Hey, spring has finally sprung. Time to spring clean and de-clutter our work environment, especially as you can win a £25 Amazon voucher in this competition by doing so.

Back in June 2010 I asked if your desk was more akin to the purposeful flight deck of an aircraft carrier or a toxic waste dump. More recently, working with a team of ‘Location Independent Workers’ – people who are home and field based and rarely venture into the company office – the whole challenge of home office and desk clutter has been brought back into focus for me.

Here’s a question: How happy would you be for your most important customer or your boss to be sitting at your desk as it is right now, making a big decision with you?

So, here’s the deal….. Or at least the competition!

Transform your desk into the productivity platform you need it to be

Get decluttering. Take a photo of your desk after you spring-cleaned it and email / message it over to me. Jacqui and I will review them all and the 4 best transformations will receive a £25 Amazon gift certificate. Email to richardm at prioritymanagement dot com I might even add a bonus gift if I choose to copy any of your desk layouts!

No rules really, you can work on your corporate office desk or home-office desk. The competition starts now and we will run this to 31st May, but, hey, why wait? You know that personal productivity is best driven from a purposeful platform. To quote Jean-Luc Picard ‘Make it so’.

Go on, get de-cluttering! You will feel so much better once you have transformed your desk into the purposeful productivity platform you know it could be. You might also win that £25 voucher. Get in touch if you want suggestions or have any questions.

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A client is committed to getting smarter with her Outlook management and is de-cluttering her inbox today and asked how she can view only unopened emails so she can run my email triage/action process on them.

It is simple. But not everyone knows. So here’s how …

2 ways I use:

1. For Keyboard Ninjas: In the search box on top right of the inbox view simply type: read:no    This searches the current folder then whole inbox
2. For rodent lovers and touchy, feely pad users: Highlight the folder you want to search > Place your cursor in the search box > ‘The Search Tools’ ribbon is activated > Hit the ‘Unread’ icon in the ‘Refine’ area.

Er, that’s it.

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If your PDF resource is limited to a free PDF Reader and/or a free PDF Printer, you are limited in what you can do with PDF files.

If you want to work smarter with Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and many other programmes, especially in creating, editing and sharing information, you do need greater PDF functionality. You don’t have to fork out a lot of money for Adobe products (great though they are).

Here is a free PDF converter programme worth investigating……

This free online service enables you convert PDF files to editable Word, Excel or PowerPoint files; it also converts these files to PDF files.

It’s real simple. It’s free. Take a look.

Here is the link: http://www.pdfconverter.com/pdf-to-excel-online-free/

Obviously they would like you to buy the full product which I have not checked out as we are already Adobe users.

Oh yes, they also have a twitter stream which you can find @PDFElite

Until next time….

Livescribe has just released an additional smartpen to the UK market with built in Wifi and a direct connection with Evernote. So they now provide 2 options for turning everything we write and hear into digital records. Given that I am an enthusiastic user for my own productivity and managing my own competing priorities, I thought it might be useful to provide a quick overview of the Livescribe Wifi smartpen here. I will also post how I use it with Evernote later.

I have previously written back in September 2011 about how and why the Livescribe Echo smartpen replaced my MontbBlanc in business meetings.

The new Wifi smartpen feels the same size as the Echo, only marginally thicker than my Montblanc Meisterstück fountain pen and comfortable in the hand to use for extended note taking. It sports an attractive silver element in the barrel and I think it looks better than the Echo for that.

But lets get to the business end here.

Livescribe Wifi and Echo key difference 1

The clue to the key difference is in the name. The Livescribe Wifi has a built in wifi which simply syncs to your Evernote account. You can use your existing account or easily create a new one, following the instructions when you set-up the pen.

This means that your notes, pencasts and recordings are automatically synced to your Evernote account when your smartpen is in range of your secure wifi access points, whether they be via your phone, your office or home wifi access point. And they are immediately available to you on all your devices – phone, tablet, pad or laptop on the run.

The Livescribe Echo, on the other hand, stores all your notes, pencasts and sound recordings on-board. You then connect your Echo to your computer by USB cable and it transfers those notes and recordings to the Livescribe Desktop application. From there you can choose to keep your content on your computer or send it to cloud services like Evernote, Microsoft OneNote, Google Docs etc.

By default the Livescribe wifi will create an Evernote Stack in your personal account. Your Livescribe notebooks are filed under this stack. You can then move your data into other Notebooks within your account if that is your filing preference.

