Archive for September, 2007

As we discussed in our last post, Integrity is about telling the truth and doing the right thing. Integrity is also about the little things… are we reliable and consistent on the job and at home? Do we answer phone calls, do we return e-mails and the big one, do we get to work on time, are some of the things we are all judged on.

Being late on the job can give us a reputation for being unreliable. With the craziness of home and the incredible traffic in most cities, many of us face a daily battle in this area.

Here are some strategies to help you consistently get to work on time.

The Night Before: Getting to work on time really starts the evening before. Here are some quick tips that will save you a lot of time in the morning.
1. Get coffee ready: If you drink coffee, prepare your coffee maker the night before and set the timer to go off a few minutes before you get up. The wonderful aroma will greet you in the morning and save you about 10 minutes of prep time.
2. Make your lunch: If you take your lunch to work, prepare it the night before and put it in the refrigerator. In the morning you can just grab and go. This will save you time and also money. For example; If you don’t have time to make your lunch in the morning, you’ll find yourself eating out, which costs considerably more than brown bagging it.
3. Get clothes Ready: Get your clothes out the night before. This will ensure that you have something to wear and cut down on the last minute stress of finding the lost sock or a matching shirt.
4. Sock Strategy: Here is a quick tip that has saved me a lot of time. Every six to eight months I buy a few packages of new dress socks. I make sure they are all the same brand. I toss out the old ones and have a consistent new selection to choose from. A few dollars spent saves me a lot of time trying to find a matching sock. (The same technique works great for white socks, underwear, and wash cloths)

In The Morning: Time is of the essence. You can’t make up time like you can in the evening. If something runs over… you’re late. Here are some things I’ve found to get me out of the door on time.
1. Set the alarm consistently: Without an alarm I find myself getting up late many times. Once I’m late the day turns stressful immediately. It’s really important to set a consistent wake up time and stick to it. Even if I got to bed late the night before, I try to keep the same alarm time.
2. Do the routine stuff first: If I shower and get dressed first it’s much easier to stop what I’m doing and get out the door. If I leave the shower for last I usually under estimate the time it will take. I forget that all the "get ready" stuff really adds up to at least 15-20 minutes.
3. Set a bathroom time goal: Why does getting ready in the morning take so long? I set a timer to find out. It turned out that there are so many little things that "just take a minute," that they really add up. Time yourself one day and set a goal to reduce your time by 20%. It’s easy to do if you focus on the little things.
4. Clock in the shower: The biggest time waster in the bathroom is the shower. There is something about hot water that makes time fly away. It’s real easy to spend 15 or 20 minutes in the shower without realizing it. Get a cheap stick on clock from the dollar store and put it in the shower where you can see it. Set a goal of five minutes max. You’ll not only save time but money too!
5. Weather-traffic report before leaving: If you have to commute very far, log in to the local traffic and weather report before you leave. This can provide big time savings as it lets you know whether to take an alternate route or not.

In Traffic: If you have to commute very far, you know the frustrations of sitting in traffic. For years I had a 60 mile, one way commute from Temecula into San Diego. Here are some things I learned along the way
1. Carpool if Possible: If you have to drive over 20 miles to work, consider carpooling. Many states provide a database of potential carpooler’s that commute to and from the same area that you do. Try a few out and see if you can form a group of three to five people. In my experience, carpooling is fun and will keep you on schedule, since everyone needs to get to work on time. With carpool lanes on many freeways you can save a huge amount of time by carpooling with others.
2. Alternate Route planning: Traffic is a bear and it is a good idea to spend some time on Google maps plotting out some alternate routes to work. In my commute we found some side streets that really paid off when it rained or the traffic was heavy. It’s also a good idea to stop by your local auto club and pick up some maps of your commuting area and keep them in the car for reference.
3. Offramp strategy: In my daily commute to San Diego, traffic was bumper to bumper many days. We found a technique that saved us 15 to 20 minutes a day when coming home. In the Rancho Bernardo area of northern San Diego, the 15 fwy had about five off-ramps in a row that were a straight shot off the freeway and then a straight shot back on. Since the freeway was usually stopped, we would just exit the offramp and then get back on the onramp. We could do this for five exits. There was actually very little traffic on the freeway ramps, and we were a carpool so we could take the carpool lane back on. I was always amazed that very few people knew about this.
4. Audio learning: It’s a long commute so you might as well learn something along the way. Audio books are a great way to learn as you drive and will make the trip seem much shorter.

These are just some ideas for getting to work on time. Try a few of them and you might find that you’ll be arriving much earlier to work. Getting there just five minutes early can pay big dividends in your reliability and it will also give you time to get a cup of coffee or tea on the way!

This is our first topic in our Digging Deeper Series. Most people think of integrity as being the same thing as honesty. Is the person telling the truth, can they be trusted etc. But if you think of integrity as consistency, where your actions, values, thoughts, and feelings all line up would you consider yourself to have integrity?

