Can Efficiency Be Taught?
2 September 2015I was having a conversation with my 90-year old aunt about delegation, task management and managing staff – she’d had many years of running teams and offices. She said: ‘Efficiency is a life-long discipline, and not everyone has it or can learn it. Some people are naturally efficient and disciplined. Others are not – they […]
How To Separate Work And Home When Working From Home
8 April 2014These days more and more folks, even corporate people, work at home some or part of the time. Two key issues need to be handled if we work without the immediate physical support of an office and the external motivation of ‘going’ to work. Mastery of them will dramatically increase your home-based productivity. They are: […]
Develop a curious mind to discover shortcuts
12 June 2012What better ways of doing things or shortcuts are under your nose? And, how do you find these ‘better ways’? Develop a curious mind, a mindset that always says, ‘How else could we do this?’ If you find yourself repeatedly doing tasks, play a game with yourself to winkle out alternative ways. […]
The Procrastination Tightrope And How To Keep Your Balance
1 September 2011Want to beat procrastination? Here’s some easy tips you can apply right now! Have deadlines for your goals. Beware, however, of being unrealistic. Working towards impossible deadlines is very de- motivating and won’t help you break the procrastination habit. Break a task down to smaller, bite-sized pieces with realistic achievable time-lines. This can often help […]
Rules To Reduce Junk In Your Inbox
8 August 2011Does spam drive you crazy? Even though I use Spam Arrest – http://www.spamarrest.com/ – as a first-stop filter, and my email programme is pretty good at filtering a lot of rubbish into Junk Email, I’m all too familiar with being deluged with bounce-backs from mail that falsely appears to be from our domain and been sent to false addresses. […]
In Order To Go Faster, First You Must Go Slower
1 August 2011How many times do we hear people say ‘I haven’t got time to .. ‘? Many times that is true, but if you notice yourself repeatedly using this phrase, step back a bit and analyse what it is you’re referring to. What are you really saying? You haven’t got time to teach someone else? You haven’t […]
Stop Unwanted Material At Source
27 June 2011A key question for the problem of space and information storage and management is ‘do I really need it?’ And following that, ‘what can I prevent coming into my space?’ Faxes: Get off fax lists of unwanted information. First port of call is to contact the offending company and politely request removal. If they choose […]
Does Your Organisation Overuse Email?
21 June 2011Just because we can send an email doesn’t mean we should! Here’s an example – The planning team of a large institution often work on large collaborative projects. This often requires input from all members. They had been in the habit of sending emails to all members of the team for input and contributions. […]
Don't Do What Someone Else Can Do
15 June 2011Who opens the mail? Who does the filing? Do you find yourself constantly getting bogged down with tasks somebody else could do? Over lunch some time David Eddy, Project Director of a great First Time Principals programme via Auckland University, shared the following tip. It was given to him by a colleague early in […]
You Don't Have To Work This Hard! – Positive Slow-Time
24 May 2011In my farming childhood the principle of fallowing a paddock was common (leaving ground uncultivated for a season, in order to rest the land, restore its fertility, and prepare it for a new crop.). These days, however, it’s not a word you often see or hear, except in cropping country. It was therefore with […]