Archive for the 'Organization' Category

My wife was messing around the other day with a sample of a five minute flowchart that I had printed out. She moved it around on the desktop and tried it in different formations. She came to one conclusion… “You need to make this into a weekly calendar,” she said with a smile.

I thought to myself… a weekly calendar….hmmmm… what would I need on a weekly calendar that would fit on a business card? I tried some different things and I realized that I would need to keep this simple to be effective. I currently use Outlook as my calendar of choice, so I wrote down the things I use it for.

I make notes of …

1. Appointments
2. Things To Do / Next Actions
3. Phone Calls I Need To Make
4. E-Mails I Need to Send

While Outlook works well for appointments, it’s clumsy for the other three on the list. Those are usually delegated to my daily goal sheet that sits by my computer. But creating a card based calendar would give me additional flexibility. I could easily take it with me in my pocket or wallet and I could easily display the cards on my desk in a plastic holder. My wife was on to something here.

With her feedback, we came up with a simple 5 day business card based calendar. We added color for additional versatility, and made them two sided for maximum information.

The front side of the card shows the day at the top and has three columns for appointments and to-do items. The alternating color rows make it easy to segregate information at a glance

The back side of the card has a place for phone calls and e-mails. You can put the cards in a card holder on your desk for instant reference and as a constant memory jogger.

The cards come in five different daily colors and two weeks of cards are printed on one sheet for added value. Since they are provided in Microsoft Word templates, it is easy to add text in MS Word or just print them out and use a fine tipped Sharpie. Both Word 2007 and 97-2003 versions are included.

Instructions for use:

• Download the Five Minute Calendar Template for MS Word
• Open the templates and modify as necessary
• Print out on Avery business card stock (10 Card)
• Print the back of the cards on the back of the same sheet
• Break cards apart
• Fill in a appointments and to-do items
• Fill in phone calls and e-mail sections
• Arrange as necessary on your desk
• For portability stack cards in order and clip together with mini clip
• Transport easily in pocket or purse

Enjoy your calendar!

There is a dirty little secret that most people have. Hidden behind doors, and piled high in closets and garages is a stack of clutter. Clutter that sometimes defies description.

Dear readers, I hate clutter. I have a daily personal battle with it. It comes in the form of junk mail, impulse purchases, free gifts, and free samples. It creeps in when you least expect it and finds a place on any flat surface in your house. It loves the kitchen counter top and the kitchen table. Soon it multiplies and finds a way into the office, where it piles high waiting for action.

Unfortunately, if I let my guard down for just one day, clutter will get a foothold. When I have a busy week with many important projects, I can have a real battle on my hands. I call it “The Curse of Stuff,” and it really can take time and energy to overcome it.

I have had an experience over the last two weekends that have really taken this problem to a new level. It’s called “Other People’s Stuff,” and it came in the form of 50 years of clutter from my dad’s house. My dad passed away two years ago and his stuff was moved to my sister’s house. My sister is now in the process of moving to a smaller house with little storage space and something had to be done.

In this stack of stuff were important papers, antiques and collectibles, old clothes, tools and supplies, and basically anything you would probably find in your own home. Unfortunately procrastination had reared it’s ugly head for many years with these items. My dad had put off dealing with it for years, and my sister never found the time to go through it.

The clutter basically got moved from place to place numerous times and got bigger and more unruly each time.

I set one rule this time… I’m not moving it again!

But here was the problem, neither my sister or I knew what to do with it. It was an overwhelming problem causing a huge amount of stress. We needed help and we needed it bad.

I started asking friends if they knew anybody that could help and one name came to the surface… it was an organization called Clutter Stop.

Clutter Stop is run by Sheila McCurdy, who is the author of a popular book on clutter control called The Floor Is Not An Option. I called Sheila and she made arrangements to look at the problem.

When she arrived, she opened the door to my sister’s garage and was faced with a floor to ceiling mess. She spent a few minutes assessing the situation and also looked at the three storage sheds of additional items. She immediately formulated a plan and set an appointment to tackle the problem in two weeks.

She ordered a dumpster and hired a crew. On that fateful Saturday, she arrived early with her sidekick Millie and four helpers. The door to the garage flew open and everything was taken out and sorted on the front lawn. The garage was thoroughly cleaned and important furniture was brought back in and set in rows.