This is an interesting question.

In our modern day to day world, I find myself challenged to be consistent in many areas. I am an honest person, but sometimes my consistency may be somewhat lacking. With the barrage of things to do and the unending stream of phone calls, e-mails and meetings, it’s hard to be consistent.

I find myself making excuses… the meeting ran late, I couldn’t get off the phone, or the perennial favorite… there was traffic. There are too many things to do and not enough time to do it all!

I sit in meetings all the time where people roll in five ten or even fifteen minutes late on a regular basis. The excuses get old, and you quickly realize that the meeting was not a priority for them. Each excuse erodes my confidence in the person who is tardy. Unexpected things do come up, but someone who is always late loses credibility quickly.

There are three areas that seem to really challenge my consistency

1. Projects: Why do things always take twice as long as you expect? I have found that I naturally underestimate how long a task will take. The little interruptions mount up… the phone call here, the e-mail there, and the over schedule of meetings and suddenly the project lags.

If you are counting on others to help out, the effect of interruptions will only increase and your integrity as a project manager may be challenged.

An important thing to remember is to Under-Promise and Over-Deliver. Unfortunately our project list may be out of our hands and we’ll need to find a way to be more productive.

The best solution I have found is to work in a focused manner. Single-tasking can really be your friend. In my article entitled, The Power of 48 minutes, I cover some strategies for working this way hour after hour and the benefits it provides.

2. Communications: You never e-mailed me back or returned my phone calls… didn’t you get my message? Have you heard that one before? We all get barraged with an unending stream of e-mail, phone messages, and snail mail.

If that person was important our credibility may suffer. How can we separate the important messages out and delete the junk? Merlin Mann’s interesting blog 43 Folders has some answers in his legendary post on Five Fast Email Productivity Tricks

I have found that setting a rule in Outlook helps me quickly identify e-mails from important people. I just set the rule to color the heading text of the incoming mail from people on my project team. It’s a quick way to identify action items in the sea of messages.

3. Time Management: When there is too much to do how can you handle it all? I’ve found many solutions using David Allen’s great time management system, Getting Things Done. From using a pocket organizer like a walleteer, to organizing my next actions, David’s system is a big help.

But one of the most effective solutions to become more consistent is to plan out your day and arrive a few minutes early to each appointment or meeting. Mike St. Pierre has a great post on six great reasons to arrive early over at lifehack.org. From getting the best seat to having time to grab a cup of coffee, you’ll find some useful solutions here.

The bottom line.. If you arrive just a few minutes early your credibility will increase. Do this consistently and you will find there are many many unseen benefits to this strategy. Integrity is just one of them.

I would love to hear your strategies and solutions in these three areas. Please leave a comment.

Welcome to our digging deeper series. In this series of posts we will dig under the surface and really explore a topic. For our first go round I’ve taken one of my favorite books and dissected it and broke it down into ten conversations. Over the next few weeks, we’ll look at some strategies for improving our lives with ten important qualities of life. This study is based on a thought provoking book by John Maxwell and Jim Dornan, entitled Becoming a Person of Influence.

At first this sounds extremely arrogant and forceful. But nothing could be further from the truth. When we look at the ten qualities presented in the book, it quickly becomes apparent that humility and humbleness are required. In fact to truly become a person that others look to for leadership and advice, the following 10 qualities are required…

This book has been very inspiring to me. In some areas I’m doing pretty good… in others I have some struggles. The book presents workable solutions for all of them. Some have hit home with a vengeance. With some minor changes, I’ve seen remarkable differences in my life.

My goal is to take these qualities one by one and share my experiences, struggles, and victories with you. I’ve developed some thought provoking conversation cards that you can print out and use as you follow along. They make great conversation starters and are great for small groups.

The cards have a quotation on the front and an additional building statement on the back. At the bottom of the back side of the card is a thought provoking question. They can be used as study guides, bookmarks, but I really like to use them in discussion groups. Each of the ten points will have five cards that you can print out. The cards will be available as each subject post comes out.

In our next post we’ll get started by looking at the subject of integrity…

Stay tuned…

I received an e-mail the other day from SmartDraw about their new 2007 release of their popular flowcharting software. I decided to download a free trial and give it a spin. I’ve used SmartDraw in different versions since the late 1990’s but this new release is really sweet. The interface is all new designed around Microsoft’s new ribbon interface for Office 2007. If you have used MS Office 2007 you’ll feel right at home. If not it may take a few minutes to get oriented to the new look and feel.

The installation took a few minutes but installed without a hitch. I opened the program and was greeted with a selection interface on the left and a preview of my selections center screen. The selection of documents and charts you can create flows off the page. This is one powerful piece of software. For my first selection I selected a blank Mind Map from the document bar.

