Posts Tagged ‘task management’

Twitter Time and Posting Management Tools

Friday, December 9th, 2011

This post was written at the request of Nancy Wigal of the Search Engine Academy of Washington DC. Hope it answers the question, Nancy!

I tell people that the worst way to interact with Twitter is at http://twitter.com. Why?

Because the main Twitter web page is missing so many useful tools. Yes, you can view your lists there, but it’s a pain to switch from one to another. You can retweet, but there’s no way to add comments to your RT. And, most important, there’s no scheduling!!!! Savvy Twitter people use (and abuse) scheduling.

So what’s a Tweeter to do? Use a third-party tool like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck. Both allow you to:

1. Make columns to view your lists or other streams (like Mentions or Direct Messages)
2. Retweet with comments
3. Automatically shorten URLs
4. Schedule tweets!

So, you may ask, which one should I pick? I prefer Hootsuite, but your needs might vary, however.

Hootsuite is browser-based on all browsers while Tweetdeck only works in Chrome and Safari. If you use another browser, you need to download it as a piece of software. This gives it a couple of advantages/disadvantages, depending on your needs.

1. It doesn’t need to update itself your computer. Tweetdeck seems to want to update ALL THE BLOODY TIME! (Ooops, did I say that out loud?)

2. It has no notifications. In Tweetdeck, you can set it to pop up notifications for your various columns. Do you love it when your computer says “You’ve got mail?” Then you’ll appreciate Tweetdeck’s notifications. Do you hate it when your computer tells you there’s a new message in your Inbox? Tweetdeck will drive you crazy!

3. Hootsuite in the browser will time out, which the installed version of Tweetdeck will not. But, just to be fair, when Hootsuite times out, you get this:

He’s a good reason to use Hootsuite just by himself.

So, users of both, what do you think? Any advantages/disadvantages I missed?

Ending Business Paralysis

Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

Most business owners suffer from paralysis every so often. You know the feeling? Your ideas keep circling but you don’t know which one to try first. Or you’re stuck, and you don’t know what to do to move forward.

Paralysis can can caused by a number of factors. Let’s look at three of them.

1. Perfectionism

My dad once told me, “Don’t let perfection get in the way of good enough.” It’s excellent advice, and it’s especially true for business owners.

Where does perfection slow you down? Are you worried your website isn’t perfect? Or do you write and rewrite and rewrite emails before you send them? How about blog posts? How many hours does it take you to write one?

Here’s some sad truths about perfection. 1) We can’t attain it. We’re only human. 2) Because of #1, no one recognizes it even when we come close.

Look at what you’re doing and ask, “Is it good enough?” If yes, go with it and stop tweaking.

2. Lack of knowledge

This one is a bit harder to overcome than #1, but it’s still manageable. If you need to learn something to move forward in your business, find a class, teacher or mentor and learn it. When you’ve learned enough, apply the “good enough principle” and keep on moving.

3. Lack of organization or a plan

If you don’t have a plan, it’s easy to get stuck on what to do next. It’s important to periodically sit down and review your business vision, mission and goals. See what your logical next steps need to be. Find the resources and make a plan to move forward. Apply the “good enough” principle and keep charging.

By the way, a coach is a fantastic resource for overcoming all three causes of business paralysis.

Anyone else have a cause to share? Or a story of how you overcome paralysis to keep moving forward?

But I Just Can’t!

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

I talk to a lot of people about coaching and what I do. A question I hear frequently is “What do you do if a client doesn’t do what he or she committed to?”

Good question. I like it because it gives me a chance to talk about one of the biggest values I can bring to a client.

Most people don’t intend to fail to meet commitments. Usually failure to do what you say you will means you are dealing with some sort of roadblock. Let me give you an example.

A client of mine was having trouble growing her business. She knew what she needed to do, and she had some excellent networking skills. But she resisted getting out to meet people, and her follow up was tepid, at best.

