AtlantaEvent.com NewsFlash - Time is Money - Or is it?

Intro From Jeff Glaze

Jeff Glaze
Editor



"Buy my eye-opening ebook!" from Jeff Glaze, The editor of AtlantaEvent.com

Greetings,

It has ben an emotional couple of weeks, hasn't it? With the aftermath of a major national crisis under our belts, we have all been thinking a lot more about disasters and how to prepare for them. Here are some thoughts I have had.

To prepare personally:

Make a bug out kit. This is a backpack that contains personal essentials - a change of clothes, toiletries - toothbrush, tooth paste - medicines- a waterproof container for documents like insurance policies, birth certificates, stock certificates and important documents or photos and passport. A large zip lock type bag is good for this.

Keep bottled water and protein bars on hand and consume them periodically to keep your stockpile fresh. As you pack your bug out kit, throw them in.

Pepper spray may come in handy. $100 in one and ten dollar denominations may be useful. You may even want to have a bag for valuable jewelry. The best way to carry valuables is to have a valuables pouch that you wear on your body under your clothes.

What other items can you think of? You can use this also in event of tornado or flood warnings.

For your business, you can replace hard drives with removable ones. This way you save all of the data and do not have to carry much extra.

It is important for us to remember that we are all vulnerable to disasters. We should, in the words of the Boy Scouts, always "be prepared". Clik here for a web site that contains information on almost any type of disaster.

Check out the articles this week, there are a few nuggets included. Stay safe and see you next time!

If your business event or organization is not listed on AtlantaEvent.com, add it by clicking on the links. Submit articles here and feedback here. Please remember that we only feature business events and organizations.

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Jeff Glaze - Editor

Time Is Money!

By Jeff Glaze

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Time is Money. Or is it?

When we work for a client as a contractor, or for an employer, we expect to be paid for the hours we work. If we work extra hours, we might even get paid for overtime. At least we hope so.

In all types of employment, the usual important thing is the money. When it comes to things we love to do however, often the money loses it's importance. it is a strange phenomenon that when we are doing something that we love to do we are more than often willing to pay to do it.

If you love Golf, on the golf course does money matter? It does if you bet on the game! Other than that and those who dream of "going pro" money becomes irrelevant.

America is a country with so much disposable time that people have to find hobbies to keep themselves busy. For each of these hobbies, there is a business out there somewhere to supply it. Have you ever found yourself daydreaming while working on that hobby, "I wish I could do this for a living. "?

Take a good look at it? Could you do it for a living? Even if it meant making less money? If you were to ask people who have taken their hobby and turned it into their business, you would probably find most of them are very satisfied with their business lives. You may know my own story, how I bought a computer, played with graphics and writing and turned it into my career. It is something that you can do too!

Just do the research and see if there is a business in your area that supplies your hobby. If not, become the local supplier. If your hobby is painting or pottery or other arts, open your own gallery. Bring in others work on consignment and promote with flyers, wine tastings and other events.

You see, if you just think beyond a paycheck, the rules of time and money begin to bend in your favor. You may find yourself in your dream living it to the fullest. I love what I do and you can love what you do too!

Jeff Glaze is the editor of this newsletter and www.AtlantaEvent.com and the author of "The Six Xtremes of Power Business Networking".

Reinvent Your Time Management Skills:
21st Century Techniques for Reaching Higher Levels of Productivity Using Microsoft Outlook

By Karla Brandau, CSP
President of Time for Results

Wouldn't it be handy if you could open up your brain, scoop out information that is outdated, then pour in information that would put you on the cutting edge?

To thrive in today's world, you may have to do just that when it comes to reinventing your time management skills for the 21st Century.

In a recent time management program, a participant brought to class a cell phone, a pager, a PDA and a laptop. He was proud of his technology gadgets and the amazing feats they could perform. The purpose at purchase time was to stay more organized but deciding which feature to use on which gadget and which gadget to use for which function confused him.

Your personal reinvention of time management skills for the 21st Century demands that you pick the best technology gadgets that will fit with your style of time management. Reinvention of time management skills also means understanding the power of the software loaded on your technology tool. It requires handling the deluge of e-mail, a 21st Century work activity, while keeping up with projects, daily tasks and calendar appointments, all rooted in human productivity since the beginning of time.

Let's examine the Microsoft Outlook software. When you got your tutorial from IT, you probably listened the most intently to the e-mail instruction because it was immediately useful. If however, after years of sending and receiving e-mail in Microsoft Outlook, you still use the program mainly for e-mail, you are only using 1 out of 6 of the powerful features you paid Bill Gates for the privilege of using. You are only taking advantage of 83% of the potential of Outlook. To fully take advantage of what you purchased, you need to change your paradigm, or "unlearn" that Microsoft Outlook is primarily an e-mail program. You can access many tips on time management using Microsoft Outlook by clicking on www.timeforresults.com/outlooktips.

