The Evolution of the Calendar: How to Use a Calendar Today

There is a major migration underway that you need to be aware of, lest it overtake you without your knowledge. Your calendar is being re-shaped, but it’s not only because of new technology…it’s because of your new habits.

Up until 20 years ago, your calendar was only a paper item that was either stuck to your wall, found in your diary or sitting on your desk where it collected appointments. It was designed as an object on which you recorded meetings with other people using a pen or pencil. The dates were arrayed in columns, lists or as a matrix of boxes, allowing you to represent a time demand as an occupied space on the page. (A “time demand” is a commitment created by an individual to complete a task in the future.)

Fast forward through the innovations of the past 30 years. Spreadsheets, email programs with electronic calendars, Palm PDAs, Blackberrys, iPads, Google Calendar, Microsoft Exchange…and when you arrive in 2012 you find habits and technologies that were inspired by what a calendar used to be, but are still limited by our old concepts.

You can see these limits in today’s most popular time management and productivity books – written, as they were, by “baby boomer” authors. For them, changing an item on a calendar has traditionally been a hard task to perform. It’s involved finding the right page, using an eraser or White-Out to remove an entry, finding a pen or pencil, and writing in a new appointment. Neatly.

Only a few big-paged calendars would allow you to record activities in 15 minute increments, due to the size of your handwriting, so you’d focus on recording only major appointments. Also, the fact that these calendars were on paper meant that they could tear, get wet or be left on a plane. You definitely didn’t want to store your whole life on a paper calendar.

Out came a rule that fit those times, and it’s embedded in today’s productivity books:

“Only put appointments with other people in your calendar.”

(Its corollary is: “don’t put anything else in your calendar.”)

Some have modified this to say that you should only put major commitments that “must” happen on a particular day and time in your calendar. (The weak definition of “must” makes the rule a hazy one.) There are problems with this approach. If, as a student, you don’t have to study tonight for an exam next week, you might not bother to schedule that early review session, and end up watching a movie instead.

These were reasonable guidelines for a time when the term “in your calendar” meant that a time demand that you had created was being literally written on a paper document as an appointment. It’s an old way of thinking that just doesn’t fit the technology that we have available today. In today’s world, as David Allen of GTD fame puts it, a calendar is just a special kind of list.

He’s right.

The only difference between a generic list and a calendar are the dates and durations that are included in the latter.

When you add this information to the items in a list, it’s called “temporal tagging” and this act transforms an action such as “Pick up the milk” into “Pick up the milk at 5 pm on Monday, taking 20 minutes”. Once time demands are assigned temporal tags, they can be laid out in neat calendar views corresponding to days, weeks, months, years, etc.

This isn’t altogether new. My old DayRunner Diary abandoned in 1997 offered multiple ways to look at the time demands in my life, in the form of different paper inserts.

What has changed is the way we use technology to manage time demands, and craft these views.
Today we have a windstorm of time demands blowing around our life each day. They may be captured in the following ways:

• Mental: These only exist in your mind (e.g. a mental note to yourself to have pasta for dinner tonight.)
• Paper: These are written (e.g. a to-do list that includes the actions assigned to you in a meeting.)
• Electronic: These exist in bits and bytes (e.g. the time demands buried inside your email inbox.)

A subset of the electronic items have been assigned temporal tags. When you pull up your calendar, you are simply asking to see a slice, or view, of all electronic time demands that happen to be temporally tagged.

A calendar, then, is a view. Because it’s electronic, you can ask for a number of different views that have nothing to do with the limits of the written or printed page. You can tag as many time demands as you want without ever running out of space.

In fact, if you had a magic genie, you’d probably attach a temporal tag to as many time demands in the windstorm as you could. When a time demand gets triggered by an email, for example, you’d have the following conversation with your genie:

1. “I need to work for an hour on a new blog post. Show me my calendar for tomorrow.”
2. “Thanks, genie. There’s no space tomorrow. Show me the calendar for next week.”
3. “Thanks, genie. Book it for Friday, next week, at 3 pm.”

Today, we don’t need to get our own genie to follow the steps listed above if we change our mental model of what a calendar is, and where it sits.

Mental Model #1: What the new calendar is

By seeing a calendar as a slice of time demands, or a view, the act of looking at your calendar is transformed into a dynamic activity in which you alternate between views, while changing items around. Creating, rearranging, rewording, lengthening, shortening and deleting time demands becomes easy. Almost imperceptibly, we are moving in this direction as the latest technology in the form of tablets, smartphones, and laptops make it easier to perform these changes every day.

With greater ease, comes the ability to manage greater number of time demands as we develop the habit of temporally tagging a greater percentage of more time demands, and master the elegance and power of using different views to see only the information that we need at just the right time.

Mental Model #2: Where the new calendar sits

Time demands in this new world don’t sit on paper, in a hand-held gadget, or on a hard drive. Instead, they reside in an electronic cloud which is accessed by a screen that provides us with a real-time view. Getting stuff wet is no longer a problem, and neither is a battery failure or a crash, due to the presence of fail-proof backups. We are never without our cloud of time demands, even when we forget our favorite device at home, because other methods can be used to pull up different views. One day, we’ll even have watches that can pull up a calendar view.

New technology has enabled the adoption of these new mental models, but it’s our daily habits that are driving this migration. We are steadily pushing the envelope on how we manage time demands, and are only limited by technology innovators who are slow to understand what we are trying to do, and how we are trying to do it.

Unfortunately, researchers are slow to catch up also, although some of it does show that temporal tagging and calendar views are used by those who are more skilled at time management. These techniques enable them to manage a greater number of time demands: an even bigger windstorm.

That shouldn’t be a surprise. The resistance hard-coded into the time management books was based on a paper paradigm. With the redefinition of a calendar as a view of time demands, and the cloud as the ultimate storage location, we can use our own magic genie to make us more productive.

