Most organizations believe email is one of their biggest productivity snags even though email is probably the most important office communication tool available. The technology has eliminated many of our personal boundaries. Some of us have even allowed email to drive our actions when in reality, our communications should be driven by our goals and the tasks required to accomplish them. What we have forgotten is the fact that email is a communication tool.
The real purpose behind communication is the exchange of information in a way that both parties involved clearly understand the shared intelligence. If the email messages you send aren’t clear, then the recipients of those messages will not be clear either, and they will not be able to interpret what you want or what they need to do as a response to the email.
Think about the number of times you have received an email message that made you wonder what the sending person meant — or why you even got the message in the first place. Now on the opposite end of the spectrum, think about the times you’ve sent an email that returned to you with a bunch of questions because you didn’t take the time to write it clearly. This is where productive communication breaks down with office email. This is the snag.
Productive communication can be greatly improved by implementing a simple mental checklist that you can run through before you hit the “send” button for each and every email that you write. This simple set of rules will grade your email (so to speak) and let you know whether it has passed or failed the test. The process is designed to help you think about what it is you are trying to communicate before sending the email off, ensuring that the recipient will understand what you are striving to communicate. In addition, by writing more effective email messages you will greatly reduce the quantity of emails you receive each day.
The process is called the PASS process of effective email communication. The PASS process will assist you in writing clearly defined emails that produce effective action on the side of the recipients.
The four questions the PASS process asks are:
- P for Purpose – What is the purpose of your email?
- A for Action – What action needs to result from your email? Does it have a due date?
- S for Support – What supporting documentation needs to be attached to your communication?
- S for Summary – Have you successfully summarized your email message in the subject line?
Only after successfully evaluating each of these questions should you click the infamous “send” button. Let’s look at them a little closer.
P – What is the purpose of your email?
First, does your email correlate with a meaningful objective or task? If it does not, you may need to ask yourself whether the email needs sending at all. After concluding that the message is vital to something of importance, you need to read your email message and ensure that it’s purpose is clearly communicated through the message body. Try to summarize what you’re striving to accomplish through the communication in the first paragraph. That way, the reader is able to read the remaining content of your email from the right context.
A – What action is required as a result of your email?
In many of our communications, we clearly state the purpose of our email but we do not make clear what our expectations are of the email’s recipient. By clearly stating what we need accomplished, we have a much better chance of it getting done.
Here is a simple list of the 3 most common email actions:
- Task: The recipient has to complete an actual physical task (for example, order report copies or call Jack Doe).
- Respond: The recipient needs only to respond to the email with the information that you requested. )You did clearly state the information that you needed, right?)
- Read: The recipient needs only to read the email for their benefit.
You eliminate any confusion regarding your expectations from the recipient by clearly stating the action you need them to accomplish. Think about your communication and clearly communicate the action you want the recipient to perform, and don’t forget to include any due dates necessary for the actions requested. Remember to be specific.
S – What supporting documentation is required by your communication?
You need to ensure that you have identified and attached any and all supportive documentation required by your communications purpose or needed by the recipient to perform any of the actions you have requested. You cannot expect somebody to read the monthly sales report if you have not attached the monthly sales report to the email message.
S – Have you summarized you email in the subject line?
This step is critical to improving your email communication standards — and a great trick is to write your subject line after composing the body of your email message, not before the body.
Did you know that some email spam filters actually catch the terms “Attention:” or “Important:” and flag them as spam. By clearly summarizing your message in the subject line, you will greatly improve your ability to communicate with your recipients. When a person is sifting through the dredges of their inbox, they tend to bypass messages that don’t appear to be important.
For example, let’s say you have a message in your inbox with, “Here’s that thing we were talking about” as a subject line. This message is going to blend into every other non-important message in the inbox. However, if the message’s subject read “Requested Monthly Sales Report for August” you would probably be more apt to open it because you need that sales report.
Pressing “Send”
Your email message is ready to send only after you have asked — and it has passed — these four simple questions. It may have taken you a little more time to prepare the email, but there are many benefits that far outweigh the little bit of extra time and effort you invested.
