Archive for the 'Success' Category

I picked up an amazing book the other day entitled Predictably Irrational by MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely. In this best selling hardback, Dan explores the hidden forces that shape our decisions. From the first chapter on, this book had some amazing insights in store for the reader. Things such as …

• Why do headaches persist after taking a one cent aspirin but disappear when we take a 50 cent aspirin?
• Why do we splurge on an extravagant meal, but cut coupons to save 25 cents on a can of soup?
• How did we ever start spending over $4.00 on a cup of coffee when, just a few years ago, we used to spend less than a dollar?

Over the next few days we’ll explore some of the concepts in the book and how they affect our personal productivity on a daily basis. You’ll be surprised just how predictably irrational we are. Stay tuned…

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 get started with Powerpoint, you’ll learn a lot of new commands and keystrokes. As you work through the interface you’ll find buttons that you constantly use to make things happen.

One of the first little toolbars that you’ll discover is down in the status bar area in most versions of Powerpoint and contains three buttons.

The first button is called the normal view button. This will quickly bring you back to the normal or default view. The second button will lay out a photo album style view of all your slides. This makes it quick and easy to move slides around and sort them the way you want. The third button starts your slide show (the F5 key is the shortcut). You’ll use this button all the time to test and present your shows.

Once you are in your show you may find that the N key or Right Arrow key becomes your best friend. This key will advance your show one slide at a time. If you find that you need to go back a slide, The P key or Left Arrow key will be useful

As important as all of these are for a great presentation, they don’t compare to the most important button. in fact they don’t even come close.

You see, the most important button is the B key. When you press this during a slide-show the screen turns black. If you press it again your screen returns.

The reason this is the most important is it returns the focus to you, the presenter! You are the most important part of the show.

You are the center of attention.

Your slides should enhance your presentation, but not be the center focus.

Press this button and all eyes return to you!

Are you ready?

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!

I walked into our home office the other day and I found my wife yelling at the computer screen. She was trying to create a flyer for her Bunco group and she just wanted to change the type font. She had done this hundreds of times before in Microsoft Word, but now everything had changed.

Her new computer had Office 2007 on it and the Ribbon interface at the top had her confused. She kept clicking on the big type boxes and all of her type was changing. She just wanted to change one line to a different font.

After 10 minutes of trying she was almost in tears. Since I was headed out the door, I finally fired up our laptop which had the older version of Word on it and she completed her flyer in just a few minutes.

*********

I downloaded the new version of Wordpress the other day and after some research I updated this blog with it. When I logged into the admin interface, I was surprised at the changes. The look and feel were completely different. It took me a few minutes to find the usual areas that I routinely access.

The interface seemed to be “dumbed down” with the more technical areas of the program hidden away. It took me a few minutes to find the plug-in and settings buttons which are small and over to the side. Once I found them and clicked on them, the interface seemed to look more familiar.

I spent about 10 minutes clicking and exploring the new interface and the new version of Wordpress started to make sense. While the interface is different, it didn’t reach the frustration level of change. There were enough things that were the same that it soon became old hat.

The difference between my wife’s experience and mine was that she ended up frustrated and mad and I was surprised but able to continue working.

10 minutes seems to be some kind of limit.

If you can’t figure it out fast, the program becomes the enemy. Most people just want to do their work and get on with life. Users may have a real problem with Office 2007. From my experience, the learning curve of the new office suite is about two weeks. To really get proficient will take much longer.

Where I work, we have hundreds of users on Office 2003. Going to the new version of office will be a big change and I really think we will have to offer training before the roll out.

Unfortunately… training is time consuming and expensive. And Office 2003 works just fine for our users.

So here is a question…

Do you change the interface and improve things or do you change the interface and cause frustration?

I have a limit of about 5-10 minutes for most things… If I can’t figure it out in that amount of time you can have your program, gizmo, or book… back!

Maybe this is why Apple is doing so well…