Archive for the 'Productivity' Category

If you work in any type of corporate environment or large educational institution that uses Microsoft Exchange E-Mail, you’ll be ecstatic about the new Exchange client for the iPod Touch.

This $9.95 software upgrade takes our favorite iPod and turns it into a productivity powerhouse. This new Apple application is by far the best hand held implementation of Exchange E-Mail that I have found. It takes your e-mail and makes it scrollable, adds your outlook calendar to the built in calendar application, and imports your Outlook contacts into the contact interface.

I downloaded the application through iTunes and followed the step by step instructions. The software did a complete rebuild of my iPod and within minutes was ready to go. I would strongly recommend that you have a good broadband connection to do the upgrade on as the file size is over 100 megs and needs to have a reliable connection to complete the upgrade process. Patience is a virtue here.

Once the software was installed, I clicked on settings and chose the mail setup screen. Lo and behold there was the bright and shiny Microsoft Exchange selection button ready to go. I clicked on the button and added my current exchange web mail settings. Within a minute it found my exchange server and started the download.

Soon my work e-mail was setup along with my Outlook calendar and my full contact list. All of a sudden this iPod became much more than a toy. Since we have wireless internet access where I work, I now have a way to take my e-mail with me wherever I go throughout the building or at our remote sites.

Here is the BIG advantage… I can now have my e-mail, calendar and contacts without paying for a data plan for my phone. In fact for many users this may do away with the need for a work phone at all.

This simple software package can possible save your organization hundreds or thousands of dollars a month in phone charges. If you currently have wireless installed in your building and you use exchange e-mail, you’ll be good to go. If you have wireless internet at home you can have work e-mail access at the touch of a button. The iPod touch may become the Hi Tech Pager of the 21st century.

This software update also includes a whole list of new applications which we’ll cover in another post. Until then… happy e-mailing!

Procrastination is an insidious thing. It creeps up and strikes even the best of us from time to time. In fact many of us may not even realize that we are procrastinating. As you read this, for instance, you may be putting off doing something important. Maybe it’s that report to your boss, a new sales call, or that phone call to apologize to a friend.

Whatever it is, procrastination can be overcome. It’s actually quite simple…

Just do it!

I know what you’re saying… Don’t you wish it was that simple. The fact is we procrastinate because we have too much to do and not enough time to do it. In our modern society we have a huge amount of things coming at us from all directions. The cell phone is ringing, e-mail is notifying, your calendar is screaming, and your boss is standing in your doorway.

Something’s got to give!

The definition of procrastination is…

Putting off or delaying or deferring an action to a later time. 

Given the amount of stuff we all have to do, it’s just natural that we have to put off some things to a later time or just not do them at all.

So the real question is… what do we do now and what do we put off until later?

1. Do we do the urgent?
2. Do we do the important?
3. Do we do what makes us feel good now?

The answers to these questions can really affect our future.

Dan Ariely, in his new book, Predictably Irrational did some experiments with a group of students to find out how structure effects procrastination. The results of his test are interesting and may give us some insight on overcoming this insidious problem.

Dan gave three of his classes different criteria for submitting their papers during a 12 week semester

1. The first class had no deadlines at all. They merely needed to submit their papers by the last class. They could turn the papers in early but there was no grade benefit in doing so.
2. The second class could pick their own deadlines for each paper at the beginning of the course. They could set them at intervals throughout the semester or just set them all for the last day of the class. Once the deadlines were set they could not be changed. Students would be penalized 1% of the grade for each day it was late.
3. The third class was given dictatorial orders. They would have to submit their three papers on week 4, 8, and 12 respectively. Their was no choice or flexibility.

At the end of the semester, the grades were tallied for each group. The group with the dictatorial structure did the best, followed by the class that set its own deadlines, with the free form group coming in last.

Structure was very important to the overall grades of the class. The class that was allowed to pick it’s own deadlines decided to follow a scheduling form that the teacher provided.

