• Where’s Ann Michael?– Putting the finishing touches on a major announcement. Stay tuned!
• Feature Article – Are You Cooking at Work?
• Ann Michael Recommends –Top 10 Productivity Tips - click here to receive your complementary copy.

I am a "foodie" by nature. I love to cook, and I love to eat. I jokingly say that I would have a life if I didn't spend so much time in the kitchen! Then again, I enjoy my time in the kitchen so I guess I can't complain.

As crazy as my day may get, dinner time provides a wonderful oasis to pause and refresh. It is a rare occasion when we are not all at the dinner table. Juggling our work schedules and those of two busy teens, it can be a challenge at times. Yet, we make it work. Some nights, dinner is rather early while on other nights it may be late. Either way, we gather around the table, dig in, decompress, and revisit our day. It's not unusual for us to sit at the table for an hour or more getting caught up, sharing stories of the day, or discussing the politics of the moment.

Then of course, there is the added element of food. I combine my knack for simplifying things with dinner time. I regularly cook from scratch yet have learned to spot easy and tasty recipes. Meal prep has become part of family time too. If the teens need a break from studying, they become my sous chef. Or, they stay at the kitchen table doing homework. Either way, we are together. I hope that you find your dinner time as refreshing as we do.

One of the things that I enjoy most about what I do is sharing resources and connecting people. My clients include major corporations and universities, mid-size consumer products/services and manufacturing organizations, micro-businesses, entrepreneurs, and individual professionals. You can imagine the variety that fills my day; it's what I enjoy so much about what I do.

It's not uncommon for me to field questions outside of my area of expertise. If I know of a resource that can provide a solution or a resource that could point someone in the right direction, I gladly share that information. It dawned on me the other day that there may be other readers of Pondering Productivity who may be interested in various topics as well.

In addition to sharing Mise En Place events, look for me to share webinar, teleseminar, radio interviews, and even training events on topics that you may find of interest. Many of the events that I will share are complementary and are with people that I know, trust, and have personally followed for quite some time. Who knows, you may find something interesting!

What's Cooking?

You may not realize it, but the name of my company is a cooking term used by executive chefs. Literally translated it means, "putting or placing in place". In a restaurant setting, it is all of the prep work that is done before the restaurant opens. It's preparing the sauces, slicing and dicing the vegetables or fruit, measuring the portion size for the meat and seafood, making the salad dressings or soups, etc.

If you've ever watched a cooking show on TV you have probably seen where the chef has everything pre-measured in little bowls ready to add when the recipe calls for it. Why do they do this? So that when it comes time to cook the meal, their full attention is on that. They aren't running around the kitchen pulling together ingredients while something is being over cooked on the stove. The chef can stand at the cook-top and with just a few steps to the left or to the right, they can get their hands on the ingredients that they need to successfully plate that meal.

This same principle can be applied to the workplace. It is standard project management. The most successful project is one that has a clear vision of the outcome. In the case of a chef, the desired outcome may be to serve Molasses Glazed Salmon on Mixed Greens with Black Mustard Seed Dressing with a side of grilled Vidalia onions. Now that the menu is set, let's see what ingredients are in-house and what needs to be ordered or in business terms, the Current Assessment. Once all supplies (business translation: resources) are available, the action plan takes shape, breaking the project into manageable segments. So for the meal, the following tasks will need to be assigned: make the glaze, prep the greens, make the vinaigrette, grill the onions, grill the salmon, plate the dish, etc.

Imagine the chaos in the kitchen if all of the prep work isn't done. In the case of the salmon, it needs to marinate in the glaze for 4 hours. If that isn't prepped and ready to go when the order is placed you will not be able to provide the level of customer service that diner is expecting -- since they aren't going to want to wait more than four hours for their dinner! So, let's take a lesson from the kitchen -- find a place for everything, assess what you need to successfully complete the project, and create an action plan with assignments. That's how you get cooking at work!

Oh, and if that salmon dish sounds interesting, click here to get the recipe! It's one of my all time favorites!

Table Headers on Every Page

Have you ever been working in a Word document with a table and when you scroll to the next page, you lose sight of the header row? You then don't know what the meaning of each column is! To make sure your table has a header added automatically on every page, you just need to check one box:

• With your cursor in the header row of the table on the first page, right-click and chose Table Properties
• In the Rows Tab, check the box that says Repeat as Header Row at the top of each page
  

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!