Flexible Working Environments Benefit All Involved

In today’s world where women are a high percentage of the work force, where they wear diverse hats while juggling their professional life with motherhood and even as caregivers to elderly parents, the concept of flexible working environments is no longer just a matter of convenience – it is expedient. Add to that the “new man” of our late 20th/early 21st century, who regularly shares not only parenting responsibilities, but an equal load of the cooking and household chores, and one can see there are good reasons for this trend toward flexibility in the work place.

One area where we see this is in creative scheduling or Flex-Hours. Flexible hours enable an employee to successfully balance his or her workload with other obligations, such as managing school age children or elderly parents who need assistance. If a company knows its employees’ flexible schedules, it can efficiently manage work assignments in such a way that the work is still properly and efficiently completed within deadline. But what has also been achieved is an environment that reaps the benefits of happy and loyal employees who are function without undue stress. This s the greatest benefit of flexibility in the work place in that it promotes better health and happier employees.

Such a de-stressed work situation even brings financial benefits by way of lower insurance premiums due to fewer health issues. This is backed up by studies that have shown employees who are given choices as to their work schedule or even work location enjoy increased health benefits and are more likely to give attention to their overall health through regular exercise and doctors’ visits, healthy sleep habits, and a decrease in depression and family conflicts.

As mentioned above, location is another area in which flexible working environments bring benefits. In this techy cyber world, it is easier than ever for an employee to work at another location and still be able to complete their work assignments. Working from home allows for the flexibility needed by mothers of young children, a caregiver or perhaps a handicapped employee who finds mobility difficult but is capable and competent in every other way. By using scanning and email, smart phones, Skype and such programs as gotomeeting. com, an employee can set themselves up in their home office and still function as a valuable asset to their company.

Some larger businesses with flexible working environments even offer daycare arrangements so the employee can bring their child or children to work, eliminating one or more extra stops each morning. This frantic morning rush, dropping one child off at the babysitters and another at school can be a major source of stress. A daycarecenter located at the place of employment means one stop in the morning, enabling the worker to start the day feeling calm, collected and ready for work. It also enables them to see their child during their breaks or lunch hour if they choose.

There is a lot of good talent being missed to companies that do not offer flexible working environments for their employees. It is a win-win situation for all involved and a trend that hopefully will become a permanent aspect of 21st century business practices.

Implementing Hot Desking And Making It Work

Hot desking seems like a new concept, but has actually been in practice for the last fifteen years or so.  It is more popular in certain industries than others and with certain types of personalities than others, but it does seem to work if implemented correctly and with full buy in and knowledge of the staff who will be impacted.

Hot desking can save a company money in equipment and overhead because employees are sharing the same desk space and typically are carrying their laptop with them and just need a place to plug in when they sit down.  They will usually have their own cell phone and a dedicated phone number that can be forwarded to them wherever they are working, so there is no need for a landline.

Most companies will have unused desk space at any given time.  This space is created by employees who are out on the road, who are on vacation, in meetings or who are out sick.

Hot desking provides employees more autonomy and empowers them because they are allowed to decide where they want to work.  It can result in quicker decisions, less sick leave and higher productivity.  Working this way results in basically happier, more satisfied employees.  It helps retain what is arguably a company’s greatest asset – its intellectual capital.

With the improvements in technology, everyone is within reach with literally the touch of a button, so it really does not matter where they are working.  One of the challenging issues with this type of system is making employees feel a part of a team when they do get together.  This can be challenging when they have no permanent location to call their work home.

First and foremost, this system should never be implemented without consulting with everyone on the team.  Even though they may all think it is a great idea, if it is implemented without asking them for their input or opinion, they may be resistant to the change, perhaps without even realizing they are.  They are being asked to change their working style, so they should be asked for input before any decisions are made.  Ideally, the system should be designed with the input from the users. These are the people who will have to live and use the system every day.

There should be comprehensive training on how the new system will operate and clear rules for housekeeping, message handling, phones, etc. The new office design will probably require more meeting rooms of various sizes, many if not all of which will need audiovisual capability, too.   There should also be conversation areas with sofas and comfortable chairs for informal meetings and gatherings.   Personal belongings and files can be kept in lockers or personal storage areas.  These should be able to be secured.

