Improve My Business

As summer plans get underway, what improvement techniques can you consider?  What will make a difference to your company (or you)?

1)  Shopping for the best lodging rate - this can be done by using an aggregator site that compares hotels for you; or you can go to a favorite brand and shop them.  However, look at ALL rates when booking - often the ‘best rate’ doesn’t take into account pay-in-advance pricing, corporate discounts, or discounts for groups such as AAA or AARP.

2)  Flexible pays off - if your travel plans are flexible, and you are flying, many airlines now allow you to see up to 3 days before and after, and compare rates.  This is great if you can control your destiny (can pick your own travel dates).

3)  Ask the hotel to service your room less - many hotels tell you that they care for the environment, yet still change out towels daily although they state that if they are “hung up” they will not.  Spend an extra minute to provide feedback to the housekeeping management staff that you’d like them to honor that (if you don’t mind using the same towel for a few days in a row - since all I do is towel off a clean-from-the-shower body, I never mind…).  Ditto for changing sheets daily.  I don’t do that at home; why do I need it on the road?

4)  Do you really need to lug the laptop?  When traveling remotely, clients will often provide a workstation (complete with computer) for me; so a USB flash drive is really all I need to be productive.  Hotel business centers often have 2-3 workstations available for evening work, and even have a great printer in most cases.  So consider whether the “less is more” mantra can be applied to your carry-on, and leave the laptop (unplugged) at home.

Technorati Tags: preparation, Streamlining, travel

Do you feel guilty for taking time to think?

Thinking is important; really important…so why are we embarrassed when we are caught thinking? Thinking is not the same as daydreaming. Deep, productive thought cannot always be accomplished while multi-tasking. Just because you are not typing on your keyboard doesn’t mean that nothing is being done.

I think we are harder on ourselves then we realize when it comes to taking time to think. In fact, we actually stop ourselves from thinking when that little voice in our head says, “You need to get busy!” We’re so used to jumping when we hear our inner voice that we don’t even challenge that thought. Try answering that thought with: ‘Hey, I am busy, I am thinking and you (voice) are interrupting!”

When you let your thoughts be interrupted by the notion that you need to get busy, the outcome is potentially dangerous. Here are some reasons why:

• Incomplete thoughts lead to unforeseen problems
• You can lose your ability to complete a thought before acting (getting trigger happy)
• You will be stumped when someone asks you if you’ve “thought this through”
• You can miss the obvious better solution
• You depend on others input so much that you’re really just copying their thoughts – losing your originality
• It becomes your habit to rely on crutches to help you with your thoughts (Google, spell check)

So, I’m suggesting you take some time to think, fight the urge to look busy and see how your quality of work improves.

Technorati Tags: preparation, quality, working smarter

How many times have you heard this tip “Lay out everything you’ll need for the next day before you go to bed”?  Obviously, not enough if you are not doing this easy task right now.  Organizing the night before allows you to get all those pesky ‘to-dos’ floating around in your brain out of there, before you go to bed.  It also allows your brain to continue working on that item like Santa - making a list and checking it twice - so that if you DID forget something, you’ll remember it (I keep a pad of paper next to the bed so if I remember something after I’m in bed, I jot it down/get it out of my head before trying to sleep.  So far, it’s fooled my brain enough that I can then doze off…)

The upside is that you can sleep 10 mins later in the morning [so now all of you who know me know why I REALLY do this...]

Blogging from Shanghai,

Mary

Technorati Tags: preparation