PowerPoint 2007 trick – customize menu

April 11, 2011April 10, 2011 ~ Sasha ~ 3 Comments

(this post is an aside, but I was happy to discover this and thought you might be too. HT to Jan Schultink, who has taught me a LOT more about effective presentations than this….but this little nugget will make me happy for a long time.)

Admittedly, I should have figured this out myself a long time ago. But I migrated to PowerPoint 2007 recently and use PowerPoint just infrequently enough that I’m not investing time to figure out how it works.

Generally I find this software infuriating and counterintuitive. Microsoft undoubtedly knows what functions most people use most of the time, yet somehow it takes more and more clicks to find these useful functions.

The good news is you can very easily take your favorite buttons and put them permanently on the bar across the top. Not by dragging (which would be easier and much more intuitive), but it is just two steps if you know where to look.

Right click on the Start Menu and click on “Customize QuickAccess Toolbar”

STEP 2: Find the icons for things you do all the time, and move them to the list on the right. Organize the list to your liking, and voila, you’re finished.

While this is trivial, I suspect it will save me about 40 hours over the course of the next year. Thanks, Jan!

90% or 5%

May 12, 2010May 11, 2010 ~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

I recently heard a speaker who suggested, to a roomful of hyper-productive multitaskers, a radical reorientation of how to spend time. This speaker, a successful investor and investment adviser, doesn’t write emails, doesn’t multi-task, and doesn’t have a Pavlovian response to a Blackberry’s red blinking light. Based on his own experience, he suggested that successful decisions come when we create space for deep contemplation and reflection – when we create the time that allows us to we walk around and look at our problems with the curiosity and reflection of a poet who studies a rock, or a beach, or the morning sky.

A lovely idea that is easy to dismiss, to be sure – and many in the audience had just that reaction. One person went so far as to give an impassioned argument in favor of the efficiency of multi-tasking (while conceding that he agrees with Clifford Nass’ research showing that multi-tasking doesn’t work).

Why are we all so defensive? Perhaps because we kid ourselves into think that we’re almost getting done 100% of what we need to get done. We’re super-busy, but, we tell ourselves, we’re probably completing 90% of what we absolutely must get done, and the other 10% probably isn’t all that important anyway, right? And if we’re getting 90% done, then cutting out half of our meetings or not responding to half our emails sounds impossible. It feels like a move from 90% to 60%. Imagine the impact!

But I wonder if the 90% is an illusion. What if I’m doing 15% of what I could do, or even 5%? What if I’m nowhere near doing everything I could do that would be productive, because “everything” has gotten so big that I’m never anywhere but the tip of the iceberg.

If I’m only doing 5% of what I “could” do, then a radical shift becomes easier. By acknowledging that I’m the one deciding how I spend the time, and by recognizing that my criteria might be really good or really bad, I just might create the space for that radical reorientation.

Am I ready to make a big change? Not yet. But I do think that doing away with the notion that I’m doing “almost everything” will allow more space for doing what I really need to do.

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JFK-SFO Haiku

April 20, 2010April 19, 2010 ~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

“Biz Class? Ha!” I scoff.

Middle seat linebacker gets

me off my high horse.

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Epiphany

April 14, 2010April 13, 2010 ~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

Nothing magical happens when my Inbox is empty.

There’s no pot of gold at the end of that rainbow.

Which means I can decide whether or not to care about this.

And so can you.

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Who works for you?

March 9, 2010March 8, 2010 ~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

Revolutionary question of the day – which I was asked, and am passing on: do I work for my boss, or does she work for me?

And, as a corollary, does my team work for me or do I work for my team?

What’s the difference? Here’s one example:

If the person who owns all the data and metrics on my team works for me, then I tell her: “you need to take ownership of operations, of making sure everyone is doing what they need to do.”

But if I work for her, then I say to her, “OK, you’re the boss. That means you’re THE person responsible for us reaching our goals. I work for you, and all of us work for you. Tell us what to do. Go.”

Different conversation. Different outcome.

(p.s. nothing special about “data and metrics.” I could have said “website” or “PR” or “brand manager” or just about anything short of the person we all pretend is in charge.)

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Out of time

March 4, 2010March 17, 2010 ~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

I just went to the hospital to visit some close friends whose baby will likely be born by the time this blog is posted. It is five days before the due date, and when I asked how things were going my friend said, “It’s going great, but it’s been kind of sudden.”

Because I was going to meet him after work, rather than heading home, I didn’t rush out of work in the way I normally do. Normally, my time is ruled by the strict deadline of the train I catch every day. Without the deadline, I “just finished up a few things,” and I left work 45 minutes later than I’d planned.

