Sterling Marketing Group » Productivity

Four New Authors On New Years Resolutions

Karen Leland — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:46:38 +0000

I’m sorry, lo siento, prastee meenya pozhalosta, and mea culpa. Please don’t hate me, but I had to do it. I know you are probably sick of the subject, but no self-respecting time management/productivity expert could get away with not writing about New Year’s resolutions on the verge of not only a New Year, but a new decade.

Oh, and not to put any pressure on you, but, according to a 2008 research study done by Steve Shapiro and the Opinion Corporation of Princeton, NJ, 45 percent of Americans usually set New Year’s Resolutions and 17 percent infrequently set them. Only 38 percent absolutely never set resolutions.

So if you’re on the fence about whether you’re going to incarnate your intention to lose weight, exercise more, write your book, build up your web business or expand your operations overseas, I’ve rounded up a few very smart authors of new books to help. Here’s what they had to say about New Year’s resolutions, and all that they entail: To read the rest of this article see my column at Web Worker Daily

Beware Malware and Social Media

Karen Leland — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:48:52 +0000

Regardless of how many malware attacks you may have experienced, one thing is certain — even one attack can give your productivity a pounding. It can leave you with hours (or days) of computer and communication clean-up work, all of which costs you and your company cash.

So, if you use Twitter and Facebook as a part of your daily work environment, you need to protect your productivity by putting some safeguards in place that keep social media malware from slowing you down. For some expert advice, I turned to Chip Reaves of Computer Troubleshooters. Here are a few of his top tips:

To read the full story visit my Productivity Superstar column at Web Worker Daily…

Give Your Brain A Lunch Break

Karen Leland — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 04:17:50 +0000

The past few months, it seems I’ve spent countless lunch hours hovering over my desk while shoving food from the deli next door down my throat. Between telephone interviews, Twitter postings and tough economic times, I often don’t make the effort to do more than choke down a salad or sandwich and call it lunch. In between forkfuls of romaine, my mind wanders to the good old days when I leisurely ate steamed dumplings from the dim sum restaurant down the street, or pomme frites from the French-style sidewalk café overlooking the bay. All this midday-meal mayhem has left me longingly wondering, “What has happened to the lunch hour?”

According to one new study from DiGiorno, 45 percent of the country’s workers say they’re taking shorter and/or fewer lunch breaks than they did a year ago. More than a third say they pass on their lunch break, thanks to an increasing workload.

Click here to read the rest of this article on my Productivity Superstar blog on Web Worker Daily.

8 Time Management Tips For Twitter

Karen Leland — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 04:04:58 +0000

Gosh, my thumbs are tired. All that texting, typing and tweeting has given my digits an Olympic-size work out.

With the past few weeks bringing on a torrent of Twitters about Michael Jackson, Iran and Sarah Palin, there can be no doubt that social media has left its mark on mainstream media. When CNN starts showing the URL to its Twitter stream — the world as we know it has changed.

But revolutions, celebrity passings and political head-scratchers aside, left unchecked, social media can become a big, huge gaping black hole worthy of a scene in the latest “Start Trek” movie. “Step away from the iPhone, Mr. Spock; just step away.”

The down, dark side to all this Twitter activity — all the time — is that it can really bring out one’s obsessive-compulsive personality tendencies. And I speak from experience here. Twitter-aholics, Facebook fanatics and LinkedIn mainliners — not a pretty story, but one that must be told.

If you want to get the Twitter monkey off your back, but still buy an e-ticket to the social media wild ride, try these seven smart strategies:

1. “I save time by syndicating my content automatically to all my social networking profiles: Twitterfeed.com sends my posts to my Twitter stream; the Notes application on Facebook feeds my Facebook profile; the Blog Link app on LinkedIn updates that site. I also use Ping.fm to update my status on multiple social networking sites as well.” Denise Wakeman, www.BizTipsBlog.com

2.“I practice batch tweeting — setting aside certain batches of time for Twitter, rather than just dropping into it at random times during the day. Ten intentional minutes on Twitter can help a lot.” Darren Rowse, www.problogger.net

3. “Look for timesaving tools and applications, but don’t waste time playing with ‘gee whiz’ applications that don’t improve your productivity,” says Dana Lynn Smith, author of Get Connected: Build Your Business With Online Networking. “Some useful productivity tools include applications such as TweetDeck.com and twitterfeed.com that make Twitter easier to use.”

