December is a time when many of us enjoy more time with family, and we use some of our precious vacation time. You know I love checklists, and I found keeping an out of office checklist that I referenced each time I took time off really helped me to have peace of mind when I finally turned on that out of office assistant and left the office.
Read MoreIf you’re anything like me and you buy holiday gifts throughout the year based on when they are the least expensive, then I highly suggest saving your holiday gift list to keep track of everything.
Read MoreI like to decorate my house for holidays. Easter, Halloween, and Christmas are times when I love to transform our home with decorations to commemorate the season. Not so long ago, I realized I have a secret weapon that can help me save a lot of time when decorating…pictures.
Read MoreIt’s Thanksgiving Week! I love Thanksgiving and its emphasis on gratitude. Gratitude is such a powerful player in my life. It helps me to more readily see the good in the world and simultaneously be able to deal with the difficult. Each year, around Thanksgiving week, I like to have a dedicated 24 hours devoted to gratitude.
Read MoreOn occasion I receive a Plain Text email. A Plain Text email is an email that contains no formatting. It’s text only with no fancy fonts, pictures, colors, etc. When you reply to a Plain Text email, your reply will also be in Plain Text. So if you add your signature line and you have fonts or pictures in your signature line, all of that formatting won’t show up. But you can kick your reply email back into HTML (with formatting) in just a few clicks.
Read MoreIn Microsoft Outlook, there is a categorize option to add a color category to emails, calendar entries, tasks, notes, etc.
Read MoreWelcome to the spookiest day of the year. It’s the time when werewolves, mummies, and vampires are supposed to be the scariest monsters around. But in real-life, some of the scariest entities that we actually want to beware are the things that rob of us our time.
Read MoreWe’re inching toward year-end review time in our professional spheres. Do you ever have a hard time recalling the important projects you accomplished throughout the year? If so, then start a brag list.
Read MoreDo you ever have issues finding an existing email, task, or other Outlook item?
Read MoreDon’t discount your personal life when scheduling your professional time.
Read MoreThere are few inconveniences more annoying than shopping, getting home, and realizing you forgot something you needed. A little more time planning before the first trip to the store will often eliminate the need for those frustrating second trips.
Read MoreIn Microsoft Outlook, when you add new entries to your Calendar, each of those entries has a 15-minute reminder automatically attached to it. But you can change reminders if the 15-minute default isn’t what works best for you.
Read MoreBeing intentional about how you use the “Show As” feature for each of your calendar items can save you time.
Read MoreIf you save contact information in Outlook, there is a handy shortcut to get that contact started.
Read MoreAre there ever times in your life when you really want to do something, but you can’t find anyone to go with you? Don’t let the lack of a companion stop you from doing what you want!
Read MoreWe at Focus to Evolve have the world’s most immediately-impactful personal productivity training. Do you feel like you are not usually "out in front of" your incoming projects, emails, and general workload (email especially)? You are certainly not alone.
Read MoreAt times there are emails I receive that I can’t unsubscribe to but I don’t want/need to review them. If you receive emails that you can’t stop but don’t want to see, a solution would be to create a rule in Outlook to move those emails to your Deleted Items automatically.
Read MoreI love to read and listen to audiobooks. We have a library of books at our house. We use Audible to buy new audiobooks. I visit my local library regularly to check out books there or use the Libby app to check out audio or e-books. I’m pretty much always digesting a good book, and I read quite a few every year. At some point in my reading journey, I noticed I would be at the library, and I would have a hard time remembering if I had already checked out some of the books I was interested in. Goodreads stopped that problem for me.
Read MoreBelieve it or not, back to school season is upon us. In our house, summer tends to be a time of less activities and coming and going places as we please. But when school starts, we go back to needing to be more intentional about when we arrive and leave places (like school). And since there are distinct start and end times for events, we have to get back into the habit of creating time buffers for ourselves.
Read MoreI’ve often experienced the phenomenon that I’m struggling with something in my life; and then all of the sudden, I’ll listen to a podcast or read a book or hear a conversation that answers that very question for me. I hope that this blog is occasionally that beacon of light for someone else.
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