Each hot desk needs to be easy to use, with power and data ports that are easy to find.  There should be clear instructions on how to hook up to the network and how to get support if needed.  A supply of stationary and office supplies is nice, too.  Also, there should be information on where the central administration facility is located and other facilities like the gym, cafeteria, etc.

Hot desking can save a company space, overhead, and equipment, but it needs to be implemented with care and forethought so that all employees feel a part of the team, whether they are hot desking or working at a traditional desk.

Seo – Get The Best Results From Your Seo Professional

If you have SEO on your mind and are looking for an SEO professional then it is important to ensure that you get the correct solution, the first time.  Like any service enquiry, you should a) communicate clearly what you need and b) ensure that you understand what services are being offered, and what the expected results are going to be for the price.  In short you should make sure that both parties have the same expectations.  “Website top of Google” is a vague comment to be made by either yourself or your supplier.  “To rank on the first page of the Google search results for [phrase X]” is much better: it is very clear and can form an excellent objectivefor the SEO work about to be undertaken.  But you need to be careful here too: if your potential SEO professional starts making guarantees about Google rankings, then that is not good. Google itself states (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35291) that no one can guarantee rankings in the Google search results.

Identifying the keywords for which you want your website to rank in the Google search results is essential and this list should be agreed by both parties. It is easier to get a website ranking well on Google for more specific, targeted phrases (e.g. “seo sunshine auckland”) than more generic phrases (such as “SEO”).  In addition to this there are a  number of technical aspects about your website that make your website more “friendly” to Google, and easier for your SEO supplier to optimise.  These are things that should be discussed and understood prior to getting started with the search engine optimisation of your website.

Here’s what I recommend you consider and discuss with prospective SEO suppliers, during those crucial discussion stages.

How you can help your SEO Supplier

Do you know what the phrases you need to rank highly on Google for are?  Or do you need your SEO professional  to find this out for you? Your SEO professional will have a number of specialised tools available which allow him or her to research what keyphrases your target market actually uses on search engines to find your services and products.  These phrases often differ from the ones you might intuitively think of, because you are thinking from your own perspective as the seller, you naturally use terminology and jargon related to your industry, and in general it can be difficult for you to really put yourself in the shoes of your potential customer.  However your SEO professional will welcome your thoughts on what keyphrases to start with, and will be able to research and develop a pool of keywords for which you need your website to rank well on Google.  Also look at your competitors and see what keyphrases they use, or are found to be ranking well on Google for, and generate a list.  Provide these lists and ideas to your SEO supplier.

Describe your target market to your SEO Professional .  Who/what are they (demographics) and where are they (geographic targeting)?  This will determine the terminology, grammar and phrases etc to be used on your website and the correct phrases to be included in the SEO  (e.g. “optimised” in UK, Vs “optimized” in US).  It will also help your SEO professional when he or she comes to formally telling Google where to geographically target your website.

Let your SEO professional see your website’s Content Management System (CMS – the area that you login to, to manage your website) so that an assessment can be made as to how SEO (or Google) friendly your website is.  If some crucial SEO requirement is not possible with your current CMS then this is best identified early, and sometimes a rebuild of the website might be recommended at this time.

Where is your website hosted, and who by?   The physical location of the servers upon which your website is hosted can be determined by Google and used to target your website in the country-specific search results (i.e. “pages from [country]”) .  There are a number of other factors that contribute to this, but it is important information that you should give to your SEO professional.  It is also important to ensure that your website is not hosted in a “bad neighbourhood”.  This can be with a webhosting provider or on servers that also hosts poor quality, or dodgy websites such as spam sites, or link farms.  Being associated with these types of website can be detrimental to your success on Google.

What domain names point to your website?  Do you have just the one, or are there several domain names pointed to your website? If there are several domain names for your site and the management of these is not done correctly then Google may impose a penalty against one or more of the domain names. This is because Google of course doesn’t want to be displaying multiple copies of the same website or web pages in the search results (called duplicate content).