The Evolution of the Calendar: How to Use a Calendar Today
Francis Wade

21 Tips to Organize Your Office and Get More Done

You may think that you don’t have time to organize your office, but if you really knew how much time that disorganization cost you, you’d reconsider. Rearranging and moving piles occasionally doesn’t count. Neither does clearing off your desk, if you swipe the mess into a bin, or a desk drawer. A relatively neat and orderly office space clears the way for higher productivity and less wasted time.

Organizing your office doesn’t have to take days, it can be done a little at a time. In fact maintaining an organized office is much more effective if you treat it like an ongoing project, instead of a massive assault. So, if you’re ready to get started, the following tips will help you transform your office into an efficient workspace.

 

Great Tips to Organize Your Office Space

1. Purge your office – De-clutter, empty, shred, get rid of everything that you don’t need or want. Look around. What haven’t you used in a while? Take one area at a time. If it doesn’t work, send it out for repair or toss it. If you haven’t used it in months and can’t think of when you’ll actually need it, out it goes. This goes for furniture, equipment, supplies, etc. Don’t forget about knick-knacks, plants (real or artificial), and decorations – if they’re covered with dust and make your office look shabby, they’re fair game.
2. Gather and redistribute – Gather up every item that isn’t where it belongs and put it where it does.
3. Establish work “zones” – Decide what type of activity happens in each area of your office. You’ll probably have a main workspace (most likely your desk,) a reference area (filing cabinet, shelves, binders,) and a supply area (closet, shelves or drawers.) Place the appropriate equipment and supplies are located in the proper area as much as possible.
4. Close proximity – Position the equipment and supplies that you use most within reach. Things that you rarely use can be stored or put away.
5. Get a good labeler – Choose a label maker that’s simple to use. Take the time to label shelves, bins, baskets drawers. Not only will it remind you where things go, but it will also help others who may have a need to find, use, or put away anything in your workspace.
6. Revise your filing system – As we move fully into the digital age, the need to store paper files has decreased. What can your store digitally? Are you duplicating files? You may be able to eliminate some of the files and folders you’ve used in the past. If you’re storing files on your computer, make sure you are doing regular back-ups. Some quick tips for creating a smooth filing system:
7. Create a meeting folder – Put all “items to be discussed” in there along with items that need to be handed off, reports that need to be given, etc. It’ll help you be prepared for meetings and save you stress in the even that a meeting is moved up.
8. Create a WOR folder – So much of our messy papers are things that are on hold until someone else responds or acts. Corral them in a WOR (Waiting on Response) folder. Check it every few days for outstanding actions you may need to follow-up on.
9. Clear off your desk – Remove everything, clean it thoroughly and put back only those items that are essential for daily use.
10. Organize your desktop – Now that you’ve streamlined you desktop, it’s a good idea to organize it. Use desktop organizers  or containers to organize the items on your desk. Use trays for papers, containers for smaller items.
11. Organize your drawers – Put items used together in the same drawer space, stamps with envelopes, sticky pads with notepads, etc. Use drawer organizers for little items – paper clips, tacks, etc. Use a separate drawer for personal items.
12. Separate inboxes – If you work regularly with other people create a folder, tray, or inbox for each.
13. Clear your piles – Hopefully with your new organized office, you won’t create piles of paper anymore, but you still have to sort through the old ones. Go through the pile (a little at a time if necessary) and put it in the appropriate place or dump it.
14. Sort mail – Don’t just stick mail in a pile to be sorted or rifle through and take out the pieces you need right now. Sort it as soon as you get it – To act, To read, To file, To delegate or hand off. .
15. Assign discard dates – You don’t need to keep every piece of paper indefinitely. Mark on files or documents when they can be tossed or shredded. Some legal or financial documents must be kept for specified length of time. Make sure you know what those requirements are.
16. Storage boxes – Use inexpensive storage boxes to keep archived files and get them out of your current file space.
17. Magazine boxes – Use magazine boxes or binders to store magazines and catalogs you really want to store. Please make sure you really need them for reference or research, otherwise recycle them, or give away.
18. Reading folder – Designate a file for print articles and documents you want to read that aren’t urgent.
19. Archive files – When a project is complete, put all of the materials together and file them away. Keep your “working folders” for projects in progress.
20. Straighten your desk – At the end of the day do a quick straighten, so you have a clean start the next day.
21. File weekly – Don’t let your filing pile up. Put your papers in a “To File” folder and file everything once a week.

Use one tip or try them all. The amount of effort you put into creating and maintaining an efficient work area will pay off in a big way. Instead of spending time looking for things and shuffling piles, you’ll be able to spend your time…well…working.

21 Tips to Organize Your Office and Get More Done
Royale Scuderi

Coping with Career Regret

Fall is a time when career regrets tug more strongly than during the laid-back summer months. New jobs appear on job boards, and many colleagues and friends move on to new careers or go off to graduate school. If you aren't moving with them, you can become vulnerable to "should have" thinking.

The should haves are hard to turn off. "I should have gotten that promotion." "I should have never chosen Public Relations." "I should have left my job long ago." These should haves eat at you, particularly if you are comparing your career to the careers of others.

Dwelling what you should have done is especially destructive because it carries a feeling of futility. Once that happens, anger and resentment build up, and you quit trying. This is painfully obvious to others — you won't get the best assignments, and honestly, people avoid those who have palpably bad attitudes. Instead of toiling through the negativity, you have to change your thinking altogether.

The right approach is to replace the "should haves" with "what ifs."