4. “HootSuite.com has a toolbar button that makes it easy to tweet a link. When you run across an interesting blog post or other resource, you can send it out to your followers with a couple of clicks. You can also schedule it to appear at a later time.” Cathy Stucker, www.BloggerLinkUp.com

5. “Saving time on social media is not only about tools, but more importantly, it’s about knowing whom you want to connect with (your ideal audiences) and connecting with them instantly when they visit your profile,” says George Kao, a social media expert. Make sure your one-line bio on Twitter resonates with that audience instantly by (a) telling them who they are, and (b) stating what results you can deliver for them or why you’re someone they’d want to follow.

6. “I am easily distracted by various social media sites, and will lose track of time quickly! So, I’ve scheduled times during the day to go on the sites and make posts and respond. I even put these times on my calendar to remind me. When I get on, I have a set time limit; then I get off! If you have trouble getting off, set a timer to remind you.” Gladys Strickland, GS Business Resources.

7. “You want to follow and be followed by people who are following less than 100 people themselves. Otherwise it becomes a ‘follow-fest,’ and nobody is listening.Â Â But … the people who are following less than 100 Twitterers are the people who are being very selective … and are the people who are listening. So, here’s the lesson … don’t build for quantity, build for quality … follow and be followed by people who care, not by people trying to build a list.” Mike Michalowicz, blogger and Author of “The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur.”

Bonus Tip: And here’s my hot tip… If I have a topic I’m hot to write about and want to do a series of tweets on it, I use http://www.tweetlater.com/ I find that by picking a topic and focusing on it for ten minutes or so, I am able to come up with a series of tweets that link together and build on one another. I usually schd. them to be tweeted once an hour or one a day for a period of days, set them up in tweetlater and move onto the next item!Â Karen Leland, author Time Management In An Instant:60 Ways to Make the Most of Your Day and president of Sterling Marketing Group.

Please note that this article is copyrighted by Karen Leland. If you would like to reprint any or all of it on your blog or website for non-commercial purposes you are welcome to do so, provided you give credit and a live link back to this site at www.karenleland.com

*Twitter Image courtesy of www.hongkiat.com

More Creativity With The Color Blue

Karen Leland — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 04:24:08 +0000

Do you think you need more red or blue in your life? Although the current economic crisis might prompt you to say, “Please, anything but red” faster than you can clip a coupon, there’s new research that shows that the colors red and blue each have a distinctly different impact on the brain.

In a yearlong experiment at the University of British Columbia, Sauder School of Business, 600 participants were asked to perform tasks on a computer that required either attention to details (such as proofreading or memory exercises) or creativity (such as brainstorming ways to use a brick). The background color of the computer screens the subjects worked on was either blue, red or, in some cases, white.

The results? According to the study, when a task requires attention to details, the presence of the color red boosts performance by as much as 31 percent compared to blue. But when the task demands more creative output, blue cues are a better choice than red by almost twice as much.

“Thanks to stop signs, emergency vehicles and teachers’ red pens, we associate red with danger, mistakes and caution,” says Juliet Zhu, Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business and author of the study. “The heightened state that red activates makes us vigilant and thus helps us perform tasks where careful attention is required to produce a right or wrong answer.”

Alternatively, Zhu says that because of an association with the sky, the ocean and the water, most people associate blue with openness, peace and tranquility. “The benign cues make people feel safe about being creative and exploratory. Not surprisingly, it is people’s favorite color.”

Zhu claims that it only takes a small amount of the desired color in an environment to make an impact. “You don’t need to paint a whole room blue to be more creative,” says Zhu. “These influences happen at a subconscious and subliminal level, so even a suggestion of the color works.” Zhu says that even something as small as the color of a pen, the background screen on a computer or the decorative items in a room can have an influence.

As a time management expert, I’m always interested in anything that can help people work better in a world with too many things to do, and too few resources to get them done with. As an artist and a writer, I’m fascinated by anything that can help me be more creative – so I decided to test this color conjecture out on myself.

I brought with me to a half-day creative writing workshop this past weekend a blue pad of paper and a blue ink pen, instead of my requisite white-lined notebook and trusty black Bic.