Have any Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) activities been undertaken on your website previously?  Importantly have any of those “submit your website to many search engines for cheap/free” – type of things been done for your website by you or anyone else?  These are frowned upon by Google and if penalties have been imposed or the website held back on Google because of them, then that makes your SEO Professional’s job much harder, and results more difficult to achieve.

What you need to ask your SEO supplier

You will want to ensure that you hire an ethical SEO Professional  who will undertake only proper and above board SEO work on your website.  Unethical or bad SEO work, where efforts are made to unnaturally or falsely increase the success of your website on the Google search results, is called “Black Hat” SEO activities and are absolutely frowned upon by Google leading to penalties, or worst-case-scenario, being banned from Google.  This is extremely difficult to recover from and in worst cases the domain name has to be abandoned. Black Hat practices include buying link, participating in link farms, cloaking domain names, making text on your web pages visible to Google only and creating other content for Google only, and not humans.

As with suppliers of any service you should ask your potential SEO supplier for references.  Look for SEO testimonials on their website and check them, and actually ring these clients and verify the success of the work that your potential supplier has done.  Ask your supplier for a list of activities they will undertake as part of the SEO of your website and check that no Black Hat activities are included.  Here’s a quick list.  If in doubt ask me.  If they subscribe to an SEO code of ethics of some sort, then that is desirable as well.

Discussion along these lines between you and your SEO Professional prior to undertaking SEO work can really help to ensure the smooth running of your SEO programme, and the achievement of agreed goals.  Regular progress updates, or questions from your SEO supplier contribute to your understanding of the work achieved and is valuable, as is your considered response to questions and feedback when requested. An effective SEO solution is one where the SEO supplier and the client work together.

Read more about tis at www.webstrategies.co.nz

How Much Is A #1 Ranking On Google Worth To You?

How much is a #1 ranking on Google  worth to your business?  This is a question that should be asked by any website owner or manager – certainly by any website owner or manager that has in interest in SEO and the performance of his or her website.  We could generically answer “a lot”, but it is actually a question we can answer with much more certainty than that.

You can in fact calculate the value (or a very good estimate) of the value to you of a #1 ranking on Google.  That is to say the value to your business of your website ranking at #1 on the Google search results, for your relevant keywords.   We can calculate this value because quite simply Google tells us how many people search using any phrase we nominate for our geographical area of interest (i.e. where our target market is).  From there we know what proportion of people who view a Google search results page click on the #1 result, we can know (or certainly estimate) the ability of our website to convert visitors into leads and we (should) know the value of our sales and our own ability to convert a lead into a sale.

So here’s how it is done:

Get an estimate of number of people using the search term of interest.

That’s easily done using the free Google keyword tool,  https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal .

1. Type in your keyphrase
2. Tick the box for  “Only show ideas closely related to my search terms” .
3. Click on “Advanced filters and options”, which expands out the options.
4. Select your location and languages.
5. Leave the rest of the options as they are for now.
6. Hit “search”

This will produce a set of results.  Look for the phrase of interest from the list and you’ll see over on the right under “ local monthly searches” a number.  This is the average number of searches each month (based on 12 months data) for our keyphrase in our target region.  For example you might see an average of 880 searches per month for your chosen keyphrase.  (Incidentally you’ll also see other keyphrases related to yours with their average search data, so you can in fact select several phrases, total up the number of monthly searches and use that data.)

Now,  http://training.seobook.com/google-ranking-value reports several studies which demonstrate that around 42% of searchers click on the first result of a Google result page. Thus of our 880 searchers per month we could expect potentially 370 to click on the first result and be taken through to our website.  Of course this value will vary depending on how well the “snippet” in the Google search results for that website sells the click.  But that’s 370 visitors to the website from the #1 spot on the Google search results, per month.