1. Start with the regret, for example, "I should have never chosen Public Relations."
2. Try getting some trusted friends or colleagues to brainstorm with you, as their valuable outside perspective can help you think differently about your regrets. Choose confidants who are imaginative and positive — not cynical and snarky.
3. Pile up as many "what if" questions that relate to the regret as possible. Some possibilities for the PR example might be: What if you did PR for a cause you passionately believed in? What if you coached your clients on PR strategy? What if you taught business executives PR basics?
4. Explore those what ifs for ideas to act on. Just that exploration will re-invigorate you and set you on a better path. If you find yourself getting excited about one possibility, keep working on it until it pays off.

To see how this plays out, take this example:

Evelyn's family persuaded her to go into accounting, but after five miserable years at a financial services firm she still regretted not following her passion into music. She believed it was "too late to change now, and I'd never be able to support myself."

But when she started thinking about what ifs instead of should haves, Evelyn's attitude changed. She asked, "What if I work in an environment where there are lots of musicians and music? What if I could help musicians with my financial skills?" The what ifs lead her to target accounting jobs in music departments of universities or in other music organizations. While she was looking, she volunteered to help a local music school put its books on QuickBooks. She loved it, and they loved her, too. When she mentioned her interest in a career change to some people on the board of the music school, they helped her get started networking in the music world. Now she is the financial administrator of a large music festival, where she gets free music lessons and sometimes even jams with the performers.

If career regrets attack you this fall (or any time of year), get a few friends together, gain a little perspective on yourself, and try asking a different question: What if?

Coping with Career Regret
Priscilla Claman

10 Things You Need to Learn to Live a Super-Happy Life

“Happiness is a how, not a what. A talent, not an object.” – Herman Hesse

The older we get, the more that we experience life and the more that we learn what truly makes us happy. Personally, happiness has always been an intriguing point of interest for me. I have always seen happiness as the epitome of all success that life can bring. If you’re happy, then surely you’ve got everything sorted, right?

What more could you want?

Happiness comes in many forms. The good thing is it can be extremely different from person to person. Why is this a good thing? You can tailor everything you do in your life to bring out the happiness in you. There are however, a number of key themes that span across all individuals for finding happiness.

To bring out the best in you and help you live a super-happy life, there are 10 things that you need to learn.

1. Learn to say I love you. For some reason, this can be a hard one for many people, particularly with immediate family members. Generally, as you grow older you will come to realize what your family (particularly your parents) have done for you throughout your life and you will learn to become more grateful for what you have. Learning to say “I love you” can make your relationships blossom, and it builds transparency, honesty and trust, ultimately helping you in becoming a happier person.
2. Learn to forgive. Have there been times in your life where you have felt betrayed or let down? Have there been times when you have felt that you have let others down? Although sometimes hard, forgiving others and being able to forgive yourself is essential for being able to move forward and regain a positive outlook in life.
3. Learn to say no. Do you struggle with saying no to people, events or situations? Without saying no, you can become overwhelmed and experience imbalance in your life. Learning to say no is essential for being able to focus on what you truly believe in, what you value and what is important to you in your life.
4. Learn to live your passions every day. Do you currently incorporate your passions into your everyday life? Spending even the smallest amount of time living your passion each day can have a huge impact to the way you feel and to what you want to achieve in your life.
5. Learn to eat healthy & exercise regularly. The old saying goes ‘you are what you eat’ and even in this day and age the saying is truer than ever. The amount of information on health and wellbeing these days is absolutely enormous. Scientifically proven through the release of endorphins, eating healthy and exercising regularly can help you live a more fulfilled life and help you feel happier on a daily basis.
6. Learn to connect deeply. Are you afraid of connecting deeply with others at the thought that you may be making yourself too vulnerable in doing so? Making yourself vulnerable and connecting deeply with others is actually not that hard. Connecting deeply with others can help you become more relaxed, open and honest, helping you to be yourself and ultimately help you become a much happier person.
7. Learn to see life differently. What’s unique about you? Are you creating your own life and your own lifestyle? Life is not meant to be taken so seriously. Life is simply about enjoying the time that we have. We only live once. The older you get the more you will realize how fast time slips by, reminding you to slow down and appreciate the moment.
8. Learn to set your own goals. Do you set your own goals and work towards them? Or does the World around you do it for you? We normally get brought up in a society where parents tell you what grades you should aim for, the media tells you how you should live your life, and your teachers tell you how to go about your schooling. Setting your own goals, focusing on them and pursuing them will enable you to follow what you truly believe in, live by your values and ultimately help you live a much happier life.
9. Learn to count your blessings. What do you take for granted? As you grow and become more aware of the World around you, you will come to realize that you are extremely blessed. Perhaps you are blessed with good health, a good community or the freedom to live a life that you choose. The fact that you have the ability to connect to the internet right now in your leisure, read and learn is a blessing that many do not have. What do you have in your life or what experiences have you had that other people may have not? Remind yourself of this every day. Counting your blessings will help you take to the World with a positive outlook and a mindset to make a difference.
10. Learn to give. Giving is a fundamental and essential ingredient for happiness. There is no doubt that the more you give the more you get in return. Giving to others can enhance your relationships, build trust, but most importantly, it can make a difference in the life of someone else, and this is the ultimate in happiness!

10 Things You Need to Learn to Live a Super-Happy Life
Brendan Baker

Data Is Useless Without the Skills to Analyze It

Do your employees have the skills to benefit from big data? As Tom Davenport and DJ Patil note in their October Harvard Business Review article on the rise of the data scientist, the advent of the big data era means that analyzing large, messy, unstructured data is going to increasingly form part of everyone's work.

Managers and business analysts will often be called upon to conduct data-driven experiments, to interpret data, and to create innovative data-based products and services. To thrive in this world, many will require additional skills.