We fill the time we give ourselves. And nearly always it feels like the deadline sneaks up on us – even if we’ve been preparing for nine months.

It’s easy to scoff at the idea of holding 5 minute meetings without any chairs in the room, using an egg timer; or doing speed interviews of 20 job applicants in an hour rather than screening a zillion resumes and interviewing 3 people for an hour each. But until you’ve tried it, do you know which works better?

I’m not saying rush through everything. I’m saying time is precious and we have the opportunity to be deliberate about how we spend it. So you get to choose. Do you:

Decide in advance how much time something really needs to accomplish your goal, and stick to it?
Do things the way everyone else does them, because it’s so uncomfortable to explain why you do things differently?

(and by the way, just because Outlook defaults to a certain length of meeting doesn’t mean that’s how you should schedule your day).

Judging

January 19, 2010January 19, 2010 ~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

You can decide that this is work and that is play.

That every time you do a little extra, someone else is getting the best of you.

That you’re making tradeoffs each and every step of the way.

Just remember that it’s you who’s doing the judging. Which means that some day (maybe today) you can choose to decide that you’re judging right – and do something about it – or decide that it’s time to start telling yourself a different story.

Don’t be afraid to thrive.

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Reorienting Haiku

July 3, 2009July 1, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

Unread email piles

It can only mean one thing

I’m getting more done

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Go

May 12, 2009May 11, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

I’ve noticed that every time the next big, important thing comes up, I always, always have time for it. A big project, an exciting opportunity…I’m there – and I’m sure you are too.

But wait a minute. Where did that time come from? Weren’t you flat out before someone handed you the plum project just waiting for someone to swoop in and save the day? Sure, you can work a little harder for a little while, but if this keeps happening time and again, you must be making bigger shifts.

Which must mean that there’s always space for something new if it’s important enough.

And this begs the question: what do I do with my time when I’m not stretching on the next big opportunity?

Put another way: “If I had all the time in the world and I really wanted to reach my goals, what I’d really give more time to is _________.”

How do you fill in that blank? And if the thing is so important, don’t you think you can find the time?

Here’s something I’ve been playing with: scheduling two 2-hour blocks on my calendar every week for the really-important-stuff-that-I-really-should-do-more of.* It’s probably not enough, but it’s a start.

This is about making your own time for your own most important stuff, because no one’s going to do that for you. You don’t need permission or someone else making a deadline for you. And you just discovered that you can make the time.

Go!

* * * * * *

*(I’m serious about the scheduling bit. I just started doing it. It makes a huge difference)

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How busy should you be (the 125% rule)?

January 25, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 3 Comments

Whatever amount of time you set aside for work, you don’t want to be 100% busy. You don’t want just enough work so you can get it done in the time you’ve set aside. You want more.

How much more? Lately I think the right amount is around 125% – that is, having 25% more work to do than you could really get done.

If you handle this in the right way, it forces you to work both smarter and faster: smarter comes from being forced to triage and put the most important things at the top. Faster comes from learning to spend the right amount of time on things, which means less time for things that are less important (without throwing quality out the window). Faster also comes from learning to say ‘no’ politely to things that you should say ‘no’ to (e.g. meetings you don’t need to attend); and smarter comes from making time for new things that could be great, knowing that something will be sacrificed in the meantime.

There’s a limit, of course. 200% busy is a disaster…it means the end of your personal time and your sanity, and it’s completely unsustainable. I started my career as a management consultant with a 200% job. I learned a ton, but I was always exhausted, I essentially sacrificed my personal life, and I never could have kept that up for the decades it takes to build a career. And 25% is mind-numbingly boring (it’s possible – I actually had a job that devolved into this), not to mention you’ll never produce enough to get anywhere professionally.

So if you’re at 100% and have been asked to do more, take advantage. Don’t be afraid to work hard. And if you haven’t been asked to do more, find somewhere to jump in and do more.

What does 125% feel like? It feels like (usually) controlled chaos…”usually” because there are always ebbs and flows, so if you’re normally at 125% you’ll have some 150% peaks that are very hard to manage. 125% is a little overwhelming, but it’s also exciting. You’re stretched, you’re pushed, you’re learning. And you’ll discover that you can get a lot more done than you thought possible.

(Oh, and if you hadn’t noticed, this is part of the reason that having a job you hate makes it very hard to be very successful. Success comes from a lot of things, but hard work is part of the answer. Think about how painful it is to work really hard for 10, 20, or 30 years at something you basically dislike or don’t care much about.)

Category: Work

PowerPoint 2007 trick – customize menu

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90% or 5%

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JFK-SFO Haiku

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Epiphany

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Out of time

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Judging

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Reorienting Haiku

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Go

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How busy should you be (the 125% rule)?

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