Livescribe Wifi and Echo key difference 2

The second key difference is, we are told, only temporary.

With the Livescribe Echo you can buy a Myscript for Livescribe licence from VisionObjects which transcribes your handwriting to text. Great for turning your handwritten notes into documents or emails. I have found this very useful, especially when I exercise a little more care over my handwriting (which – in itself – is very satisfying!)

For the time being this is not available for the Wifi smartpen. Livescribe say they are working with Vision Objects to provide a similar solution for the Wifi.

There are some other subtle differences between the two Livescribe offerings but these 2 will define which smartpen is best for you. As I’ve already pointed out, Livescribe is working on adding further functionality to the Wifi smartpen / Evernote solution. I’m excited and migrated from the Echo to Wifi Smartpen in October last year.

Feel free to get in touch by commenting here or emailing or phoning me with any comments or questions.

Until next time…

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I was talking with a client just now who did not know that she could backup her carefully crafted Linkedin profile, which she developed using my Linkedin Profile Polisher. Linkedin does not provide an automatic, one-click profile backup option.

Fortunately it is very simple, and arguably, important to backup your Linkedin profile. Especially if you have invested time in honing your profile so that it works hard for you. Here’s all there is to it:

1. Go to your Profile and select ‘View Profile’ (do  not go to Edit profile page!)
2. Hit the arrow to the right of the ‘Edit’ button
3. Hover your cursor over the arrow to the right of the ‘Edit’ button (highlighted opposite)
4. Click on ‘Export to PDF’
5. Save the resultant pdf file.

Drop me a mail or contact me if you want a free copy of my Linkedin Profile Polisher.

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Have you noticed that your Linkedin Group Discussions and Comments have suddenly and unexpectedly been automatically placed in an ‘Awaiting Moderation’ queue?

Are you a busy Linkedin Group Owner or Manager getting messages from members about being blocked? If so read on because

sometimes the friendly dolphins get caught in the tuna nets

Recently, and without any announcement or explanation that I could find, Linkedin initiated a process which they call SWAM “Site-Wide Auto-Moderation” such that when a Group Owner or Manager executed a ‘Block & Delete’ of a member from a group, that member is automatically put on moderation in ALL groups they belong to.

Clearly, this is intended as an anti-spam measure. But the law of unintended consequences applies and many members are suffering collateral damage through friendly fire.

If you are a Group member who is getting a ‘Submitted For Review’ message when you post to a Linkedin Group

There is no automatic appeal process. You can’t get it fixed by Linkedin Customer Service. You won’t get a message from the relevant Linkedin Group saying that your post breached the rules. You can’t find out which Group Owner or Manager blocked and deleted your posting. You are on your own.

You have to send a message to every Group Owner/Manager asking them to check and change your status to ‘Approved to Post’ (see below for how to help them do this for you).

It is, obviously, best to draft a message in your text editor and then copy into individual personal messages to each Owner/Manager. To send the message to the Owner/Manager you need to do this:

• Go to the Group
• Hit the ‘More’ menu (to the right of the Discussions – members etc. menu)
• Select ‘Group Profile’ and hover your cursor over the Group owner’s name in the ‘About this Group’ box on the top right of the screen until the pop-up profile bubble appears, then hit the ‘Send message’ link. This is a good way to send messages to fellow group members even though you are not directly connected with them!

If you are a Linkedin Group Owner / Manager who is getting ‘Why am I being victimised by having my posts submitted for review and moderated?’ messages from members who have been blocked elsewhere.

If you have not flagged an individual’s messages as part of your own moderation activities, and you value your members’ contributions to your group, you will have to manually change their posting status. Here’s how: This is not as clear as it should be but so stick with me here…..

•  Hit the Manage menu in your Group
• Hit ‘Participants’ link in the ‘Manage Group’ menu on the left of the screen
• Unfortunately it is not as simple as going to the ‘Blocked’ tab, so ignore that and go, instead to the Members’ Tab.
• If you are responding to a member’s request simply punch their name into the search box. If you are looking to do a group-wide audit (good luck!) you will have to check each member record in the list for the  ‘Requires moderation’ against their name.
• Once you have found the member, you will see a ‘Requires moderation’ note to the right. Hit the ‘Change permissions’ link and change to ‘Approved to post’.

I suggest very strongly, that you do not use the ‘Block and Delete’ feature unless there are very strong grounds for doing so.

