Greetings!
I hope you all had a wonderful Memorial Day holiday, and took a few minutes from your fun to honor and respect those that made that day possible. I actually took my daughters out and had them help me with unfurling Old Glory and told them what the holiday stood for -- a great way to start a beautiful Memorial Day here in Michigan.
I also realized I only had one day left to get out the May Timely Tips, so here it is! This is a tip submitted by one of my past clients and Timely Tip readers -- and a VERY clever way to take advantage of the new hardware platforms available to reduce paper and office clutter.
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Using "New Tech" Hardware to Get Rid of Paper in Your Office
| This is ALWAYS the place to look for your Timely Tip!
I want to give a thanks for Lyn Hewitt for sharing this great idea. I was talking with Lyn recently about my new Kindle, and how I was reading an old Jack London novel. She then told me about what may be the very best use of the Kindle (or iPad, or Nook, etc.) -- to get rid of paper in her office!
Here's what she is doing: rather than keeping all of the magazines, articles, and other assorted materials that come to her "for review", she is scanning and printing to PDF the individual items she wants/needs to read, and then downloading directly into her Kindle. This may be the best idea yet I've heard for this device from a productivity enhancement/clutter reduction perspective (and maybe a way to justify getting a Kindle as a business expense???) Following her lead, I've tasked my new office assistant Emily to go through all of my "to review" magazines, articles, etc., pull out those that look most relevant to my business and line of work, scan and print those items to PDF, and download onto my Kindle.
Thus, I am about to get rid of one of my longstanding "stacks & piles" -- my "To Review" pile, replacing it with a single technology device -- my Kindle. I'm quite certain that I will actually read these items much more quickly now, as it will be so much easier to keep them handy, find them, open them, and read them. I'll be more efficient, and maybe a little smarter too!
Now, of course, this can go one step farther (and will in my office at least!) I also have my "Priority File", as taught to me by David Allen 20+ years ago. This is my hard-copy file that has the most urgent and/or important paper item on top, and least important item on the bottom. It is a paper-based file because "sometimes you just need the piece of paper". Not anymore. After Emily completes the PDF scanning of articles, I'm going to have her take any paper items in my Priority File that I cannot easily convert to an electronic task, and have her scan those to PDF also. I will then attach those PDF files to the individual related tasks in my prioritized Outlook task list. I'm predicting by the end of this summer, I will be nearly paperless, and significantly more efficient in the process. I will also be down to a single, integrated task list -- no more checking both my Outlook task list and my Priority File to figure out what is next.
It does help having a dedicated resource to do the scanning and PDF creation for you to enable this, but I hope this month's tip gets you thinking about your options with new tech devices and old paper files and articles. Summer is a GREAT time to attack stacks and piles -- maybe this is the summer to convert some of those stacks & piles to kilobytes & megabytes!
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Love these kinds of results:
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This winter, I spoke for the second time at the American Bus Association Annual Convention, this year in Philadelphia. I recently received the results from my three separate sessions. I did three different programs: Taming the E-mail Beast, Optimizing Your Outlook, and PC Productivity Boosters and Timesavers ( send me a note if you'd like the descriptions for any of these programs.) Both Taming E-mail and Optimizing Outlook had 100% of the attendees rate the program as "Very Good" to "Excellent", with 95% giving the same ratings to PC Productivity Boosters. I'll be back again in January at American Bus, this year in Grapevine, Texas, sharing even more of my favorite productivity tips and strategies -- one of my favorite events of the year! |
A Cool Little Video My Wife Shared ...
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I'm so excited my wife, Jana, has made it in my Timely Tips. She found and shared this great little 3:00 video on the importance of teamwork and shared leadership, as exhibited in nature by geese. Worth a look -- enjoy!
http://www.pullingtogethermovie.com/
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Summer is Here! (My New Project ...)
Even though the calendar technically says we have 3 weeks until the official beginning of summer, the fact that we spent about 8 hours at our local club at their outside pool would indicate summer is here now. I'm calling it -- IT IS SUMMER!!! With this time of year, I purposefully slow down my schedule a bit to spend more time with family and friends, and to work on special projects. Sitting poolside this week, I started a doozy -- a new e-book project, sharing my very best Outlook strategies. I've already completed a chapter, and have the rest of the publication fully mapped. I'll be providing more updates as we go through the summer, but my goal is to have at least an e-book version of this publication completed before the kids go back to school in September. And it will be a tech-enhanced e-book, using video links to better help with the retention of the tips and strategies by readers (much like my last book, Taming the E-mail Beast.) Watch for more information soon, but also make sure to break out some time on your schedule for summer fun with the family as well as those high-value special projects that add greatly to the quality of your work and life as well as those around you. Until next month, Stay Timely!
Sincerely,
Randy Dean
Randall Dean Consulting & Training, LLC
or http://www.emailsanityexpert.com
PPS: Always feel free to use the "Forward E-mail" option below to share this info with your family, friends, & co-workers. |
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NEXT
PUBLIC
PROGRAM:
July 13-15 -- Iowa Association of Lifelong Learning
Marshalltown, IA (I'm presenting on July 15!)
| I'll be leading two of my most popular sessions: Time Management in "The Cloud" Using Google Apps, and Finding an Extra Hour Every Day (Including Strategies for Taming E-mail). I'll be the final day general session luncheon speaker with Finding an Extra Hour, but it looks like there is an outstanding set of other sessions and speakers at this conference. Take advantage!
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Speaking of "The Cloud" ...
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My friend and fellow productivity consultant and trainer Josh Zerkel CPO, based in the San Francisco market, recently made this great little vodcast video. He very eloquently answers the question: "What is the Cloud, and what are Cloud apps?"
He says it so well, I just thought I'd share. Enjoy!
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Did you see my new Demo Video?
| I shared this last month, but wanted to post again in case you missed it. Last year, I presented two packed sessions at the NBTA (Now GBTA) Annual Convention in Houston, and they videotaped both of my sessions. I worked with my friend Kim Capone at Take2Media here in Williamston, MI to get the following demo video put together (thanks to Kim for the excellent editing and post-production! And, YES!, she can do this kind of work for you too!)
Click here to see the new demo video.
Please feel free to share, and I welcome your comments! |
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