The Mind Map application opened with a ribbon bar at top, a left hand smart panel and a large work area. I took a quick look through the menus and found the ribbon interface very similar to Word 2007. This new interface is very intuitive. The blank mind map page opened with a single “Main Topic” button in the center of the screen. For my first mind map I decided to create one for my work activities.

I clicked the add topics button from the left menu and added a few buttons. As they appeared on the screen I clicked them one by one and gave them each a title. Once I had my main projects on screen I added sub topics to each one. This was fun as I went through my mind and put down everything I had been working on for the week.

The software was intuitive and it was really easy to add titles and sub titles since the connector lines were automatically drawn. Soon I had a very complete diagram of what had been going through my mind over the previous few days. I was blown away how quick and easy this was. I was also greeted with one huge fact….

Here was all the STRESS I had been feeling all in one place. The chart was almost overwhelming. I could not believe how much stuff I had been dealing with on a daily basis. This is what was so eye opening for me… I knew I was busy… but I had no idea of the magnitude of the problem. With thirty to forty boxes it was easy to see that something had to be done.

This diagram put all my work stress visually in one easy to navigate chart. Now it was easy to break things down by project. And the big one for me… It was easy to see at a glance the Next Actions. So many of these projects were stalled by one thing or the other. But when you can visually see them all in one place your mind really gets to work.

I printed out the mind map and got out a highlighter pen and started marking it up. Top priorities were highlighted and it was really easy to see that completing just two things would move 6 of the projects to the next stage. Dear readers… this is one of the most productive things I have ever done. It took under 10 minutes to create this mind map, but the results have been amazing.

As a visual person this on screen representation really hit home. I have tried mind mapping before with other software, but the interfaces have always been a little clumsy for me. I would usually give up in frustration. But this new interface from SmartDraw just works. I didn’t have to think about anything. When I clicked… it worked the way I thought it should.

And then I discovered some additional features that were really cool. With a click of a button, I had a Powerpoint slide of the mind map. Another click gave me a PDF and another gave me a complete HTML webpage. With the themes button I could change the look and feel of the whole document in just seconds.

After modifying the map I exported it to a Word document and added a Next Actions list to the bottom. Now my GTD skills came into play and I was able to get the “big rocks” on their way to completion. Simple, effective, and it took under 15 minutes to complete.

As I started to write this post I decided to create a mind map of my blogging activities. In just a few minutes I had a great view of my weekly blog activities. As before the visual representation instantly got my mind to thinking… man I’m doing a lot on every post. My mind asked, “is there a way to simplify this? The next actions became apparent and I realized quickly that some new blogging software might help me immensely. I’ve taken some action on this this morning and I’ll post about this on an upcoming article.

Here is a mind map of my blogging activities (I simplified this quite a bit to get it to fit on one screen). When you see everything in one place you realize that blogging is not as easy as it sounds. If you multiply this with multiple blogs you can easily see how it can get out of hand. With SmartDraw you can easily add sub-topics to this diagram to really fine tune the process.

I have only touched on one facet of this powerful software. I’ll be posting about additional features in the coming days. The great thing about SmartDraw is that you can download a trial version for free. This is one piece of software that I highly recommend you take for a spin.

To help you create flowcharts and mind maps in a workgroup or during a meeting, check out our Desktop Flowchart and SuddenMind Idea Mapper. These cards are a great way to brainstorm ideas in a group before bringing them into a software application like SmartDraw.

Technorati Tags: SmartDraw, mind map, flowchart

I’ve been involved with small group studies for almost 25 years. They have included church bible studies, Toastmaster groups, and sales organizations. Small groups are a great way to share information and study together. The key to a successful small group is to have from 6 to 16 people and have a comfortable location to get together. If have many more than 16 people the group becomes too large to share effectively. The collective wisdom of a group this size is amazing.

One of the techniques I’ve found for leading a small group is to be a facilitator instead of a lecturer. This facilitator organizes the meeting and applies a loose structure. A good facilitator will try to get everyone involved in the conversation and control the interaction to keep anyone from dominating the entire discussion.

In church and other study groups a great technique to get things going is to have someone read a scripture or reflect on a quotation. You broaden the verse with a little explanation or practical observation. Then you ask the group a question based on the verse.

This simple three step process can generate lots of conversation with just one question. It makes it real easy to facilitate as you just sit back and listen to others. Your main job is to keep the discussion under control and draw people back in and move on to the next point.

The three points can be distilled as

1. Read the scripture or Verse

3. Ask an open ended question

I’ve put together some easy to use study cards that make this process easy. You add your verses or quotations to the front of the cards and put the expansion and questions on the back. Pass these cards out to different members at the start of the meeting and take them one by one. The great thing about these cards is the font size. You can make the verse easy to read for those people that may have trouble reading the smaller print in a bible or book.

