January 2014

If I were a Meeting Planner...

As a frequent presenter to organizations within the Meetings and Hospitality Industry, I've come to appreciate the role meeting planners and sales people play in the success of a meeting. I think if I had your job, I'd probably look like this on most days:

January is National Get Organized Month and I wanted to provide some helpful and free resources that you can download, print and share at your next staff meeting, sales meeting or just in general with others.

Here's to a productive and prosperous 2014.

Warmest regards,

Audrey Thomas

Speaker. Author. Lean Office Expert.

Resources and Ideas to Share

Email Etiquette Pledge- This is something I share with audiences when I offer training on managing email, maximizing MS Outlook or increasing productivity. You can download it for free or send the link to others. I heard of one client who posted it in the company's bathroom stalls. For the record, that wasn't my idea.

Productivity Passport- Feel free to download and/or print. This mini e-zine contains several articles and strategies for improving productivity on-the-job and in your personal life.

Limit Email Interruptions

If you're like most, you receive monthly mailings from professional associations, list serves and other newsletters from people like me.

These emails probably contain helpful information that you eventually want to get to but they certainly don't deserve to interrupt your focus by landing in your Inbox. Did you know that you can presort certain emails so they'll go directly into a folder vs. your Inbox? I often tell people when they sign up for our newsletters, that they have to promise to create a "Rule" to presort it to another folder so I won't be responsible for interrupting their work.

Here's how to make this happen using Microsoft Outlook:

Create a folder that you can presort items into that you want to read later. Mine is named quite simply - TO READ.
Once you've received one of our newsletters, right click on it in your Inbox.
Scroll down to "Rules", and then "Always move messages from Organized Audrey"
Next, choose the folder which you want it presorted into. Viola!

Now future newsletters from us will automatically sort into the folder you designated and will no longer interrupt your day by landing in your Inbox.

You no doubt have a variety of emails that you could be pre-sorting. Have fun setting these Rules up as they'll save you so much time down the road.

Permission to Snoop Granted

Often after I've addressed a crowd, someone will make a comment about taking me home with them or coming to my house to see how I manage things. It always gets a laugh.

Well...here's your chance to do a little snooping into my personal life. It's not every day that you have a camera crew from Better Homes and Gardens show up but a few months ago I welcomed them into my home so they could do a photo shoot of my walk-in closet. Nothin' like a national magazine showing up to make sure EVERYTHING was in order. Ha!

The article, complete with pictures, is featured in the Spring edition of Better Homes & Gardens Storage Magazine. It just hit the newsstands but you can view the article here if you'd like. Enjoy!

Just for Grins

At this year's FICP National Conference in Boston, I played this video as part of my Passport to Productivity presentation. It got a lot of chuckles, probably because everyone procrastinates at some point in time. It's a quick one-minute video. Enjoy! http://youtu.be/4P785j15Tzk