time management « All Things Networking

Posts Tagged ‘time 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?

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Tags: social media, task management, time management
Posted in social media | 8 Comments »

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?

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Tags: general business, task management, time management
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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?

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Tags: networking on the go, task management, time management
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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!

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Tags: task management, time management
Posted in Time and Task Management | 4 Comments »

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!

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Tags: task management, time management
Posted in Time and Task Management | 1 Comment »

Amazingness That Is Gmail

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

Is “amazingness” a word? It is now.

Anyway, you all probably know this, but just in case, I wanted to write about using Gmail to keep all your email accounts in one place.

I have six email accounts right now, four for work and two that are strictly personal. Because I hate Outlook, I’ve been looking for a way to aggregate all my work accounts in one place. None of the free email clients I’ve tried will allow me to send emails from more than one account. Since I use all four accounts for different purposes, I need the ability to send from each of them. My “solution” up until now has been to check four different webmail accounts. Yuck!

I was complaining about this at a networking event, and someone said, “Why don’t you use Gmail?”

I have a Gmail account, but I hadn’t realized you could send and receive from multiple accounts through Gmail. I figured out how to do it, and for the last week, I’ve been using Gmail for all my business accounts. I’m loving it!

Since you can set it up to automatically reply using the account the email was received by, it’s transparent to your recipient. Of course, you can filter and sort in a number of different ways, and you can set it to delete the emails from the original server. Except to check my SPAM folders a couple of times a week, I never have to log in to the various webmail sites again.

One caveat. Your non-Gmail accounts must have POP3 capability. That means I can use it for one of my Yahoo accounts (which is at the premium level), but I can’t use it for the other two. Since they are strictly personal and low-traffic, I just check them on my phone.

The aggregation made checking email on my Nook Color while I was out of town very easy. My Nook Color is more and more acting like a tablet. Look for an updated review on it in a couple of days.

Truly effective from a time management principle. Glad I finally learned about it. If you are still checking multiple email accounts, give it a try.

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Tags: time management
Posted in Time and Task Management | 3 Comments »

5 Tips For Making the Most From a Conference

Monday, March 21st, 2011

I taught a class last week to participants of the Veterans in Business Conference. I was giving them tips on how to prepare and get the most from an all-day conference. Here are some of the tips that resonated and might be useful for you when preparing for a conference or trade show.

1. Planning In Advance

I spent most of the class on this topic. Too many people pay money and spend a day (or days) at a conference and never plan their goals. No wonder they come back thinking it hadn’t been a good use of that time or money.

Before attending a conference, write down several specific goals. Do you want to meet a specific number of people? Perhaps a workshop will give you continuing education credits. Or maybe you are looking for ideas and best practices. Make sure you write them down and refer back to your goals periodically to ensure you are on track.

2. Business Cards

Bring lots. And I mean lots, like 50 for each each day of the conference. Then there’s no chance you’ll run out and look unprofessional.

3. Listen and Ask Questions

This is a common theme when I talk about networking, and it’s true here too. The more you listen when you talk to people, the more everyone will get from the interaction. Maybe you can help someone meet his conference goal. Or you can make some connections. Being a good listener will make you memorable and easier to follow up with in the future.

4. Introvert or Extrovert?

I got some laughs from this one, but it’s important. Introverts make better listeners, so you’ll do that piece well, but we introverts get tired easily in crowds, so we have to remember to schedule time to recharge alone.

Extroverts have plenty of energy and feed off being in a crowd. But you aren’t as good at listening, and you might flit from conversation to conversation, gathering cards but not starting any meaningful relationships. Remember to take a deep breath every so often and remind yourself to listen.

5. Follow Up

Of course you know you need to follow up, but do you schedule time to do it? I recommend you clear your calendar for the morning after the conference. Give yourself time to categorize business cards, prioritize follow up and then actually do it.

It will take longer than you think. At a minimum, I’d suggest blocking out two hours.

Anyone else have any good tips to add?

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Tags: Follow up, Networking, time management
Posted in Networking | 2 Comments »

Set Your Rate Right

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

I was working with a client a few days ago. He was frustrated with not having enough time to market, write proposals and respond to client questions.

I asked him how many hours a day he needed to bill to make his income goals. The answer was “six.” No wonder he was frustrated! Needing to bill six hours a day definitely left him with little time for anything else.

So we discussed his rate. Did he have room to raise it? And the answer was “yes.” In fact, I wasn’t the first person to suggest he was underselling himself.

Look at this from a time management point of view. He has room to raise his rates by at least a third. That actually lowers his required billable hours by 2 each day! Two more hours to market his business and do all the other tasks he’s been putting off. Raising his rates makes sense there.

But what about from a perception of value view? When he told me his rate, my first thought was, “he’s pretty cheap.” Want to bet some of clients thought the same thing? Being thought of as “cheap” can be a selling point, but I don’t recommend it.

I had another client, several years ago, who was seeing about 5-7 clients a week. I urged her to raise her rate from $75 an hour to (eventually) $125 an hour. She was terrified that she’d lose clients by being too expensive.

What really happened? Her clients increased. Over the year we worked together, she increased her clients to 12-15 per week. She received most of her leads from an online profile, and she made only one change to that profile. Her hourly rate. I’d like to say she also did great networking, but I’d be lying. Most of the change in her clientele was a result of raising her rate.

Perceived value is huge. If something costs a little less than we expected to pay, we see a bargain. If it’s lots less, we see it as shoddy. When my client raised her rate to what people expected to pay for someone in her profession, with her experience, they believed she was competent.

See how it works? Doing a pricing analysis of your business is important. Charging the right amount will bring you more clients. Billing the right amount will bring you more time.

Anyone else want to share a pricing story?

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Tags: sales, time management
Posted in General | 3 Comments »

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