What do you want to learn about?

I’m running a poll on my website to understand what areas might be of greatest value for those leaving formal education and starting in the world of work.  Could it be communication skills? Problem solving techniques? Or just how to manage your work?

You can find the poll here

Thanks in advance for your input.

Reading Regularly

Reading regularly is a great way to learn something new, and learning something new is a great way to keep yourself fresh and motivated.

Unless you work in a creative industry, your workplace if often more focussed on the status quo and getting the job done. Although nothing wrong with getting results, new ideas are often the only way to improve what you are doing for better results in the future.

Its not so important where these ideas come from but books work for me. However, reading can be a time consuming business albeit relaxing. Some thoughts on how to make this more effective.

• Get into the habit or reading a reputable periodical. Often the ideas in our books are summarised in articles within weekly or monthly periodicals. Also you get the benefit of general current affairs which can reinforce your reflections on ideas by providing examples of whats going on around you, outside of your work sphere. Some examples are: The Economist, Newsweek or Time Magazine. Choose one you like and subscribe.
• Consider reading on an electronic device (dedicated e-readers are best as they are designed specifically for this and are easier on the eyes) as books can be read across devices and often at times when you have a spare 5 minutes. You are unlikely to have a large hardback book in your bag all the time but you are more likely to carry a lightweight Kindle or your iPad. The periodical you have chosen above is also likely to be available electronically and downloaded automatically to your device. Ease of access and portability is the key to more reading.
• Audiobooks are also a effective way to ‘consume’ new ideas. Your commute is a great time to fill with an audiobook, especially if you are driving and therefore could not otherwise be using the time reading. A great idea I picked up from the fantastic Asian Efficiency article – 7 Reasons Why You Should Listen to Audiobooks is to play audiobooks at a faster speed (I play mine at 1.25 speed). I hardly notice that the narrater sounds any different but I save a couple of hours over the length of an average book. Again, some periodicals such as The Economist have audio editions of their content to consume this way.

Whatever way you use to get new ideas, pursue them regularly and keep your mind fresh and motivated.

Are You Digitally Effective?

Are you Digitally Effective?

When I first started getting serious about being effective at work, I focussed on organisation of the office materials and paperwork. I quickly realised that the majority was electronic and therefore on the computer.

But how do you organise your electronic life to be digitally effective? More and more software is moving towards a model where documents do not exist as a traditional file, they are simply documents accessible through the software interface (example: iCloud, Evernote etc.)

There are still many times however that you need to ‘manage’ files. I’ll talk in later posts about automation techniques with products such as Hazel (Noodlesoft) but there are some very simple techniques to get you started with no software required.

Many of these I have learned from an excellent resource called Bit Literacy by Mark Hurst. As I write this, the kindle version is available on Amazon UK for £0.77. An absolute bargain if you ask me for the gems of information contained inside.

Let me share one technique I use every day. When naming files, always use a date at the beginning of the file name in reverse order. For example a file you create dated 24th February 2014 would read:

• 2014 02 24 File Name.ext (based on the UK date format)

Why do this?

What is does is order your documents in numerical order when browsing in most, if not all file windows (both on windows PC or apple mac). Very quickly, it gives structure to your documents in a way that can quickly take you to what you want and need. This type of ordering or filtering is possible in some file windows anyway through sorting by metadata in the file, but this way is foolproof. It also allows you to change the date manually when updating documents and you always know which is the most recent version.

You should also consider effective naming of the document after the date, again something covered in Mark’s book with some great suggestions.

This type of technique can be very effective when working with digital files. I’m sure once you’ve given it a go, you’ll not go back.

Happy Naming!

Why do I need to focus on being effective? – I’m Busy

Why do I need to focus on being effective? – I’m Busy

Yes you are busy; probably very very busy. I don’t know anyone who isn’t busy and stretched beyond capacity.

And there’s he trick. If you are at or beyond capacity, you are likely missing things, succeeding in some areas but not others. You are inconsistent. The only way forward is to become more effective and efficient, to do more with the same and be more consistent across all areas of your responsibility.

Efficiency alone won’t get you there, although it will help considerably. You also need to consider doing things differently to become consistently effective in all the things you do.

The meaning of the word Effective can be defined by by the Oxford Dictionary as:

Successful in producing a desired or intended result

One of the first rules is to stop doing things that aren’t adding value to you. This is often hard to do. I suggest though that there are many ways to use skill upgrades, techniques or technology to remove the non-value added steps in your activities whilst still keeping the results.

Let me start with an example that you will all be impacted by on a daily basis; typing.

For me, typing is a non-value added activity. It is the mechanism to get the ideas from your head into a transferrable electronic medium for communication (email, powerpoint etc.) or future printing. Its a necessary evil.

• What if you leant how to touch type (a skill upgrade); think of the time saved over a working week.
• What if you used high quality dictation software (Technology); you practically remove the typing step itself, although admittedly you have replaced it with another albeit quicker step.

Either way, an improvement on where many of us are today. And these improvements add up and help get the job done.

I want to go home at the end of the day feeling like I have achieved all my goals. Anything I can do differently to help me be more effective will get my focus.

Will it get your focus?

8 Things The World’s Most Successful People All Have in Common

Great observations on success and and predictable behaviours that drive it.

Don’t reinvent the wheel

Don’t reinvent the wheel

I’m sure you’ve heard that many times and that’s because it’s good advice.

In my previous blog, http://managingforthefirsttime.blogspot.com/ I shared some of my thinking around effectiveness and managing yourself and others.

Despite moving my blog, I will keep this online as an archive for reference. If it was good then, no sense to reinvent it.

I encourage you to take a look. Thanks.

Simple does not mean easy

Simple does not mean Easy.

Lets get that out there first; to set expectations.

So why bother? As with most things in life, the specific result is what is important (although in certain cases the journey has its own rewards). Its the process we have to go through to get what we want or need and it shouldn’t be easy. If it were easy then everyone would be doing it.

There seems to be an general correlation between something not being easy and being vauable or worthwhile.

But it also doesn’t need to be complicated.

It may seem complicated when you first consider it. It may be daunting. Most things learnt are a process one goes through. A process is a series of activities. Activities can be focussed on before moving onto the next.

As long as you do not marginalise the individual activities and reduce their value to pointlessness, you will have found the optimal ballance. Give every step the attention it deserves or you will derail yourself later.

I’ll talk in later posts about a checklist or tick box mentality which helps to visualise a complicated thing into simply defined steps. Such a simple and powerfull tool in itself, provided the goal is not to tick off the items for the sake of it.

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler”

or variations of this are attributed to Einstein. I think he may have had a point.

A new focus!

Starting a new blog today focussing on personal effectiveness.

It follows my first entry into the world of blogging at http://managingforthefirsttime.blogspot.com/

Follow me on twitter @perseffect

Stay tuned with more to come.