The average website converts 2-3% (http://index.fireclick.com) of visitors into leads, thus of our 370 visitors we expect 9 or so leads per month.  That’s phone calls, emails, form submissions etc.  And if you understand your own ability to convert leads into sales then you can forecast your sales from here. If you have a 50% lead to sale conversion rate, then you can expect 4-5 sales per month.  If your average sale is valued at $2000, then you can expect $8000 – $10000 worth of sales per month to be generated from that #1 position on the Google search results for your phrase.

You can of course make this calculation for any phrase, and also use totals and averages as mentioned above to calculate the expected level of sales from a number of relevant keywords under consideration.

How can you use this?

If we use the data provided by Google, an understanding of your website’s ability to convert (conversion rate), along with knowledge of your business then you can make informed decisions regarding your SEO  plans.  You can select which keyphrases you should focus on and estimate the value to your business of getting your website to #1 on Google for those phrases.  For some phrases it will be worth the expense or effort of optimising your website for them, and for some it won’t.  If you factor into your forecasts the cost of doing SEO work yourself or hiring a professional then you can determine if that investment will generate a positive return, and over what period of time.

Source: http://www.websitestrategies.com.au/seo-website-marketing-articles/how-much-is-a-1-ranking-on-google-worth-to-you/

For more go to www.websitestrategies.com.au

Top 10 Reasons To Start A Blog

Blogging is becoming more and more popular every day. Take a look at this list to help you make your decision about blogging.

1. To Express Your Thoughts and Opinions

You have something to say, and blogs provide a place to say it and be heard.

2. To Market or Promote Something

Blogging is a great way to help market or promote yourself or your business, product or service.

3. To Help People

Many blogs are written to help people who may be going through similar situations that the blogger has experienced. Many parenting and health-related blogs are written for this purpose.

4. To Establish Yourself as an Expert

Blogs are wonderful tools to help bloggers establish themselves as experts in a field or topic. For example, if you’re trying to get a job in a specific field or hoping to publish a book on a specific topic, blogging can help legitimise your expertise and expand your online presence and platform.

5. To Connect with People Like You

Blogging brings like-minded people together. Starting a blog can help you find those people and share your opinions and thoughts.

6. To Make a Difference

Many blogs are issue-based meaning the blogger is trying to provide information to sway people’s thinking in a certain direction. Many political blogs and social issues blogs are written by bloggers who are trying to make a difference in their own ways.

7. To Stay Active or Knowledgeable in a Field or Topic

Since successful blogging is partially dependent on posting frequency and providing updated, fresh information, it’s a perfect way to help a blogger stay abreast of the events in a specific field or topic.

8. To Stay Connected with Friends and Family

The world has shrunk since the Internet has become more accessible. Blogs provide a simple way for family and friends to stay connected from different parts of the world by sharing stories, photos, videos and more.

9. To Make Money

It’s important to point out that most bloggers don’t make a lot of money blogging, but the potential does exist to generate revenue from your blog with hard work and commitment. There are many bloggers who bring in big bucks. With patience and practice, you can make money through advertising and other income-generating activities on your blog.

10. To Have Fun and Be Creative

Many people start a blog simply for fun. Perhaps a blogger is a fan of a particular actor or loves knitting and wants to share that passion through a blog. One of the most important keys to successful blogging is having a passion about your blog’s topic, so you can write prolifically about it. Some of the best and most interesting blogs started out as blogs that were written just for fun and to give the blogger a creative outlet.

Source: http://www.worldnz.co.nz/blog/post/top-10-reasons-to-start-a-blog

The guys at Worldnz will be able to help you more with blogging

Activity Based Office Design Encourages Productivity

What do such names as Google, Microsoft, Pixar all have in common? If you answered that they are highly successful companies, you would be right. But more to the point, they all benefit from activity based office design. What does that mean?

These highly visible and innovative companies, among many others, have proven that employee morale, efficiency and higher production are just some of the positive results of well-thought-out office design. Gone are the days of the lonely cubicle where an employee can be less than two feet from his or her coworker but cut off by a barrier that makes interaction impossible. Activity based office design does away with these archaic, impersonal work areas and increase production and the effectiveness of the employees.