Antiques and collectibles were brought in, sorted and displayed on top of the furniture for an appraiser to look at. Important papers and photographs were put in their own section. The rest of the items were sorted for a garage sale and if the item was not sellable it was thrown away.

Her crew was amazing and at the end of the day we filled the dumpster twice over and had a very organized garage. I can’t tell you how nice it was to have someone take charge and tackle a very overwhelming problem.

We have since hired an appraiser and had someone who works with estate sales sell the antiques and collectibles for us. My sister’s older children are coming next weekend to do a huge garage sale. While we still have a ways to go, Sheila’s commitment to tackling clutter got us over the hump.

I have ordered Sheila’s book and just looking at the reviews I know she’ll have some great tips to help me with my own house. If you find yourself facing the agony of clutter, be sure to log onto Clutter Stop for some very helpful resources!

When you first open Word 2007 for the first time, you’ll probably be surprised by the changes that Microsoft made to the user interface. Instead of the usual icons and menu selections, you are presented with their new fluent interface, called The Ribbon. This is a totally new way to get things done in the Office 2007 suite of programs. Unfortunately this new interface can be intimidating.

The Ribbon is segregated into groups of commands called tabs, with each tab having it’s own sections and mini toolbars. Once you get used to the tabs, they become logical places to find similar commands.

After working with this new interface for some time, I found myself going back and forth constantly between the tabs to get things done. I wanted to find an easy way to modify the ribbon to create a tab that had all of my commonly used commands in one place.

Unfortunately Microsoft has not made this easy. You either have to be a Visual Basic programmer or know how to modify a large XML document, both of which are outside the scope of this article. In my research, I did find some workarounds that make Word 2007 more user friendly. Here are 5 time savers that you can implement in just a few minutes.

1. Create New and Open Icons

In figure one above you’ll notice that the commonly used icons New and Open do not appear on the ribbon interface. To get to them you have to click on the Office button and find them in the pull-down menu. When you do find the new button and click on it it opens a dialog box which requires you to choose a blank document. This is at least three clicks just to open a new document.

To easily re-create these icons like they appeared in earlier versions of Word, you just need to add them to the Quick Access Toolbar. Figure 2 shows you how easy this is.

1. Click on the pull-down menu at the right of the Quick Access Toolbar
2. Select the checkboxes next to Open and also next to New
3. You’ll now have these handy icons available on this toolbar

Now you’ll have one click access to open a new or saved document.

2. Adding Additional Icons To The Quick Access Toolbar

To add additional icons to the Quick Access Toolbar, just open the pull-down menu and click on the More Commands Link (see Figure 2). This will open the customization dialog box (Figure 4).

1. Choose the popular or all in the pull-down menu
2. Highlight the icons you want to add
3. Click on the add button to move them to the toolbar
4. Click the OK dialog box when you are done

You can add many of the hard to find icons that are missing from the ribbon interface and put them in one convenient place.

3. Using Paste Special

If you routinely cut and paste from different documents, web sites, or PDF files into Word you might notice that when you paste the copied text it will bring along the formatting of the previous document. These may include..

1. Different fonts, text sizes, or colors
2. Hyperlinks, tables, or graphics
3. Strange punctuation and line breaks

The best way to get rid of this extraneousness stuff is to use the Paste Special command. You can easily add it the the Quick Access Toolbar using the procedure used in Adding Additional Icons above (Figure 4).

Once you copy your text from the document source using the copy command or Control-C on the keyboard, use the paste special command to paste unformatted text into Word (Figure 5).

This can save you an enormous amount of time trying to reformat items. This also works well as a way to take text into other applications that do not have this command. Just paste special into Word and then cut and paste the resulting unformatted text into your other application.

4. Minimize The Ribbon

If you have a new wide-screen laptop or other wide-screen monitor, you may notice that the vertical space in Word 2007 is compromised by the wide ribbon interface.

You can easily minimize the ribbon by using the CONTROL-F1 command from the keyboard (CTRL key & F1 Key). This instantly minimizes the ribbon to just tab headings, but leaves your Quick Access Toolbar in view. This will save you at least an inch of vertical space which is really nice when typing longer documents. This command toggles, so hitting Control-F1 another time instantly brings back the ribbon.

5. I Still Can’t Find It!

With all the changes to the Word 2007 interface it’s a good chance you may not be able to find your favorite commands anymore. If you’re like me you’ll spend a lot of time clicking through the tabs hunting for familiar commands or icons.

