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Tag Archives: Organization
Seven Reasons You Might Not Want to Work from Home
Working from home has become increasingly popular in the last few years. For solo entrepreneurs and micro-business owners a home office has often become their primary business location, whether by necessity or choice. There are many good reasons to work from home. No long commute, no office overhead, no distracting co-workers, no having to get dressed up for the office.
Working from home does have its downside, though. There are definitely some logistical problems and challenges to having your home as your office. Commercial office space can offer benefits that a home office may not. Here are seven reasons you might want to consider an office away from home.
You don’t have to worry about whether your clients are allergic to cats. Meeting with clients when you work from home can be a real challenge. Not all of your clients will love the dog like you do—and the dog may not love them. Sure, you can meet at the local coffee shop but how certain are you going to be that there’s a quiet table available or that it won’t be full when you schedule that 2 p.m. meeting? Having your own office space will assure you of a quiet and professional space to meet with clients.
No distractions. When you work at the office, it’s pretty rare that someone will be interrupting you for a game of Candyland or a peanut butter sandwich. You aren’t likely to need to stop working to investigate that funny noise coming from the ice maker or to run someone to a friend’s house. When you have a commercial office for your business, it’s easier to focus on work and leave the distractions of home at home.
No crumbs in the keyboard. It’s not likely your admin will be eating peanut butter crackers at the computer, spilling their crumbs and their juice on your keyboard or leaving sticky fingerprints on the mouse. Not having to share the computer with your son’s homework or your spouse’s to-do list can really increase productivity and cut down on computer repairs.
Kids make lousy IT techs. There isn’t always ready tech support available when you work from home. Your son may be a whiz at setting up the video game console and your daughter may be able to text like crazy, but how much help will they be when your network goes down or your hard drive crashes? Many service providers charge a premium for home visits or mileage for a trip to suburbia to repair your computer. And where will you keep that equipment, anyway? A laptop and printer don’t necessarily take up much space, but what about a copier, a scanner or other office machines that speed up production and make life easier? Having an office space with your co-workers where you can share the cost of equipment and have ready access to technical support makes the work day go so much easier.
No one will color on your proposal. Oh, whoops? Was that an important paper, Mom? Having a private space of your own means not having to worry about your office supplies ending up the medium for your kids’ artistic endeavors.
More family or free time. One of the big reasons people choose to work at home is they think it will give them more family time. Recent studies show the opposite is more often true. With work right there staring you in the face 24 hours a day, it’s easy to get sucked into taking care of “just one more thing.” When you leave your work at the office—the one not at the kitchen table—you can come home and focus on your family.
Your own office—really. In many homes, private office space just doesn’t exist. Are you working in the guest room? Or do you set up at the dining room table? Having a commercial office means not having to quit early because you’re having dinner guests or put a project on hold because the in-laws are coming for a visit. An office of your own means you can work how you need to without worrying about what’s going on outside the office.
How about you? What are your ups and downs of working at home or not working at home. Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
Improve Your Twitter Experience with Lists
Does Twitter sometimes move too fast to keep up? Do you feel like your favorite Tweeters get lost in the stream?
There is an easy solution that will help you keep up with those you most want to follow and interact with on Twitter: Twitter Lists
Lists are a built-in Twitter feature that allows you to sort and categorize those you follow. Using Twitter lists, you can organize your Twitter stream in a number of ways:
Sort who you follows by industry, by location, by relationship, by activity level. There are as many ways to use Twitter lists as there are people who use them.
When you create a Twitter list, you have the ability to view only the tweets of list members, making it much easier to keep up. If you are using a Twitter management program such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, you can actually display several lists at one time, manage and update them from the program.
What are some of the other benefits of Twitter Lists?
Find targeted followers.
You can look at any Twitter user’s public lists. Take a look at the lists of the influential people in your field to see who they have listed. You can find some great follows this way that you might not find any other way.
Next, look at who has listed you. Skip the lists titled things like “new followers”. If it’s a list that targets your interests or your niche, take a look. They may follow some people you should consider following, too.
Keep up with people without having to follow them.
Ideally, you want everyone you follow to follow you. Welcome to real life. It rarely happens. There are sometimes influential people unlikely to follow you back. You can include them on your list without following them and unbalancing your follower-following ratio.
You may also have people whose tweets you’d like to see from time to time, but not every day. Listing them without following allows you to see them only when you want.
Now that you know why you want a list, how do you create them?
Go to your “Lists” page in Twitter. You can get there, either by going to your Profile page and clicking on Lists, or using the dropdown menu under Profile in your main navigation.
Click Create List. Give your list a name—not more than 25 character—and then give it a short description to help you—and other Twitter users—know what it’s about. Decide whether you want it public or private. Public lists are accessible to anyone on Twitter; private lists are visible only to you. Be careful with your public lists—remember that EVERYONE can see them, so don’t make lists with names like “jerks” or “bad business people” or you may find yourself on the receiving end of some bad Twitter karma.
To add someone to a list, click on the list person icon to the right of their name and select “add to list.” You can do this whether or not you are following them. Then select the list you want from the menu that pops up or create a new list on the fly.
And making a Twitter List to organize your favorite and most important follows is just that simple.
To see list creation step-by-step, watch this short video.
Two Quick Steps to Increase Productivity Now!
Would you like to painlessly boost your productivity today? Here are two simple ways to improve your productivity, save you time and give you a little clarity.
#1. Clean off the top of your desk or workstation.
Really. Remove everything from the top of your desk. Leave the computer monitor and the phone. You don’t need to mess with those—that will make more work. But everything else needs to go. No matter how critical you think it is to your work life, take it off your desk.
Dust your desktop and your monitors and clean the phone. Wipe the phone down with an alcohol wipe; get all the grime and dirt and germs off it. Once you’ve done that, look at all the stuff you took off the desk. Yes, the piles, the pens, the sticky notes, the business cards, the mail, etc., etc. Give it a quick sort and figure out what you really need.
For me, critical desk items would be my pen cup (empty out all but your favorite and most-used implements here—the spare pens can go somewhere else), my notepad, my timer (find out why here), my sticky notes and my water bottle. That’s it.
I really don’t need the canned air, yesterday’s mail, the memory cards that need reformatting or the Chinese Fortune Sticks. Are those stress balls and Kid Meal toys really helping you get more done? If not (and you know the answer is no), find them a new home.
Now, doesn’t that look better? Doesn’t that feel better? Do this at least once a week and you’ll find that you are working better and thinking more clearly.
#2. Clean out the drawers.
Confession: I have computer desk; it has no drawers (yes, that is my desk in the picture and all the workspace I have). That’s one of the reasons my desk top gets messy. What I do have is a set of rolling drawers that sits next to my desk, but it’s just out of reach. Since I don’t have a dedicated office where I can keep everything, most of my office supplies live in the basement store room so the drawers have become my portable office for things I need on a regular basis.
When I am tidying up in a hurry, or when my kids don’t want to take something back to the basement, it gets stuffed in my drawers. As a result, they end up cluttered and messy and full of stuff I don’t need. Giving the drawers a quick clean out can produce some amazing finds.
Let’s do this one drawer at a time. Open the drawer, take EVERYTHING out of it and wipe down the inside. Turn it upside down over the wastebasket if you need to and get all the little cruddy stuff out. Look at the contents you have taken out and decide what really needs to be there. If it isn’t something you use regularly in your work, consider finding it a new home.
Yesterday my desk gave up two tape measures, a flashlight, an empty tape dispenser, some colored pencils, a compass (the math kind, not the Boy Scout kind), three checkbook covers and some other junk. It may not seem like a lot, but my drawers aren’t very big. If you have larger drawers, put a drawer organizer on your shopping list. My favorite—especially for the pencil drawer—is a silverware divider. They are just the right size for most desk drawers and the perfect for sorting writing implements.
Take a look at what you got from the desktop and the drawers. Throw away the trash and the broken stuff and then get rid of everything that isn’t helping you be more productive. Your kids’ art supplies and homework tools can go into a labeled bin in the closet that they can access when they need it. Receipts and other forms should be filed in your file box or cabinet.
If you keep in or on your workspace only what you currently need, you’ll find your workday going more smoothly, you won’t waste time trying to find things, your productivity will go up and your stress level will go down.
What’s your biggest productivity challenge or your best tip?
Please share your thoughts in the comment section below and let’s all get more successful together.
Do Your Little Kittens Keep Losing their Mittens?
