Tag Archives: Goal Setting for Success

Multi-tasking or “allowing interruptions”?

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To me, multitasking is merely a euphemism to “allowing interruptions”.

One technique I use is the Sprints and Buffer technique.

  1. Divide your tasks into smaller mini-tasks with scheduled buffer time between the tasks.   This way you can make forward progress on a multiple of things — without churning from task to task.
  2. When an interruption enters the queue, simply schedule that interruption at the next available “buffer time”.  This allows you to complete several different categories of tasks AND handle the unexpected interruption.
  3. If you are a valuable component of your company or business, then you will be interrupted…you will be in demand. That’s the definition of an MVP.

The trick isn’t to turn-off that flow of influence and appreciation; the skill is to merely manage your time better. Planning for the unexpected is the key. We don’t know what will show up — but we do know something will show up. Therefore, it makes sense to actually schedule for those inevitable interruptions.

What would you do with 10 minutes?

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If you were given an extra 10 minutes each day, what would you do with it?

Would you….

  • Fly a kite with the kids?
  • Help the needy?
  • Read an article?
  • Write a letter?
  • Ride a bike?
  • Kid a kidder?
  • Take a walk or swim?
  • Take a break?
  • Hug a friend?
  • Stretch?
  • Challenge yourself?
  • Laugh?
  • Organize your desk?
  • Sing?

 

Here’s your ten minutes. Do it NOW. Set your timer and indulge for 10 minutes in something that will propel you forward faster. 10 minutes a day can move mountains.

7 Tips to reduce paper BEFORE it becomes clutter

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Office Organization Tips

By Laura Lee Rose, author of TimePeace: Making peace with time

 

Did you know that the 3rd week of April is “Organize Your Files” week?

Here’s 7 quick tips to prepare for this upcoming holiday…..

 

Office organization is an important step toward both releasing clutter and creating more time in one’s hectic schedule.  In this information age, many of us receive thousands of emails a day as well as dozens of snail mail packages and papers. Before drowning in this information, experiment with these 7 simple tips for both paper and electronic posts.

 

 

7 tips for paper and electronic clutter:

 

1) Don’t bring it in the house or office in the first place.

I do a quick elimination at the mail box. If it’s junk mail, advertisements, etc I note the ones I am interested in and toss the rest. The ones I am interested in, I look at on-line.

2) Once in the office, sort into three boxes/containers: TODAY, This week, later.

Once sorted in my time-sensitive boxes, I can prioritize my time appropriately.

3) Release the need for paper.

Acknowledge that everything is currently available remotely through the internet. There’s always ways to replace or get another copy.

  • There same ads are normally on the store’s website.
  • The magazine/newspaper/newsletter often have on-line version.
  • You can easily get replacement receipts and bank statements.

 Revisit your real need for the paper trail. If it is an imaginary dependency, then toss it and discontinue the paper subscription. Continually ask yourself “What’s the worst that can happen if I threw this away? Isn’t there a way to retrieve this if and when I really needed it?”

 4) Take on an On-Demand and Abundance mentality.

Instead of cursing the abundance of email and post mail, appreciate and use that knowledge. Realize that even better information will continually come to you.  Therefore, you never need to save something “just in case you need it in the future”.  There will always be an abundance of information exactly when you need it.  If you haven’t read or used it within a month, it is now obsolete.  Toss it. Release the old to make room for the better.

 5) Create email Message-Rules

Setting up Message-Rules allows you to presort your email, even before you see it. Investigate your mailer for the feature “Create Message Rules”.  Create different email folders and message rules for different subscriptions, subject lines, sender or from names, and topic headers.

6) Time-sensitize your in-box with “TODAY”, “This week”, “Later” action intentions.

Flag the items you need to “take action today” using your email message flag feature. Items that you can deal with later move to your email LATER folder. The only thing in your inbox should be things you need to deal with today or this week. Everything else is placed in its proper folder.  If stays in your LATER box over a month, delete it.