Companies grappling with big data recognize this need. In a new Avanade survey, more than 60 percent of respondents said their employees need to develop new skills to translate big data into insights and business value. Anders Reinhardt, head of Global Business Intelligence for the VELUX Group — an international manufacturer of skylights, solar panels and other roof products based in Denmark — is convinced that "the standard way of training, where we simply explain to business users how to access data and reports, is not enough anymore. Big data is much more demanding on the user." Executives in many industries are putting plans into place to beef up their workforce's skills. They tell me that employees need to become:

Ready and willing to experiment: Managers and business analysts must be able to apply the principles of scientific experimentation to their business. They must know how to construct intelligent hypotheses. They also need to understand the principles of experimental testing and design, including population selection and sampling, in order to evaluate the validity of data analyses. As randomized testing and experimentation become more commonplace in the financial services, retail and pharmaceutical industries, a background in scientific experimental design will be particularly valued.

Google's recruiters know that experimentation and testing are integral parts of their culture and business processes. So job applicants are asked questions such as "how many golf balls would fit in a school bus?" or "how many sewer covers are there in Manhattan?" The point isn't to find the right answer but to test the applicant's skills in experimental design, logic and quantitative analysis.

Adept at mathematical reasoning: How many of your managers today are really "numerate" — competent in the interpretation and use of numeric data? It's a skill that's going to become increasingly critical. VELUX's Reinhardt explains that "Business users don't need to be statisticians, but they need to understand the proper usage of statistical methods. We want our business users to understand how to interpret data, metrics, and the results of statistical models."

Some companies, out of necessity, make sure that their employees are already highly adept at mathematical reasoning when they are hired. Capital One's hiring practices are geared toward hiring highly analytical and numerate employees into every aspect of the business. Prospective employees, including senior executives, go through a rigorous interview process, including tests of their mathematical reasoning, logic and problem solving abilities.

Able to see the big (data) picture: You might call this "data literacy": competence in finding, manipulating, managing, and interpreting data, including not just numbers but also text and images. Data literacy skills must spread far beyond their usual home, the IT function, and become an integral aspect of every business function and activity.

Procter & Gamble's CEO, Bob McDonald, is convinced that "data modeling, simulation, and other digital tools are reshaping how we innovate." And that has changed the skills needed by his employees. To meet this challenge, P&G created "a baseline digital-skills inventory that's tailored to every level of advancement in the organization." At VELUX, data literacy training for business users is a priority. Managers need to understand what data is available, and to use data visualization techniques to process and interpret it. "Perhaps most importantly, we need to help them to imagine how new types of data can lead to new insights," notes Reinhardt.

Tomorrow's leaders need to ensure that their people have these skills, along with the culture, support and accountability to go with it. In addition, they must be comfortable leading organizations in which many employees, not just a handful of IT professionals and PhDs in statistics, are up to their necks in the complexities of analyzing large, unstructured and messy data.

Here's another challenge: The prospect of employees downloading and mashing up data brings up concerns about data security, reliability and accuracy. But in my research, I've found that employees are already assuming more responsibility for the technology, data and applications they use in their work. Employees must understand how to protect sensitive corporate data. And leaders will need to learn to "trust, but verify" the analyses of their workforce.

Ensuring that big data creates big value calls for a reskilling effort that is at least as much about fostering a data-driven mindset and analytical culture as it is about adopting new technology. Companies leading the revolution already have an experiment-focused, numerate, data-literate workforce. Are you ready to join them?

Data Is Useless Without the Skills to Analyze It

Jeanne Harris

What to Do When You Have to Work with Someone You Don’t Like

Jeff*, like me, is a writer, a speaker, and the head of a consulting company. As far as I can tell, he's professional, well respected, capable, honest, and has a popular following. Someone we both know has asked us to collaborate on a project and there's clearly a mutual benefit to our working together.

It all sounds great except for one thing: I don't like Jeff.

Something about him rubs me the wrong way. He seems too self-serving or egocentric or self-satisfied. I don't know what it is exactly, but I know I don't like him.

I mentioned that to the person who wants us to work together. She told me, essentially, to get over it. "You don't have to like him," she said, "but you'd be smart to work with him."

So how do you work with someone you don't like?

I'm not simply talking about someone who frustrates you because they communicate poorly or can't run a meeting. Sure it's annoying to have your time wasted, especially when you believe you could do a better job. 

But that's different than disliking them. Just think about how you respond differently to someone you like who can't run a meeting (you want to help them) versus someone you don't like (you want to stop working with them, or, if the meeting is really long, kill them).

The typical advice you hear about working with people you don't like is simply to depersonalize the relationship. Just transact whatever business you need to with them and move on. In other words: Grin and bear it.

But I have found that almost impossible to do.The people we don't like drive us crazy and we waste a tremendous amount of time complaining about them, or stressing about a conversation we need to have with them.

And that's not the worst of it. The deeper problem is that if you don't like someone, chances are they know it. Which will prompt them to not like you. And if you think working with someone you don't like is hard, try working with someone who doesn't like you.

It's simple, really. The people you get along with will find ways to help you; the people you don't get along with will find ways to obstruct you.

Being liked has irrefutable benefits. According to research, the more people like you, the easier, more productive, and more profitable, your life will be. Which means that someone you don't get along with — even if you grin and bear it — poses a risk.

So if grinning and bearing it is a losing strategy, what's the alternative?

Consider, for a moment, the reason you don't like someone. Maybe you think they're greedy. Or selfish. Or dismissive. Or downright mean. In other words, they have some character flaw or disagreeable trait that bothers you. Like my view of Jeff as self-serving, egocentric, and self-satisfied.

Now — and here's the hard part — think about whether, in the dark shadowy parts of your psyche, you can detect shards of that disagreeable trait in yourself.

Can you be greedy, selfish, dismissive or downright mean? You really don't like that part of yourself, right? You wish you could distance yourself from that side of you. Just like you wish you could distance yourself from that disliked person.