Mine do–and it drives me crazy.
We live in an area where winter gear is more than a wardrobe accessory.
When I found eight gloves on my daughter’s desk–and not a matching pair in the bunch–I knew we needed a better way to keep track of all the hats, scarves, gloves and other winter clothes that seem to be draped over every chair, spindle and doorknob in our home.
I thought about putting bins or shelves in the front closet or letting their little fingers and noses turn blue and fall off, but none of those ideas went over well. I really wanted a solution that would be simple and seasonal. After all, we don’t’ need storage bins in the front closet in summer and that would just invite clutter to pile up.
And then I was at the store one day and found this.
For just a few dollars, I found this great over-the-door shoe organizer. I was looking for one with the pockets for each shoe, but this one–designed for pairs–works even better. There are enough pockets for each family member to store a hat, scarf and gloves in, plus extra pockets for heavy-duty ski (or shovel-the-front-walk) gloves.
I didn’t have to build shelves, find room for bins or make any permanent changes to my closet. When winter’s over, I can store it in the same bin as all the winter gear.
We have come to use shoe organizers for many things at our house. We’ve never used them for shoes, but they are handy for all kinds of other things: art supplies, hair accessories, neckties, jewelry. See-through small pockets and the ability to put them on the back of doors, utilizing otherwise unused space, makes these perfect for organizing.
Next year, I might even write names on the flaps so there’s no question about whose gear goes where.
How about you? Have you got a favorite organizing tip to share or an organizing challenge you’d like help with. Please leave your ideas, questions and suggestions in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
Keep Your Memories Safe
The holidays are over and if you are like most people, you pulled out your digital camera and took at least a few photos. If you have kids or grandkids you probably took a lot of photos.
Now what?
Are you going to print them and put them in an album?
Share them on Facebook?
Or let them languish on your camera’s memory card forever?
Are those pictures important to you? If they are, how will you keep them safe?
I hear on the news at least once a week the sad tale of someone whose home or car was burglarized and who lost their digital camera or computer with every single photo they ever had of their wedding or the birth of their child or some other important event. We rarely hear that the thieves felt remorse and sent back the photos. And if not loss by theft, what about accidentally erasing the card or having your hard drive crash? Yes, it happens. Hard drives fail. It’s not a matter of IF but WHEN.
Here are a few suggestions for preserving your important pictures so you can enjoy them, share them and pass them on to your children and grandchildren someday.
Back up your files. That little card in your camera wasn’t designed to be your image files’ permanent home. At the very least, download those images to your computer. If you can, use a dedicated hard drive for storage. My computer has one drive for the system and programs and one for image storage. If you don’t want to set aside a whole internal hard drive, consider a removable or portable hard drive for picture storage. There are many programs on the market for photo organizing and storage. My personal favorite is ACDSee. You can also use CD’s and DVD’s to store files, but be aware that disks don’t last forever. Disk writing software and technology can change, leaving older disks unreadable. Disks can get scratched or broken. If you back up to a disk, make more than one and test them after writing to make sure they are readable—sometimes the write can fail even when it says it didn’t (guess how I know).
Once you’ve downloaded your images, it’s ok to delete the bad ones. Just as you didn’t keep every print back when you were using film, you don’t have to keep every digital image. It’s always best to do your deleting from the computer and not in your camera. You are less likely to delete something you wanted and less likely to cause problems with your memory card. If you want to use photo editing software to make enhancements, go ahead—just remember, a little bit goes a long way. If you’re making big changes to a file, save it as a copy so your original will remain unharmed.
If you want an easy way to share your images with friends and family online, you can set up a free photo sharing account on a site like Flickr or Photobucket. You can also share them on Facebook, but some people don’t have Facebook accounts. When uploading photos for online sharing, remember to be sensitive to the feelings of your subjects and don’t share embarrassing or unflattering pictures without their permission; otherwise, they may return the favor.
Now that you’ve done all that, print your favorites. This is the best thing to do with a photograph and what they are really for. Take or send your files to your favorite photo lab and have prints made to frame and hang in your home or office, give as gifts, put in an album or pin on your bulletin board. Once they’re printed, display or scrapbook them so you can enjoy your photos. If you’re not into traditional scrapbooking, you can use a digital scrapbooking program and then have an album printed by any number of different printers.
