Maybe stories are just data with a soul.
~ Brené Brown
Are you using stories to make your data more attractive and effective?
You crank up your computer every morning, click to your e-mail and--whap!--a slew of messages demands attention.
E-mail can be a great tool, but many misuse it, turning what should be quick, easy communication into a laborious, time-consuming management chore.
"Many people use the inbox as a to-do list, calendar and filing system," says Mark Hurst president and founder of Creative Good, a consulting firm in New York. "File some messages and delete most of them, but without a doubt, don't let anything stay in your inbox permanently."
Hurst says effective e-mail management is built on filters, filing and ruthless use of the delete key.
He offers this distinction to better define the problem: The number of new messages received each day is "volume" while the number of e-mails sitting in the inbox is "message count." The second is the key measure of effective e-mail management.
"A user who gets 100 messages a day may not be overloaded at all if the message count is low," Hurst says. "Conversely, a user who gets ten e-mails a day may be overloaded."
If the number of messages stacked in the inbox becomes too large and difficult to manage, you're overloaded. The e-mail system then becomes a black hole rather than a productivity tool and your output will suffer.
"If overload is the problem, then removing the load is the solution," Hurst says in a special report, "Managing Incoming E-mail." "Here's how to manage incoming e-mail: Keep the inbox empty--clear out incoming e-mails before they pile up or you lose your ability to manage them effectively."
But there's just one catch and, unlike catch-22, it's not the least bit philosophical.
"It may be a simple solution, but it's not easy," Hurst says. "Achieving simplicity--or emptiness, in this case--takes time and continued improvement. It's difficult but better than drowning in e-mails and becoming less effective. Only an empty inbox will allow users to take full advantage of the benefits of e-mail."
The first step is deleting all spam. Never reply to spam because the spammer will know your e-mail address is active and sell it to others at a premium. The result: more spam.
Next, read all personal e-mail from friends or family and save selected messages as needed elsewhere on your computer or print out important notes. It might be a good idea to check your personal e-mail account at work and use it to chitchat and exchange goofball jokes with your lunatic friends while reserving your company account for (gasp) work-related items. Admit it: This would sharply reduce the volume of incoming mail on the company e-mail system.
Hurst says messages should be sorted by date with the oldest message at the top of the list. Each message should be opened and the appropriate action--filing or deletion-- should be taken quickly. This will prevent the accumulation of a 500-message stack in your inbox.
Hurst says newsletters should be read or scanned quickly, but never filed because then you'll have two cluttering up your inbox when the next arrives. FYIs, or non-actionable information such as an answer to a question or notification of an event, should be read quickly, filed if necessary and deleted as soon as possible.
Hurst urges use of the "two-minute rule" for to-dos. If the task outlined in the e-mail takes two minutes or less to complete, even if it means getting out of your chair, do it immediately and delete the message.
If you're way behind in managing your e-mail, Hurst recommends a ruthless cleaning out of the clutter in the inbox to allow users to manage e-mail effectively with just a few minutes work each day. It may take several whacks to get through all the old junk, but once it's cleaned out, it's done and future management of the inbox can be handled in just a few minutes each day.
E-mail arrives throughout the day so it's impossible to keep the inbox empty at all times. Hurst recommends dealing with e-mails as soon as possible after each arrives or setting aside a few minutes several times a day to complete the task.
"Users shouldn't let an inbox go more than one business day without emptying," he says.
Filters will screen out most of the junk. For starters, Hurst recommends setting up your filter to accept mail from everyone in your address book. Suspected spam, including any e-mail containing viruses or unknown attachments, gets sent to purgatory--a folder for suspected junk mail from unknown senders. Any e-mail with three or more consecutive exclamation points gets zapped. Set the filter to automatically delete any e-mail containing raunchy words you'd expect to find in sexually explicit spam.
Have the filter kill any e-mail with "adv" in the message line. Expand the list of subject lines to kill starting with obvious pitches such as "Free Long Distance," "Find background info about anyone," "Quit Smoking" and "Be your own boss." Compiling the list requires some thought because many spam subject lines appear in legitimate e-mail such as free, mortgage, university, diploma and life insurance.
Software will thin the thundering herd of spam seeking to graze and fatten your inbox, but it's not the final, or best, way to manage e-mail.
"'Delete' is one keystroke," Hurst says. "I don't know what's easier than that."