Before my personal coaching, a large majority of my clients had not used the Tasks feature in Microsoft Outlook. If you are one of those, click on Tasks and start making an electronic "To Do" list. Refrain from making a duplicate list in your date book organizer, on your yellow pad or on those handy sticky notes. With an electronic task list made in Microsoft Outlook, there are several ways to systematically prioritize the items, move them up and down on the list, turn them into calendar events, change due dates, and other marvelous things only available with technology. You choose the method best for your personality and how you work.

Technology gadgets loaded with calendaring software are great places to keep your schedule. You can schedule out into the year 4000 if you think your exercise and diet routine will keep you going that long. I personally found it easy to transfer to an electronic calendar as opposed to a physical calendar with the 1-1/2 inch blank squares into which you tried to cram all of your daily activities.

Reinventing your time management skills as it applies to the use of the electronic calendar involves using the calendar as a place to plan the flow or your day. For instance, if on today's date, you need to:

• Take your suit to the dry cleaners
• Make a ticket to Chicago for the conference next month
• Ensure that HR gets your updated insurance changes
• Have a package ready for FedEx pickup by Noon
• Finish the Telco project by 2:00 pm

These are not "meetings" such as the meeting scheduled with your manager at 10:00 am or the team meeting at 2:00 pm, but adding the above items as calendar events and then estimating the time it will take you to complete each item gives you graphic and sometimes shocking information on the discretionary versus the non-discretionary time available during your work hours. This kind of information helps you to work leaner, cut out unnecessary steps and combine errands while reducing and simplifying. It is especially effective if you plan tomorrow before you leave the office today.

The ideas I have given you for reinvention of your time management skills are not brain surgery but they are not easy either. Time management practices are habits. It takes intense effort to change a habit.

The deception of "it is working now" is another reason why the reinvention of personal skills is challenging. "It is working now" lulls you to sleep as you think all is well, believing "I can catch up tomorrow," "I'm doing pretty good," "I'm not too far behind."

A third reason reinvention and self-renewal is complicated is because it is easier to keep doing what we have always done instead of investing the time to learn something new. This is true especially when learning new software. My preferential human style of functioning is to learn the bare necessities to get me into the program and then stumble on to other features and be amazed at the breadth and depth of the software. The need to be efficient this very minute blinds me to the return on investment in the short two to three hours needed to be fully functional in a software program such as Outlook. The return on investment in learning time is well worth the expenditure of energy and is vastly superior to waking up one morning and being obsolete.

Try these actionable strategies and techniques for using 100% of the advanced Microsoft Outlook available and they will help you handle your workload and increase the time you spend in high payoff activities. Graduates of the Time for Results program consistently reinvent their time management skills and find 30 to 90 minutes of valuable time every day, giving their career a positive boost!

Karla Brandau is a Certified Speaking Professional (CSP), author of 101 Time Management Tips for Busy Professionals, and president of Time For Results. Time management and Microsoft Outlook products are available at, .timeforresults.com. To bring Karla to your company for technology and time management training, call Time for Results at 1-770-923-0883.

Why Should We Care?

by Jeff Glaze

Do you ever feel like no one cares about you? If you have ever felt that way, you know what an empty lonely feeling that is.

In business, the business owner can experience this. They can feel like their vendors, clients, employees, partners, friends and relatives don't care and this too is a lonely empty feeling. It is a feeling that causes the business owner to take some often drastic steps.

Here are some drastic examples. ( I love that word - drastic! )

If a business owner does not feel that a vendor does not care about having them as a client, the business owner will go to great lengths to find a new vendor. They may even settle for higher prices and lower quality in search of the vendor who treats them like their business is important to them.

If a business owner has a client who is difficult for unknown reasons, who does not respect the needs of the business owner regarding the amount of time or attention they demand from them, or even when a client becomes rude and annoying, a business owner may ask a client to take their business elsewhere. This can result in a client having an interruption of needed services.

Employees who do not care about the success of the business are very much at risk. Not only do they risk losing their job, they risk losing the growth potential that can further their careers both inside of the business and in the future of their career. An employee might rationalize that the employer does not care about them. In this situation an employee should question if their needs are reasonable. After all an employer hires an employee to perform specific tasks. In exchange for the performance of these tasks the employee receives wages and/or benefits. Beyond a reasonable respect of the employer toward the employee. If an employer practices good leadership skills, most employer/employee issues will not exist.

Partners in a business share a great deal of responsibility. These responsibilities extend beyond work, tasks and delegation. They include on openness and honesty toward other partners for the greater good of the business. Nothing will kill a partnership quicker than kept secrets and misunderstandings. A partner who does not care about these things will not be a partner for long.

Friends and relatives may care about you as a person, but may not care at all about the success of your business. When you start a business you can almost expect that friends and relatives will not be customers. Of course this may depend on the type of business you start, but you will find that customers who become friends will often care more about your business than regular friends or perhaps even relatives. Sometimes when relatives work in your business it becomes painfully clear how little they do care!

As a business owner if you do not reciprocate caring and give as well as receive, you will find yourself limiting your success. Each of the examples above can be flipped to apply to you as well. So in a world of anonymous, nameless, meaningless faces and relationships, a little bit of caring can go a long way.

Do you care? You should!