I still recommend photo lab prints over home inkjet printers. It’s generally less expensive and the prints are more durable, though there are inkjet printers very capable of high-quality photographic reproduction these days. Some online labs even offer free photo storage for you so you have an online backup of your image files.
So what will you do with your holiday photos this year? Do you have any questions about storing or printing digital files? Please share your thoughts and questions in the comment section below.
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Use Gmail Filters to Organize Your Email & Increase Productivity
Do you spend too much time on your email? Would you like to cut that time way back and not miss any important emails.
You can! If you use gmail, today’s tutorial is just for you. Learn how to create filters that will automatically sort your incoming emails into the folders of your choosing, so you can easily see what’s important and what can wait.
By the way, if your email is through your domain, you can still use gmail to read and process it. If you’d like to learn how, leave me a comment below and I’ll let you know when the next tutorial is up.
If you found this post helpful, please use the buttons above and below to share it on the web.
8 Reasons to Use Gmail
I have a Gmail account and use Gmail for all of my business mail. If we’ve emailed, you probably don’t realize this because my email address is marie at marieleslie.com. Gmail doesn’t show up anywhere in my emails unless I choose to send from my Gmail address. I’ve been through several email systems in the nearly two decades since I got my first email account. I’ve been using Gmail for six years now and it has been the best.
I’ve had email accounts with all the major providers. I use them infrequently, one for strictly personal email (you know—my family, my kids’ schools, etc.) and one for junk. I use it for junk because I can’t keep any contacts in it; I think it’s the most hacked email provider on the planet and I don’t want to subject any friends to hack spam.
Why do I love Gmail so much?
Gmail has the Best. Spam. Filters. Ever.
I NEVER find ads in my inbox for male enhancements (for whatever reason I only get emails with male things; go figure), email with vulgarities in it or garbage. I do get daily notices that my accounts have been compromised at banks I’ve never heard of, but those only appear in my Spam folder. And unlike some other email providers I’ve used, I didn’t have to set up the filtering myself.
Gmail automatically uses my domain email.
Gmail allowed me to set up my email to automatically receive email from my domain (yes, it’s forwarded from my webhost) and to have every outgoing email automatically show as coming from my domain. Six years ago, no online email provider did it that simply. Even when I send from my phone, it still shows my domain email as the sending address. I don’t have to remember to select it every time I send an email. I can even choose to have outgoing emails sent from any number of different addresses if I want to.
Gmail can be accessed from any computer and from my phone.
Without jumping through hoops or going through complicated procedures, I can check my BUSINESS email from any computer and from my phone and I can access old emails as well because it all stays on the Gmail database. This also means I don’t ever download any potential virus-containing emails to my computer. For what it’s worth, I do download and store important emails and information that would kill me to lose if something happened to my email. I’d do the same thing if I were using Outlook and it downloaded my mails. Backing up everything important is just smart business and part of my business routine.
Gmail has an awesome labeling system.
I like things orderly. I don’t like messy inboxes any more than I like a messy desk (my pet peeve). Not only can I organize emails into neatly labeled folders, but Gmail actually has a filtering system that I can combine with those labels to have it automatically sort my incoming mail to make my mail-checking so much easier. I’ll be posting a tutorial about this in the next few days if you want to know how it works.
Gmail makes it easy for me to see what’s important.
Gmail has nifty stars and other symbols that I can use to label emails. My other account allows me to flag things with a little orange star when it’s important; Gmail gives me several different colors of stars as well as exclamation points and other symbols. I use them to mark emails for different purposes. Different colors of stars have different meanings for me as well as using colored exclamation points for degree of importance or urgency. When I can’t tend to all my email at once, it’s a great way for me to know what I need to come back to later and in what order.
Gmail has a cool group-by-conversation feature.
I love that Gmail keeps emails with the same subject together. When I’m having an ongoing conversation with someone, I can see the entire thread start to finish. I don’t have to waste time hunting down old emails to refer back to something that was discussed in an earlier email. If you don’t like this feature, you can turn it off.
Gmail has an easily customizable signature.
I can create a signature, with multiple links if I want, to go at the bottom of every outgoing email. I can even create a different signature for each outgoing address I use. Yes, I am aware that most other providers allow signatures. Gmail’s works for me.
