Improve My Business

Many folks complain about how e-mail takes up all of their time - it interrupts them, prevents them from getting concentrated work complete, and sucks up all their time.

I used to be no different - until I got fed up with being in e-mail hell, and figured out a way to get out of it.  There are several techniques that I’ll list here - figure out the ones that work for YOU, and implement them immediately.

The list, in no particular order (other than the order I thought of them), are:

- the unsubscribe feature on company emails.  Do you get daily coupons from a pizza joint, weekly sales notifications from your favorite clothing store, or other emails that take up your time?  If so, scroll to the bottom and follow the instructions to unsubscribe.  Getting rid of these once and for all, rather than deleting them without reading, will eventually clear out some of the clutter you see when reviewing unread emails.

- don’t reply if you don’t have to.  Sending an email with “thanks”, or “got it”, or even “OK”, unless specifically requested, or in recognition of someone else going above and beyond for you, is unnecessary; and worse, clutters up THEIR email box!  However, if someone does you a favor that would be nice to acknowledge, write them a thank-you note by all means…

- set aside “no email” time.  I leave email processing for when I’m done with a chunk of a big project, when I’ve completed a couple of blog posts, when I need a break from writing a report, etc.  I DON’T have an email flag that pops up every time I get an email; I DON’T check my email every 30 minutes (unless I want a headache that day); and I DON’T live on my email account unless I need to (a client and I are conversing back and forth, exchanging documents, etc.)

- schedule your “email” time.  When consulting with execs to streamline their day and help them to become more efficient, we start with two basic things - interruptions, and emails.  (Interruptions will be a separate blog post at a later date…)  when we cover email, I ask them when they REALLY need to look at emails, and the most common times are:

1. at the start of the business day
2. right before lunch
3. right after lunch, to check for afternoon info
4. before going home
5. (unfortunately) at home that evening

So, if I can get the exec to commit to ONLY looking at emails these 4-5 times, for a few days, they invariably report that they had been more productive since they handle emails in batch vs continuous mode, and they subsequently had more time available to get other things accomplished.  One fun way to do this is to play the E-Mail Game, which lets you see how long you are spending on each email and provides points and timing - to make it fun.  It’s also very helpful in getting emails out of your inbox, since you can ‘boomerang’ something out for a set amount of time rather than leaving it there (and potentially overlooking it).

There are tips galore on the web about handling emails; these are the ones that most of my clients find to be the tops for getting them sprung from email hell.

Any tips to add?  Inquiring minds want to know!

Technorati Tags: Business, de-clutter, efficiency, email, managing your time, organizing, process improvement, Streamlining, Time Management, working smarter

Courtesy of our friends at 825Basics, this post:

Technorati Tags: communication, efficiency, managing your time, Time Management

Last night at dance class our instructor was talking about efficiency of movement and encouraging us to reduce the distance we move our center of gravity with each step. In general keeping steps smaller allows you to be quicker and is essential for dancing to faster tempo music. It got me thinking about efficiency in business expansions and wondering if similar principles apply.

To understand where I am coming from first think of your core business competencies as your business’ center of gravity. Now we can see that any expansion of our services or product offerings is a slight, or not so slight, shift of our center. Now similar to dance, the further away from our core competencies we get the more we are moving our center of gravity and the harder it is going to be to recover and change directions. In business this means that if we expand our offerings too far outside our core competencies it becomes increasingly harder to recover and we may wind up overextended. Sticking to expansions that are smaller steps away from our core competencies will allow for more speed and precision in our movements and also make it easier to recover should we decide that the expansion wasn’t a good idea.

With the pace of innovation and change we are seeing in the economy today it is becoming clear that going forward one of the key factors for business success is going to be agility. Those business that are able to most easily adapt to new changes in the marketplace are the ones that are going to survive. So think like a dancer when considering expansion and only move your core competencies as much as you have to. Don’t overdue it or you may get behind the beat and that’s never good in business or dancing.

Technorati Tags: Business, efficiency

Steven Covey, in his groundbreaking work The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, tells us to “begin with the end in mind”. The concept is to know what you want to accomplish, and to set up your tasks to assist you in reaching that goal. This is nothing more than knowing what you want to accomplish, and aligning your tasks and assignments with that goal.

Many folks get caught up in the social media craze – I admit that I did too for a while. The good news is that my personality gets ‘tired’ with things pretty easily – whether it’s posting 5-6 times per day on twitter, or connecting with acquaintances on Facebook, or answering questions in the Q&A on LinkedIn Answers. Why is that good news? Because I know that, once I ‘master’ this new application, it will lose its allure. So, I can focus on my new obsession in the knowledge that it’s only because I’m not expert at it yet; once I get there, my nature will allow me to naturally ratchet back on the time, effort, and brainpower I’ll put in on this.