When we did some digging, we discovered that she had set a message in her subconscious that she didn’t want to make money! How? Well, a few years back, she’d been facing a possible bankruptcy, and she had decided it didn’t make sense to increase her income until that had been resolved. The situation had been subsequently resolved, but she hadn’t “reset” the message to her subconscious.

I’m happy to report that has been fixed, and she’s now networking and landing lots of new business.

Could she have figured it out on her own? Maybe. But using someone else as a sounding board, preferably one who’s trained at it, can make it a lot easier.

What should you do if you find yourself unable to meet commitments or do what you know you need to do to grow your business?

1. Ask yourself why

Is it time management difficulty? Are you burned out on your business or job? Is your home life making you crazy?

Talk to some friends. Ask them what they see that’s different with you now as opposed to when you used to be more productive. Or ask them what they think might be in your way. Your friends often know you better than you know yourself.

2. Make incremental changes

You didn’t get the way you are overnight, and you won’t change in a day or two. Look at your end goal and then decide on one step to get you in that direction. If your problem is, say, lack of organization, make a commitment to one small change, like cleaning up your desk.

3. Hold yourself accountable (or find an accountability partner)

Accountability is hard. You’ll make progress forward and then feel like you’re slipping back. Having someone else to be accountable to can help. It’s even better if you’re holding your buddy accountable too. Change is easier when shared.

4. Celebrate success!

When you make a step forward, celebrate. Look at what you just did instead of looking at how far you still have to go. Enjoy your accomplishment, and then set your next step to the goal.

Tried all that, and you’re still stuck? That’s a good time to hire a coach. Like me!

Anyone else want to share some stories about how you overcame your roadblocks?

Working On the Go

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

Are you a small business owner who moves around a lot? Do you travel between client sites or are frequent meetings in coffee shops part of your day?

If so, you need ways to be productive on the go, and the new trend toward tablets is supporting you. I’ve done several posts on using my Nook Color as a tablet and how it’s made me more productive, but there are several new low-cost tablets coming out before the end of the year, and all of them look like they’ll make you more productive.

I’m not going to get into a feature/benefit comparison, but the three I’m watching are:

The new Nook Tablet
The Kindle Fire
The Kobo Vox

All three are inexpensive and require no data contract. So once you’ve bought one, that’s it. There’s no need for a monthly data contract, which means you’ll need a WiFi hotspot or a portable WiFi device, but it hasn’t been a problem for me to rely on public WiFi.

What can you do with your new tablet?

You can use an app like Office Suite Pro to do your word processing and spreadsheets. I’ve been using it for several weeks now, and it’s the best tablet-based Office suite replacement I’ve found.

You can use Evernote for taking notes. I’ve been planning out a series of webinars in Evernote, and then at home, using my notes to create the Power Point presentation.

You can read books to keep up with new business ideas or to work on improving yourself.

Of course, you can keep up with social media, but I prefer my phone for that, so I can’t comment too much on tablet social media apps.

Does your business show off well in video? Tablets are a great way to show video. The screen size is large enough to view easily and small enough to be portable.

There are plenty of Calendar/To Do apps to keep you organized.

Gmail is fantastic on my tablet. In the evenings, I curl up on the couch to check my email instead of using my netbook. Obviously, WiFi is needed for this one.

The list goes on. I’ve been productive on the Metro, in coffee shops, on my couch, in my car (while parked, of course) and plenty of other places. There’s no excuse now to sit with nothing to do while you wait for someone to arrive for an appointment.

Anyone else want to share their tablet productivity tips?

Managing Email-Keeping It Under Control

Friday, October 21st, 2011

In my last post, I talked about how to get your email Inbox to 0, which is the first step in taking control of your email. Hopefully you’ve followed my advice (or made a good stab at it), and now you’re ready to move on to keeping it that way.

But first, let me ask. How did you feel when you got your Inbox down to 0 emails? Good? Anxious? Invigorated? I hope your reaction was positive, because if you liked it, you’re more likely to keep it that way. I like looking at an empty Inbox. It makes me feel like I’m on top of things.