How? By creating workspace that encourages interaction and inspires the imagination. These workspaces are open, colorful and well lit. There is a designated area for any given task and shared areas for social interaction. There are spaces with conference type tables equipped with laptops and good lighting — a perfect environment to stimulate the imagination and for creative brainstorming sessions.

Activity based office design has proven itself many times over, particularly for companies that rely on its employees’ creative input for their success , marketing and advertising firms, firms connected with social media and the like. These work areas tend to avoid such dinosaurs as assigned desks or anything that caters to an office hierarchy, if you will. Everybody is thrown together and the result is lots of social interaction and collaboration. In some circles this is referred to as “hotdesking”. Just grab a spot and start brainstorming!

Just using Microsoft as an example of the effectiveness of this activity based office design, we see “teamwork benches”, and “concentration booths” (because sometimes after all that stimulation a person needs a little quiet to allow those creative thoughts to fester and evolve into brilliant ideas!), individual work carousels and work lounges. There are break areas designed to give the mind a genuine break from its thought processes by such diversions as ping-pong or pool, or by wrestling with the dog they’re allowed to bring to work! Yes, it’s a new world out there and, believe it or not, businesses are finding these new innovations highly effective.

Microsoft, for instance, boasts the following positive benefits of their activity based office design:

• A 30% reduction rate in real estate costs
• Increased employee productivity
• Enhanced market reputation
• Employee satisfaction and the ability to attract new talent
• Environmental and health benefits

And that is just to name a few. Employees in these innovative companies are encouraged to mingle and relax in other spaces designed just for that purpose. There are coffee shops, staff cafeterias or dining areas, and my particular favorite sleep pods! You might wonder how that qualifies as activity based office design, but if you think about it, a few minutes of rest can actually enhance the mind’s ability to think and create.

It’s something to think about. If you would like to see some examples of these new office designs, try Google images. It’s hard to argue with success!

What Is Geotechnical Data And Why Is It Useful?

Geotechnical data is on a very basic level the properties of the ground, which includes soil, geology in general, regolith formations and topography. Geotechnical engineering studies the behaviour of the materials in the earth and from there they can generate a map of the earth’s conditions. This is extremely useful in many ways, and is commonly utilised by mining and petrol companies, as well as military and in construction. By performing a geotechnical evaluation, the engineers can map the stability, foundations and possible risks of an area, prior to mining or other industrial processes.

The most common use of geotechnical data  is the creation of a digital geological map. These mapsare primarily used by mining companies and construction firms. The map will provide information that is imperative to the success of mining campaigns and large scale construction. The maps use geotechnical data such as the locations of large dense stones, geologic strata (sedimentary layers), surface exposure, bedding planes, and array of other structural features. This is then compiled into a relatively easy to comprehend map. Simply put, once geotechnical data is compiled into a geologic map, it takes out a majority of the guess work going forwards.

To correctly generate one of these maps, a full geotechnical evaluation must be carried out. First the needs of the client are assessed, then the site is fully investigated. Rock, soil, bedrock and other materials from on and below the site are collected and tested to better understand the area being mapped. From this,potential risks in the area are determined. These most commonly include sinkholes, landslides and debris flows.

Geotechnical data isn’t limited to just a map, you can apply it to many other data styles such as a graph or even a simple spreadsheet. If required, geoscientists can organize, store and interpret your geotechnical data for you. If you have geological data that they did not collect, they can create a map for you using it. Many large organisations and government bodies still hold all of their geotechnical data in a physical form, so now the job of many geoscientists is to interpret all of this loose data and apply it to a digital form.

Orrbodies is one of the leading companies in Geotechnical services . It was started by two geologists (Tom and Lisa Orr) in 1998. They have worked in the Mining and Exploration Industries in numerous countries and have greenfields, oil, gas, gold and mining exploration experience. The Orrbodiescompany offers their services to a wide range of industries, and have also recently begun to offer their services for free with local environmental projects. The core work that they offer includes the compilation of hardcopy data into digital databases or into geological maps, the processing of geochemical data, and prospectivity mapping.

