Here’s an article about a smart lady who was able to reduce her packaging (environmentally sound, too!) and therefore get 40% more product in the same shelf space – now THAT’s efficiency! Here’s the Fortune Small Business magazine article… and I LOVE the pic of her and her dog at the top!
There are resources all over the net on how to start your own business. I found this article from Inc. Magazine on how to start up your own business to be practical, and a mirror to the advice I give people when they contact me – consider these points when deciding whether being an entrepreneur is for you!
And, if you’ve already taken the plunge and have your business going, here’s great advice on Running a one-person company.
Enjoy!
I’m a big keyboard shortcut fan. I am a touch typist, and therefore can key in pretty quickly what I want to do. By using keyboard shortcuts, I can keep my hands here rather than moving over to a mouse to do the same thing, distracting me from what I’m working on.
Here are some of my favorite keyboard shortcuts:
| Shortcut Keys | Description |
| Alt + F | File menu options in current program. |
| Alt + E | Edit options in current program |
| F1 | Universal Help in almost every Windows program. |
| Ctrl + A | Select all text. |
| Ctrl + X | Cut selected item. |
| Shift + Del | Cut selected item. |
| Ctrl + C | Copy selected item. |
| Ctrl + Ins | Copy selected item |
| Ctrl + V | Paste |
| Shift + Ins | Paste |
| Home | Goes to beginning of current line. |
| Ctrl + Home | Goes to beginning of document. |
| End | Goes to end of current line. |
| Ctrl + End | Goes to end of document. |
| Shift + Home | Highlights from current position to beginning of line. |
| Shift + End | Highlights from current position to end of line. |
| Ctrl + Left arrow | Moves one word to the left at a time. |
| Ctrl + Right arrow | Moves one word to the right at a time. |
If you’re a mouser rather than a keyboarder, you may not agree that this method is any faster than using your mouse; however, if you are a touch typist, I encourage you to try some of these and see if your speed doesn’t increase…
How’d you do? Let me know!
The web is a wonderful tool. It provides us with useful information (as well as whimsical, amusing, and outright weird). One of the best ‘inventions’ in recent years is information aggregator sites. The most common aggregators are those that will search for a string and show websites that may be related. There are several websites out there that will do this; I’m a fan of Google, but know others who are fans of other aggregators. Aggregators are also industry-specific – the most common/well-known ones are probably travel sites.
Oftentimes, in the not-so-distant past, when a traveler wanted to find out the rates for a car, hotel, or airline, they would visit each site (or call a travel agent). Now, most travelers will visit a site like kayak, expedia, travelocity, hotwire, Priceline, etc. to shop for several fares simultaneously – and will book through these sites, or may do additional research based on the results.
What other aggregator sites are you a fan of?
In our last post, we talked about doing tasks right away rather than adding them to the to-do list for later. Here’s a corollary: keep a scratch pad next to the phone or computer to jot things down quickly. If you keep your to-do list on the computer, you can sometimes minimize the window or task pane, and jot it down on that list as easily; but if you don’t, it’s sometimes helpful to jot things down to remember later.
If I’m writing an article for a magazine, I may want to remember to include an anecdote. Rather than write a formal outline of the article, I’ll simply jot down “include story about xyz” to ensure that I don’t forget to include later on. Is this something that needs to go on my to-do list? Probably not, since I’m in the midst of writing now (although “write article by next Tues” may be on my list, subtopics under it most likely are not). By use of this throw-away technique, you can ensure you are making the case in point while not cluttering up a more formal memory jogger instrument like a to-do list.
Makes sense? What are your thoughts?
A perusal through time management books, efficiency books, etc. will show you the importance of to-do lists. To-do lists definitely have their place – it’s one of the ways that we make sure that we don’t forget to do important (and not-so-important) things. However, look at how long you are taking to work on your to-do list for the coming week or day – could you spend 30-50% more time, and actually DO the task?
Let me give you an example: I remember that I need to set up a doctor’s appointment for Monday. You can either write down “Call Dr for appt” or you can pick up the phone and actually make the appt. [Of course, this presumes that you are writing this during business hours.] It may take you 10 seconds to jot it down, or 2 mins to complete the call; however, there’s one less thing for you to do.
Try keeping your to-do lists for things that take 5 minutes or more – and take care of the smaller things as you think of them. We’ve implemented this methodology in our staff meetings, and so end up with a shorter list of actionable, but longer implementation time, items rather than a long laundry list of things that will take 2-3 mins to do each. It’s improved our internal system considerably; give it a try and let us know how they work for you!