Let me give you an example: when I first logged on to Twitter, I was one of the earlier adopters (I won’t say early adopters, but certainly am not a newbie to the app). I was focused on identifying posters who were interesting, humorous, leaders in their field, and leaders in my field. I grew my follower list thoughtfully (I don’t automatically follow those who follow me; and if someone follows me, I go to their profile, read 2-3 pages of the most recent posts, and decide to follow or not based on whether I want to hear what they have to say. If their entire post history are either retweets (RTs), responses (@twittername) or links to their own products (“come check out my 50% off sale!”) I don’t tend to follow them.)

My twitter followers to @marymcd has grown organically to around 1,000 – 1,100 followers – every week I gain some, and I lose some. I check out who I lose, and it’s invariably people who have followed me for 48 hours, seen that I don’t automatically follow them back, and they drop me (Twitter Quitters). Conversely, I’ve built online relationships with folks that I’ve never met IRL (In Real Life) and have a network of professionals I can tap at any given time to get their thoughts on something I’m struggling with. So, although I devoted a bunch of time to building this network, I don’t spend NEARLY that much maintaining it (and yes, I do post regularly on Twitter except when I’m travelling…)

What was my original goal? To understand this new tool, to figure out if I could build a revenue stream from it (yes, but indirectly only), and to connect with colleagues in far-flung locations. Did I accomplish this? You bet. Was it worth the effort? Yes, when I consider the friendships I’ve developed (you know who you are, @my-virtual-twitter-friends…) Am I a twitter guru? Not even close. I use the tool, and am happy with my use, but do not aspire to be a Twitter queen.

Re-examine how you are spending your time – are you doing things that support your ultimate goal? If not, why not? What can you do differently?

Technorati Tags: blogging, Business, communication, efficiency, goals, managing your time, Time Management, working smarter

Last week we talked about the importance of cleaning out your mental closet, getting rid of old ideas that had been sitting around collecting dust and taking up space for too long. Today I want to talk about cleaning another aspect of work life that can seriously stress us out and detract from our productivity at work, the in-box. To me an in-box is where you keep all of the projects that you need to work on and usually its full of little things that never seem to get done. Letting things pile up in your in-box will eventually stress you out and can lead to panic and overwhelm at work, and we all know how productive we become once that sets in.

To avoid in-box overload it is important to clean it out every so often, this seems obvious I know, but can be harder then it sounds. Most peoples in-boxes are full of what I call, “when I get around to it,” tasks, meaning they aren’t important enough to make you stop what your doing, and are just important enough to not be shuffled to the trash can. They sit there until that magical day in the future when you have boundless time and nothing to do with it, I’m sorry to say, that day isn’t coming anytime soon. So we have to come up with some other strategy to deal with our in-box and I have two different approaches that I have found to be effective.

The first approach I call the one a day method. Basically you take one item from the bottom of the in-box every day, and do it. Now  it is important to note that you pull from the bottom of the in-box. Doing the new things that come in that are  more urgent doesn’t count towards your one a day goal, it has to be something that has been in your in-box for a while and doesn’t necessarily have to get done right away. By doing this you will start to whittle away at the growing mountain and keep it under control.

Typically the one a day method wont take more then 10 or 15 minutes from your day. The tasks at the bottom of the in-box are usually little things that just sort of sift down to the bottom, they don’t get done because they are minor annoyances that don’t demand attention, not because they are major projects that take a lot of time. These minor annoyances however, if allowed to build up, can turn into a serious mountain that will add serious stress to our work day. So make the commitment to do one of them a day, it wont take long, and help manage the mountain.

The other method I use is a planned cycle of batch an process. This typically happens when I have a big project on a relatively tight time schedule. I can’t really spare the 10 or 15 minutes here and there to take care of a little task, so my mountain starts to grow. However, I avoid the feeling of overwhelm that is created by the ever growing stack of stuff, by scheduling when I will deal with it, typically after the project is done.

Usually I will spend several hours going through the little stuff in my in-box and getting caught up the day after a big project or deadline. I have found this to have two great benefits. First off, by having it scheduled I know I can just ignore the stuff in my in-box while I am focusing on the project. Second, it provides a nice break from the heavy mental lifting of a major project. Remember that these tasks are typically of the minor annoyance varietal and are stuff you can just chew through without too much thought, which can be a great way to be productive while recovering from some serious mental labor.

So start working on those in-boxes today. The magical day of plenty of time and no work will never come, so there is nothing for it but to just get to it.

Technorati Tags: de-clutter, efficiency, managing your time, organization, organizing, Planning, Time Management, working smarter