Know Yourself Before Hiring Someone Else

December 15, 2008 at 7:17 pm (Blogroll)
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One of the biggest failures I’ve seen in business or government civil service is that people who have a hard time delegating (or releasing the reins) have that problem due to not knowing their people’s strengths and weaknesses followed by their own weaknesses in following up to make sure the job(s) are done correctly.

So as a business owner know your strengths and weaknesses first. Then, as you work with people already on staff, make note of their strengths and weaknesses. Pair up people accordingly when doing team work. Eventually, as people learn to rely upon one another the productivity of the group/team will increase due to an increase in trust.

Your own strengths and weaknesses will reveal how likely you are to delegate. The reality is that you can not do all the work yourself, no matter how hard you try. So learn where your weaknesses are, your dislikes and then hire someone who can fill those weaknesses with their strengths.

Take these little tips. Sit down and write them out. Make a list and check it twice. It’s Christmastime and if you have time to do everything you are surely blessed.
That’s it for this update!

Denise
denise@progressiveorganizingsolutions.com

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Productivity,Time Management, or Self Management

October 1, 2008 at 11:58 am (Blogroll, home organization, organizing information, organizing space, productivity, time management)
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Do you feel your productivity needs a boost?  If you’re not completing tasks that are helping you reach your goals then productivity is an issue for you.  What’s behind the lack of productivity could be any number of things, but today time management is what we’re going to focus on.

Time management is really a misnomer.  There is only so much time in any given day.  So the real, the only way to rephrase time management is by saying self management.

Take a look at the distractors in your work day.    If you wake up late is your entire day ruined?  When you are at work do you take long breaks between working on different projects.  Do you have the skill and knowledge to complete the work you are working on?  Do the office cronies come in and distract you by talking about personal issues or asking you to do something at the weekend?

These are all valid distractors at work.  Think about how you would stop them from occurring.

The first one, waking up later than you should, as long as it is not a habit of being late to work should be okay if you still have time to focus in on what needs to be done.  Just remember that “the early bird gets the worm” addage.  If the boss is at work early, and he or she constantly sees that you have his or her work ethics of being there early then they may trust you more to be getting your work done and give you bigger and better projects.

Taking long breaks can break your concentration, but is at times unavoidable.  We do need to restore our energy levels.  I have been reading Life Hacker and found a neat 10 step blog entry on the Top Ten Ways to Stay Energized http://lifehacker.com/5054947/top-10-ways-to-stay-energized.

What you don’t want to do is to stand in the kitchen or at the water cooler and lose all focus.  Certainly go out to lunch instead of staying in even if you brought lunch from home.  If you can go listen to the birds, sit outside to eat and let your brain rejuvenate.  It’s when we refuse to allow our bodies and minds to rejuvenate that we start to lose our edge in whatever we’re doing.  Yes, I guess this means meditation is a good thing.

Know your stuff.  If you’re given a project, a report to write or something similar and you do not know how to get started or how to complete it and you keep putting it off how does that make you look to the boss?  The key here is to use those strategic alliances you have been building with all the networking you’ve been doing.  Call or email someone who does know how to do what you’re seeking to learn.  Is there any harm in asking?  NO!  Is there harm in not getting the project done?  YES!  So ask!

Cronies, friends, and family interrupting your train of thought when you’re on a roll and working as hard as you can, can destroy a thought process quicker than anything I know of.  It can stop you dead in your tracks.  Your mind will go off to Fiji with your cronie’s vacation plans or you’ll be stuck in the kitchen with the grandmother who can’t decide if your child should have soup or a sandwich for lunch.

Controlling interruptions is perhaps one of the hardest things to get past.  Previously, I’ve written that if you can, turn off the phone ringer, close your door, hang signs that you’re busy or on a deadline, but the biggest one you need to remember is self-management.  Only you can say to your co-worker, I’m busy.  When grandma calls, and you answer, say to her, I trust your judgment.  She will call less.  Your co-worker will realize he or she should be working too and the boss will see that you don’t waste time.

Well try these things out and let me know how it goes.  I’m always open for ways to help others get organized, be more productive and share them with others.

Denise

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Mind Mapping- Accomplishing Your Goals-Being Productive

September 21, 2008 at 2:15 pm (Virtual Organizing, home organization, organizing information, organizing space, productivity, time management)
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Have you ever wondered how people who were so successful actually got there?

It seems that no matter what we are trying to accomplish we are always forgetting at least one step of it.

If this is true for you then jump on board the bus.  This is true for most every one.

So how do you get these tasks accomplished without forgetting all the steps?

A big phrase these days is Mind Mapping.

It’s been around for generations, but is just coming back into focus to help people accomplish those larger goals that need to be tasked out.

Here’s an example of how mindmapping could help you.

You’ve joined a team that is working on a sales presentation for a new product that is going to be released soon.  So you and your team are meeting and deciding on how to divvy up the tasks.  Who is responsible for each section like Advertising; Marketing; Product Development; etc.

To use mindmapping each of these categories would be a center hub of activity.  The tasks that are associated with each center are the tasks that go with these.

So the center hub of Advertising would then have arms or tasks of publications, or other forms of advertising.  Each task would then be divided down into sub tasks that are the actual productivity required in each sub task to accomplish the task.

Example:    Advertising-

Publications -

Newspaper – Wilmington Star News – Advertising contact name & number.