So how do you keep it that way? Well, first understand that it’s an ongoing process. Often, you’ll clear your Inbox and a few seconds later, a new email pops in. That’s okay. It’s much easier to deal with them as they come in than letting them pile up.

Before you can truly master your email, you need all your messages in one place. If you use a program like Outlook, make sure it’s gathering up all your accounts. If you’re like me and despise Outlook, you can use Gmail, which can be set to import all your email accounts. Having them all in one place is a huge time saver, especially if you have many webmail accounts, like I do.

Once you’ve got them all in one place, use a similar strategy to what you used to get it to 0 in the first place. When you open your Inbox, categorize your emails as follows.

Take action on quick emails right away

If an email will take 5 minutes or less to handle, answer it and either delete or file. Don’t let it sit there.

Create To-Do items for emails that will take longer

Unless you have time to deal with the more time-consuming messages right now, make a note and file the email in your Action folder. This way you won’t worry about forgetting about it. Once it’s on your To-Do list and out of your Inbox, it stops weighing you down.

Obviously, you’ll have to take action on it, and the other items on your To-Do list, but that’s true whether you’re handling email well or not. If your To-Do list is out of control, read David Allen’s excellent Getting Things Done. You’ll notice that I’ve adapted his email system for these posts.

Delete the rest. Or even better, filter them

Filters are my friend. When an email comes in that is junk, I don’t just delete it. I set a filter to automatically route the email to my Deleted Items folder. I get up to 50 emails a day that I never see (I just checked and did a quick count.) That saves me so much time. Sure, it takes me a moment to set the filter the first time, but then all emails from that sender are automatically deleted.

I prefer this to unsubscribing. For example, I’m on several Daily Deal lists. Right now, I’m cutting back on eating out, so I don’t want to be tempted. When my weight is back where I want it, I might be interested again, so I can just remove the filter and go back to seeing tempting cupcakes in my Inbox.

Filtering keeps the amount of junk way down, which allows you to focus on what needs your attention.

I generally delete and filter first when I open my Inbox. Let’s say I have 20 emails. After deleting and filtering, I’m probably down to 6 or 7 that need action. Most of those are quick “Sure, that’s fine” emails, leaving me with only one or two that need more time.

Setting aside two or three blocks of time each day allows me to keep on top of it and routinely get my Inbox down to 0 (which is where it is at the time of this writing).

Sound good? Go ahead and try it for yourself!

Managing Email-Getting Your Inbox to Zero

Wednesday, October 19th, 2011

Do you hate to open your email in the morning? Do you cringe at the thought of how many messages (both read and unread) are there? Would you rather get a root canal than answer one more email?

If you answered “Yes” to any of those, you aren’t alone. But it’s possible to be a good business person and not hate your email.

As I am writing this, my Inbox count is 0, and it’s the middle of the afternoon. I don’t hate my email. I’ve learned to make it work for me, and you can too.

The problem is that lots of people use email as a “reminder” tool. The theory is that if it’s in your Inbox, you’ll be reminded to take action. But that system breaks down as soon as you have more than 10-20 email “reminders” sitting there. We just can’t keep track of that much information, so we ignore most of it. I’m speaking from experience here. I used to do the same thing.

So what can you do?

First, get your Inbox down to 0 as soon as possible. Once you’ve got it down to 0 messages, you can start managing it.

“But, Juli!” you say. “I’ve got over 1000 message there. How do I get it down to 0?”

One message at a time. It might take you a few days (or a few weeks), but you can pare it back. Make a goal each day to have fewer emails at the end of the day than you did at the start, and you’ll get there.

Start with the junk

The odds are that most of the emails in your Inbox are junk. Delete them. Be ruthless. Email newsletters. Offers for the latest cool tech toy. Blog posts someone else thought you might enjoy. Everything like that. Delete them, right now.

If you absolutely think a message might be useful later, okay. File it. But get it out of your Inbox now.