I cannot see Linkedin investing much time and effort into changing this unintended consequence soon and I hope this is useful. If it is please let me know. Matt Mansfield wrote a fuller post with official Linkedin responses which I have found useful.

Till next time…..

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A lot of my work recently has been dedicated to helping ambitious companies define and develop approaches to raise ‘Time management’ from an individual employee’s personal preference to a strategic organisational process. You can imagine my delight, then, when I read this headline in my January McKinsey Quarterly feed

Making Time Management the Organization’s Priority

If any of these headline items below from McKinsey’s research resonate with you please do get in touch – together we will make lasting, measurable change to the way your team or business manages the one finite and measurable resource that everyone has responsibility to manage well every day. Time! See what clients say here. My work in this area covers the 5 remedies in the report and much more.

Selected highlights from the McKinsey research through canvasing nearly 1,500 executives across the globe:

1. 91% of executives dissatisfied in how their time is spent – Only 9% of the respondents deemed themselves “very satisfied” with their current allocation of time
2. Only 52% said that the way they spent their time largely matched their organizations’ strategic priorities. Nearly 50% feel they’re not concentrating sufficiently on strategic objectives of the business.
3. This McKinsey research identifies 4 broad leadership profiles defining 4 flavours of frustration with time. Which one do you identify with? The Online junkie, the Schmoozer, the Cheerleader, the Firefighter. See the narrated slide-show, “Time management: Four flavors of frustration” for a full description of each (6 minutes long). You might need to create an account, which I strongly suggest you do anyway.
4. The myth of ‘Infinite time’ often results in Initiative Overload with special projects, strategies and change programmes being heaped indiscriminately upon already demanding day-jobs, with little or no strategic time allocations being built into team schedules.
5. A lack of organizational time-management guidance for individual managers is widespread and people are expected to manage it themselves the best way they can.

The problem of managing time within most businesses, even with good personal time management skills, is compounded by the ruthless realities within the modern workplace.

Microsoft recently did some research on the impact of interruptions This suggests (and in my experience of working with clients, it is about right) that with ever increasing workloads and interruptions, the probability of the wrong stuff being worked on by most people in the business is high – and this has an impact on overall workload management and productivity.

Microsoft’s research suggests, among other things:

An average of 112 emails being received daily
28% of the day spent dealing with interruptions
Over 40% of disrupted tasks are not immediately resumed
Tasks performed in parallel take the average user 30% longer to complete than tasks done in sequence

I strongly recommend a free subscription to the McKinsey Quarterly I can get a pdf of the full report to you if you ask me.

If you want to find out how we can improve your team or business approach to the thorny, perennial problem of ‘Time Management’  in a more practical, robust and lasting way please do get in touch.

Microsoft’s recent study on the impact of Interruptions – infographic. What is your experience of interruptions at work? Do you recognise these numbers? Is your world of work easier or tougher than these averages? I’d love to know.

Courtesy of Red e App

If you want practical, proven training on managing competing priorities within demanding workloads and a maelstrom of emails and information just get in touch now. Together we will deliver results worth talking about. That’s a promise!

I was working with a client in France yesterday. We were working on the challenges of managing competing priorities, multiple projects, imminent  deadlines and – inevitably – the volume and quality of internal Microsoft Outlook email traffic.

We were looking at how we could improve internal team communications through better internal email discipline and one of the team blew me away with her insight, she said ……

Well, I will sum it up as….

Online Forums could be a model for Internal Email

Here is the essence of the conversation: Most of us use online forums to share information.  All online forums have rules of engagement. Almost everybody understands those rules and etiquette of the forum and find that, when followed, they make accessing and sharing information relatively easy. The best online Forums have active Moderators who uphold the standards. Anything off topic or inappropriate on a thread is managed out. Good online forums generate loyalty, standards and – as a result – better information management.

Most internal business email, whether delivered through Outlook or other providers  has no where near the same standards as a good Forum. I won’t go into the issues here – you will know your own from your own experience.

The point is this. We can improve the quality of our internal email, indeed, I facilitate this on a very regular basis for my clients. Here’s my insight from yesterday …

online forums work best with good Moderators. Internal email works best when we are all moderators of agreed standards

If you want me to facilitate a practical, productive team communications and email management session for your team get in touch. Together we will deliver results worth talking about.

Till next time, Richard

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Within the maelstrom of meetings, emails and too much to do I attended a funeral for a friend last week, more a Thanksgiving really but still very sad.