7) Block time to review your email.

Don’t interrupt your day every time an email, a phone call, or an instant message comes in. Allow your mail-rules, voice mail, and do-not-disturb features to do their job. Create automatic responders to initially respond to incoming email (i.e. announcing that you have received their email, that you need some time to review, and that you will have a quality response within 2 business days.  If it is an emergency, ask them to call you.)

Scheduling a block of time to handle the accumulated requested (instead of being interrupt driven) is a more effective use of time.

 

I am Laura Lee Rose, author of TimePeace: Making peace with time. I am a business and life coach with over 20 years of corporate experience, specifically in the software industry. I now use my time and project management skills in my own Rose Coaching business, to help people transform the life they have into the life they really want.

If you are interested in more organizational and time saving tips, check out my book: TimePeace: Making peace with time (at amazon.com) or subscribe to my newsletters and articles at http://eepurl.com/cZ9_-/

 

How to Stay Focused While Working from Home

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Laura Lee Rose is the Corporate Exiting Strategest for blooming entrepreneurs.
Laura helps others to easily transition into their next chapter whether it’s the next ladder of success within their corporate environment or into the entrepreneurial playground.

To sign-up for these tools, subscribe at  http://eepurl.com/gGZtP

 

Questions to Ask Yourself After You Get Fired

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As a business and life coach who specializes in time management and work life balance strategies, I recommend clients to consistently look forward (not backwards).

Therefore, the question “why I got fired” is not as beneficial as “what do I want to do now“.

Although there are many symptoms — there are usually only a few underlying reasons that anyone gets fired (I am making a distinction between being “fired” and “getting laid off”):

1) The ‘real’ job did not match what the effort the employee wanted to submit.
2) The employee and employer’s expectations were not understood or did not match.
3) The job didn’t lead the employee’s career in a direction that the employee wanted to go.
Given the above, better questions to ask yourself after you get fired are:

Creating a “No Excuse” Zone ~ Part 3

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Below is Part 3 of a 3-Part article designed to help IT and database professionals stay on top of their game in an ever-changing trade. Part 1 and 2 describe examples of how we inadvertently make excuses for our lack of progress in certain areas of our careers.

Part 3 offers several steps toward creating “No Excuse Zones” in our home, office and thinking. For more examples that fit your specific work environment, please feel free to contact LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info.

We all have “excuses‟ as part of our normal, default speaking and thinking patterns. It’s normal. It’s human. We often entertain ourselves with stories of how we got to where we “don‟t want to be”. We do not readily acknowledge these stories as “excuses” or blaming something or someone external to ourselves for our predicament; we’re simply “explaining” ourselves.  But the longer we stay in the “explaining” stage of the current situation; the longer we are stalled and not making forward progress.

As you can see in part 1 and part 2 of this article, there are endless ways to take control over your own calendar and time.  Using external people and event as excuses for your lack of progress is very natural but not very beneficial.  We won’t be able to totally avoid our very natural and human reactions to things.  But we can continually improve upon are recognition of what is more beneficial in moving us forward faster.

Beginning steps toward NO EXCUST ZONE thinking:

Step 1) Create several NO EXCUSE ZONES in your home, office and social environments.
These places will be designated as “NO EXCUSE ZONES”. These are places where you are deliberately on the lookout for excuses in your speech and in others. It will be in these places where “excuses” will no longer be acceptable.
You can place a “NO EXCUSE ZONE” sign to warn co-workers, friends and family that you have kicked-up your game. It will be at these places that you practice your new-found energy, focus, and purpose.
When you detect “defensive” speech from yourself and others, diplomatically challenge the thought as an assumption, a false premise or even an irrelevant truth. Just because something is factual doesn‟t make it beneficial or useful. There are lots of truths that are simply immaterial to forward progress or solutions.

Click here to read the rest of this article.