Take one card at a time and have the person read the verse and then turn it over and have them read the example and have them ask the question. The discussion will take off from there. Many times the discussion will really take off and may last 5, 10 or even 15 minutes on a single question.

I’ve put together a front and back page Microsoft Word based template that you print out on blank Avery Business cards. You put the verses on the front, and add the example and question on the back. Just print the front first and then turn the sheet over and print the back side. Within minutes you’ll have a complete study ready to go. Break the 10 cards apart and take them along to your next group meeting.

I’ve included an example bible study in the book of Proverbs as a quick way to show you how effective these can be.

The front card has a scripture verse

The card includes the chapter and verse as reference, and includes the verse in a large serif font to make it easy to read.

The back of the card has thoughtful information and an open ended question.

There are 10 cards in this selection that can be used to generate a rousing discussion that will go at least an hour.

As you can see these questions are not always easy to answer and people will have many different viewpoints to go along with them. These cards make great bookmarks to mark the reference verse for further study. Here are the instructions for downloading…

1. Download the Study Cards zip file to your computer.
2. Unzip the file and open the templates in Microsoft Word.
3. Put a sheet of plain white Avery Business Card stock in your printer.
4. Print out the front of the cards first with template 1.
5. Turn the business card sheet over and print the back side with template 2.
6. Break them apart
7. Take them along to your next study or small group…

Technorati Tags: bible study, small groups, study

The 400 pages of the large book seemed daunting at first and the teacher was relentless. The book review was due in a week. I wasn’t sure how to about this task. As a student I had run into difficult tasks before but this one was different. There was an unappealing book in front of me that needed to be read, dissected and reported on. I didn’t have much time and the whole process seemed overwhelming, and yet my grade depended on it. Four hundred lousy pages and I hadn’t read one yet.

The grumbling in the class was apparent but there was one student who seemed to have things under control. My friend James was busy reading and taking notes. As the bell rang, we walked out of class and I asked him what he though of the project. I was expecting the same negative attitude as the rest of the class, but James surprised me. He said something simple yet profound…

You’ve got prime time before the chime,
write it down, one chapter at a time.

This simple advice really helped me on the project, and I learned a new skill that day. I learned to take notes along the way. Before this I would attempt to read the whole book and then go back and write down notes. I always seemed to run out of time and I had a hard time remembering what I had read. My grades reflected this.

My solution was to take a large sheet of paper, and scribble notes as I read. While not elegant, these simple notes formed an outline, and a quick way to get started writing a report. This note sheet became a bookmark, and the torn edges reflected its use.

From that experience, I developed a simple outline sheet which has been a big help when reading and studying. One of my co-workers, Jeanette, gave me an idea the other day to make this even easier. I showed her some graphical bookmarks that I was designing and I asked her for her opinion of how they could be used. She liked the graphics but said that plain bookmarks would be helpful for her kids to take notes, chapter by chapter.

Chapter bookmarks were born out of her great idea.

Here is how they work…

I went back to the drawing board and came up with a two sided bookmark card, that can be printed on plain white business card stock. The front of the card has the chapter headings, a rectangle for notes, and three lines that can be used for keywords, page numbers or general ideas.

The back of the card has a place for three action points and a box for references or quotations. The cards are simple enough that they can be used in a variety of ways. Just put a few blank ones in your book and use them to mark your place as you read along. As the ideas flow, mark them down chapter by chapter.

The nice thing about cards is that they are portable. You can leave the cards in the book or take them out and store them in an envelope or other storage container. You can clip them with a mini clip and store them in pocket or purse. When you are done, lay out your chapter cards on your desk and rearrange them by idea or topic. This is where the flexibility of cards comes in.

Like a mind map on your desk, the tapestry of ideas will come alive. Move them around and sort them by topic, keyword, or page number. The visual nature of these cards will help you create some amazing associations. Start creating your book outline with the enclosed idea-outliner and you’ll have an amazing book review in no time at all.

It’s real easy to get started…

1. Download the ChapterMarks zip file to your computer.
2. Unzip the file and open the templates in Microsoft Word.
3. Put a sheet of plain white Avery Business Card stock in your printer.
4. Print out the front of the cards first with template 1.
5. Turn the business card sheet over and print the back side with template 2.
6. Print out an idea-outliner to use with the cards
7. Get reading and writing…

I’ve included a second sheet of front cards that are numbered 11-20 for longer books. You can easily modify any of the cards to meet your individual needs or to mark them for books with more than 20 chapters.

These cards work well with our Walleteer organizer, for easy retrieval and storage. Print out a set for the students in your home and help them develop the habit of taking notes chapter by chapter. Their grades and their attitudes might just change for the better.

When working on a thesis or other larger project try these cards with our SuddenMind idea mapping system.

Technorati Tags: books, bookmarks, studying