Business success comes from strategy, leadership, management and marketing. But the tips that seem to whet appetites most are those on more prosaic issues, like how to handle e-mail better or save time with neat, free software. Here's a review of some of the best tips on these matters from the past year:
E-MAIL EFFECTIVENESS
- When an e-mail arrives requiring action from you that will take more than two minutes, write the first step you intend to take on the subject line at the top of the e-mail. Then transfer it to another file, labelled @action so it rises to the top of your Outlook folders. The message now won't clog your inbox and you can return to it when you have sufficient time. The David Allen Co.
- When you are sending an e-mail, the normal order is to type the name of the recipients, add a subject line, write the body of the message, and attach files. Reverse that: Attach the files first, so you don't forget. Then write the body of the message, indicating the action the recipient should take on the attachment. Then write the subject, a condensed version of the message. Now, with no chance of accidentally sending the message during that process, you can add the recipients. The message will be more focused and organized through that reversal, and you won't, to your embarrassment, see it zing off without a crucial attachment. Everyjoe.com
- Here's another nifty way to not mess up on an attachment: If you put your cursor on a file name you want to attach and press Ctrl+C to copy, and then move to Microsoft Outlook and press Ctrl+V, a new e-mail will open with that file attached. To get material into your Outlook e-mail that isn't intended as an attachment but as a paste, press Ctrl+V when there is no e-mail open; it will automatically open a new e-mail and paste in whatever you recently copied and stored in your clipboard. Tech-recipes.com
- Make your e-mail subject lines say what you want done - and by when. For example: Please print, sign and return the contract by Jan. 6. Jason Womack newsletter
- Know when not to write e-mail. Commit to a daily 10-minute meeting or phone call with your main e-mail correspondents. Focus on non-urgent items that might have gone into e-mails. You'll be amazed at how many messages you can pre-empt. TimeBack Management blog
PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS AND TRICKS
- FileBox eXtender, a shareware download (http://www.hyperionics.com), gives you two handy icons on the top of every Open or Save dialogue box. One lists recently opened folders, making them easier to access. On the other, you can list favourite folders to save time. It also allows you to "pin" a window to your desktop, keeping it visible while you are working in another window - so a Web page can be open, say, while you write a report in Word. Techbite newsletter
- RescueTime is a software tool (free for individuals, licensed for organizations) that will analyze how you spend your computer time every day. Abhijeet Mukherjee, Dumb Little Man
- To quickly adjust column width to the largest item in Microsoft Excel, select the columns you want to adjust (it must be more than one, even if only one really needs to be changed) and then double click on the "column separator" - the thin line between the two columns at the very top of the spreadsheet column. Lifehacker.com
- The copy-paste tool offered freely at copypastetool.com allows you to go beyond the most recently copied item in pasting. You use Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V as usual to copy and paste, but to paste previous text saved in your clipboard, simply press V again (and again, if necessary) without releasing Ctrl.
- Neat Net Tricks You can turn selected text to all capitals or back in Microsoft Word using Ctrl+Shift+A. Allen Wyatt's WordTips
- If you can't find your computer mouse pointer at times, open the Mouse Control Panel applet, choose the Pointer Options tab, and check "Show location of pointer when I press the Ctrl key." Flashing circles will now surround it after pressing Ctrl. CNET Workers' Edge
ORGANIZING YOURSELF