There is a better way. Microsoft has published a Flash based Quick Reference Guide that features a Word 2003 interface that is clickable. You click on the old command and the program tells you where the command is in Word 2007. Cool!

Reference Materials:

While these five tips may save you some time, if you are faced with learning Word 2007 for your job or business, I would recommend that you pick up a quick-start guide. I have used these for years to get up to speed quickly when a new version comes out.

Word 2007: Step By Step

Word 2007: Plain & Simple

The step by step book is my favorite because you work through real world examples. In just a few hours you’ll be up to speed with the most popular commands and options. The Plain and Simple book is a feature packed reference guide that will help you implement the new Word 2007 features quickly and easily.

Amazing Deal From Microsoft:

If you are a college student at an accredited university you can get the Microsoft Office Ultimate Bundle (Regular price $459) for just $59.95 for a limited time. Here is the link from Microsoft for more information. Don’t miss this one…

Take A Few Minutes…

And modify Word 2007 the way you like it. You’ll find that many of these tips work in Excel, Powerpoint and other Office 2007 applications. A few quick keystrokes and you’ll be more productive.

You are out to lunch with your co-workers to plan out the new Thornton project. This is a very important task and the representatives from the Thornton company have related the importance of the short timeline for the assignment. You relate to your co-workers that the first draft is due by the end of next week.

You can tell they are anxious, but you tell them not to worry and pull a small stack of cards from your pocket. As you pass around the cards, the waiter brings your lunch. As you start to enjoy the wonderful salad, you realize you also need to get business done. You grab a business card sized project list card and a pen.

As you start to brainstorm the project, you write down the major items on your project list one by one on the cards. You then lay the cards out on the table in front of you. This is where it gets fun. You and your co-workers arrange the cards in order of completion, make notes, and write down who will be doing what.

You bring out a second stack of cards. This stack includes a …

1. Resource List
2. Department list
3. Document List
4. Crew List
5. Cost estimate
6. Three different timeline cards

As you continue to brainstorm, you make notes on the appropriate cards. Pretty soon you have a good list going. The little cards are great memory joggers and they are easy to pass around the table. You have your HR person fill out the department and crew lists, while your business services person makes a note of all the required documents and fill out the resources that will be needed.

As lunch is winding down you grab a 5 day timeline card and put one word in each box. You ask Sally to grab some highlighters out of her purse and you mark the important days with different colors. The colors help you organize the project by milestones that will need to be met.

Soon the waiter brings you the check, but in your short lunch period you were able to get a lot done. You have each one of your co-workers grab a to-do card and make a quick note of their tasks for the next week. This will give them an easy to use take away so they wont forget what they need to do.

You gather up the project and resource cards and clip them together with a mini clip. It won’t take you long when you get back to your desk, to transfer the information and get the project started. With the cards at hand the e-mails start flying and the appropriate people are able to get started on their individual projects.

The cards you used were part of a free download and the three 8.5 x 11 sheets easily printed out on Avery Blank Business Cards on your laser printer. A few minutes breaking them apart and you had a project planning kit that was small enough to fit in your pocket.

Here is how you can create a set for yourself…

• Download the Instant Project Planner for MS Word
• Open the template(s) and modify the text as necessary
• Print out on Avery business card stock (10 Card)
• Break cards apart
• Use the project list cards to outline your project tasks
• Arrange as necessary on your desk to set the proper order
• Use the resource project cards to fill in all the necessary resources that will be needed for the project
• Use the appropriate timeline card to set priorities
• Fill in the to-do cards for task management
• For portability stack cards in order and clip together with mini clip
• Transport easily in pocket or purse

Make your next project more enjoyable, download a set today. 

Other Project Planning Tools you may enjoy…

Five Minute Flowchart
Five Minute Organizer
Five Minute Motivators

With the New Year approaching it’s time to review our goals for the coming year. It’s a great time to look into the future and go over our one, three, and five year plans. There is nothing better than to plan out a course of action… a roadmap if you will… of the roads and paths we will take to get there.

For myself I have been developing some printed documents that help me visualize where I am going. I am setting one up for each of my major goals. They list the goal in bold type and then the steps it will take to get there. Since they are organized by goal all the steps to accomplish them are easy to see and in one place.

The problem is, I like to keep my goals where I can see and review them during the day.

I have tried leaving them on my desk, posting them on my computer, and even framing them on my wall, but nothing seems to work better than a plain old…. Notebook.