Magazine – Wilmington Magazine – Advertising…

Radio -

Different Radio Stations and contact information

Television -

Different Television stations and contact information

Each category will have subcategories and tasks to be accomplished.

So let’s say this is a product that you are creating from scratch.  Your mindmapping could be a method for you to identify the different methods or steps that you use to create your product.

You then have a reproducible methodology that you can also sell, not just the product you have created.

The bottom line here is that by fine tuning your process, you are not wasting time.  Your productivity increases exponentially and you achieve more in less time by knowing what it is you want to achieve and having a formula to achieve it.

To learn more about mindmapping I’d like to recommend a great teacher.  His name is Bob Jenkins and he is really a teacher.  His website http://www.askbobtheteacher.com has a great link to http://www.discoverfreemind.com.

So go to Bob’s websites, download the Free Mind mindmapping software.  Uh, yes it is FREE.  Try it out to start getting your goals accomplished faster every single day of every single month of every single year!

That’s it for today.  Have a great week ahead!

Denise

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New Tools 2

September 4, 2008 at 1:34 am (Blogroll, Virtual Organizing, organizing information, organizing space, productivity, time management)
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I do believe that all good things come to us one way or another.  Tonight I checked a forum posting to find out the answer I needed to create a way to link all my social networking sites together.  Just so ya know, productivity is my game and wasting time is not.  Productivity means you spend less time doing the things that don’t make you money and more time being focused on the things that do.  I love keeping up with my friends, family, co-organizers, but if I could do this more efficiently then I most certainly will leave the “let’s see who is doing what’ phase behind and stick to the more Productive Way of Doing Things.

So today I want to present to you a great tool for your toolbox.  http://ping.fm

This little website has the capability of getting you to spend less time having to post to all the different social networking sites and more time on what’s important to you.

Now, you know you’ll have to learn the few little tricks that make it work best for you, but if I told you all of those would you remember them later when you wanted to add more to ping.fm?

Alright, go and enjoy ping.fm.  Learn as much as you can and come back to let me know how it goes!

Denise

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What’s Your Biggest Struggle?

June 19, 2008 at 11:07 am (Blogroll, home organization, organizing information, organizing space, productivity, time management)
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Being organized can be a struggle for even the most hard working individual. I’d like to hear from you, my readers, to know more about your struggles in staying or getting organized.

Life is busy. I can’t get the filing done because when I take a break from working I have to take the dog out…

Or in the home, the laundry never gets folded, the dishes washed or when clean it takes a day or two to put them away.

You get the picture.

So what do you avoid like the plague? Is it that the sink is filled with dishes that someone else put there? Or you just can’t fit in a time to sweep out the debris from the garage from the last storm?

Today’s blog is on helping yourself to get started being organized. And the first topic is on recognizing there’s a problem.

When you walk by the sink filled with dishes do you tell yourself you’ll clean them up when you get home from work?

Try these:

* When you finish eating breakfast, instead of putting the dishes in the sink for later, rinse and put into the dishwasher. If you don’t have a dishwasher, turn the water on, wash the dish right then. It can dry on its’ own in the drainer.

* You’ve avoided the laundry all week. You have a washer and dryer, but actually making yourself available to fold, hang or iron is almost impossible in your schedule. Think about your family structure. If the kids are too young to help, your husband or wife is non-existent or doesn’t help to do this chore, then consider hiring someone to do just the laundry. But if you can, sit down with the family and have a pow-wow. Delegate the chores. Why is it important to delegate chores to children is another subject. Both my adult sons thanked me for providing them with the knowledge so they could be self-reliant.

* The 4 Hour Work Week is a book that instills in us permission to outsource. At work, if we ever learned them, we have good habits that help us to get our work accomplished. If you have difficulty completing projects on a timely basis, perhaps a hard look at how you work is needed.

You do not have to go to the boss and say, wow, I’m not getting anything done, can you help me establish better work habits. Can you imagine the response. I wouldn’t want to do that. However, the boss may have noticed that you are not performing and make suggestions on their own.

So if on your own and you want to accomplish more do these general steps to get you started.

* Write down what it is you need to accomplish each day

* Write down the steps, if necessary, that will help you to accomplish your goals. Step 1, Step 2, Step 3…

* Each time you have completed a step, mark it off.

Preventing interruptions. Interruptions are the leading cause for you losing your concentration and getting off task. Your co-worker stops by to talk about the movie she saw, or the game he took his kids to. The telephone is ringing off the hook. Your email notification keeps popping up and verbally telling you to check your email. How many things distract you is personal, what you do about them is not.

Do these:

* Hang a sign on your door “Do Not Disturb” “I’m on a deadline.” It actually makes people think when they see this that you are there to work.

* Turn the ringer off on the phone. You can still see the button light up. Nothing is so urgent that you can’t ignore the phone for an hour. If you have Caller ID all the better. You can vet those calls to make sure you don’t miss the important ones.

* If you are like me you receive about a thousand emails a day. Turn the notifications off. Get a spam filter on your email.  Send out to all your friends, and colleagues a notice that you will only be checking your email from specified time to specified time each day.

Believe me, people understand. They have work to do too, they just take breaks at different times.

Try a few of these different tips and see how they work for you. If they do or don’t please drop a comment here or email me at denise@progressiveorganizingsolutions.com

I look forward to hearing from you!

Have a great Thursday!

Denise

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