Productive U Podcast

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With all the talk of the recession and layoffs on nearly every news story available, I figured I would share some tips for you and your co-workers to help have a cumulative effect on the resources of your company.

What kind of impact can your little gestures really have on a company? I would say some, but not major, unless you get others involved. Think of it as your little penny savings plan.

“Pennies?” you ask. Really, pennies are virtually worthless and saving a few in a large company can’t really have an impact.

Here are just a few facts about those worthless pennies that aren’t worth our time.

Here is a link to the Americans for Common Cents website (the source of this information.)

• 84% of females and 74% of males would still pick up a penny off the ground
• 73% of females and 58% of males want to keep the penny
• 33% of males and 22% females do not value loose change or keep track of it
• While more Americans own Piggy banks than in 2002 (67% versus 56%), less are now using them for penny accumulation (57% versus 87%)
• Only 27% of Americans want to eliminate the penny, virtually the same level as in 2001 (26%)
• To date, Abraham Lincoln is the favorite president featured on U.S. Currency, just beating George Washington 28% to 25% (from 2004 Coinstar National Currency Poll)

To demonstrate just what kind of an impact a group of people could have with just mere pennies is evident with the Common Cents’ 17th Annual Penny Harvest, which benefits many charitable organizations nationwide.

Here are just a few organizations that have harnessed the power of the penny:

• Penny Lovers of America, who use over 1 million pounds of pennies each year to help send disadvantaged students to college
• The Kindness Foundation in Texas, who raised over $14,000 to benefit the victims of the Oklahoma City Bombings (1995)
• and Trinity Baptist Church in Marion, OH who raised over 4 million pennies for the Brother’s Brother Foundation for use in global-relief efforts

So how can you and your co-workers regain lost pennies in your organization? Well, the easiest way you can do this is by remembering that time savings for individuals is also a monitary savings for the organization. Remember that this isn’t an effort to be recognized, but a recognition that your efforts matter to your company and to your fellow employees. So here are 10 tips to help you and your friends make an impact.

1. Twitter has helped me be more productive by teaching me to write short messages and put them in the subject line of an email. By starting your message with an asterisk and ending with dash EOM for end of message, you can greatly reduce the amount of time others need to take up reading your message. Once they catch on, you will find others following in your footsteps. Example: * Are we having a meeting today? – eom
2. When emailing people you know internally in your company, who will recognize your email address, delete your signature. It creates needless noise and helps the reader focus on your message.
3. Don’t use the Reply All button. Your message, which may have been intended as a response to a couple of people, now must be read by everyone. Do the math; if it takes you 3-4 minutes to read and scan the message and there are 10 people on the list, you have just spent 30-40 minutes of valuable productivity time of the company. So is your response of “Thanks” worth the time it takes 10 people to read?
4. When answering questions in an email, don’t write your response in the other person’s message. Instead, make it easy to find by copying and pasting the questions into your response and then adding your answers. But if you still insist on doing this, at least turn on the “Mark My Comments With” feature in Outlook so it is easy to find both by your name and by color.Access this option by going to Tools > Options > Email Options



5. If you’re sending a link to someone, don’t include just the link, include a brief summary of why you think this link will be of use to the person you are sending in 1-2 sentences and let the person decide. Remember: every message someone reads takes time that costs money.
6. Archive your inbox frequently. This can vastly speed up the time required to access your messages from the server and save most people up to an hour or more each week. I know archiving takes time. So why not start your archive when you step away for a break, or first thing in the morning when you head off to get that sweet cup of java.
7. When you save files with a date in the file name, save them with the date at the beginning, formatted as year dash month dash day. This will make it faster and easier to find because it can be sorted quickly by filename. Example: 2009-04-24_TPS Report
8. Do regular maintenance on your PC to speed up its performance. Open up “My Computer”, right click on a local drive letter, and choose “Properties”. Once in Properties, you can choose the tab for Tool and select Defrag. This can easily be set to run when you go out to lunch or overnight when you leave the office. Looking to learn what this defrag thing really is? Check out the link in this blog post labeled “What is Defrag?” and our tip for creating a shortcut to quickly start it running.

   What is defragging?

   Create windows shortcut with: %windir%\system32\defrag.exe C: for easy access to starting the defrag process.

9. Use the disk cleanup utility to clean temporary files from your computer. Most people don’t know where these things actually get stored and some are stored in hidden folders. Using this utility is a great way to save drive space and make your PC run faster. Be careful to NOT remove Microsoft Office installation files in case you ever need to repair your Office programs.  Launch this by: – Open “My Computer”– Right click on local drive to clean– On the General tab click on the button marked “Disk Cleanup”
10. Hide the icons on your desk top and activate the desktop toolbar. It is a nice way to feel less cluttered, see your serene desktop background and easily access your desktop items without actually needing to minimize everything just to get to a shortcut or file. But if you prefer going to the desktop try using Windows Key + D which hides everything and takes you directly to the desktop and repeating this will return you to where you were.Hide your icons by:
    – Right click the desktop
    – Select “Arrange Icons By”
    – Choose the option for “Show Desktop Icons”
    – This will hide them, to get them back follow the same steps

So think of you and your co-workers to see if you can have a small impact on your organization and soon you may just find your company succeeding a little better from your efforts.

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

This entry was posted on Friday, April 24th, 2009 at 8:56 pm and is filed under Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Windows, Podcast, Productivity Tools, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.