The take away is this… people do better in this order

1. Externally imposed deadlines
2. Personally imposed deadlines
3. No deadlines at all along the way

This has been my experience over the years with many different classes, goals, or other accomplishments. Over the next few days we’ll look at some structured ways to overcome procrastination in different areas of life. From diet to money management we’ll take a look at some successful programs that let you say…

Let’s get started… NOW!

In his best selling book Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely asks a simple question, “What is the cost of no cost?” Dan and his team of social scientists did some experiments on a group of potential customers to find out how much they prized different types of chocolate.

On a table in a large building they offered two types of chocolate. The prized Lindt truffle was offered along side the common Hershey’s kiss. The truffle was priced at 15 cents and the Hershey kiss was priced at a penny. Both of these prices were less than half the usual cost. There was a large sign at the table that said “One Chocolate Per Customer.”

As you would probably expect, the Lindt Truffle was a runaway hit at 15 cents. Over 73% of the respondents chose the higher priced truffle over the generic Hersheys kiss. But what happened in the next test was very interesting.

Dan and his testers then lowered the price of each Chocolate by a penny and ran the test again? This time the Truffle was priced at 14 cents and the Hershey’s kiss was given away free.

The results were startling. Now the Hershey’s kiss was the favorite by a wide margin. Over 69% of the respondents now chose the kiss over the truffle and the difference in the test was one red cent.

The difference was the word free. Free made all the difference, especially when compared to an item with a cost associated with it.

As Dan alludes to in the book, this comparison of a free item to an item that we have to pay for can lead us to make irrational or poor decisions. How many times have you chosen the buy one, get one free item only to get home and find it was not the quality you expected.

Let’s say you went to Walmart to buy tee shirts. You usually buy the national brand that doesn’t shrink and holds up well wash after wash. On the same rack is an inferior brand, but the large size package is priced buy one-get one free. Your mind instantly picks up on the deal even though you have to buy two and end up spending more for the large package of shirts.

You get home and after one washing, the inferior shirts shrink 20%. Now you have two packages of shirts that you cant wear but once. The power of free caused you to make a poor decision.

The word free can drive traffic but often relegates the item to something of little or no value. On this blog for example, I provide many free MS Word based templates for a variety of uses. I don’t use the word free but instead use words that explain the benefits.

Instead of Free Flowchart Template, I refer to my flowchart cards as a Five Minute Flowchart, letting the reader know that the flowchart can be created on their desk in under five minutes.

Given the premise that the word free is a powerful motivator, would people be more interested in a free offer or the benefits of a product or service?

Here is a question: What offer would you choose below?

A Free Flowchart Template emphasizing the value of “Free“

A Five Minute Flowchart emphasizing the benefit of “Speed“

Both of these links and graphics point to the same flowchart page. Which graphic would make you click first? The one with the free option, or the one with the time saving benefit?

I would like to hear your comments on this.

I’m going to track this in my stats and see which one is more popular. If you have a minute click on the graphic you would choose. I’ll post the results in an upcoming post in a few days. It will be interesting to see how predictable this choice is.

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!

The new 2007 Office Suite from Microsoft offers a lot of new functionality for the user. If you have installed one of the popular versions you have undoubtedly noticed the new ribbon interface in Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. While this can be intimidating at first, you’ll soon find that it will start to make sense and actually speed things up once you get used to it.

In this short tutorial I want to take you through some more advanced features of Word and show you how to tie it in with formatted table elements.

Let’s get started. Use the document picture below as a reference. You can also download the Finished Real Estate Flyer to make it easier to follow along.

One of the more popular uses of MS Word is to create flyers for business use. In this example we’ll create a flyer that can be used by real estate agents to highlight their properties. We’ll include a place for a large picture, we’ll offer a payment calculator that is easily updated, and include a convenient place for property and agent information.

Step 1. Creating the Page Layout

The first thing we need to do is layout our page in Word with lots of space to work. By default, Word comes with pretty restrictive page margins. For a flyer we want to maximize these. This is real easy in the 2007 version.

