Managing Purpose & Priorities with Richard Maybury
Now is probably a good time to future proof ourselves and investigate how we can work smarter and get our purpose and priority management in alignment. With the summer season upon us there might just be enough time to take our eye of fighting the alligators and take a little time to clear the swamp. And it is becoming critical for many of us, whether we know it or not! Here’s why…. How future proof are you?
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It doesn’t matter if you have got too much business to cope with at the moment or if you are working hard to bring more in; the ruthless reality for most people right now is that it takes an awful lot more work to achieve the results we were used to pre crunch. Most of us are under pressure. Read more on how to avoid Just To Late decisions
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Many people are annoyed with the fact that their Microsoft Outlook programme, running in Windows 7 will no longer allow a single click access to email attachments and the ‘Opening Mail Attachment’ dialog box has the option ‘Always ask before opening this type of file’ greyed out and unable to be disabled. An important element of Best Practice Time management is ‘Continuous Process Improvement’ which allows us to be more efficient and effective. So, here’s how to disable this element of Windows 7 User Access Control for once and for all. Permanently remove the annoying Outlook ‘Open or Save’ dialog box
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As we manage demanding workloads, juggle multiple projects and manage competing priorities, email is always near the top of the list of productivity challenges that most of us face every day. Whilst it can be a productivity enabler, it is more often cited as the biggest contributor to information overload and the insidious destroyer of our focus and energy. And the biggest challenge to our Time Management efforts. Even renowned and respected leaders of major corporations – including some of the biggest people in the IT world, as you will see - admit to its impact on their own focus and performance. Read more on email overload
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Some words of encouragement for you, if your race towards your goals in the first half of the year did not go as well as you had hoped.
You might know someone who could use this to re-energise themselves and redouble their efforts for the times ahead, if so feel free to pass it on.
”Quit, give up, you’re beaten” They shout at me and plead
“There’s just too much against you This time you can’t succeed”.
And as I start to hang my head in front of failure’s face,
my downward fall is broken by the memory of a race. read more of ‘The Race’
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It is so difficult to be proactive when most of the default settings in Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes and other productivity tools reinforce and reward reactive behaviours. This is unfortunate because, as proactive people, we want to work smarter with Outlook, Notes or whatever tools we have in front of us.
This demands that we must move away from the Pavlovian stimuli of alarms, alerts and flags as important elements in our decision making, no matter how appealing and ‘helpful’ they may appear on the surface. This, then, means that we have to reinforce and reward our proactive behaviours of defining purpose, planning, focusing, discerning and doing what we decided to do – even when the inbox, the voicemail, the IM, the ‘social media’ channels are all pulling us in another direction. Proactive versus Pavlovian working
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When helping people to work smarter on their conflicting priorities, I usually help them to work smarter with their office software and smartphones as well. After all, most of their communications and commitments flow through these tools. Here’s an Outlook Calendar productivity tip that has proved very popular recently. Outlook Calendar tip – Overlay Mode
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If you are involved in any way with people management and would welcome an early morning coffee in Guildford with like minded individuals on Wednesday 14th July any time from 07:15 to 08:59, without booking costs, read on…. [click to continue…]
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Good priority management is all about being cristal clear on our purpose, being committed to our goals, knowing what commitments are already in our trusted inventory of current commitments (much more than a to-do list), and having a process to manage this with ease on a day-to-day basis. In the same way that our Inbox, Calendar, Tasks and Contacts must be purposeful, so too must our desk and physical work environment be. [click to continue…]
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So, part of your priority management strategy over the next month or so is not to miss any critical World Cup matches. Here is a link to a great Microsoft Excel file that will place all the fixtures into your Microsoft Outlook calendar for you in one click.You can use it to plan your workload vs Football priorities either in your main Outlook calendar or a separate World Cup Calendar subfolder. Either way, you will see your matches alongside your other priority calendar commitments which you can sync with your Blackberry or phone. [click to continue…]
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