Gmail connects easily with other apps.
I can use my Gmail account to quickly and easily sign in to any number of other online apps that I use. It just makes my life easier to have a Gmail account that is connected to everything, like my Google Voice, Hootsuite, YouTube and Flickr accounts so I don’t have to remember as many passwords.
Are you a Gmail user? Do you love it or not and why? Share your comments and questions in the comment section below.
And if you found this helpful, please use the buttons below to tweet or share it with your network.
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Marie Leslie is the chief Creative Genius at Marie Leslie Media. With 30 years experience as a professional writer, editor and photographer she has had work published in many regional and national magazines. Marie currently writes and teaches about business and social media, helping people to understand and make use of the ever-changing internet. She offers social media training and set up, including blog set-up and optimization as well as blog writing & social media management services.
Controlling the Morning Mania
I don’t know about your house, but school has started here and with three students leaving at three different times, and two working parents with their own schedules, my house gets pretty crazy in the mornings.
Here are a few simple strategies for keeping the daily chaos to a minimum and getting everyone out the door without losing your mind.
- Don’t use the snooze. Get up the first time the alarm goes off. Don’t set it a half-hour early and hit the snooze button 3 or 4 times. You aren’t getting any more rest and you’ll end up more stressed. Set it for the time you need to get up and get up when it goes off. Put it across the room if you need help getting out of bed.
- Give each of your school-aged children alarm clocks and teach them how to use them. By high school (or earlier) your children should develop the habit of getting up on their own. Once they go away to college or move into their own place, this will be a critical skill. Don’t make them learn it the hard way.
- Have kids shower or bathe before bed at night instead of in the morning.
- Leave the TV off in the morning. Turn it on to check the morning weather if you live in a place where that is a planning factor, but then turn it off for a calmer, distraction-free environment.
- Make breakfast easy. Go with grab-and-go, especially with teens. Bagels, muffins, fruit, breakfast bars—all things kids –and parents—can eat on the run.
Make your hot breakfasts ahead of time if you’re a hot-breakfast person. I make waffles or pancakes on the weekends and triple or quadruple the batch. All the leftovers get frozen on cookie sheets and then popped into plastic bags so everyone can grab them and heat them up in the toaster or microwave for a quick hot breakfast with no mess to clean up. Yes, you can also buy them pre-made and pre-frozen at the grocery store. Are you an oatmeal lover? You can buy the instant packets or make it in the Crockpot overnight. I love Kashi. I make it and freeze serving-size portions in muffin tins sprayed with non-stick cooking spray. Once frozen, I pop them all into a plastic bag and then pull them out one at a time to reheat in the microwave for a quick hot, healthy breakfast.
- Buy gas on the way home from work. Don’t leave it until the next morning when you’ll invariably be running late and stressed out.
How do you control the morning mania at your house? What do you struggle with? Please let me know in the comments section below.
And if you found this helpful, please use the buttons below to tweet or share it with your network.
____________________________________________________
Marie Leslie is the chief Creative Genius at Marie Leslie Media. With 30 years experience as a professional writer, editor and photographer she has had work published in many regional and national magazines. Marie currently writes and teaches about business and social media, helping people to understand and make use of the ever-changing internet. She offers social media training and set up, including blog set-up and optimization as well as blog writing & social media management services.
Taming the Email Monster–4 Ways to Empty Your Inbox
I don’t know about your email inbox, but if I don’t pay attention to mine on a regular basis (meaning every 12 minutes), it somehow seeks revenge and its contents multiply faster than the hangers in my closet.
Since I don’t want to spend my day babysitting the inbox, I’ve developed a few strategies that allow me to handle urgent emails quickly and the rest of them on a schedule that’s convenient for me. It’s also cut the time it takes me to go through my inbox each morning and afternoon by more than half.
Delete unnecessary email without opening it.
When I open my inbox and it looks like the entire contents of the internet have been deposited there, I go down the list of emails and delete everything I don’t need to read. All the ads, all the misdirected spam, all the automated notifications that I really am not interested in. I even delete the notices from my blogs that tell me I have comments (I’m going to visit them anyway and I can see and read the comments then). Then I prioritize what’s left. Important things I need to read now get a star. If I have time left after reading the starred emails, I start on the rest. Otherwise, they wait until I have time.