Nothing newsworthy there, you have probably been to a few funerals too. What makes this so impactful for me is that it was the life of a 29 year old we were celebrating and giving thanks for.

29, that’s tough. A child’s death is devastating, there being so much anticipated potential; an elderly death is almost acceptable and can be a sweet relief. But a 29 year old man, full of vigour and energy – a life that has already deeply impacted so many people in so many ways. Potential already formed, honed and realised with more promise to come, that’s tough.

My friend, David, spoke eloquently about how it is not the length of a life that matters, but the depth and resonance of it that matters. He reminded us of that great Maximus Decimus Meridius line in Gladiator, ‘What we do in life, echoes in eternity’. And this got me thinking…..

Now, this may surprise you but, as someone who specialises in the purpose, strategy, time and priority management training space I have never been a big fan of the ‘Tombstone Test’ (An exercise where you write your own eulogy). Yes, I have done it and yes, I do sometimes run the exercise in training events BUT it can lull us into a false sense of security that we have time to make some changes. It can allow us to ‘think about it’ or, more realistically, avoid or procrastinate about doing something about it. I’m more of a ‘Carpe Diem’ guy myself (although some days I do fail miserably in getting a grip on anything!).

It seems to me that all we have to do is decide what is best to do with the time that is given to us. So here’s 5 things we can do right now

1. Get to know the purpose and point of our lives, our careers or businesses, our current roles and responsibilities and the decisions we make right now about what to do next and why.
2. Work well on building, developing and nurturing relationships. Remember that in business having deep and enduring relationships can go hand-in-hand with commercial acuity.
3. Sell with integrity. The right offering on the right terms trumps short-termism always. It is good for the customer, good for the business, good for the relationship and possibly good for society too.
4. In negotiations always allow the other party to have some dignity, pride and skin in the eventual outcome.
5. When it comes to the customer getting what they paid for, treat the SLA (Service Level Agreement) as the minimum service standard to be delivered, not the maximum attainable at a stretch after allowances for escalations and excuses along the way

Well, that’s it for now. Rest in peace Paul and thank you David.

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I will be at the Learning Technologies Exhibition on 29th and 30th January in Olympia London. It is a great event combining 2 of my professional passions – Learning and, er – Technology. I have a few meetings lined up for both days already and if you want a 121 with me during the event read on.

The best way to hook up with me at the Learning Technologies Exhibition is to book a 121 with me:

Meet Richard Maybury at Learning Technologies Exhibition 2013

If improving personal and team productivity through the potent mix of rock-solid, time honoured principles with Best Practice behaviours and processes driven through best of breed usage of technology – we  really should catch up!

If you want your people working smarter on managing their time, competing priorities and their multiple project participation and management through making best use of the technology you are already invested in, – you got it …. we really should meet up!

Think Microsoft Outlook, Outlook for Mac, Lotus Notes, Google Apps, Microsoft Project. Think Cloud Solutions – think Zimbra, think many leading Collaboration Platforms. Whatever you have your people driving their workload and teamworking through we can improve their productivity and their contribution to your business.

How to book a 121 with Richard at Learning Technologies 2013

Call me on 01428 607763
Tweet me – preferably DM me http://twitter.com/RichardMaybury
Email me richardm@prioritymanagement.com
or drop a comment below.
See you there! If you can’t make it and still want to get in touch, feel free!

Many of you, dear readers, will know that I am a big fan of the Livescribe Echo smartpen as a productivity tool. Back in September 2011 I wrote about how it replaced my MontBlanc for business writing. In October 2012 I wrote about how their new smartpen, the Livescribe Sky, was about to take handwriting mobile. I was excited. I was working on a productivity pointer post on the Livescribe Sky then this happened.

There I was, happily developing my blog post for you on how I use the Livescribe Sky and Evernote to further improve my meeting notes and other business notes and plans when, on 17th December the Guardian reported that a copyright infringement claim by BSkyB forced Livescribe to pull the pen off the UK market.

I’m still loving the pen and the way it wirelessly sends my written notes and recorded audio (usually from conferences and events – where I rarely take full written notes any more) to my secure Evernote account for use with my business systems.

This is obviously a blow to Livescribe in the UK. The pen continues to be available in the USA and elsewhere. Once the legalities of the matter are settled in the UK I will write about how I use the Livescribe Sky as part of my productivity platform.