In other words, chances are, the reason you can't stand that person in the first place, is that they remind you of what you can't stand about yourself.

Suddenly, working with people you don't like becomes a lot more interesting. Because getting to know them better, and accepting the parts of them you don't like, is actually getting to know yourself better and accepting the parts of yourself you don't like.

So the way to overcome your dislike of someone else? Overcome your dislike of yourself.

That's where the person you don't like can come in handy. Use him to understand yourself better. Consider why you have a problem with him. What does he do that bothers you so much? Move past his inability to run meetings or write a good email and get to what's really bugging you. What about his personality or behavior sparks annoyance or disgust in you? What do you hate about him?

Then, consider how your answers might be a reflection of you. This is a game and you win by finding that hated behavior in yourself.

For me, Jeff reflected those attributes about myself that I disliked — the way I can be self-serving and egotistical and self-satisfied.

Think about times when you feel greedy or selfish or dismissive or downright mean. Can you see it? Can you feel your feelings of both attraction and disgust? Can you admit to yourself that it's not black or white? It's black and white. Can you live with the complexity of your humanness? That's the key to being compassionate with yourself.

And being compassionate with yourself is the key to being compassionate with others. Before you know it, you'll actually begin to like people you never liked before. Maybe you'll even feel like helping them run those meeting more productively.

It's now easy for me to see myself in Jeff. I can be self-serving and egotistical and self-satisfied. It's still hard to admit that — especially in writing — but it's a part of who I am and, in the right doses, it actually serves me well.

And there's an added bonus to admitting it: I now like Jeff.

*Name has been changed.

What to Do When You Have to Work with Someone You Don't Like
Peter Bregman

3 Ways to Emphasize Your ROI on Your Resume

Creating your resume, but stumped for ideas beyond your job titles, places of employment, tasks, and education?

Getting employers to pick up the phone requires a much stronger brand message!

If you haven’t focused on your ROI – the benefit companies get when hiring you – your search can go on indefinitely.

You might believe that recruiters or HR managers will “get” this message from reading about your past jobs or span of authority – but guess what?

With plenty of resumes to review, most hiring authorities won’t take the time to connect the dots in your background.

Therefore, if you’ve made a significant difference at past employers, but your resume doesn’t provide this evidence, you’ll lose your shot at winning an interview (while employers hire your competition instead).

Consider adding these quantifiable measures of your performance to your resume:

1. Comparisons to Others

Do you wear many hats at your current job? Employees who can perform more than one job simultaneously are often credited with generating increases in the bottom line.

On your resume, you’ll be able to show the savings gained by helping your employer avoid the need to hire or train an additional staff member, as in these examples:

Cut 34% from training budget by assuming new project leadership role for Global Standards initiative.

Eliminated need to hire new team members by performing dual roles in operations and sales, with estimated $80K annual savings.

ROI can also be demonstrated by comparing your work to others on your team, or to a predecessor who held the same role prior to your tenure.

You may be more efficient or better able to understand customer needs – saving your employer additional effort (such as multiple sales calls or additional work on technical problems) – than your counterparts.

If so, put this savings into a dollar figure by calculating the cost of rework for use on your resume.

2. Revenue and Profit Improvement

Will anything get an employer’s attention faster than telling them you’ll bring sizeable profits? Not likely.

However, unless you’re in a sales role (or another revenue-specific job), you might find this exercise difficult. After all, how does a project manager or operations director make money for the company?

The secret to pulling out a revenue or profit figure (when your job isn’t tied directly to money) is to look higher in the company for the impact of your work.

This means taking into account the value of the project to your employer (a new service line that will create revenue opportunities), or the impact of the new equipment you implemented (improving production and fulfilling more orders).

As in this example of a resume statement, your work as part of a larger effort can be conveyed in the impact of the entire project:

Played key role in $23M project slated to improve operational efficiency, with 45% reduction in call center hold times and expected $7M annual savings.

If your job involves technology, consider the monetary value of the improvements gained with a new solution you implemented.

Once you put the emphasis on your work at a company or department level, the revenue or profit equation can make sense. Of course, you’ll need to share the credit for creating more $$$ with your team or colleagues, but it’s an important measure of your benefit to a new employer.

3. Cost Containment

Cost savings are a high-priority area for many companies, especially those in industries directly affected by the economic downturn.

Of course, showing your impact on expenses is easy if you’re the one negotiating new vendor contracts or preparing a budget.

Even if your responsibilities don’t seem related to costs, think about your ability to produce work faster or with less resources – then add the costs associated with this acceleration into your resume.

For example, an office manager who arranges shifts to cover the phone (without hiring an additional employee) is directly saving significant payroll and training costs. An IT Director might be able to point out the projects completed in less time due to a newly acquired software tool, with related opportunity costs allowing the team to take on other projects.

These examples show different ways to state cost savings on your resume:

Saved division nearly $700K with switch to Agile Development methodology and training for 3 team members.

Reduced marketing spend $35K by learning social media techniques instrumental in promoting company services.

Perhaps you’ve monitored expenses within your team, and figured out ways to generate the same amount of revenue with less overhead.

These figures can be estimated, or specified in percentages of savings, to show your impact on costs.

The bottom line? Your employment automatically comes at a cost to your employer.

If you can demonstrate a substantial ROI over the expense of hiring you, companies will be eager to bring you on board – even with a raise in salary – despite a competitive job market.

Source: http://www.careerealism.com/resume-roi/

How Two-Career Couples Stay Happy

It's more important than ever to know how to balance a marriage and a career. Between 1996 and 2006, the percentage of two-income married couples rose 31% in the US. Now, 47.5% of all American married couples are dual-career couples. In Canada, the percentage of husband-wife families that were dual earners is roughly 70%, and approximately two thirds of two-adult families have two incomes in the UK.