The Old Stuff

If you have a lot of emails cluttering your Inbox, odds are most of them are ancient. Or at least old. Decide on a reasonable cut-off date and get rid of them.

“But, Juli! What if there’s a critical client communication in there?”

So what if there is? You haven’t acted on it before now. Odds are it’s too late anyway. Get rid of it!

Everything Else

Now you should have a reasonable number of messages to take action on. Go through them one by one. If answering it will take less than 5 minutes, do it now. If it will take longer than 5 minutes, add it to your To-Do list and file the message. I suggest having an “Action” folder for those messages. I create the To-Do and then keep the email in my Action folder for reference when I’m ready to, well, take action on it.

If you don’t need to take action on an email, either file it or delete it.

This may be a painful process. You’ll find stuff you’ve forgotten to do. You’ll find messages from friends and family members you wish you’d responded to, but trust me, it’s better to do this and get rid of the weight of all those messages. You’ll be more productive in the future.

What do you do once you get your Inbox to 0 for the first time? Tune in Friday where I give you some suggestions to stay at or near 0 forever!

Social Media Time Management

Wednesday, January 19th, 2011

People frequently ask me, “How much time do you spend on social media?”

It’s a fair question, but I’m not the best person to ask. Social media is part of what I do for my business, so I spend more time on it than the average business owner.

That said, I spend two hours or more each day on social media. But before you have heart failure, remember that I’m a blogger. We spend more time than average because we have to write our posts, and we probably read more blogs than non-bloggers.

So how do I do it? And what can you learn from me to help you?

Simple. It’s all in the tools and time management.

I don’t keep up with social media in one or two long blocks of time. I spread it out over the day with short blocks of time that fit between meetings or larger tasks.

For example, in the morning, I check Twitter and catch up on blog posts. Mostly, I do that from my phone, sometimes before I’ve even gotten out of bed. Very luxurious, I tell you.

I do most of my Twitter and Facebook interaction from my phone because I can be anywhere. Waiting on a meeting, waiting on a phone call, as a short break to clear my mind. Sometimes, like today, while I’m eating lunch.

If you follow me on Twitter, you might think I’m on it all day. But I’m not. I use scheduling on Hootsuite for iPhone to space out my tweets. That means I can do a 20 minute session and have tweets and RTs going out for the next couple of hours.

Twitter recently added a new feature, which has been great. Whenever I receive a Twitter @Mention, I get a text to my phone. So I can reply to those as they happen instead of a couple of times a day.

See why I love my smart phone so much?

What about blogging? I write each post the day before. Then in the morning, I just need to do a quick edit and publish. Again, I use Hootsuite to schedule the tweets about my blog. 7:00 AM isn’t a big time for US Twitter people, so I’d rather have the tweet go out in the late morning. Scheduling makes that happen. It also means I’m never sitting in the morning, staring at a blank screen, thinking, “What to write about today?”

As for reading blogs, I use Google Reader mostly. All the blogs I’m subscribed to all in one place. If I have a few minutes, I go to my Google Reader page and see what’s new. I also use an iPhone app, Byline, to check blogs on my phone.

So it’s all about using good tools and finding those few minutes a day when you can dip in, read some stuff and then get back out and on with your next task or meeting.

Anyone else want to share how they time manage social media?

Task Management Idea

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011

Shame on me! I realized it’s been months since I posted on time or task management. Sounds like I need a better system, doesn’t it?

Well, as it happens, I am trying a slightly new task management system this year, and I thought I’d share.

I’m basically working three jobs this year: 1 to 1 Discovery, writing/publishing and volunteering for Homeward Deployed. It would be easy for me to spend my time disproportionately, and all of them are important. My coach challenged me to come up with a way to keep track of all them, and I can’t stand not responding to one of her challenges.

So I started this system last week, and so far it’s working well.

Each morning I spend a few minutes looking over my day. I’m still using Pocket Informant as my calendar and task management app. I see how much time I have devoted to meetings and how much time I have left over for other things.

