and it was fun trying to find them. Their support and enthusiasm always came at the perfect time. 13 hours and 10 minutes later, I crossed the finish line!
The following day, we headed to Sedona where we spent a week that was full of hiking, off road jeep riding, shopping and eating. Probably the most peacful place I have ever visited.
As you reflect back on 2011, embrace your accomplishments, learn from your failures and plan for a successful 2012!
Thank You!
I want to send a heartfelt “Thank You” to all of my readers, colleagues and clients for your contributions to my business success! Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!
Take It Easy!
Holiday time can be stressful, especially if you are expecting house guests . The key to being a successful host or hostess is preparation.
- Get Ready. Prepare guest accommodations at least a week before your visitors are due to arrive.
- Set Priorities. Let your guests know about any work-related deadlines or priorities that will occupy your time while they are visiting.
- Keep Things Simple. Plan easy-to-fix meals that don’t require a lot of preparation since your visitors will want you to spend time with them, not in the kitchen.
- Don’t Over Plan. Allow your guests free time to come and go as they please and pursue their own interests. Don’t plan every minute of their visit.
- Don’t Do Everything Yourself! Accept offers of help! Your guests will feel more relaxed if they know they have contributed to the smooth running of the household.
Say “Thank You” and Stand Out from the Crowd
Thanksgiving is the perfect time to thank people for their contributions. Most people send holiday cards in December; fewer people send Thanksgiving cards to colleagues, vendors or customers. This is a time for you to stand out by sending thank-you cards with handwritten notes. To really stand out, don’t use an e-card. Use snail mail. This is a small, yet gracious, gesture that will be welcomed and well remembered!
Decision Points to Eliminate Piles of Paper
Do you have piles of paper at home or at work that are waiting for a moment when you have more time? If so, you’re not alone. With the fast pace of our lives, paperwork often gets left to be handled later.
Start first by reducing the volume of unnecessary paper you receive. See my recent blog, Eliminate Spam and Junk Mail for ideas.
When a piece of paper comes in, immediately decide if you should discard, delegate, take immediate action, file for reference, or file it for follow up. Do not put the paper down somewhere to be handled a second time, make one of the above decisions.
If the paper requires action, ask yourself if it is time sensitive? If so, then use a tickler system that works for you. Remember to keep it simple!
Items that are not date sensitive but still require action should be dealt with weekly at a specified time. Put the time in your calendar as if it were an appointment.
Use these simple guidelines to cut down on the paper in your life and become positively productive!
Capturing Good and Bad Ideas
If I only knew then what I know now! How many of you have ever said or thought that? It’s a fairly common thought among humans, and it is a powerful thought.
If humans could somehow know things in advance that they ultimately learn from the school of hard knocks, they could avoid bad marriages, bad bosses, bad hires, bad customers, bad investments, bad movies and bad sushi. On the other hand, they could also take advantage of an endless supply of opportunities for success.
But the fact is, you cannot know then what you know now. That’s not the way the world works. However, you can do the next best thing: You can know now what others knew then and others can know now what you knew then. Let’s put this idea into a step-by-step format so you can consider implementing it.
Step 1 – Create a form to help capture ideas. Use this form to capture good and bad ideas. Give the form a name and write it on the top. For example, you can call it an Idea Sharing Form. Add a blank space to the top of the form labeled Category. In this blank space, you might categorize ideas into sales, production, customer service, retention and so forth and so on. Think in terms of how someone might search for an idea later. Include an area with a few lines to record a highly summarized version of the idea. Label this section Headline of Idea. Under that, create an eight- or 10-line space and label it Comments and Explanation. If you’d like, at the bottom of the page, create a couple of blanks labeled Author and Date. Having said all of this, use a pencil to draft your form and make any changes to my ideas on the design of the form that make sense to you.
Step 2 – Have someone create an electronic version of the form to make it easy to distribute to your employees. Even better, create a document that allows others to fill it out on their computer rather than handwriting it.