Many marriages fail for work-related reasons. And prominent articles like Anne-Marie Slaughter's recent contribution in The Atlantic, "Why Women Still Can't Have It All," and rejoinders like Froma Harrop's "News Flash: No One Can Have It All" have spurred critical conversations about what it means to practice work/life balance and how married people (or those in other long-term, committed relationships) can make their personal and professional lives work.

We're part of that dual-career cohort, and we've had many discussions about what it means to manage a marriage and a career. As a former marriage counselor, Jackie has seen the problems couples face, and we've had challenges of our own, from living in different cities to managing trying travel schedules. But we think that with intentionality, it is possible to manage marriage and a career. While we're still trying to figure things out, we wanted to offer a few thoughts based on research and our own experience.

Actively manage expectations. Unspoken expectations often lead to disappointment and miscommunication in a relationship. And the first step toward navigating a healthy marriage and an active two-career schedule can be managing expectations — everything from daily routines to ways of working. Do you need time to decompress after a long day at the office or do you need to debrief the day's events with someone? Do you prefer frequent, short touch points (e.g., phone calls, emails) throughout the day, or do you prefer longer personal time together in the evenings? What are your expectations about travel, meals together, child care, and money? Clarifying these things up front can help you make conscious trade-offs and decisions, rather than running afoul of each other's unspoken beliefs.

Schedule your spouse. The average person spends 7.6 hours per workday on the job, and for many professionals, that number can double. During your time in the office, you schedule meetings, reviews, and time to complete your own assignments. Other things make the calendar, too: workouts, breakfasts with friends, board meetings, and community service. But how much emphasis do you put on scheduling your spouse? One of the healthiest things you can do is put the same effort into scheduling time together. Many professionals live by their calendars, and if you don't carve out time with your spouse as rigorously as you do with your business partners, your most important relationship can suffer.

Find time to cheat — on your job. What happens when a work meeting conflicts with something you've scheduled at home? And how many weekends and evenings are interrupted when you need "just a few hours" to finish something up for work? Many professionals fall into the habit of "cheating" time with family by slipping in extra work. But you can also find time to cheat on your job with your significant other. When was the last time you slipped away at noon for an impromptu lunch date or left early to make it to one of your spouse's events? How often do you decline another work call or event because you have a date night planned? Be spontaneous above and beyond your scheduled time, and make sure that you're not constantly breaking appointments with your spouse for appointments at work.

Bring your work home and your home to work. Dual careers can be more difficult when your work and your family occupy completely separate spheres. When your spouse doesn't know the people in your office, he or she can feel alienated. But finding opportunities for your spouse to meet your colleagues can create work environments that are more sensitive to your personal priorities and an atmosphere of trust and understanding at home. Bring your spouse to company events, and if you run a company or a division, find opportunities to get people's families together. As noted inPassion & Purpose, in a world dominated by email, smartphones, and flexible work schedules, the walls between work and a personal life are falling. Finding ways to integrate them thoughtfully can be a professional and personal boon.

Balance your compromises. In 2011, only 3.4% of stay-at-home parents were men. And while studies show the average childless woman between 22 and 30 years old out-earns her male counterparts in 147 of 150 major U.S. cities, the overall female-to-male earnings ratio in 2010 was 0.81 (PDF). There are a variety of complex biological, cultural, and personal issues at play, but it's quite common for one partner in a relationship (often the woman) to compromise on his or her career ambitions while the other partner compromises time with family. There is no-one-size-fits-all solution here, but couples need to have open and honest discussions about their ambitions for their careers and their roles in the family, and assure that one partner isn't making all the sacrifice.

Setting up expectations and clearly defining a plan to balance your job and your relationship is an important part of making your marriage work. But it's also important to check back in from time to time to assess what could be improved. Keep the lines of communication open, and adapt your plan as needed. The very act of asking a spouse for feedback can show you care about the relationship.

For many of us, our marriages and careers are two of the most important parts of our lives, and making both work (in parallel) is a huge priority.

Source:  HBR

Your LinkedIn Intervention: 5 Changes You Must Make

LinkedIn is, far and away, the most advantageous social networking tool available to job seekers and business professionals today. Far and away.

So why is it that so many of us stink at LinkedIn etiquette?

That’s right, folks. We stink at it.

We send out lazy, generic connection requests. We ask people we barely know for recommendations. We ambush people, asking for favors before we’ve ever spent even two seconds of time building rapport. We shove our Tweets through our LinkedIn feeds, even though half the people on LinkedIn could care less about Twitter.

You want to use LinkedIn to your massive networking advantage? Then you need to start working strategically and mindfully. And before you even think about logging on next time—you need to digest a few basic rules of etiquette.

1. Generic Requests are for Suckers
I’m going to assume that you use care in selecting who you’re going to invite into your LinkedIn network (you should). Why then, do you send them this note: “Debbie has indicated you are a friend?”

This generic invite is a huge turnoff to the majority of LinkedIn users—especially those who get dozens of requests each week, or who don’t really know who you are or why you’re attempting to link up. (Fact: I ignore each and every generic connection request I get.)

You absolutely must send a personalized note to every single person you’d like to connect with, telling them who you are and why you’re inviting them to connect. Sure, some of these people are your pals and they’ll know you right away. But in every instance that you extend an invite to a professional (or relatively unknown) contact? You have to introduce yourself and outline your goals and intentions.

2. When You Ask for a Recommendation, Be Specific (and Know the Person)
Clearly, LinkedIn recommendations can be massively advantageous. Third-party endorsements are job-seeking gold, especially when they come from clients, supervisors, or prominent professionals. So, don’t squander this opportunity by sending a vague or wishy-washy request for the recommendation (and definitely don’t ask people you barely know for an endorsement).