I wish you and everyone special to you a Christmas that:

1. Refreshes beyond the best, biscuity chilled champagne
2. Resonates deeper than the click-click-whirrr of the shopping till when buying your most thoughtful gifts for the most important people in your life
3. Remains with you well beyond 12th Night and reinforces you into the rest of the 2013 that you will be building for yourself and those you love.

I want to briefly say a massive thank-you to 4 very important groups of people…

• All my wonderful clients, suppliers  and business friends. Thank you for your loyalty, your confidence, your cooperation and your business.
• All my collaborators and those who confidently refer my services  to their people. I never forget that I am standing on your shoulders and work hard to build your reputation before I earn the right to my own with the people you introduce me to.
• All those hard-working people we have trained who, although already building successful careers and businesses, changed the habits of a working lifetime and have taken up our key principles, processes and behaviours; and made them manifest in their busy lives. I wish you all continued success. You know how to get hold of me if you want to.
• And, finally to my family, the foundation upon which every day is built. Jacqui for your selfless love. Mike and Tim for your intelligence, energy, drive and support for my efforts over the year.

Whatever your faith, wherever you are coming from or going to, I wish you all a happy, peaceful and fulfilling Christmas

Whilst you are here you might find my 12 To-Dos for the 12 days of Christmas interesting.

If you are a business owner or are responsible for a team you might like to know about this simple way to bring your people some healthy competition, wellbeing, fitness, teamworking, fundraising and a big tick in the CSR box.

Do consider the potential for Volunteering in your business. There is need within a few paces of your home and place of work. Your contributions will make a difference.

Check out my recent blog posts, including Tim’s simple, practical Excel tips that he has got great feedback on.

Hi, Tim here again with a final Microsoft Excel tip for this year. This smarter working with Excel tip is about splitting comprehensive data in one cell into a number of discrete cells so you can manage the information easier within your CRM system. I use it when I get a column containing a complete address that I want to split out, or when I get a full name and email address in one column. Here’s how I do it….

1. If necessary add a new blank column(s) to the right of the fields you want to split out. Do this by Right-Clicking on the header of the column to the right and select and click ‘Insert’ Make sure you create enough new columns, especially if you are splitting out a full address onto different cells for insertion into a CRM system.
2. Next, you must set the Delimiter properties of the column you want to split out. This will depend upon how the data appears in the column. Note that you can select more than one delimiter – very useful if the data is separated differently within the column (some people are so messy!)
3. Often, especially with address data, components of the address are delimited by a comma between the words as in this Microsoft address: Microsoft Campus, Thames Valley Park, Reading, West Berkshire RG6 1WG Other data may just contain spaces between the words as in Richard Maybury Richardm@prioritymanagement.com
4. Once you have identified how the words are separated (Delimited) you now need to set that up in Excel. Click on the column header, hit the Data tab in the Top toolbar / Ribbon and click on Text To Columns button
5. In the Convert Text to Columns wizard select Delimited then hit the Next button
6. Select the appropriate Delimiter – Comma as in the address example above and/or Space in the second example, Hit Next
7. In step 3 of the Convert text to columns wizard accept the General default and hit Finish
8. You now have data columns you can map to your CRM system or use directly for marketing purposes.

You can see my tip for combining 2 or more columns of Excel data into a new column here and see how I  convert a column of email address data into formatted email addresses to insert into an Outlook Email here

Hi, Tim Maybury here again with another Microsoft Excel tip useful for managing marketing information. I use this one in conjunction with Microsoft Outlook mail merge and my father’s Productivity Pointer emails. This time I’m going to show you how to combine data in 2 or more columns into a new column. I hope you find it useful, let me know if you do – and tell me the tips you use for managing data in Excel, I’d love to learn from you. 

OK, this is relatively straightforward. Let’s assume you want to combine a column of First Names in column A with a column of Family Names in column B to produce a full Contact name in Column C – here’s how:

1. If necessary add a new blank column to the right of the fields you want to combine. Do this by Right-Clicking on the column C header
2. Type the following into Cell C1. Before you do so, it is important to note that the quotation marks you use must be the double ones (usually above the ’2′ key) Oh, and don’t forget the = sign or the space between the quotation marks! ……     =A1&” “&B1 
3. To make the formula apply to the whole column simply hover your cursor over the small square in the bottom right of your cell C1 and drag it to the last cell of data you want to manage.
4. In Excel this is called CONCATENATE, but you don’t need to know that.