One of the reasons I wanted to take the class was that with all the non-fiction book, magazine and blog writing I’ve been doing this past year, I felt in need of a creative break – something to shake me out of my current pattern. So I took the class, and I used a lovely shade of periwinkle blue paper. But did it help my creativity? You tell me…

Blue Paper Poem by Karen Leland

I didn’t use red
Because I needed to shed
My old way of thinking
And clear out my head
Instead I choose blue
Which from the study I knew
Would not make me smarter
But crank up my creative juju

FOUR WAYS TO GET MORE COLOR INTO YOUR LIFE

Depending on which type of intelligence you’re looking to increase, here are four ways to get more color into your life.

1. Change the background color on your computer screen. When I’m working on word-smithing a piece, I change the color on my Mac to a lovely, soothing and apparently creativity-boosting periwinkle blue. When I’m trying to get my inbox to zero and need to make decisions quickly, I change the background to an action-inspiring red swirl pattern.

2. Use a pen with red ink or a red casing when working on something analytical in nature and a green when attempting to write the great American novel – or tackling any other inventive and imaginative task.

3. Keep a mouse-pad wardrobe handy and switch out from red to green, and back again, depending on the task before you.

4. Paint an entire room in your office red and an entire room green. When you need to get everyone’s right brain engaged in an innovative endeavor, hold your meetings in the green room. If the meeting calls for a left-brain gathering, try the red room.

Please note that this article is copyrighted by Karen Leland. If you would like to reprint any of it on your blog or website you are welcome to do so for non-commercial uses, provided you give credit and a live link back to this posting at KarenLeland.com

What Pez Candy and Time Management Have In Common

Karen Leland — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 04:02:35 +0000

When I was a kid, one of my favorite candies was Pez. The dispenser was a long, thin lighter-type shape, and the top was the head of some famous cartoon character. With one swift motion, I would pull back the Donald Duck, Goofy or Mickey Mouse top and out would pop a single, small sliver of satisfyingly tart and sweet candy. I would go on like this, dispensing one treat at a time, until the entire package was used up.

If you’re wondering what this childhood trip down memory lane has to do with today’s time management, I’ll tell you – but first, you have to sit through one more candy metaphor.

Most people today approach their to-do list like it’s a box of chocolates (and not in the somewhat endearing Forest Gump “lefe is leke a bax o’ chokolates” way). No, we take a small nibble out of a caramel cream and dump the remains back in the box or grab a bite of a chocolate-covered cherry and then discard it to its holding place next to the
English toffee.

Likewise, we tend to take little nibbles on projects, bites of our to-do list and leave tasks half eaten. For the most part, this leaves us wholly incomplete and unsatisfied. Lots of little actions – but no big accomplishments.

I think we should all take a productivity lesson from PEZ candy and promise to start doing one thing at a time. No distractions, no multitasking, just focus – pure, old-fashioned, unadulterated focus. To increase yours, try these focus-building behaviors.

Warning: You may have heard or read a version of these before. They’re classics in the world of time management, and for those of us who pedel this stuff, for years we’ve all written about them, spoken about them, recommended them and sometimes even followed them. They are, in many ways, common sense. But you know the expression about common sense not being so common? Oh, and if you need a visual to remind you, order a PEZ dispenser.

1. Keep a Brain Drain list on hand: One study by George Miller found that people can only hold five to nine things in their mind at a time; the rest goes into the unconscious mind. To keep your mental real estate tidy, as soon as a thought, idea, task or to-do enters you brain – threatening to strip you of your focus – write it down for processing at a later date.

2. Tackle the hard things early in the morning: One survey by Accountemps found that 69 percent of financial executives polled said that their most productive time for meeting with potential job applicants was between 9 and 11 a.m. Why? Because most people have more energy available at the beginning of the day than at the end. Instead of frittering away your morning surfing the net for fabulous finds, put that time to work on your “A” priority items.

In fact, if your are so inclined, I’d love it if you would take just a minute (literally) and fill out a poll on What Is Your Most Productive Time Of Day?

3. Work on increasing your attention span. The next time you sit down to do a specific task that requires your full attention, set a timer for five minutes. No matter what, don’t allow yourself to be pulled away. Yes, your brain will scream for mercy. Yes, you will think you are going to die of boredom and yes, five minutes is both a lot longer and a lot shorter than you realize.

When you can focus on the task uninterrupted for five minutes, try 10, then 15, then 20. If you can get up to 45 minutes of totally focused time – no itches and urges to answer your cell phone, check your e-mail, Facebook a friend or twitter your latest thought – you are Zen master and are hereby absolved from ever having to read another time management book. Not really, but you would be among the few and the proud.