Then I look at the tasks I (sometimes optimistically) have due that day. I prioritize them, and reschedule ones that don’t make the cut that day.

My final check is that I’m representing at least two of my “jobs” each day. If I can fit in all three of them, great, but some days that’s just not realistic.

Planning done, I go about my day, keeping track of which tasks I’ve accomplished.

At the end of the day, I’ve scheduled another few minutes. That’s when I go back and look at what I did. I created a template for an “All Day Event” where I can track what I did for my three areas of focus. I write down exactly what I did to advance the three big goals I’m working toward right now. Mostly, it’s just cutting and pasting completed Tasks, but it’s a way to hold myself accountable.

For you visual people, here’s what that daily event looks like.

As you can see, I did pretty well on the writing goal that day!

On Friday, I go back and look at each of those events and make certain each goal was advanced.

On Monday, I add another extra step. I look at all my Projects (ala Getting Things Done) and make sure I have a task assigned to each of them.

It doesn’t take much time. The daily planning and reflection takes less than 15 minutes. The recap and planning on Friday and Monday take about 30-45 minutes total. But spending those couple of hours each week is making me more productive by ensuring I’m working on exactly what needs to be done.

Working When You Don’t Feel Like It

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

Yesterday, I didn’t want to work. I felt sort of blah all day. But I still got stuff done, and I had a productive day.

Does this happen to you? I’m sure it does. Part of being a small business owner is having to find the self-motivation to work when we don’t feel like it. Without a boss checking to see if we’re playing Solitaire on our computer, it’s easy to fritter a whole day away.

How to manage the problem? I recommend having “Rainy Day” items in your action list. These are things that need to be done but don’t take a lot of creativity. Cleaning up my Twitter followers is a good example. Doesn’t take much brain power, and it’s something I hate to do when I’m at my best, but it’s perfect for “brain dead” days.

I also worked on editing and rewriting my urban fantasy story. It did require creativity, but it was also fun and didn’t feel too much like work.

What kinds of (productive) things do you do when you don’t feel like working?

Goals and Social Media Strategy

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

Several months ago, I wrote a post on how your goals will affect which social media channel you use. Today I’d like to expand on that by discussing how your goals will affect how you engage in social media.

This idea came out of my Netmasters group last month. When I asked about social media goals, I received some interesting answers, all of which dictated slightly different engagement strategies.

1. Become a creator of content

Not surprisingly, a couple of people wanted to be known as experts in their industry. But not all of them were going about it the same way. One attendee was a writer. Obviously she wants to use social media as a way to get the word out about her services. As we brainstormed on her business, it became obvious that she needed a blog. What better way to showcase her talents? So her strategy for engagement was to use social media to promote her blog and to publish a list of short writing/grammar/spelling tips. Self-created content is going to be a significant part of her social media stream.

2. Become an aggregator of content

The real estate agent in the session also wanted to be known as an expert in his industry. But his approach turned out to be different from the writer. His goal was to sift through all the often-conflicting information in his industry and be known as a place to go for the best and most up to date information about real estate. He doesn’t have to create content. He needs to read, filter and promote the best articles he can find. He might also want to discuss some of the bad articles to show people the difference, but he won’t need to do much writing. He can get away with posting links and doing a lot of re-tweeting.

3. Meet cool people

This one was fun, and my favorite. His goal was similar to a face to face networking goal. He wants to meet interesting people who have good stuff to say and build relationships with them. His strategy is going to be to find and follow leaders in the industries he’s interested in. He will see who they find worth following and follow them. It will be sort of a free-form “Six Degrees of Separation” approach. What will his social media stream look like? Lots of re-tweets and back and forth discussion, either through @ Mentions on Twitter or Wall posts on Facebook.

See how it works? Your goals certainly affect which channels you will use. But they also dictate what your engagement will look like. What are you waiting for? Go set your goals now. And share them in the comments. We’ll help you out!