Have you seen my post on how to convert a column of email address in Excel to formatted email addresses in Outlook?

My father is always interested in your comments. Feel free to sign up for free practical productivity pointers

SME Owners, Partners and Directors who are looking to make Volunteering opportunities available to their staff and themselves as simply as possible might find this useful.

Item 7 in my 12 To-Dos for the 12 days of Christmas is volunteering.  Managing volunteering for staff in a hard working busy small to medium sized business is never easy. Fortunately I know of one UK based registered charity who are  keen to help the SME community engage with volunteering. They are CSV.org.uk and they are ready to make your ambitions to build volunteering into your business as easy as possible. They are good people. Get hold of them and get your people involved.

The 12 days of Christmas starts on Christmas day, 25th December, and runs to 5th January.

Christmas and the New Year is a wonderful time to get back in touch with ourselves and some of the more important aspects of our life which can often get taken for granted in the headlong rush of our busy lives during the rest of the year.

Here is a list that might spark an idea or two for you. Go on, put a couple on your To-Do list, go public on it with family and friends and commit time in your calendar to make them real.

1. Learn a new skill – you are never too old or too young
2. Consider, plan and commit to supporting a specific charity in any way you can throughout 2013
3. Start reading that good book you bought with the best of intentions but haven’t opened yet.
4. Get outdoors. Go for a walk.
5. Call an old friend. You know, that one you used to be so close to but just haven’t got around to speaking with recently
6. Learn to juggle at least 3 balls for at least 3 minutes. Not only great fun but it helps improve your thinking and focus management skills
7. Volunteer in your community. There are people in your community, just a few steps away from where you live who would benefit massively from a little of your time, talent, ears and energy
8. Join a club or special interest group. Online groups count. Consider one that will challenge your thinking. Think Tanks can be useful and interesting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_tank
9. Arrange some one-on-one time with someone close in your family (and, no, your partner does not count!)
10. Support your local arts scene. Any arts performance counts ranging from an acoustic night in your local pub to your local amateur or professional theatre offering.
11. Share something important with a trusted friend.
12. Sit up straight with your back unsupported in a totally quiet room and practice a good breathing technique, focusing only on your breathing for 5 minutes once or twice a day

There you go, something to think about without having to make a New Year Resolution!

Hi, Tim Maybury here. Sometimes we need to grab email addresses from a column in Microsoft Excel and use them in a Microsoft Outlook email. Here’s the smarter working way I do it with Microsoft Outlook. Do you have any smart Excel tips you wish to share here? …

1. Copy the Excel column of email addresses
2. Paste them into a blank Microsoft Word document, selecting the ‘Keep text only’ Paste option
3. Click the ‘Replace’ button on the Home tab
4. In the ‘Find’ box and enter ^p. ( “^” = Shift-6)
5. In the ‘Replace’ box and type in a semi-colon.
6. Click the ’Replace All’, hit OK to close the Find/Replace dialogue box.
7. Copy the resultant text into the To, CC or BCC lines of your Outlook email form.

Remember, if you want yourself or your people working smarter on your conflicting priorities and heavy email loads just get in touch. We will have a support solution to meet your training needs.

I’m interested in your comments. Feel free to sign up for free practical productivity pointers.

I  found a great way for individuals and work teams to Kick off the new year. I came across it when I was running a presentation on Smarter Workload, Email and Time Management with Microsoft Outlook at a Surrey Chambers of Commerce exhibition the other day. It’s great because it is fun, active, inclusive, team-oriented and it raises funds for charity and costs practically nothing for a business to operate.

In business speak you drive teambuilding, engagement, wellbing and CSR in one fun and totally inclusive programme.

Here’s what’s involved:

This is a 6 week challenge, which will start on 28th January 2013, to walk, run or cycle 10,000 steps daily, earn achievement awards, compete with other teams and, if you wish to you can raise money for charity into the bargain.

It is managed online by www.activity4charity.co.uk and everybody gets a high accuracy USB accelerometer (which you keep) to wear or carry, through which you can upload your data to the website and monitor your activity progress and your competitiveness any time you want to.

The programme is set up to be totally inclusive for all levels of fitness, from the most unfit to the manic marathon runner, so everybody can get involved.

You can log your activities individually and as a team, so a lunchtime team walk would be an option to the rushed sandwich at the desk!

Companies can sign up any number of teams of 5 people. It may also be possible for individuals to join and be hooked up to other solo entrants to form a virtual team.