Step 3 – Fill out at least one of these forms each week and encourage all employees to fill out a minimum of one form per week. Write up an idea that worked great or one that bombed; it doesn’t matter since people can ultimately benefit from both. Have someone transfer the ideas to a searchable database that all employees can access. Keep it simple.
Think about it, if you have 10 employees and everyone (including you) completes at least one form per week, you will have a database of around 550 ideas after 12 months – a database of ideas that specifically relate to successfully, or unsuccessfully, running your specific business.
This database can serve as a non-intimidating source of knowledge for you and your employees. Any employee who chooses to use this database can frequently say, “I know now what you knew then.” And that is a good thing!
Written by Chris Crouch, developer of the GO System.
Eliminate Spam Email and Junk Mail
How much time do you spend dealing with spam email and junk mail? Both at work and at home, information we don’t want or need seems to be creeping into our lives.
The temptation is to just delete the email or glance at the paper mail and then throw it in the trash. What you don’t think about is how much time you could save in the long run if you don’t have to handle the information or paper in the first place.
What is the value of clearing clutter from your email inbox, so you can actually find the important information? What is the value of clearing the clutter from your mind and not having to handle or make decisions about unsolicited paper, magazines, etc.?
The next time you encounter email you don’t want, take the extra minute to unsubscribe from the mailing list. If needed, send a personal email to politely ask to be removed from an email list.
For unwanted catalogs and mail, check out the website www.catalogchoice.org. There you can submit all of your unsubscribe requests in one place. It may take a month or two to be removed.
Finally, think about your social networking options. Change your account settings to receive only what you really need.
Implement these ideas to clear your inbox and your mind and become positively productive!
Focusing on the unimportant
When you find yourself focusing on low-value, unimportant activities … and you know full well you have much more important things to do … ask yourself this question:
What am I avoiding and why?
If you are going to stick your head in the sand and avoid important things anyhow, you might as well use the time to “look beneath the surface of things” and try to determine what is really going on. Don’t look for complex answers. Look for easy answers such as: I am unclear about what I am supposed to be doing or, I am not sure how to get started.
You don’t usually have to get too far beneath the surface of things to find the source of your avoidance.
Written by Chris Crouch, developer of the GO System.
Read Faster for Results
Do you have stacks of documents to read every day? If you are like most people, you spend hours a day reading printed and electronic documents. Use these tips to rev up your reading speed to get through that pile faster without harming comprehension.
- Stop reading word-by-word. Instead, read entire phrases or clauses as single units of information.
- Pay attention when you read to avoid re-reading. You can retain focus by running a pen or your finger across and down the page.
- Keep distractions to a minimum. Do not multi-task, avoid auditory distractions and stop daydreaming when reading.
- Focus on the most important information. Read headlines, subheads, photo captions and the first sentence or two of paragraphs. If a document is well written, the topic sentence (the major point of each paragraph) will appear early in the paragraph. Once you get the major point of the paragraph, you usually do not need to read the entire thing.
It is not appropriate to read everything quickly. Slow down as appropriate. Take your time when reading legal documents, when editing or proofreading, or if you need to analyze or summarize the material. Check out the book “The Power to Read Your Best” by Bobbi DePorter for some great tips!
Juggling Managers
Handling multiple managers is not a problem; it is an opportunity to develop your collaboration and interpersonal skills. An important key to supporting more than one manager is to understand how your skills can complement each of their skills. Your goal is to develop an individual relationship with each manager. What skills do you need to work for multiple managers? You need to:
- Understand the goals of your department and how each manager contributes to those goals. Meet with each manager to better understand where each fits into the big picture and discuss how you can better support each.
- Create a master calendar that shows deadlines for tasks by manager. A master calendar can help you get and stay organized. Make sure everyone has access to the master calendar, so each knows your priorities.
- Keep lines of communication open between you and each manager. Also encourage communication between the managers themselves.
- Be flexible and assertive about priorities and deadlines. When there is a conflict, speak up and negotiate to ensure the most important tasks for the department are completed.