 

 

How to Repel Your Existing Customers from Ever Coming Back

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Hello, this is Laura Lee Rose – Corporate Exit Strategist for the Blooming Entrepreneur – and I am a business and life coach that specializes in time management, project management and work-life balance strategies. As a business coach, I received this recent question:

“How do you repel your existing customers from ever coming back?”

At first glance, this may seem like a strange question, but it is actually a great topic. In any business, it is unrealistic to feel that you can make everyone happy with your products and services. Most successful businesses do not plan to be “all things to all people”.   As such, there may be certain customers that you don’t really want as regular clients.  This is actually very good business planning.

Having said the above, how does one go about professionally “repelling” an existing customer without the risk of a “Better Business Bureau Complaint”?

One very positive way to “repel customers from ever coming back”, is to focus on your overall goal to an exceptional client experience. This seems strange, but please bears with me.

If your goal is for 100% client satisfaction (or an exceptional client experience), and you are unable to satisfy this particular client with your current services or products, point them toward someone else’s service or products that will satisfy them.

Creating a “No Excuse Zone” around YOU Professional Development Series

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Below is Part 2 of a 3-Part article designed to help IT and database professionals stay on top of their game in an ever-changing trade. Part 1 highlighted some IT scenarios. In this part 2, we will take a closer look.

Part 3 offers several steps toward creating „No Excuse Zones” in our home, office and thinking. For more examples that fit your specific work environment, please feel free to contact LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info.

We all have “excuses‟ as part of our normal, default speaking and thinking patterns. It’s normal. It’s human. We often entertain ourselves with stories of how we got to where we “don‟t want to be.”  We do not readily acknowledge these stories as „excuses‟ or blaming something or someone external to ourselves for our predicament; we‟re simply ‘explaining’ ourselves. But the longer we stay in the ‘explaining’ stage of the current situation; the longer we are stalled and not making forward progress.

 

Let’s look closer:

My task was to contact 3 hospitals to collect meaningful metrics on these five database features. Only one hospital has responded on only one database features. I am late with this project and don’t know how to proceed.

Our developer had not been keeping his team and stakeholders involved in his progress. He had been struggling with the 3 hospitals without conveying the obstacles he was encountering. He allowed the deadline to pass without a word of status. He was nervous and ashamed about his lack of progress on this task. Continue reading →

How to Handle Multiple and Unclear Job Directives

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Hello, this is Laura Lee Rose – Corporate Exit Strategist for the blooming entrepreneur – and I am a business and life coach that specializes in Time Management, Project management training and work-life balance strategies.  Today we are sharing tips on how to handle multiple (and often conflicting) directives from various clients, managers and stakeholders.

Whether we are in the corporate environment or starting our own small business, we have competing resources for our attention, skills and talents.  How can we not only professionally handle these multiple and unclear job directives, but use these opportunities to propel us forward faster?

Step 1) Acknowledge and congratulate ourselves for being in demand. Because we are valuable in our field of choice, people do come to us for our advice and coaching.  We don’t want to stop this trend.  We don’t want to resent the people that value and need us.  We just want to take better advantage of this great phenomenon.   You need to create a daily schedule that allows you to get important work done and handle the expected interruptions.  Although you don’t’ know exactly what will interrupt you, you know that you will be interrupted.  Therefore, the intelligent thing to do is to schedule and integrate interruption time into your daily schedule.

Corporate Exit Strategy Series: Handling Multiple Directives

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Whether we are in the corporate environment or starting our own small business, we have competing resources for our attention, skills and talents. How can we not only professionally handle these multiple and unclear job directives, but use these opportunities to propel us forward faster?

Tune in to the video below for suggestions you can put into practice starting today…

 

 

Laura Lee Rose is the Corporate Exiting Strategest for blooming entrepreneurs.
Laura helps others to easily transition into their next chapter whether it’s the next ladder of success within their corporate environment or into the entrepreneurial playground.

To sign-up for these tools, subscribe at  http://eepurl.com/gGZtP

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