Unsubscribe.
Do you really need all those notifications? I have set nearly all of my social media to either send me only very specific notifications or none at all. For example, the only email I get from Facebook are my weekly page reports or when someone makes me an administrator of a group or page (I like to know when I’m being committed to something). I know I’ll sign in pretty much every day and I’ll see anything else relevant then. My LinkedIn groups come in weekly digests, except conversations I’m actually participating in and other notifications I can log in to LinkedIn to see. And I finally got smart and told my blogs to quit telling me I have comments.
For blogs I’m subscribed to, only my most read ones come to the inbox. I use Google Reader for everything else and just visit my Reader account during the time I have set aside for that. If I find I’m deleting more than I’m reading, I change my subscription settings or unsubscribe all together.
Use filters and folders.
I have my email set up to automatically filter certain subjects and senders into folders. For example, essential social media notifications, emails from groups I am subscribed to and blog subscriptions all go to their own folders as soon as they arrive in my email. They are almost never urgent and can be looked at when I have time. Removing them from my inbox reduces the clutter and makes it easier for me to find the important emails that need to be dealt with. When I do get to those non-urgent missives, I can deal with them more efficiently because they are generally all related subjects, allowing me to focus on one subject at a time.
Deal with it when you open it.
Once you open an email, deal with it. If it’s something that requires further action at a later time on your part, create a folder for that and move the email there. Put a reminder on your calendar if it’s time sensitive. If it involves an appointment or meeting, copy the relevant information into the appropriate calendar entry and then delete the email (I use Outlook & use the big text box to copy any related information so when I am reviewing my calendar, everything I need to know is right there) .
If it requires a response, type it up immediately and send it off. And remember, with email brief and to the point makes both the sender’s and the receiver’s life easier. If you’re an email keeper, use folders to organize emails by subject or project and get them out of the inbox. I have folders for my current jobs so I can see ongoing correspondence by itself and at a glance.
If the email contains a link to an article I need to read or a video to watch, I will bookmark the article in my reading or video folders (I have specific times for these activities each day), delete the email and move on.
By removing emails from your inbox as you deal with them, you will keep it uncluttered, making it easier to see what’s really important and reducing the stress that having too many emails can induce.
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How do you keep your Email under control? Share your best tips here.
And if you found this post helpful, please use the buttons below to share it.
And if you found this helpful, please use the buttons below to tweet or share it with your network.
____________________________________________________
Marie Leslie is the chief Creative Genius at Marie Leslie Media. With 30 years experience as a professional writer, editor and photographer she has had work published in many regional and national magazines. Marie currently writes and teaches about business and social media, helping people to understand and make use of the ever-changing internet. She offers social media training and set up, including blog set-up and optimization as well as blog writing & social media management services.
3 Easy Ways to Increase Productivity and Lower Stress
Do you ever feel like you spend your days running in circles and the really important stuff never gets done? Does your stress level go up as the day goes on and the to-do list gets longer instead of shorter?
Here are three quick tips for getting to what really needs doing and helping keep the to-do list under control.
Choose Your Priorities
Before you start on that to-do list, take a good look at it. What really NEEDS to be today? Make your top priority your top job. Don’t spend your time on all the little, unimportant tasks just so you can check off lots of things on your list. Prioritize the to-do’s. If it doesn’t really belong on the list, relegate to a day with no big jobs.
Organize yourself
Before you sit down to work, make sure you have what you need close at hand and what you don’t need is out of your way. Do you need supplies for your project? Gather them or get them before you start. Every time you have to jump up and go hunt something down, that’s time lost. You run the risk of getting distracted by someone or something while you’re wandering around trying to remember what it was you needed. If you are prepared for the project, you’ll be able to focus on getting it done.
Limit your Interruptions
Voice mail was invented for a reason. Set aside a block of time for that priority project and eliminate the distractions. Turn off the TV, close the e-mail notification window and send your calls to voice mail. Unless you are the leader of the free world, the world will probably not come to an end if you don’t respond immediately to every request for your attention. If it makes you crazy, schedule a e-mail/phone break every so often (and that doesn’t mean every 15 minutes). Multi-tasking is a myth. Being able to focus on what you need to get done will get it done faster and better.
Do you have any easy productivity tips that have helped you? Share them in the comments section below.
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