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Thank you to the HUNDREDS of you who responded with a suggestion for my new book title. Here are the seven finalists! Vote for your favorite! With thousands of subscribers, I'm sure we can get a relatively valid statistical sample of society if we get a big turnout. Please vote!

1. YOU'VE GOT ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD! The Productivity Pro® Show You How To Make The Most Of It...At Home And In Life

2. BEATING BUSYNESS: The Productivity Pro® Shows You How To Get More Life Out Of Your Time...After You Leave The Office

3. GET MORE LIFE FOR YOUR TIME! The Productivity Pro® Shows You How To Do More At Home In Less Time...And Feel Great About It

4. WHERE DOES THE TIME GO? The Productivity Pro® Shows You How To Build Eight Pillars Of Personal Productivity To Support Your Frantic Lifestyle

5. FIND MORE TIME: The Productivity Pro® Shows You How To Keep Your Family Happy, Your House In Order, And Your Sanity Intact

6. MAKE IT A PRODUCTIVE DAY! The Productivity Pro® Shows You How To Find More Time, Get More Done, And Create A Happier Home Life

7. LIFE AFTER WORK: The Productivity Pro® Shows You How To Find More Time and Survive the Second Shift

Using Time Wisely: Proven Tips for Taming the Top 5 Time Wasters at Work

1. Meetings

• Schedule meetings involving brainstorming, problem solving or strategic thinking in the morning when productivity is usually highest.
• Schedule routine staff meetings, project updates, or information-only meetings during lulls in productivity. Better yet, forget the meeting and share or distribute information with email or memos.
• Always use an agenda and always start on time.
• Schedule meetings at odd starting times like 10:17 a.m. Try it and you'll be amazed how prompt—or even early—everyone is.

2. Phone

• Answer it. By the time someone leaves a message, you listen to it, write down the details, and call back; you could have saved time by simply answering.
• Use voicemail strategically. Let your voicemail pick up when you have a pressing deadline.
• Keep the conversation focused. If a conversation is off-target, use your agenda to bring it back on track.
• Return all phone calls at once, if possible. You will naturally get right to point, saving you time.
• Use a wireless headset so you can use your hands to complete minor tasks.
• When you're going out of town and need to connect with co-workers, schedule a conference call to handle all matters once a day.
• Prioritize the order in which you return calls.

3. Email

• Set aside a specific number of times a day to check and handle your email rather than doing it every time the impulse strikes you.
• Use the subject field to indicate contents and priority.
• Agree on acronyms to use that quickly identify actions. For example, your team could use <AR> to mean "Action Required" or <MSR> for the Monthly Status Report.
• Include the word "Long" in the subject header so the recipient knows the message will take time to read.
• Sending a one-line text message to a Blackberry? Send the message in the subject line, using <EOM> to signal the End of Message.
• Instead of forwarding a series of forwarded messages, write a brief summary of the key points or select and highlight the essential information. That way the recipient doesn't have to waste time scrolling through pages of information.
• Turn off your email program's email notification feature.

4. Clutter

• Discard. If you tell yourself "I might need this some day," get rid of it permanently.
• Delegate. Hand off as much as you reasonably can. We cannot manage by doing it ourselves in the Information Age, so give away as much as possible.
• Delete. Stop any reports, memos, letters, minutes, catalogues, magazines, and junk mail that you don't need or have time to read.
• Organize files based on the frequency they are accessed: at least daily, monthly, yearly, and rarely.

5. Interruptions

• Agree on a signal to let co-workers know when someone is not to be interrupted unless it is an emergency. For example, turn your nameplate around or hang a colored ribbon on your cubicle.
• Set aside "down time," periods of time every day where you cannot interrupt another employee, schedule a meeting, or answer your phone. Inversely, establish fixed office hours when you can be interrupted.
• Schedule regular check-in times for updates from people you must talk to often.
• Go into hiding. If you absolutely have to get away for a solid hour without being interrupted, find an empty conference room or borrow a vacationing colleague's office.
• Use verbal tactics and body language. Stand up when interrupted and immediately state how much time you have.

Make it a productive day! ™

The Importance of Employee Development. Entrepreneur - USA. Learn why creating formal employee training and development strategies can increase your company's productivity and profitability.

Your brain on e-mail. Seattlepi.com, Buzzworthy - Seattle,WA, USA. This concept is profound: you need to accept interrupts from others so that they can make progress on their activities, even though this decreases your personal productivity.