Article written by Scott Reeves© Forbes.com Inc.™
Anne Rivers Siddons
Every August, four women would gather together to spend a week at the beach, renting a new house each year. But when one of the Girls dies tragically, the group slowly drifts apart and their vacations together are brought to a halt. Years later, they decide to come together once again and make startling discoveries that will change them in ways they never expected. => http://bit.ly/15u2DJe
...the basic difference between an ordinary man and a Warrior is that a Warrior takes everything as a challenge ~ whereas an ordinary man takes everything as a curse or a blessing
--don juan
The clothes you wear when you present ... what do they say about you? Yes I know we shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but we do. Everyone does. Audiences do. So what do your clothes say about you? Is that the message you wanted them to convey? The message the audience gets from your clothes needs to support the impact you want to make.
On the other hand, are your clothes making their own statement? Do they stand out so much that they are more interesting than your words or message?
Consider the thought that you are respecting your audience if you dress at least at their level and perhaps a level above.
When I travel, my daily agenda is always full.
I don't get up late, linger over breakfast, and then start meandering down one country road after another, just to see where they might lead. I'm up early, ready to cram as much into each day as I possibly can. I know exactly where I want to go and, map in hand, I know how to get there.
Come to think of it, that's also how I approach life. I can't just let life happen to me. I need a road map that shows me how to get from where I am now to where I want to be in the future. Of course, if I want to be successful, I can't just leave the roadmap in the glove box. I have to follow it. Diligently.
In our series about travelling through life, we've already talked about travelling light (getting rid of excess emotional baggage and keeping "short accounts") and taking someone with you. Today, my travelling tip is to follow the roadmap. In life, a roadmap is akin to a game plan—a carefully thought-out strategy for achieving success. My game plan probably doesn't look exactly like yours, because my definition of success might be different from yours. But the fact that we might be following slightly different roadmaps doesn't negate the wisdom of using one in the first place. As the saying goes, if you aim at nothing, you're likely to get it.
Regardless of our position and station in life, following the roadmap means:
1. Knowing where you are at this moment. How can you know where you are at this moment? The key word is reflection.
2. Knowing where you want to go. For me, success is knowing my purpose in life, growing to my maximum potential and sowing seeds that benefit others. That's where I want to go.
3. Understanding that life happens between where you are at this moment and where you want to go, and that it's the "between where you are and where you want to go" that causes people to miss life. Some people have what I call "destination disease." They live life thinking, "When I get promoted, I'll be fulfilled" or, "When I get married, I'll be happy" or "If I could just meet that person, I'll be on my way." It's good to plan for the days ahead, but if you're basing all your hopes for fulfilment on some future event, you're actually missing out on the essence of life itself. As John Lennon once wisely observed, "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans."
When it comes to travelling through life, I can't over-emphasize the importance of following the roadmap. But it's also crucial to note that, even if you're following the best map ever made, you'll most likely have to stop and ask for directions from time to time. I'm well aware that this practice is excruciatingly difficult for some of us. And we just might be stubborn and persistent enough to avoid doing it, at least when we're driving somewhere in a car. But in the journey we call life, people who refuse to stop and ask for directions aren't stubborn or persistent; they're foolish.
Unfortunately, an unwillingness to seek advice is all too common among businesspeople today. In The Corporate Steeplechase, New York social psychologist Srully Blotnick says that career men and women in their twenties tend to be ashamed to ask questions, and in their thirties, the desire to be individualistic makes it difficult for them to counsel with colleagues. The value of advice becomes clear only with maturity, he writes.
That's so true. As philosopher John Collins has noted, "To profit from good advice requires more wisdom than to give it." That said, people often make the mistake of following advice without carefully evaluating it first. To avoid this common error, ask yourself the following questions when appraising the validity of any piece of advice:
1. How credible is the source?
2. Am I getting the same advice from different people?
3. Have I made allowances for any biases, pro or con, an advice giver may have?
4. Have I talked with more than one person so I have a basis for judging the advice?
5. Am I in an emotional state to act wisely on this advice?
6. What is the ratio between the potential cost of acting on the advice and the potential benefit that it may hold?
Taking the time to stop and ask for directions might seem like a big hassle when you're busy with the daily stuff of life. And to some, sticking to a roadmap might seem unnecessarily restrictive. But as one traveller to another, I encourage you to make both a priority. Otherwise, you just might end up on a fast road to nowhere.
I don't think I've mentioned this before. So if you have been hiding under a rock for the last year or so and have missed this - it's a great read - Jobs and Gallo are both speakers we can all model....
The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs
Carmine Gallo
"The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs reveals the operating system behind any great presentation and provides you with a quick-start guide to design your own passionate interfaces with your audiences." Cliff Atkinson, author of Beyond Bullet Points and The Activist Audience => http://bit.ly/14Kp90g
