April 2012

Planning – Personal and Professional

Do you Plan?

I have a belief that most people just allow life to happen to them. Every year I sit down on my birthday and set goals for the following 12 months. I write these down and keep the list in my bedside table drawer. I have several years of these goals now. It makes it easy to see what was important to me, what I accomplished, and where I failed.

Working through professional development with friends and co-workers I have learned too many of us are reactive instead of proactive in planning. It is easy to be consumed in the daily “fires” of our jobs and life. It is harder, and better, to have a plan and control how we fight those fires.  Having goals will help you move forward in life.

How do I start?

1) Create a calendar, viewed by week. Days across the top and weeks down the left. I like to us MS-Excel for this.

Week of | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thur | Fri | Sat | Sun
4/30    |     |     |       |    |     |     |
5/7     |     |     |       |    |     |     |

2) Next, insert everything you know for the year.  For example, vacations and trade shows should go on your calendar.  You know the dates.  Next block known holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, July 4th, etc.

3) You now have a working skeleton of a schedule.  From a tactical standpoint you can layout travel for work or specific goals.  For example,  I layout regular travel to other offices on my calendar.  I have challenged co-workers using similar tool to plan for territorial travel regarding sales.

When done you have a look at the next 13 months.  Your next challenge is to identify recurring items, like weekly meetings, monthly meetings, doctors appointments, etc and add them to your Outlook or Gmail calendar.  At a glance you should always know when you have an appointment. 
“We must be able to look out 13 months and know where we are going, professionally and personally. Otherwise we are no different than a message in a bottle; we may have something important to say but leave our fate to the currents and waves of life. A plan allows us to instead navigate calm and storm alike. And, although we may be pushed off course our direction will generally take us where we want to go. The unguided bottle, on the other hand, cannot predict its fate.” – John Nelson

April 28, 2012 by Self Improvemet

Opportunities

Opportunities

Opportunities confront all of us each day but too often the door is closed without ever stepping forward to take a chance. Writing this column my inspiration comes from concern for those I watch missing chances to take advantage of new paths in life. After many observations I have concluded there are two distinct reasons people reject opportunity: fear and inaction.

President Roosevelt said, the “Only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” and nothing sums up the reason opportunities are rejected than his infamous saying. When faced with a new challenge many people will create unfounded fears that prevent them from considering a change. For example, an elderly person may reject a free airline ticket to see her grandchildren for fear of dealing with unknown airports, but yet millions of travelers face that fear every travel day. Similarly, overcoming unemployment may be impossible for the fear of moving from established roots, but yet thousands migrate to locales like North Dakota and Nevada to save their families.

Second to fear is inaction and is best exemplified by Einstein’s famous quote, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” I assert inaction is far easier than action. Thus, when faced with opportunity the effort to take action will succumb to the ease of inaction and the door to opportunity will close. By example a high school student may pass on a college application or a standard test due to the effort required and her laziness is then rewarded by the status quo. Likewise, a job opportunity may be passed because leaving a spouse in a current job is easier than searching for a new job when total income could increase.

Often it is easy to observe the opportunities friends and family miss, but impossible to realize when the same occurs personally. Daily I believe each of us are presented opportunities, some consequential and most trivial. The critical trait is to recognize when opportunity knocks and to, at a minimum, give consideration. Understanding fear and inaction as the obstacles to grasping opportunities helps right a course in our lives from status quo to prosperity and adventure.

My challenge to you this week is to assess every choice as a new opportunity and to understand how fear and inaction could contribute to saying no. Alternatively this week consider how facing fear and taking action could open doors normally closed. “Opportunities multiply as they are seized.” – Sun Tzu.

April 28, 2012 by preparedness sheep Stupid People

Microsoft Outlook Tips and Tricks

Microsoft Outlook Tips and Tricks
I travel between time zones and work on site in other times zones often. Keeping my calendar straight in Outlook has been a huge challenge. Second, I have more than one calendar: my primary Outlook, a second Outlook domain, my Gmail calendar, and finally I use “Tripit.com” to aggregate my travels.
In this tutorial I will cover the following:
1) Adding a an additional time zone to Outlook
2) Maintaining time zone support on your iPhone
3) Publishing calendars and viewing a published calendar

Adding Time Zones to Outlook
My business problem is that I live in Eastern Time (Atlanta) and often travel to Pacific Time (Salem, Oregon) to spend several days in meetings. Instead of doing the time zone math in my head when setting meetings it is easiest to have Outlook do this for me.