Working hard or hardly working? Miami Herald - FL, USA. A study reveals that images of productivity can be deceiving, such as the image of a productive employee being someone who works long hours and is chained to a desk.

Q: How do you deal with ongoing projects? For instance, if I'm waiting for someone to call me back on an item, how do you follow up to make sure the project is still moving ahead? I know you manage two lists, long term and short term. But it is difficult to manage the long-term list when some items are out of your control. Thanks, Chithra D., Cliffside Park, NJ

Q: Hi Laura! I attended one of your sessions at SHRM and have been working on clearing the desk. It was the best motivation to get me organized! One of my issues is what to do with papers that I am waiting on a follow up from someone else before I can get back to the employee (not related to a project or on-going assignment, just a one-time question/issue that I will have to follow up on. I started by putting it in my tickler file for a week out so I can follow up, but then how do I know where to find it if the response I'm waiting on comes in before the date I file it. For example: I have an employee who inquired as to the status of a request. Unfortunately, I have to rely on a vendor for the response and it may take a couple days. What do I do with the note from the employee? Thanks! Krista M.

A: Both of these great questions relate to the same issue. You are on the right track that a paper tickler file is easiest to use. Very simply, you pick one day of the week to be your "follow up" day. Let's say you pick Mondays. So whatever day you do the task, you look at the calendar and file it in the daily file for the next Monday. If the vendor or employee calls in or inquires before that, you simply look up at your wall calendar and know the note is located in the numbered file for the next follow up Monday.

Ask the Productivity Pro® Your Burning Question

What is the most frustrating productivity challenge you experience at work? What keeps you at work late? What is the biggest waste of your time? What is the #1 thing that negatively impacts your productivity?

Ask Laura your question and it and Laura's response may be featured in an upcoming newsletter.

Hi Laura,

I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your presentation on Peak Productivity at the SHRM conference in San Diego. I am working to implement your suggestions in both e-mail and for physical paper. The filing system with the dates is awesome and I have others converting as well. I wanted to share a tip on the e-mail, I have been trying to implement the 6 D's, but am an e-mail addict and have so many e-mails in my inbox it was hard to tell if I was succeeding. I have now moved all of my old e-mail in my inbox to a subfolder titled 'Old In-box' and I work on deleting those e-mails some each day. This allows me to apply the 6 D's to all my new e-mail and actually see my success at the end of the day!!!

Thanks again for sharing your tools!

Liz

Dates: September 7 & 8, 2005
Time: 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Location: 2 Inverness Drive, Suite 189B, Centennial, CO 80112

September 7
"Planning and Conducting Productive Meetings: Making the Time Count!"

Meetings, meetings, meetings! Where minutes are taken and hours are wasted. Today's managers and professionals spend so much time attending them…you'd think most would be trained in how to plan and run them. Not so. Most meetings frustrate employees, because agendas aren't distributed, objectives aren't defined, time runs over, and no decisions are made. Another two hours of your day down the drain! This course gives people who call meetings the requisite skills to plan and execute a productive meeting, and follow-up properly afterward. It also provides the protocols necessary to keep a meeting on the right track, even if you're just attending. You will learn to achieve the objectives of the meeting, in a minimum amount of time, in a way that's satisfying to all participants.

September 8
"Project Management for the Rest of Us: Secrets for Productive Goal Setting and Planning"

Whether you are remodeling your basement, coordinating a social event, or managing a new software release, the competencies and skills of project management are the same. Everyone manages projects at least part-time. In fact, many people in an organization do not have a job; rather, they pursue a number of projects. This course will help you carry out your projects productively with proper planning, scheduling, and monitoring. The complex tools you've heard about in project management are refreshingly absent. The process is simple, and the tools presented do not presume any prior knowledge of the subject. Questionnaires, checklists, and worksheets are provided.

Tuition: Your investment for each workshop is only $295 per or $245 when enrolling three or more individuals for the same workshop. A $100 discount will be given for the second day if you enroll in both seminars.

Registration: On-line registration is preferred at www.theproductivitypro.com/program_publicworkshop.html. Or you can print the enrollment form and fax it to 303-471-7402 with credit card information. You can also mail a check made out to The Productivity Pro® to 9948 S. Cottoncreek Drive, Highlands Ranch, CO 80130. You will receive a written confirmation of your enrollment.