The cost for the whole 6 week challenge – including the USB accelerometers, access to the challenge website and all online support is only £195 plus VAT and p&p per team of 5 people. Individuals can register for £34.90 inc VAT plus p&p.

Teams can optionally elect to link their challenge to charitable fundraising just to squeeze more benefit from the engagement.

It is shocking but research shows that 2/3 of us don’t do enough daily activity to accrue any cadiovascular benefits and that 2/3 of us are over-weight or obese. We have a huge (no pun intended) issue in this country .

The good news is that research and guidelines by the Chief Medical Officer has shown that just by doing 30-60 minutes of activity a day we can reduce many chronic diseases such as cardiovascular diseases (one of the major killers in this country), diabetes, obesity related issues and certain cancers by 50%.

Not only this, but the more active you become the healthier you become in mind as well, you sleep better, you feel more energised, maybe you start connecting better with family and work colleagues.

Through the Activity4Charity programme you can link your wellbeing programme with your CSR activities and raise charity funds into the bargain.

Some stats Activity4Charity published from their last challenge:

• Before the challenge just 34% met the UK government activity guideline (30 minutes/day, 5 days/week). This increased to 83% at the end of the challenge.

• 92% reported the challenge had benefited their personal health and wellbeing

• 63% reported it had improved team relationships or office atmosphere

• 95% said they intended to maintain a higher level of activity after the challenge

If you or your company needs a boost, an inclusive and fun New Year challenge, if you want to get moving, engage in the CSR activities and work together well in teams, then join the Activity4Charity January 2013 challenge – it starts 28th January – and compete with many other companies and teams. Make that difference to 2013…Who’s up for it?

You can find out more from the A4C website www.activity4charity.co.uk or contact the wonderful Seema Bennett by email seema.bennett@mmvsense.com

Alternatively just ask me about it here or by email.

Ridiculously busy is the new normal. Too much to do is the new normal. Managing multiple priority conflicts is the new normal.

‘Everyone with a half-decent job has a job and a half to do’ – Richard Maybury

That’s why it is so important to polish up our priority, workload and email management skills – simply because working a day and a half every day for the rest of our lives simply is not sustainable.

remember: Isolated tips and tricks do not build a sustainable, robust time, workload and results management platform. For proven, practical, sustainable and scalable productivity training Call me on 0044 (0)1428 607763 or get in touch here

Back in September last year I wrote about why the Echo smartpen has replaced my Mont Blanc and how it helped me improve my productivity and work smarter when integrated with my other productivity tools like Microsoft Outlook.  I love the way it is not just about taking notes, it is about where my notes can take me. Well the Echo has just got better!

I always go into meetings with my pen and notebook to capture ideas and commitments. I have worked with smartpads but somehow I just prefer writing on paper and feel that it is more acceptable when I am in client meetings. My Echo means that I don’t have to rewrite my notes into my business management systems.

Well, my favourite note taking combo – my Echo Livescribe pen combined with Evernote has just got even smarter and I’m delighted. Livescribe has announced at 05:00hrs this morning the introduction of the Sky wifi smartpen.

Essentially with the Sky wifi smartpen you don’t have to choose between writing on paper and writing on a tablet – you can have the best of both worlds. Sky is an ideal companion to an iPad or Android tablet. Together they offer the ease, flexibility and precision of writing on paper with the benefits of saving, searching, replaying and sharing on a tablet.

The Sky wifi smartpen is the first digital pen to integrate WiFi technology and cloud services. Sky digitizes everything consumers write and hear and automatically sends it to their personal Evernote accounts, where it is securely stored and readily available to search, play back, organize and share. Perfect for today’s on-the-go world, everyone from busy executives to students can conveniently access their written notes and recorded audio directly from paper, as well as on all the tablets, smartphones and computers they use.

I’m a big fan of Echo Livescribe I can’t wait to start using the Sky wifi.

You can see the new pen at http://www.livescribe.com

I will keep you updated!

Richard

Hi all, you will soon see that Linkedin is rolling out the new Profile building option on a phased, invited basis. In answer to a few questions from a few friends and clients, Yes, key elements of my  current Linkedin Professional Polishing guide are still relevant if you act on them now.

I see this as even more reason to get key elements of your Profile updated and ready for the full roll-out of the new profile page that you will be using some time soon. Do yourself a favour and check out what you need to edit now, in a format that is familiar to you, so that when the new profile editing opportunity hits your home screen, you will be ready to make the most of the opportunity with minimal pain.

What are you doing for lunch on Monday 12th November? How about 30 minutes of practical personal productivity tips  and some best practice Microsoft Outlook  usage right at your desk before you venture out for food? See the booking form below ……

I’m running a free, 30 minute online Executive Briefing  at 12:00  on 12th November, if you are interested in joining me why not register right now before the Briefing fills up.

The aim of this light learning lunch is twofold:

1. To share some powerful, practical productivity tips from one of our proven training programmes, that you can put to work for yourself immediately within your current workload management approaches.
2. To give you an insight into our Working Smarter training programmes, the ones that deliver an average of 68 minutes extra productivity per person per day measured four weeks after the training!

You can book now or call me on 01428 607763 for further information. I will be hosting this through my GoToMeeting account, so you will be able to see and share my desktop. You do not have to sign up to GoToMeeting to join in

Richard

This is a great book. Its been around for a while and has inspired a number of good people to do some great things with their businesses and careers.

My colleague and collaborator, Richard Munden wrote a great bullet point summary (he is the kind of guy who values getting straight to the point) which I know has motivated people to buy the book, digest it and drive specific actions based upon their reflections on it. You can pick it up from the link below.

If this book has been on your business radar but you never made it a priority to read it, I suggest you get on to your favourite book seller right now and grab it.

A lot of the content is congruent with our own management and leadership interventions and it is still on my priority reading list for people I support.

So we are making this short summary available to you with the very strong suggestion that you buy the book and make it a priority to take some management action on what you have read

 Download Richard’s take aways from Jim Collins book Good to Great

There you go, I hope you find this overview useful and that you will want to explore the book further (my own is massively annotated – I always read my business books with a pen in hand!)

I’d love to know what you think of the book and what you think of Richard’s summary. Comment away freely below!

Till next time,

Richard

‘Hell is the daily tsunami of CC emails that I have to manage! Is there a way to automate a response so I don’t have to take any action when I’m triaging them?’

That was the cri de coeur from one of the people on a recent training programme where we were driving best practice workload, email,  prioritisation and critical result management through Microsoft Outlook.

We had already covered a lot of productivity principles, processes and behaviours on managing massive email volumes and conflicting priorities during a busy training day but this was a heartfelt cry and I was asked for an answer.

So here is one further suggestion about automating a response on CC mails.

How to send out an automatic response on all emails where you are in the CC box

After all, in Best Practice email management, CC means ‘this is a ‘carbon copy’ of something I am sending to someone else to take action on and I’m only letting you know about it as a courtesy so you are kept in the communication loop and I don’t expect you to do anything with it specifically’

You can use this approach to do 2 things:

1. Manage the expectation of the person sending you a CC email
2. Remind them about a basic email management principle about CC emails

All it takes is for you to create an Email Rule in Microsoft Outlook to send out the auto response. Here’s how to do it:

In Outlook 2010 go to your inbox and hit ‘Rules’ in your Home ribbon and select ‘Manage Rules and Alerts’
In Outlook 2007 hit the ‘Tools’ menu and select ‘Rules and Alerts’

Under ‘Start from a blank rule’ select ‘Apply rule on messages I receive’ (2010) or ‘Check messages when they arrive’ (2007)
Click ‘Next’
In Step 1 select ‘Where my name is in the CC box’ then ‘Next’
In step 2 select ‘Have the server reply using a specific message’ then – in the lower rule build up box hit the hyperlinked text ‘a specific message’ to give it a value.
You will see a blank email form pops up. Populate it with your preferred subject line. The body text of your mail and your signature for this mail, then hit ‘Save and close’.
You will now see that your subject line is in the lower rule build up box. Great! Hit ‘Next’
You can add exceptions to the rule if you wish – I don’t! So simply click ‘Next’ and then ‘Finish’.

Then next time you are CC’d into an email conversation the sender will get your caring words of wisdom back immediately.
So, there you have it, an additional automation step to add to all our Best Practice high volume email management processes and behaviours.

Obviously there is so much more to the management of high email volumes, competing and conflicting priorities, heavy workloads and tough targets, and still having the energy and enthusiasm to enjoy a fulfilling evening and feel refreshed for the battle next day.

If you want some seriously practical training on workload, email and critical results management you know what to do, don’t you?

Yep, simply get in touch now! Feel free to let me know what you think and what else you do the manage the madness that is email in busy businesses.