This simple binder gives me easy access anytime I want it, yet allows me to store them away for a tidy work area. I have setup dividers for the different length goals so they are easily accessible for reference.

A cool trick that I have found is to use a business card page to keep some of my Goal Setting and Motivator cards in for quick access.

I like to keep a plastic business card holder on my desk to put my goals or daily motivator cards where I can see them at all times. The business card page gives me a place to store and access these cards that I put in the holder.

This notebook works great along with a Daily Planning Sheet. It’s easy to reference action steps from the goal documents and copy them onto my daily planner.

Over the next few weeks we’ll look at strategies for putting together a Goal based notebook. For a quick start you can download our Goal Setting Toolkit and Motivator cards. Modify the cards for your needs and print them out on Avery Business Card Stock.

In your notebook include a plastic Business Card Page. Store your numerous cards for quick reference. If you use a larger notebook you can setup a section to store your Daily Planning Sheets before and after you use them along with a section for your Lifetime Goals Questionnaire.

To keep up to date with our upcoming goal setting tools and notebook, be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed and sign up for our Success-Connect Newsletter.

Have a Successful New Year!

Do you struggle to make decisions? Do you need to consult others to finalize an idea? Here is an easy to use decision making kit that works well in small groups or at the lunch table. The kit consists of four printable sheets created in Microsoft Word. One sheet is printed on business card stock and the others on heavyweight paper.

This kit works easily to collect ideas and put them on paper right in front of you. The cards add flexibility and allow you to have other people fill them out. You can do it right at a table or have them take the cards with them and return at a later date.

Here is how it works…

Step One-Idea Collection: Print out the pro-con decision cards on Avery business card stock, break them apart, and pass them around the table to each person in your group. Give each person a pro card along with a con card. Hand everyone a fine point Sharpie and have them get ready to start writing.

Lay out your idea that you need a decision on in simple terms so everyone can understand it. Write it in a simple sentence on one of the idea cards and make sure everyone understands what is being presented.

Once everyone is clear on the concept, have each person come up with the pros and cons of the idea. There are four lines on each card for multiple items. Have everyone write the ideas on the respective cards and pass them to the moderator when everyone is done.

Step Two-Layout: When you are done, collect up the cards and lay them out on the decision layout sheet. This sheet is best printed on heavyweight paper. Put the decision idea card at the top and layout the pro and con cards on their respective sides.

Now it is easy to see at a glance everyone’s ideas in one place. You can quickly determine if an idea is popular or not by the amount of items on each side and the overlap and repetition of ideas.

Step Three-Discussion: This tool is a great conversation starter and really will help to brainstorm an idea. Look at the cards for the following…

• An Overlap of Ideas
• Any show stoppers. Items that must be overcome to move forward
• Costs or Expenses
• Offensive or Unpleasant Items

Use different color highlighters to mark different items… For example

• Use a Yellow highlighter for Good Ideas
• Use a Red highlighter for Expenses
• Use a Blue highlighter for Show Stoppers

Be sure to discuss each item. Once you are done you’ll have a collection of great ideas and maybe some items that need attention.

Step Four-Decision: If everyone is in agreement you can come to a final decision right in your meeting. If further things need to be worked out use the separate further discussion worksheet to write down further action items and compile a to-do action list.

This sheet offers a place to compile costs and also offers a point based grading system for those more complicated decisions. Best of all it has a Bottom Line that you can check YES or NO.

Optional-Comparison Decision Maker:

For comparing two items side by side, use the comparison decision maker sheet. Write the two items to compare on the item cards and put them on the decision A and B spots. Pass around pro and con cards and have people write down one item each on each card for each item to be decided on. When you are done, put the pro and con cards under each decision card.

You can quickly highlight different items and this sheet will give you a quick visual representation of the pro and con ideas being presented. There are two boxes at the bottom for notes or scores and best of all a place to put your decision.

Download and Printing Instructions:

Download the Pro-Con-Cards zip file
Unzip the file and open in Microsoft Word
Print the Pro-Con cards on Avery Business Card Stock
Print the other sheets on heavyweight paper
Break the cards apart
Take a Sharpie, highlighters, decision sheets, and your cards to your next meeting. Have Fun!

Related Projects:

Five Minute Motivators

Five Minute Organizer

Mind Map Your Stress

Sudden Mind Idea Mapper