6 Ways To Say ‘No’
By Grey | November 11, 2008
The fastest way to free time in your schedule is also the hardest: learning to say ‘no’. It’s a tricky endeavor, doubly so when the person asking something of you is in a position of authority. Here are some suggestions to make the process less painful:
- Repeat the ‘No’. People expect a conversation to go this way: “Can you help with with project X?”, “I’m sorry I can’t”, “Oh please? I’m really in over my head.”, “Alright, what do you need?” Do not give in to this. When you say no, you have to learn to hold your ground.
- No Excuses. Never, ever give an excuse for why you can’t do something. If you give an excuse, it puts you on the defense. The person asking will now launch into an attack on why your excuse isn’t (to them) satisfactory. (Not offering excuses, is a good rule in general, not just for saying ‘no’.)
- Not Enough time “I’m sorry, I’d like to be able to help right now, but my current project take up all of my available time.” For lots of workers, this is the truth. You must not over schedule yourself and, more importantly, you must not let others over schedule you.
- The Conditional ‘no’ Agree to help, but only if X number of other people agree to help as well. This is the best method for friends who want to move house, or want volunteers to help them with household projects. Moving house with 10 people is a world of difference from moving house with just two.
- Switch Projects With bosses, often there isn’t a way to say ‘no’ to taking on an additional project. It’s best to keep a projects list and ask your supervisor what project you should stop working on to dedicate time to the new project. This serves two purposes: it reminds your boss of the things you are working on, and it also reminds them that if you start something new, something else must suffer.
- Do an Excellent Job When You DO Help. On the projects you do say ‘yes’ to, do your best to do a superb job. It will help build your reputation as a person who does great work, but has limited time.
--
Header photograph by Daquella manera
Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Never Forget Anything Ever Again with iFlash
By Grey | November 8, 2008
Every six months or so, one of my flatmates moves out and we need to find a replacement. At the end of the interview process we ask them to write their contact details on a pad of paper.
Every time, they don’t know their phone number.
“I just got a new phone,” they say. “I haven’t learned the number yet.”
But they lie. How do I know? I used that same excuse when I moved into the flat and was asked for my number. Truth was, I just plain didn’t remember, but felt stupid saying so.
The number of devices out there, leaping at a chance to hold important pieces of information is staggering. It’s so easy to let them be our outboard brain. Were it not for teachers and their tests, I’m sure the kids-these-days would find the idea of using their brain to remember things archaic.
I don’t think this lack of memory is necessarily a bad thing. It’s no worse than the deterioration of mental arithmetic since the invention of the abacus.
However, there are times that you may want to remember things.
If you want to keep your memory up-to-date, then Iflash is a great program to help you do so. It’s a flash card database, with one great advantage: it asks the flash cards you have the most difficultly with the most often. If I have five minutes to kill while waiting for a client I’ll fire up Iflash to do something useful with the time.
I use it to remember things like my wife’s phone number. While I have her number on speed dial, it’s easy to imagine an emergency where I don’t have my cell phone and need to contact her. It’s also handy for bank account numbers and passwords (I do, however, keep my database of flash cards encrypted, so that I can store sensitive information without worrying).
While you can make many different databases and categories, I prefer to leave the flash cards unsorted in one massive pile called ‘The Knowledge’ (after the arduous geography test that London cabbies must pass). This way, anything that I ever need to remember stays in there forever. It also makes the daily testing more interesting. Iflash asks ‘What’s the 92nd element?’, ‘Who assassinated William McKinley’, and ‘what does lexiphanes mean’ rather than just question after question on spanish verbs.
Even though a world where google is a verb makes looking up information so easy, just remembering something makes life a bit smoother. Eventually though, memory will be a kind of arcane art form — a calligraphy of the mind. But until that day, give Iflash a try.
[Click here to download iFlash]
--
Header photograph by sanchom
Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »
How To Write An Effective Email in 6 Steps
By Grey | November 4, 2008
Having trouble writing a coherent email to your family or co-workers? Here are six tips to help you through the process.
1) Keep it Short
Keep your email as short as possible. Writing a long email is a way to ensure two things:
- You will never get a response because…
- Your email will never be read
The rapidity of typing makes it too easy to spew a long, ill-formed messages onto another person. If you had to write emails by hand, you’d be a lot more succinct. Cut your email down to the bones. But, this is a harder task than you think, as Abe Lincoln once wrote: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”
2) Limit Email to a Single Topic
Never write an email that covers many subjects. If you actually want a response, you need to make it easy for the other person to respond — the first way to do this is not overwhelm them with multiple tasks.