1) First and foremost, ensure your Windows settings are correct.

a. Right click on the date/time on your computer
b. Choose “Adjust Date/Time”
c. Ensure the time and date are correct
d. Second, click on the tab labeled “Time Zone”
e. Ensure the time zone is correct for your “home” location. This is where you consider your base office. For instance, if you live in Dallas and the default time zone is “Pacific time” then change it to Central time.
f. Make sure the check box, “Automatically adjust for daylight savings time” is checked.

2) Start Microsoft Outlook
3) Click on “Calendar”
4) Once the calendar shows, click on the “Week” view.
5) In the blank area, just below the date, right-click and choose “Change Time Zone”
6) A pop-up screen will show with another of options:

a. Click “Show an additional time zone”
b. Choose the time zone and click “Adjust for daylight saving time”
c. Give the zone a name, for me I choose “Salem” and the time zone is Pacific Time.

7) Use the button “Swap Time Zones” when traveling to change or to easily set appointments.
8) When done, click “OK”, your second time zone shows on the screen.

Maintaining Time Zone Support on Your iPhone
When traveling I used to struggle with the iPhone not properly showing my appointments in another location. As an example, let’s assume we are headed to a trade show in Las Vegas and normally live in Atlanta. Using the steps in the previous section, setup Las Vegas as an alternate time zone and swap time zones. Appointments for the week of the trade show can be setup in the local Las Vegas time zone.
To ensure your iPhone looks right on arrival you must ensure iPhone Time Zone Support is off.

1) Go to the Home screen on your iPhone
2) Choose Settings
3) Scroll down to Mail, Contacts, Calendars
4) Scroll down the calendar to “Time Zone Support”
5) Click on it and ensure the setting is “Off”

Since all of your calendar settings are in correct local time, which means they reference to UTC time correctly then the events will shift as you travel. Thus, an appointment set in Outlook for 4pm EDT will show at 1pm in Salem, Oregon on your iPhone calendar.
Publishing Outlook Calendars and Viewing Published Calendars
The next challenge I faced was sharing two distinct versions of Microsoft Outlook on my computer. I did this to segregate emails and keep appropriate domain names filed separately. Fortunately my iPhone made managing the calendar easier as I could see multiple calendars. However, I needed the same capability in Outlook.
To make this change I had to publish each calendar to the other Outlook. Let’s say we have Outlook1 and Outlook2. Outlook1 is one domain and Outlook2 is the second.
Before starting you will need a Microsoft Live Account (Create MS-Live Account).

1) Open Microsoft Outlook
2) Choose Calendar
3) You may be able to share your calendar if your domain settings allow, but most domain settings will not allow this.
4) On the left hand side find the option “Publish My Calendar”
5) You will be prompted for your Microsoft Live credentials.
6) At the end of publishing you will be prompted for emails to invite to your calendar. Enter your Outlook2 email address.
7) When done, exit Outlook.
8) Re-open Outlook, but open Outlook2.
9) Accept the invitation in your email to read the published calendar.
10) Click on calendar
11) On the left hand side there will now be a checkbox available under “People’s Calendar”
12) Click the box and you can see the published calendar.

Repeat the above steps within Outlook2 to publish to Outlook1.

Viewing your calendar
When adding the new calendar, the second one, to your Outlook the two will show side by side. Personally I prefer an overlay that allows me to see a single weekly calendar with all of the dates overlaid.

1) Start Outlook
2) Click Calendar
3) I prefer to be in week view, click “week” at the top
4) On the left hand side, under “People’s Calendars” ensure there are additional calendars selected
5) Two possible views exist; overlay view and side by side view.
6) Right click under the date, on the main calendar
7) Click the appropriate choice:
a. “View in Overlay Mode”, or
b. “View in side by side mode”
For more information, visit Microsoft’s help page by clicking here.

April 9, 2012 by Android