Geotechnical data has become an integral part of the mining and construction industries as well as many others. Whether their job is to perform a geological evaluation and create a map, to interpret existing data or just to compile hardcopy data into a digital form, without geotechnical professionals such as Tom and Lisa Orr, many industries would suffer. So if you believe your company would make use of geotechnical data, or have data that needs interpreting or compiling,contact Orrbodies for all your needs.

It’s Piling Up!

“I can’t see the wood for the trees!” is a phrase we PEP consultants often hear when starting a Day 1 with a new PEP group.

As we see in our line of work, many participants of the PEP course are almost drowning in backlogs and unfinished work. When we ask them where we as PEP consultants are most likely to help them to improve their efficiency, this is a key subject named. They regularly complain about not being able to sort the old mail in their inboxes or thoroughly read or finish the sometimes long-overdue tasks which result from these mails. This, of course, causes a lot of stress for the participants and leads them into almost instant procrastination.

Tasks and mail do not just pile up in thee electronic (Outlook, Groupwise etc) inboxes of these participants.  Even their physical inbox (by which I mean their “To-Do” shelf or in-tray) is often stuffed to the brim with unfinished work which should have been handled some time ago. Imagine a desk filled with piles of paper and loose notes. It’s not a pretty sight and it’s certainly distracting!

The workplace stress stress these backlogs create can generally be problematic for the participant, because the person will always be looking at these piles (whether they are physical or electronic) while not really knowing how to deal with them. But there are ways to improve this!

Solution:

This causes a lot of stress, since you are continually looking at the huge amount of work that still needs to be done while remaining aware of the new tasks that also have to be achieved.

With our PEP Efficiency Survey we have tabulated the results from 4000 PEP participants and can now conclude without a doubt that backlogs are a major cause of stress.

The method of dealing with these backlogs is: planning, discipline and creating a routine. As you do not want the backlog to grow further, you need to develop efficient work habits.

You need to approach this in two ways:

Routinely schedule time for decreasing the backlog and

Develop efficient working habits and routines so that you do not create a new backlog.

Now for tackling the backlog. If you have the opportunity to work from home one day a week, then “Just Do It”. Actually plan a block of time in your calendar, preferably first thing in the morning. Make sure that you don’t first look for and open any newly arrived email!

Start with the oldest item and don’t move on to the next until you’ve finished it. Now make a clear decision using the 4 D’s:

• If you can finish it within 10 minutes then DO IT NOW!
• If it will take longer than 10 minutes, DESIGNATE IT! Plan a specific time for it in your calendar.
• If you don’t need it or know where you can find it, DELETE IT!
• When someone else can or should do it then DELEGATE IT NOW!
• In this way you systematically get rid of the work that has been waiting to be done and your inbox will be clean and manageable again.

Keep this planning active, making sure the documents, mails and to-do tasks don’t start to pile up again. Make the discipline a routine and keep it organised.

Professional Time Managers Tips To Improve Your Efficiency

If we believe all the surveys, most of us who sit in open-plan offices get interrupted every 11 minutes (and take double that time to re-focus), spend half our days going through the inbox, respond to a new email within an hour of receiving it, all of which is done while responding to instant messaging media, phone calls and meetings.

It was fascinating to see what a core of professional time-management coaches gave you as their top tip to improve your efficiency in 2013.

The tip was basically to ‘stop multi-tasking’.

If we believe all the surveys, most of us who sit in open-plan offices get interrupted every 11 minutes (and take double that time to re-focus), spend half our days going through the inbox, respond to a new email within an hour of receiving it, all of which is done while responding to instant messaging media, phone calls and meetings.

Most of us believe we need to multi-task just to stay afloat.

But we don’t always feel good about it. In fact, Dr Glenn Wilson of King’s College, London, tested 1,100 office workers and found that many of them, after experiencing the regime described above, lost 10 points from their IQ at the end of a day. And the feeling you’re left with is that you’ve missed a night’s sleep.

Sadly, the time-managers got it right. In recent years many independent psychologists have discovered that the great art of multi-tasking is actually bad for us.

It’s a difficult one because multi-taskers believe they’re getting better at what they do. (They simply get better at ‘switching’ between things. Their ability to concentrate and to produce a quality output really suffers.)

The multi-taskers themselves believe their biggest problem is: ‘a lack of team communication and unclear objectives’ (Microsoft Office Productivity Challenge).

The time-managers who set out to fix them advised them to stop-multi-tasking.

Solution

Along with its inevitable interruptions, multi-tasking causes adverse psychological and physiological effects, according to the research we mentioned. So why do we do it? Probably, on the surface at least, multi-tasking seems to be a solution to the everyday problems of unclear objectives and confused priorities.

What has also come to light in recent years is that the brain actually uses up a huge amount of energy (glucose) just in the act of trying to prioritise. It’s part of the reason most of us find prioritising one of the toughest things to do.

How many people do you know who come into work first thing in the morning and immediately open their email – and spend the rest of their day with their email open, reading every email that comes in – no matter what else they’re in the middle of?

When we ask people ‘How many of the emails you receive are to do with your own priorities?’, we’ve had answers as low as 20%. Yet people sit, waiting for the next email interruption even though they’re 80% certain it will not be a priority they should immediately attend to. (Did you know 39% of email is sent to people sitting less than 100 metres away?) When we ask ‘Why do you do it?’, the answer is often simply ‘habit’.

We’ve noticed that two activities can have an amazing effect on people’s energy, focus and ability to prioritise.

1. One is to NOT open email for the first hour of the morning. (Whether you believe you should or shouldn’t do it, it’s helpful to know that reading email uses up a lot of your available ‘prioritising’ energy – energy of which you have a limited daily supply.) Simply work on your existing priority items as the first thing you do.

2. The second is to only work through your email in batches of half an hour or so per sitting. Decide to open, receive and process your email only at these set times during a day. Your type of job would dictate whether it’s twice or three or four ‘batches’ (or more) a day. But the point is to close your email and then focus on completing what you have decided are your key priorities. Only process emails during the set batch times you’ve chosen.

In both cases we’ve found people’s completion rates soar, along with the good feeling of a more rewarding day.

We’ve mentioned only two activities. We’d be pleased to hear of others that work as well.

Choosing the Right Time Management Courses

There is no doubt that issues with time management affect our productivity. Whether you are an individual or a company, using your time effectively will help you in achieving your goals. The process of learning time management is not an easy task. Some of the habits that we have involving how we manage our time have taken years to develop. Therefore, to be able to get rid of them we need to give ourselves time and an opportunity to learn. Most people choose to get time management courses to assist them with how to effectively manage their time. There are professionals who have designed courses that tackle issues related to time management. It is important to think about certain things when choosing these time management courses.

The first thing that you need to think about when choosing time management courses is the purpose of the course. People deal with different issues when it comes to time management. It is important to check whether the course is designed to deal with the issues that you have. You should also ensure that by looking at the outline of the course, you can see how the course will be able to help you. There is no need to spend money on a course that does not contain the curriculum that you need. Most time management courses will offer an outline of their curriculum. This will help you see whether the course is offering what you need.

The style of learning is also crucial when it comes to time management courses. Each of us has a style of learning that suits them. When choosing these courses, you need to go for a course that uses the style of learning that you will enjoy. The style of learning also determines whether you will actually draw lessons from the course. Participation will help you learn and you can only participate when the right style of learning is used. The duration of the courses is also vital when choosing the course. Most people cannot commit to a course that will last a long time. Therefore, choose a course that lasts for a period that you find comfortable. There are online courses that you can do at your own convenience if you find that going to class is not easy for you.

Finally, you need to consider the cost of the time management courses. How much are you willing to spend on the course? Choose a course that is within your budget. You can compare prices from different companies to see which company offers the best offer. It is important when checking the cost to ensure that you get value for your money. Do not compromise on the quality of the course to save on cost. You can also check on discounts that are on offer for you to save money. Most of the time, there are discounts for groups that choose to do these courses as a team. Going for these courses can cause positive change in both an individual and a team.