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Archive for the ‘control journal’ Category

A cool timer – Journal feature in Outlook

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

I just wanted to quickly share something that’s been working GREAT for me with keeping focussed while I’m working (and playing) on the computer.

It’s the journal feature in Outlook.

All you do to activate it is click on the green Journal button to open. Then open a new Journal, and click Start Timer. Then the little clock starts ticking.

When I start blogging, for instance, I turn the Journal on and start the timer. The mere fact that that timer is ticking away keeps me on track and focussed.

Since I’ve started using this, I realised, for instance, that I write very quickly but it’s the uploading of photos to blogger that takes all the time

I am getting a lot more done on project work because I know how much time I have allotted to do something, and so I just dive in and get it done.

It also gets rid of the perfectionism monster because I don’t let myself waste time thinking about the perfect word; instead I just write from my heart and hope my readers get what I’m trying to say

And if you’re competitive like me, you can make a game out of it – say, how many emails can you get through in 30 minutes?

Anyway, just thought I’d share.

I know that Suzanne uses the Journal to keep track when she’s on the phone with a customer services rep. Oh my – if I did that yesterday, it would have racked up 48 minutes to Telkom to report the fault on our telephone line!

Does anyone else use the journal and HOW?

WAIT – before you go, please weigh in here too…

I’m of two minds as to whether or not I should participate in the bloggy giveaways thing next week.

Honestly, I don’t know if there’s any real purpose because (I may be wrong) it seems like it’s just a “grab as much as you can” fest

Hey – I love sales as much as the next gal!

But 1) you get a ton of traffic for 2 days and then back to normal 2) most people don’t ship outside the US so I don’t even bother to participate (except in the blog header competitions!) 3) I don’t know if other businesses actually get an increase in sales?

I really would LOVE to know what you think, but especially if you have your own business, then please weigh in (you can stay anonymous if you want

)

For more tips this week, visit Shannon’s Works for me Wednesday blog carnival.

Posted in control journal, keeping focussed, Office paper computer, Outlook, overcoming perfectionism, time management | Comments Off

Tackle it Tuesday

Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007

I decided to join this meme to tackle those things I know I should do, but generally procrastinate on.

So without any further ado, this week I decided to finally start a business control journal. I learned about control journals from Flylady. If you don’t know Flylady, go on over and visit her site.

Anyway, I made a list of all the tasks I want to do in a week and those I need to do every month.

I then broke up the weekly tasks over the different days so that everything is spread out evenly and I don’t get overwhelmed.

When I’d done the monthly tasks, I was on a roll, so I also did a list of 3-monthly, 6-monthly and annual tasks.

Well, my control journal is only 6 pages long (that includes the cover and all the pictures – I have to make it pretty, you know. That’s the fun) but at least I have a working skeleton.

I now want to flesh out each section and add my policies (cancellation, travel, for-free speaking, etc) to it.

And that’s it for now. I felt really good once it was done.

Then I PDF’d it. Now in Adobe, you have a choice to print multiple pages on one sheet of paper. So I selected 6 and it all printed on 1 A4 sheet of paper.

Which I now keep under my to-do list every day so that it’s in my face and I can tick things off as I do them. Lovely!