Posts Tagged ‘efficient business’
Focus, Reinvent, Fill a Need
Opportunity is Knocking – Can you hear it?
Time Management – Phone Calls at Work
How to keep personal phones calls from interrupting your business
If you depend on the phone for business, you need to find a way to keep the lines clear for business. If not, you can find yourself getting annoyed, frustrated and less productive. Take note of how many calls a day you take or make that are related to your business. Then write down the amount of personal phone calls you get that interrupt your business calls and work day. This will give you an idea of the importance of the calls and how much time you spend on each.
The one thing that you have to do is figure out a plan that will help you keep your calls in order. You don’t want to be interrupted when you are trying to talk to a potential client and have the beep of call waiting make the prospect lose focus on your conversation. Interruptions are considered something that is ‘not necessary now’. Of course you want to know immediately if you have a death in the family or if something bad has happened but there are certain things that you should not bother with at work.
It is important to figure out what is getting in your way and stop it. Most of the time, people find out that friends and family may be causing a dip in productivity – especially when you work in a home office as I do. Ignoring the problem will not help you at all.
One day I had a relative call during a training session with a client and I had forgotten to turn off call waiting (my practice during important calls). Lucky it was a good and patient client. My relative called my office line, home phone, cell phone and then the office line again. At this point I excused myself a moment and took the call only to ask her “Are you dying, is Mom in the hospital? If not I am talking with a client which is why I did not pick up any of the phone lines and you need to leave me a message.” She apologized when we talked later that night and it has never been a problem since.
Some options?
- Having two different phone lines may be the right answer if you want to ensure you receive personal calls.
- You might want to answer personal calls only on your cell phone and the business calls managed by your office line.
- If you are working away from a desk you may want to have two cell phones on you at all times. Then one would be used for work only and the other would be for your personal calls to be handled.
If two phones are not an option you may just want to keep your cell phone off during the day so that you are not bothered with personal calls. This may be the best way to handle the problem of being bothered when you are trying to make or receive calls.
Remember running a successful business is one thing that you do not want to forget about. Make certain you are putting enough time into your clients and business and not talking on the personal line all the time. Some tips to help you manage these types of call or interruptions are:
- Mark off certain times of the day for your personal time. You might want to make all the calls that you need to for business in the morning or before two in the afternoon so that you are not being bothered with other things.
- Let people know your schedule so that they are not calling during the important times. This is going to help eliminate the problem calls that you are getting so you will not have to stress over it.
- Use Voice Mail or let the machine get the calls that can wait.
- Use Caller ID to help you make the choice of a call that can wait or not. Turn it off during very important calls where the beep can be distracting.
- If you have a problem caller – tell them otherwise they will never change their calling habits.
Learning to manage your time is one of the most efficient ways to make your career soar. You want to be able to have time to work on your business as well as give your family and friends time too. The only thing that you can really do to rectify the situation is make time for both. Figure out a plan of action that is going to work best for you and never let either one interfere with the other.
What tips to you employ to make certain you can connect with family and run your business?
Too Much Information to Read? This tool will help
Are you one of those people who have a ton of bookmarked websites and pages in your web browser? You know, pages you have found interesting but had no time to fully read, so you clicked “bookmark” this page and saved it for later?
If you are like me you may or may not have gone back to read it, but you definitely have not cleared it from your bookmarks once read. Take a peek at your bookmarks toolbar – Is the list full and goes well on beyond the bottom of your computer monitor? If so then have I got a solution for you!
I found it yesterday when I updated to the latest version of Firefox. They had a message to “Check out the latest Add on Features” (Add-ons in Firefox are like little tools that help you with various web browsing situations. I did for once, and one of the top ones was something called “Read it Later“. I took a minute to check it out – very neat tool.
Once installed this Add-On places a button right by the address bar in Firefox. If you come across something you want to read later, then all you do is click this button and it adds the page to your list.
When you have the time to read those pages – you go to the list under the main icon and simply look at your ‘Reading List” and click the one to read. Once done with that page, all you need to do is click the checkmark that it has been read and that webpage gets removed form your Reading List. Nice and clean.
Best of all it keeps all these “read later” pages out of your bookmarks so that you can save that for pages you visit often and want to keep organized.
The process to ensure that you in fact get the Read it Later list cleaned out weekly is to set aside time on your schedule for ‘reading’. Once you have read the items/pages and gleaned the info you wanted from it – tick the page as read and move on to the next site.
Distractions at Work – Staying Productive
Kathy's family at the Beach
This week, I returned from two weeks away on vacation. We had a fabulous time in New England at Old Orchard Beach and I was able to check some emails and do a bit of needed work, but my preparations before I left and my team support while gone really made it easy to be away from the office.
Of course we returned at a very busy time – not only is it the end of the month (books and billing due), but the kids are still home and needed a few more things before starting school on Sept 2nd AND add to this one of the worst heat waves I have ever experienced in Nova Scotia.
Today the temps got up near 34 C (about 88 F) and with our lovely maritime humidity it felt like 41 C (104 F). I am not very good with high temperatures like this – not at all. So my productivity this week has been less than my norm and that only adds to the cranky-i-ness.
We are all human and have issues at times. Today mine was the heat. Oh, the horrible heat of the last few days. Earlier this summer I told my husband (during another mini heat wave) that I had had enough and was going to buy a portable air conditioner for my office. Of course, it was a hard sell, that type of purchase, when in all honesty I might only need it a few weeks (even days) every year. Yet the arguments against it were coming from someone who works day in and out in a nicely air conditioned office building. So we decided it was not something we would pursue.
Yesterday, however, was my breaking point. We all have them, and mine was when I started sweating in places I did not know that it was possible to do. The kids were all cranky and hot, I was cranky and hot and nothing (not even a quick trip down the road to the neighbourhood beach) could keep my mind off the uncomfortableness of it all. Needless to say I was not very productive at all. I even tried working late at night, but the heat just wouldn’t go away.
As a small business owner, my work is the business and if I cannot work then not too much gets done. And this heat wave is to continue until Friday night when we will probably get hit by Hurricane Earl.
This morning when I got up at 7 and the day was already stifling, I made my executive decision. Right after walking the dog, and checking some online availability, I headed out – telling the kids I would be back in while.
I went right to my local Canadian Tire store (think Lowe’s, but even better) and found what I was after – the tool to make me a productivity machine! I also got the extra materials I needed to rig up something to make it work properly and back home I went to spend the next 3 hours on setup. (Or should I say sweat up)
The end result was absolutely what I needed. Sometimes you just have to go for it and take the steps needed to make everything work properly. And that is exactly what I did. I took a picture and emailed it to my husband at his work. His response?
“You look happier in this picture than you did on our wedding day.” (Absolutely not true, but I was pretty happy).
You can see for yourself my level of happiness!
The lesson for other Work at Home and Small Business Owners – Staying productive is Key. Always be looking to implement systems or use tools that will help run your business efficiently and keep you productive. And, these tools/systems may not always be standard to everyone.
PS. Hubby was quite okay in the end with my purchase – partly because by the time he made it home from work, the humidex was setting records all over the province and neighbouring ones as well. My task for tomorrow? Figuring out how to keep everyone from crowding in my office to stay cool! 
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