If you have many unrelated things to discuss with your recipient, send each one as a separate message.
3) Make it Clear
Emails are far too easily misunderstood. Therefore, make sure the email is as clear, unambiguous and easy to understand as possible. This means avoiding abbreviations, and brushing up on your grammar — yes it can be boring, but a little grammar revision cuts down on confusion.
Hardest of all it to make sure to explain fully to the other person what you are thinking about . It’s too simple to forget that the knowledge you have in your head is not the same as your recipient’s. Before writing the email, place yourself in their mind — think about how best to explain what you are talking about to someone who is not necessarily as familiar with the topic as you are.
In a reply, quote the exact text you’re responding to. This helps keep things clear.
4) Tell the Person Exactly What you Want
If you want something done, ask. Finish each email with a bullet point list of what you need. Don’t force the person to hunt through your earlier paragraphs looking for the things they are supposed to do.
The same goes for questions. Asking vague, essay-ish questions will get you vague essay-ish answers. Ask questions about specific topics that require specific answers
5) Write the Subject after the Email
The subject is an overlooked part of the email message. It’s often the first thing you write, before you’re even sure what the email is about. This is why subjects are often vague and unhelpful, i.e. ‘Hey,’ or ‘Hello’. After you’ve written your email — and have a better idea what the message is really about — then write the subject.
6) Writing the TO: Address is the Last Thing You Do
By waiting until the very end to enter the address, you prevent yourself from the embarrassing mistake of sending a half-completed email. Even better, if your email is written in haste or in anger, it gives you a final moment’s pause to reflect on whether you really want to send that message.
An Example:
From: coaching@silverclipboard.comTo: jo.client@gmail.comSubject: Hey
remember the thing that we talked about the other day? i need some more information so I can do it, also what are your thoughts on the new place?
This is a terrible email. The subject gives no indication as to the contents of the email. The message assumes the other person remembers the previous conversation and it combines two topics that should be separate emails. It then finishes with an essay question.Let’s take a look at a better way to accomplish the same thing:
From: coaching@silverclipboard.comTo: jo.client@gmail.comSubject: Information re: New Seminar Venue
Yesterday we talked about changing the venue for the seminar on the 30th of August
Could you please:
* Tell me the new venue's name and address
* Do you think the space is adequate to hold and speak to 500 people?
Thanks,
This is much better. The subject tells what the email is about, it reminds the recipient about the previous conversation and it finishes with the exact information the sender requires.
--
Header photograph by Pink Sherbet Photography
--
Topics: tips | No Comments »
Easy Way to Keep Track of How Much Time Has Passed Since You Did Something
By Grey | October 31, 2008
The ‘days ago’ counters are a handy way to keep track of how long ago something happened. Simple to use, there is just a button on the front that keeps track of how many days it has been since you pressed it. While the days ago counters are intended to keep track of expiring food, there are a number of motivational ways to use them. For example, keep track of how many days it’s been since you’ve worked on a project or exercised. I have three sitting on my desk, and love them.
[Click here to get a days ago counter]
Topics: links | No Comments »
Don’t Sleep in! Use Daylight Saving Time to Help Start an Early Wake up Routine
By Grey | October 28, 2008
If you are unfortunate enough to live a certain distance from the equator, for reasons of dubiousness value the government will mess with your sleep cycles twice a year by adjusting the clocks and hour forward or backward.
Next week is the Autumn ‘fall back’ half of the year. This Sunday we will wake up with an extra hour of time. Who doesn’t open their sleepy eyes on that morning, look at the clock, remember you have an extra hour and drift back into the arms of Morpheus?
I say fight Morpheus, take the radical approach: use daylight saving time to help you get up early.
If you’ve been trying to get up early, and found yourself constantly failing, now is your chance. Normally it’s difficult to stick to a schedule of early rising because of the terrible, terrible physical feeling that first morning. But when the clocks move, if you wake up at the same time you normally do, you’ll steel an hour of the day for yourself.
So, if you’ve been trying to wake earlier, I suggest you use this week as a trial run of getting up an hour earlier than you normally do. Use that time for whatever you want, but give it a go. Have a seven-day, pain-free trial of the early waking life.
--
Header photograph from the wonderful and surreal toothpaste for dinner
--
Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »
--
If you would like to see more articles about getting organized in the future, please click here to get free updates via the RSS feed.
« Previous Entries