Staying Organized in These Chaotic TimesWritten by Ron Sathoff
In Terry Gilliam Film, BRAZIL, there is a fantasy sequence where Robert De Niro is enveloped by a swirling cloud of papers and memos. Some days, as I look around my office, I know exactly how he felt!In this age of information, it is really easy to get bogged down by all little bits of paper that seem to infest an office, whether it's a corner suite in a downtown skyscraper or just your kitchen table. If you use a computer, it can be even worse -- you could end up with hundreds of files that are hard to identify and impossible to locate. If you don't take steps to organize your information, all of this "information clutter" could cause you to lose valuable time as you try to find what you actually need. Even worse, you could lose business by losing that key piece of information you need to make sale. Here are just a few simple pointers on how to be more organized as you try to run your business: 1) Folders, Folders, Folders: A good filing system, used religiously, is best way to avoid "clutters." Whenever you start a new project, label a folder to hold information. Then, whenever you receive something that pertains to project, make sure to file it as soon as possible. Make sure to mark and organize your folders -- A good system is to just have a place to keep your past folders and a place (easily within reach) to keep folders that you are currently using. You should use this same system on your computer. Create a folder for each project and keep everything you need right there. The nice thing about a computer is that if you have a file that pertains to more than one folder, you can just copy it and have a copy of it in each folder. 2) Use Your E-Mailboxes: This is similar to advice above. I don't know how many times I've seen people who only use three mailboxes in their email program: In, Out, and Trash. These people have about 1000 emails in their In box, and have a devil of a time finding a past email when they need it. You can avoid this by simply creating new mailboxes, which are basically just like email folders.
| | Why Change?Written by Robert Brents
Why are most people tired at end of their workday? Not because they've had to do so much physically demanding work. Most jobs are not physically tiring. Running down a Mastodon -- that's tiring. In an "information" economy, most people's jobs are not hard physically. I had an inside sales job where I was on my feet much of day and, yes, at end of day my feet hurt. But I still went to gym after work at least three or four times a week. The reason most people are tired at end of average workday is because they are bored to death. They are bored! If you've ever had a job -- and some of you have one right now -- where you were bored most of time, you know, your job is a series of stupid emails, and pointless, interminable meetings (and if you haven't had a job like this yet, you probably will). Being bored is exhausting. People come home at end of day from jobs like this exhausted. They can barely lift fork to get food into their mouth. No wonder television is so popular -- programming is crappy, stupid, ridiculous, and insulting, but it's not boring. It's at least better than being bored. So business as usual is boring. Change is not boring. Changing is hard. Changing is work. Until you get train rolling. Think about a train in station, just leaving, just getting underway. What happens? Does it start off BOOM 70 miles an hour? Of course not. It starts off very slowly. At first, train's motion is barely perceptible. (Have you ever had experience, in a train or a car, where someone outside walks or drives by in opposite direction and makes you feel like you're moving when you're not?) It's hard to get something as big as a train moving. How much does your average 100-car freight train weigh? A lot. To get that mass moving at all takes a huge investment of energy. But you know what? Once it's moving, that huge mass moving at a high speed, it has acquired momentum. The Queen Mary, ocean liner, takes seven miles to stop. So if you're coming in to dock, you're not thinking about stopping when you enter port. You'd better be thinking about it much earlier. Way way out to sea, like seven miles out. (Captain: "I'm going to have to stop way over there, but I'd better start thinking about it NOW.")
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