1. Open Word with a blank document
2. Click on the Page Layout tab
3. Click on the Margins button
4. Select Narrow from the pull-down list (Figure 1)

Now you have a page that is maximized with a 1/2 inch margin all around that works with most printers and will give you lots of space for graphics and text.

Step 2. Adding a Table for Structure

If you have ever worked in a word processor before you’ll know that page layout with graphics and text can be a real challenge. Everything is setup to flow around the page text. With the basic page setup in Word you have limited options to make your page look right.

This is where tables come in handy. Tables give you structure and keep things aligned properly. Let’s add a table that will give us a place for our property picture, our payment calculator, and a couple of boxes for property and agent information (Figure 2).

1. Click on the insert tab in the ribbon interface
2. Select table from the list (Figure 2)
3. Bring your mouse down as in figure two
4. Select a 2 column by five row table
5. Click your mouse to create the table

Now we need to format our table for our page elements. Since we want our graphic and home description line to span the entire page we need to merge the top two cells from two columns to one.

1. Put your mouse in the top row of the table (Figure 3)
2. Hold down the shift key and click in both top cells to select them
3. Right click on the mouse and select merge cells
4. You now have a row that spans the entire document
5. Repeat step one and two on the second row

Step 3: Adding Text & Graphics To Our Table

Let’s add a clip-art placeholder for our house picture, add our picture caption, and center both cells in the table.

1. Click on the insert tab and select clip art from the menu (figure 4)
2. Do a search for “House” in the clip art search menu
3. Find a simple “WMF” type graphic (resizable) as our picture placeholder
4. Make sure your cursor is in the top table cell
5. Double click the desired graphic to add it to the table

1. Your graphic has now been added to the top cell in the table
2. Click the graphic to select it and use the handles to resize it larger
3. Click elsewhere in the top cell, right click, and select centered formatting
4. Your graphic is now centered
5. Add placeholder text for your address in the second row of the table
6. Select the text, right click, and select centered formatting

Step 4: Fill In The Rest Of Our Cells

Let’s fill in the rest of our table. We need to add a property description box, informational headings, and our property and agent info.

1. In row three we want our property description text.
2. Merge both cells in row three as we did above
3. Add a few lines of property description text
4. Leave the formatting as left justified.
5. In row four we want to include 2 information box titles
6. Add the words Property Information to the left cell, center formatting
7. Add the words Agent Information to the right cell, center formatting
8. In row 8 put property info in the left box and agent info in the right
9. Your basic flyer is about done

Step 6: Add A Payment Calculator

Lets add three more rows for some additional features.

1. Put your cursor in one of the current bottom cells of your table
2. Right click and select Insert / Insert Rows Below
3. Repeat this three times to add three additional rows to the bottom

1. Use the diagram above as a reference (Figure
2. In the first row you added add Payment Calculator & Office Information Text
3. Center and Bold as shown above
4. Add a 2×4 nested table to the left cell in the new second row (Put your cursor in the cell and select 2 columns by 4 rows in the table dialog. Figure 2 shows the table creation procedure)
5. Fill in the 2 x 4 table with Text as shown (Leave the calculated cell blank)
6. In the right cell in the new second row add office information
7. Merge the third row and add disclaimer text

Add a calculated cell to sum up the totals

1. Click in the bottom right of your payment calculator nested table (figure
2. Click on the formula icon on the layout tab in Word
3. Make sure the calculated fields look like figure 9
4. This will insert a calculated field and add up the total payment numbers
5. The calculated field should now show 1800

Step 7: Agent Picture

Add your agent’s picture to the agent information area

1. Right click in the agent information cell and click split cells
2. Your cell is now divided in two
3. Place your cursor in the new right cell
4. Add a small clip art person as a place holder in the cell
5. Move the vertical cell line as necessary (Figure 10)

Step 8: Finish Up

Now your document should look like the picture above. You can add text, change line spacing, or change the text size to fill up your page. This flyer can be used for multiple projects. Just change the pictures and the text. Digital photos work well for the house and agent pictures.

You can recolor the main table to a light gray to minimize the lines and use different fonts and colors for emphasis. Have fun!

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.