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Exemplus Quick Tips

• Quick Tip No. 87: 3 Easy Steps to Creating a Work Sanctuary

  July 1, 2010

  

  I recently read an article called "Home as Sanctuary" and realized that many of the points could be applied to work space. If you have a home office, like me, creating a sanctuary becomes even more important in keeping the division between home and office. This month's tip will help you create a workspace sanctuary that will re-invigorate the stagnant energies that build up over time. The new energy you create will help bring focus and creativity to your working hours, making room for lots of productivity.

  1. Remove objects that don't inspire or have a purpose, such as the collection of coffee mugs at the bottom of your bookcase. A cluttered office can hamper creative thinking and cause unproductive behavior. Start with a small area of your office, preferably your desk, if that's where you spend the most time, and spend 10 minutes a day tossing anything that's draining positive energy from you. Before throwing anything out, find ways to re-use old stuff.
  2. Create a morning and evening ritual for starting and ending your day. Avoid diving right into email and phone calls. Start your mornings with a short list (5 items) of what you intend to accomplish for the day. End the day reviewing the list and acknowledging your accomplishments and carryover anything that you could not get to for the next day. Be sure to praise yourself for your accomplishments.
  3. Fill your space with objects that create harmony and feed your creativity. Keep your space open and fluid by "creating a container for positive energy."

  Do you have tips for creating a more harmonious workspace?

  Additional resources:

  • Clean-Slate
  • Feng Shui Your Desk
  • How to Simplify When you Love Your Stuff
  • 50 Feng Shui Tips

   

  

   

   

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• Quick Tip No. 86: Multi-tasking is overrated

  May 7, 2010

  Did you know that when you multi-task, you aren't retaining as much information as you probably need to? According to a study conducted by USC "...distractions force you to pay less attention to what you are doing, you don't learn as well as if you had paid full attention." Your brain is not wired to focus on multiple things. So if you're on the phone and at the same time getting your 3-year old dressed and your husband is telling you where and when to meet him for dinner Tuesday night, there's a great likelihood that you are going to flake on the dinner date with your husband. Try these steps to help you focus:

  • Set a goal for that particular time period you are devoting to a project. Ex: In the next hour I intend to finish writing the Executive Summary
  • Turn off anything that could cause a distraction, e.g. Internet, cell phone
  • If you're in a public place where the noise level is high, put on your headset and listen to soft music

  

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• Quick Tip No. 85: 3 Easy Green Habits

  April 21, 2010

  Happy Earth Day! We all do our part to be Green and today I am sharing with you 3 easy habits for a green office.

   

  1. Recycle

  • Paper - better yet, reuse: print drafts on backs of used paper
  • Ink cartridges - take them to Staples where they collect ink jet cartridges AND give you money back for recycling them. Being green really does pay!

  2. Plants

  • Beautify your work space with plants that absorb airborne toxins for a cleaner more breathable air. Big absorbers are ficus and bamboo.

  3. Consolidate your errands

  • Walking and public transportation are not always practical options. Plan your trip by mapping out the stores you need to hit and park in a central location so you can walk as much as possible. Remember to bring your shoppping bags. Whenever possible, bring a friend!

   What are your green habits?

  

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• Quick Tip No. 84: Who's in control here?: Information overload

  February 14, 2010

  Don't let information overload control you.

  I repeatedly hear how people have too much information coming at them. How do they decide what to read, will they be missing out on really important information if they delete an email, what if a colleague asks how they liked their latest newsletter, and so on.

  Remember that you have total control over the information you're receiving. When you open an email, you call the shots: read, file away, or delete. It shouldn't get anymore complicated than that. Get a handle on your information overload by following any or all of these tips:

  • Unsubscribe to newsletters you don't read. If you haven't bothered to open the past 6 issues, then how interested are you in the information anyway?
  • Create folders for your subscriptions and have the issues filtered directly to the appropriate folder.
  • Instead of subscribing to the newsletter, subscribe to the RSS feed and check out the thread of information that interest you.
  • Delete any emails that don't apply to you, or share it with someone, being very mindful that you're not adding to the info overload.

  Your sending habits

  When you are on the sending end of the information, be mindful to:

  • Have a table of contents for quick reference
  • List all of the permanent information at the top of the message, with links.
  • Be sure the information is concise
  • Ask friends and colleauges how they process their information and try to design your messages with their comments in mind.  
    

  A personal note

  Personally, I only subscribe to two email newsletters and they are both from the Harvard Business Review. Their information is always concise, meaningful and includes links to related HBR articles and it's a model I try to follow. For anything else, I subscribe to RSS feeds or go directly to my favorite sites - that's what bookmarks are for afterall.

  Speaking of bookmarks, managing them will be the next quick tip topic.

  If you have comments to share or have topics you want to read about, please let me know. I'd love to hear from you!

  

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• Excel Tip: Deleting Duplicate Entries

  January 7, 2010

  Happy New Year fellow entrepreneurs!

  The very first Quick Tip of 2010 will teach you to how find duplicate entries in an Excel worksheet. I've worked with worksheets that were extracted from someone's contact list with some contacts listed multiple times.

  In your worksheet, insert a blank column (for this purpose the blank column is B). This is where you will enter the formula that will find the duplicate entries for you.

  Assuming that row A1 is a column heading, enter the following formula in row B1

  =IF(COUNTIF(A$1:A$100,A1)>1,”DUPLICATED”,””)

  Now let’s breakdown the formula:

• >=IF(COUNTIF: this says to count how many cells in the given range have the same value as A2 
• >(A$1:A$100,A1): this indicates the range of the data you’re searching for dups 
• >>1,”DUPLICATED”,””): this says that where do duplicate exists, the count is 1 and the cell will be blank. When a duplicate value is found, the word “DUPLICATED” is entered in the cell.