A great request will let the person know why you’re approaching, what, specifically, you’re looking for, and for what you intend to use the recommendation. Example:

Hi Susan, I’m currently seeking a new project management opportunity and wanted to ask if you’d be willing to provide a recommendation outlining your experience working with me. Specifically, I’m looking at positions that require an ability to view the ‘big picture’ and then assemble resources to ensure a project is completed on time and to budget.
If you could speak to my skills with managing both ‘big picture’ projects and critical details, I would be very grateful.”

It’s also a good idea to email the person directly before you send the LinkedIn recommendation request. This helps ensure that no one feels ambushed or obliged.

3. Avoid the Default Text Like the Plague
LinkedIn has some very nifty templates and default text available, which makes it so easy to do things like request an introduction to someone’s contact. Don’t do it. Just like you’re not going to send a generic connection request, you absolutely cannot use the LinkedIn default text to communicate with professional contacts. Make it personal. Make it specific. Make it clear that you’re not the laziest person alive.

4. Stop Tying Your Tweets to Your LinkedIn Feed
I don’t care how simple HootSuite and TweetDeck make it for you to integrate your Twitter feed into your LinkedIn status updates. Resist the urge. You’re dealing with two entirely different audiences, with different personalities, writing styles, and lingo.

Twitter is like a summer cocktail party. In all likelihood, not many people will bat an eye if you get drunk and fall into the pool. LinkedIn is the mixer that follows your big professional conference. Surely, you can be conversational in your LinkedIn updates. You just can’t get drunk and fall into the pool. Big difference—and good reason not to integrate the two.

5. Review Spelling and Grammar Like Your Life Depended on It
I’m continuously simultaneously entertained and horrified by the sloppy mistakes that come my way in LinkedIn requests. You want to establish a great connection or score a favor, introduction, or recommendation? Spell well. Brand yourself right from the start as a smart, articulate, and precise human being.

When it comes to LinkedIn, stop stinking, start thinking. And use these rules as your compass.

Source: Forbes

5 Ways to Be More Productive in the Office

Have you ever felt like you’re constantly chasing your tail at work?

Too many scheduled meetings and then there’s the emails flying into your inbox so fast you barely have time to look at them? And yet, at the end of the day you haven’t got much done. Nothing to show for the hours of ‘hard work’ you’ve put in.

There’s nothing worse than having an unproductive day at the office. And yet in my opinion it’s pretty easy to waste a lot of time in an office environment.

There are ‘unsaid’ rules that we abide by:

• Meetings are important.
• Email is king.
• We must ‘look busy’ even if we’re not.
• We must ‘look stressed’ — otherwise we can’t possibly be busy.

The best thing you can do is throw all of these outdated rules out the window and replace them with one rule:

Focus on output

Not how many minutes or hours you ‘put in’, but the ‘results’ you ‘get out’ of your day.

The thing is, a lot of people don’t really care about results – they just care about ‘feeling busy’ and working long hours for the sake of it. But when you switch from a ‘busy’ mindset to a ‘results’ mindset your whole world starts to change.

You have more time to spend on the important things, which equates to more results.

Here are my top 5 tips for being productive in the office:

1. Prioritize

Focus on a maximum of 3 priorities each day.

This means ‘ignoring’ everything else on your list…until tomorrow. When we’re distracted and overwhelmed by a long list of ‘to do’ items, we can find it hard to focus on getting ‘anything’ done and procrastination takes over! Cut back and focus on the 3 most important things ONLY.

2. Always do the most important things first

Never, never, never start your day with your easiest or most liked tasks. Always start off with the hardest, most important task. Because this is the only way you’ll get it done.

If you leave the hardest task until last guess what happens? You run out of time and it doesn’t get done. By tackling your hardest task first you can be certain it will get done no matter what happens.

3. Take control of email

For many of us, email is like a wild beast that takes over our office life. Take control of your email by limiting the time you spend checking and replying to emails. Just because there are emails there, doesn’t mean you have to reply to them all immediately. The world won’t end if you reply to an email an hour or two after it was sent.

I recommend only checking email 3 times a day max. Once in the morning, once just after lunch and once late afternoon. You’ll notice how much quicker you reply when you do it in bursts too. See my recent email tips for more tricks to control your emails.

4. Make all meetings 20 minutes long

Meetings can be the biggest waste of time. There’s an unspoken rule that all meetings must be for an hour. Why? How can all ‘topics’ neatly fit into a one-hour time slot?

Cut down meetings to a 20 minute maximum. One way to speed them up is to do meetings standing up – people seem to magically get across their point much quicker when they’re not lounging around a board room table.

5. Always have an agenda for all meetings

Many meetings run over because there’s no structure to them. Insist all meeting owners provide a full agenda before any meeting detailing exactly what they want to discuss. This forces the meeting owner to do a lot of the work before the meeting and reduces any time wastage during the meeting itself.

5 Ways to Be More Productive in the Office

Zoe B

The Surprising Secret to Selling Yourself

There is no shortage of advice out there on how to make a good impression — an impression good enough to land you a new job, score a promotion, or bring in that lucrative sales lead. Practice your pitch. Speak confidently, but not too quickly. Make eye contact. And for the love of Pete, don't be modest — highlight your accomplishments. After all, a person's track record of success (or a company's, for that matter) is the single most important factor in determining whether or not they get hired. Or is it?

As it happens, it isn't. Because when we are deciding who to hire, promote, or do business with, it turns out that we don't like the Big Thing nearly as much as we like the Next Big Thing. We have a bias — one that operates below our conscious awareness — leading us to prefer the potential for greatness over someone who has already achieved it.

A set of ingenious studies conducted by Stanford's Zakary Tormala and Jayson Jia, and Harvard Business School's Michael Norton paint a very clear picture of our unconscious preference for potential over actual success.

