Office Technology
How important is the Internet to younger workers’ lives? Very. For example, in a recent eye-opening study of college students and young professionals, one in three considers the Internet to be as important as air, water, food and shelter.
How do you make sure a task gets done? Peter Bregman, author of 18 Minutes, believes we ought to make appointments with ourselves in order to accomplish things. “We should all be working off our calendars, not our task lists,” says Bregman.
Have you ever caused a problem for your computer because you simply didn’t know better? “You’d be surprised how many people unknowingly damage their computers,” says Derek Meister, a Best Buy technician. Here are six no-no’s to avoid to keep your computer out of the repair shop:
Switzerland’s Anti-PowerPoint Party is seeking support for a national referendum to ban the use of PowerPoint. Author Matthias Poehm believes PowerPoint is the wrong tool for making an effective presentation. His advice? Go back to using a flip chart.
Boost the odds that people will read your emails. Five guidelines: 1. Limit your message to five sentences. 2. Figure out your main point. 3. Edit. 4. Ask one thing at a time, or maybe two. 5. Include a link to information available online.
Creating meeting agendas just got a lot easier with MeetingMix, online software that helps set agendas and track minutes.
Tips for working in new or unfamiliar software: 1. Right-click to see what options you have. 2. Google your question. 3. Keep detailed notes in a file for software tasks you do only occasionally.
1. Include your phone number and mailing address in your signature. 2. Provide “if-then” options. 3. Always start with a greeting. 4. Check Snopes.com before you waste time forwarding a chain letter.
Maria had been emailing back and forth with a colleague all day about a work issue, when she finally decided to cc the boss. It felt like the right thing to do. But that’s not how it turned out. Instead, it came back to bite her. How to avoid cc’ing up and other email faux pas:
Two nifty tools: one that helps business travelers get more done, and one that helps executives get more done by avoiding travel.
Next time you get an email request with an urgent flag, try one of these three tips:
Heed these four tips when preparing a PowerPoint presentation: 1. Keep slides clutter-free. 2. Use one image to sell each idea. 3. Follow the same color schemes, fonts and logos as your company’s website or brochures. 4. Give the audience a break to prolong attention spans.
Chris Anderson, who runs the high-profile TED conference, believes we need to focus on limiting the flow of email, rather than focusing on how to organize and file all those messages. Anderson penned 10 ideas that could make a dent in email quantity:
