• Where’s Ann Michael?–Booking speaking engagements! Thank you to the many Pondering Productivity readers who shared ideas and contacts whom they thought would be interested in having a guest speaker on productivity. As I firm up dates, I will be sure to’ll let you know where I will be!
• Feature Article – Life if Full of Hiccups
• Ann Michael Recommends –Taking advantage of 25% discount on the Mise En Place Managing E-mail course. Invest 75 minutes of your time and get control of your email. It’s an online course that you can take any time, from any pc and you can return to it as often as you like for future reference. Enter WINTER2010 to get your discount. More details are below.
  

Whether you call them bumps in the road, an unexpected event or you have the feeling that the world is out to get you, life is full of hiccups. Take last week for example. I was fighting a cold and when I got out of bed I felt like I was moving in slow motion, just not functioning very well -- I was in a fog. Fortunately my husband was able to deal with the morning routine and I toddled back to bed for a few more hours of sleep.

Once in the office, I received an e-mail from one of my team members saying that her uncle had been admitted to hospice. She wanted to let me know that she would be taking some time off in the next two weeks to head out of town to say goodbye and be with family. Then, three minutes later I received an e-mail from my assistant (she works virtually) saying that her 44 year old brother-in-law had been rushed to the hospital during the middle of the night with apparent heart issues.

The ripple effect of these hiccups is astounding. Juggling the children, the spouse's job and commitments, other family members, making flight reservations... the list goes on and on. It's bad enough that life has hiccups, add work to the equation and, wow, can you feel your heart sinking? Imagine the three of us, working in your department... and suddenly we are absent. How would that impact your organization? Could you handle those hiccups?

“I didn’t get anything done today…I dealt with e-mails all day”

How many times have you looked at the clock only to discover that the day is over and you’ve said this to yourself? Don’t you think that it’s time to end your frustration with your overloaded inbox? Take advantage of our mid-winter special and invest seventy five minutes—that’s right, just seventy five minutes of your time. The Managing E-mail course in the Mise En Place Productivity Library is a 75-minute, 2-part video that will walk you through a strategy for getting your e-mail under control. The program comes with course notes, a 22 page "how to guide" with step-by-step instructions for everything that you see in the video and a Next Step Guide to walk you through getting your own inbox under control.

You can take this course whenever you would like. It is online and available 24/7; so during office hours, early morning, evening or even the weekend -- whenever it is convenient for you (Although I do advocate taking time off from work, I do recognize that often times the only time to take a course such as this, if off hours.) Enter coupon code WINTER2010 to receive your discount. Offer ends March 31, 2010. Sign up today.

• The 3 T’s of Getting More Done in Less Time. Tips, Tools, and Techniques to get you out of the office and home in time for dinner.
  
• Oh! I’ve Always Wondered How You Do That. Tips and tricks for using Word, Excel, PowerPoint, the Web, and more
  
• I Want it All in One Place! How many times have you said that? Explore how technique and technology come together to accomplish just that…everything at your fingertips! In addition to conducting these sessions in person, webinar options are also available. Interested? Contact me so that we can coordinate schedules.
  

Life is Full of Hiccups

Think about when a colleague has been out of the office due to one of life's hiccups, and you've needed some information that they have. It could be a file, some contact information or an electronic document. Do you venture forth into their office in search of it? Or, do you call them and add to their stress of the moment? Do you wait and put things on hold? Or maybe you take the time to re-create the information you need?

None of these options sound very productive. Yet, they are a wonderful example of the need to create a finding system. Yes, a finding system, not a filing system. A client once said to me, "I don't have a problem filing; I'm really good at it. The problem is that I can never find it once I file it, so I keep everything out so that I can see it!"

A finding system is a combination of methodology and technology. The methodology helps you accommodate how you think about the information that you use. How many times have you looked at a document and thought of 4 or 5 different ways that you could file it? You get stymied and end up stacking it. Does the same thing happen when you go to name a Word or Excel document? Not with a finding system.

Add technology to this, and you end up creating your own easy to search, easy to find, easy to use private library. In addition to being able to use this methodology and technology combination for your paper files you can also integrate your Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations and more. Imagine being able to do a Google-like search for just about all of your information. Pulling everything together in one place and being able to find it on demand is incredibly powerful, not to mention highly productive. Wouldn’t that help when life’s hiccups come your way?

Curious? I hope so! Mark your calendar for March 18th at 1:00 (EST) for our complementary teleclass on the Say Goodbye to Your Filing System - 7 Tips for Creating an Effective Finding System. Click here to reserve your spot, and we’ll get the details to you. Remember, it’s complementary, so come and learn with no obligation! I’ll be recording the teleclass so even if you can’t make it, please register so that we can send you the link to the recording. See you then!

Sorting Tables

1. Highlight what you want to sort. Be sure it’s either 1) the entire table or 2) all the rows and columns that have data in them.
2. You may include the header row if you like. Sometimes it’s easier to do that so you will have "names" of columns to sort by instead of column letters.
3. Click on Table in the menu at the top of the screen.
4. Choose Sort.
   

Choose a column by the heading name. Decide if you want the sort to be ascending (a to z) or descending (z to a).

Ann Michael Henry is the Founder and The Productivity Chef for Mise En Place -- an organization and productivity consulting firm devoted to working with clients to discover the right ingredients for managing e-mail, digital data, paper, and workload so that they can "get cooking" at work and still have time to satisfy their appetite for life.

Her personal philosophy...let's get the work done so that we can go out and play is what motivates Ann Michael. If you liked today's issue, you'll love Ann Michael’s productivity tools, products, and training designed to help you improve your focus, organization, and productivity at work so that you have time to experience all that life has to offer.

Having the right ingredients – tips, tools, and proven techniques – to accommodate an individual's work style is what makes the difference. This is where Ann Michael thrives! Her ultimate goal is to find the recipe that works for you!