In one study, they asked participants to play the role of an NBA team manager who had the option of offering a contract to a particular player. To evaluate the player, they were given five years of excellent statistics (points scored, rebounds, assists, etc.) These statistics were described either as ones that the player had actually earned in five years of professional play, or as projections of how he was capable of playing (i.e., his potential) in his first five years.

Then the "managers" were asked, "What would you pay him in his sixth year?" Those who evaluated the player with potential for greatness said they would pay him nearly a million dollars more in annual salary ($5.25 vs. $4.26 million) than those who evaluated the player with a record of actual greatness. Potential evaluators also believed their player would score more, and would be more likely to make the All-Star team.

Tormala, Jia, and Norton found the same pattern when they looked at evaluations of job candidates. In this case, they compared perceptions of someone with two years of relevant experience who scored highly on a test of leadership achievement, versus someone with no relevant experience who scored highly on a test of leadership potential. (Both candidates had equally impressive backgrounds in every other way). Evaluators believed the candidate with leadership potential would be more successful at the new company than the candidate with a proven record of leadership ability. (Incidentally, if you ask the evaluators to tell you whose resume is more impressive, they agree that it's the one with experience. They still prefer the other guy anyway.)

In other studies, the researchers showed how we prefer artwork and artists with potential to win awards over those that actually have, and prefer restaurants and chefs with the potential to be the next big thing in dining over the ones who have already made their name. In a particularly clever study, they compared two versions of Facebook ads for a real stand-up comedian. In the first version, critics said "he is the next big thing" and "everybody's talking about him." In the second version, critics said he "could be the next big thing," and that "in a year, everybody could be talking about him." The ad that focused on his potential got significantly more clicks and likes.

And this is not, incidentally, a pro-youth bias in disguise. It's true that the person with potential, rather than a proven record, is sometimes also the younger candidate — but the researchers were careful to control for age in their studies and found that it wasn't a factor.

So, since preferring potential over a proven record is both risky and inherently irrational, why do we do it? According to these findings, the potential for success, as opposed to actual success, is more interesting because it is less certain. When human brains come across uncertainty, they tend to pay attention to information more because they want to figure it out, which leads to longer and more in-depth processing. High-potential candidates make us think harder than proven ones do. So long as the information available about the high-potential candidate is favorable, all this extra processing can lead (unconsciously) to an overall more positive view of the candidate (or company). (That part about the information available being favorable is important. In another study, when the candidate was described as having great potential, but there was little evidence to back that up, people liked him far less than the proven achiever.)

All this suggests that you need a very different approach to selling yourself than the one you intuitively take, because your intuitions are probably wrong. People are much more impressed, whether they realize it or not, by your potential than by your track record. It would be wise to start focusing your pitch on your future, as an individual or as a company, rather than on your past — even if that past is very impressive indeed. It's what you could be that makes people sit up and take notice — learn to use the power of potential to your advantage.

The Surprising Secret to Selling Yourself

Heidi Grant Halvorson

Learn More By Asking Fewer Questions

Every day online, a pop-up or email from a major brand or frequently visited site implores me to answer a few questions about myself and them. I (almost) always decline. Not because I care about my privacy but because I don't care to waste my time.

Whenever I've responded, invariably and inevitably, I'm confronted by a boringly designed survey with at least ten to twelve questions that, frankly, are of much greater interest and benefit to them than to me. They want too much for too little. I haven't got the time. Sorry. (Just kidding; not sorry...).

I'm hardly atypical. You won't be surprised to learn that the response rates — and the statistical representativeness of actual responders — tends to be abysmal. People who value their time don't care to waste it on multipart questionnaires.

But there's a simple yet powerful technique for dramatically improving response. I've seen it work magic. 

Ask less.

One Fortune 100 firm showed me its comprehensively designed internal "innovation culture" intranet survey containing 25 questions. I (strongly) suggested they ask no more than five. They thought that ridiculous. But they were persuaded to run an A/B experiment where a third of the 10,000+ recipients got the short form. The results were unambiguous. Response rates for the fewer questions were over 11X better than for the full questionnaire. When one factored in the declining quality of "tail end" answers — people clearly just "box ticking" the final five or six answers to be done with it — less proved to be more. (An inadvertently truncated short form with only four questions enjoyed an even higher response rate.)

Of course valuable information and feedback was missing. But design imperative was striking: Getting a robust response for the five most important questions was — on every dimension — far more valuable than puny responses for the top twenty. Yes, there's always another good question worth asking. But the discipline and constraint of honing in on the four or five that matter most helps avoid the intellectual sloth, cognitive laziness and marketing lassitude that longer surveys effectively invite.

Whenever I've worked with design teams collaborating with marketers, I've pushed hard for short vs. longer A/B questionnaire tests. Almost without exception, both the response rates — and responders — for the short form generate the most useful and usable insights. Needless to say, iterating another just-in-time follow-on survey to short forms proves much more practical and palatable than inflicting new questionnaires on long-form participants.

The simplicity of Facebook's "Like" button is no accident. What the smartest innovators and smartest marketers I know have in common is not asking a lot of questions but making sure the most important questions get asked and answered. By definition, the more questions asked, the less important any single question seems. Customers and clients have no interest in viewing your market research surveys as final exam questions. Indeed, what marketers rationalize away as customer-centric curiosity, customers frequently interpret as opportunistic exploitation. Ironic how "proactively eliciting customer insights" can hurt your reputation, isn't it?

I regret that I was never able to persuade one of my credit card clients to test the idea of surprising customers who answered the four question e-survey with the promise of 1,000 reward points if they answered another five questions. I always thought the promise of incentives and recognition would go a long way to improving both the response rates and reputation of virtual market research. But if you can't make your questions sweeter, at least make them shorter. Much shorter. You'll learn a lot more by asking a lot less.

Learn More By Asking Fewer Questions

Michael Schrage