There will be a decreased necessity to continue sending messages back and forth since you’ve ensured the clarity of your message’s purpose. Your expectations of the recipients will more likely be accomplished due to clarifying the actions required in the message. You will be sure the recipient has everything necessary to get the job done. And you can be confident that the true meaning of your message will be received within its subject line. The PASS process of effective email messaging will allow you to once again use email as a productive and effective communication method.
(Image courtesy of Biscarotte under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 generic license.)
There aren’t a lot of great free templates for PowerPoint. In fact when we decided to compile our list of 20 Free PowerPoint Templates That Don’t Suck, it was pretty hard work finding them!
So I thought I’d start a little series here on WorkAwesome of some free templates from old projects of mine, or quick ideas I have. I whipped up the first today which is a simple wooden background template, and you can download it below. Of course if you want super high quality templates and don’t mind paying a bit, you’ll find some great stuff on GraphicRiver’s PPT Templates category.
Anyhow here is today’s freebie!
Download Free Wooden Powerpoint Template
The Download (5Mb) includes a Powerpoint PPT file and a Photoshop PSD file of the background. The font is Century Gothic which I think comes free on most computers.
The wooden texture is courtesy of Bittbox and you can grab an original, unmodified copy on Flickr here. If you decide to redistribute this file for some reason, we’d appreciate a link back to WorkAwesome so we can build some awesome SEO rankings! And finally here are some preview images of what the template looks like, enjoy!
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This week’s episode of the WorkAwesome Podcast features an interview with Nathan Hangen and Oleg Mokhov. These two gentlemen who not only have their own ventures that they foster on a daily basis, such as Nathan’s Building Digital Empires site and Oleg’s own site Mokhov.com, but they have forged a partnership with two projects: SoundTrackster (a site that offers “royalty-free music that doesn’t suck”) and BlueRize, which offers electronic music and podcasts that are a serve to energize entrepreneurs.
Did I mention that these two live on opposite coasts?
They discuss with host Mike Vardy how they are effective as a team, how they stay productive, function and flourish with such a distance between and what they do to foster their partnerships from across the miles.
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David Allen is known as the GTD Guy. Stever Robbins is known as the GID Guy. Both offer great insights on productivity using very different approaches. Both are also published authors, and Robbins’ latest book, Get-It-Done Guy’s 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More, hit bookstores a few weeks back. The book is a fairly light read, yet brimming with tips and information that are sprinkled with Robbins’ signature humor and style.
In Get-It-Done Guy’s 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More, Robbins offers a step-by-step method that appears less daunting than the popular methodology than David Allen’s GTD methodology. I wouldn’t necessarily say it is less daunting once you dive in, but it is an approach that might be easier to adopt for some. It’s more of a “grassroots” approach to becoming more productive. Robbins breaks how you can work less and do more into the following steps:
- Live on purpose
- Stop procrastinating
- Conquer technology
- Beat distractions to cultivate focus
- Stay organized
- Stop wasting time
- Optimize
- Build stronger relationships
- Leverage
These steps (which are broken into individual chapters) are fairly self-explanatory on the surface, but once you dig into them it’s easy to see that without working on each consistently then you will quickly go off course. One of the ideas Robbins presents in the book is the use of a Life Map, which helps you keep tabs on what’s important. He outlines how he does this in the following excerpt from the book:
On Reviewing Life Goals and Priorities
Here are some of my favorite times to review my Life Map to bring me back on track:
- When surfing the web, reading email, or doing anything online. Commenting on a blog about celebrity acne can wait. At least, I’m pretty sure it can.
- Before running errands. Do I really need new boxer briefs right now? Maybe I’ll just do laundry, instead.
- Making outbound phone calls. Aunt Sally will still be there tonight. Maybe I can call her then, and make progress on my life during the day today.
- Doing administrative stuff. Filing bills makes me feel so organized! I just love filing! But administrative tasks rarely make progress on my most important goals. We’ll learn how to deal with administrivia elsewhere in the book. Your life map will get you back on path if now isn’t the best time to address envelopes.
Robbins has a light touch with his words, bringing a dash of accessible humor to the book and does so without compromising the message. It’s not a “jokey” book, it’s a book that delivers a message in a way that keeps the reader engaged with a topic that can become very dry very quickly. The excerpt below demonstrates just how Robbins is able to balance information and wit in his writing:
On Setting Boundaries to Prevent Interruptions:
If you spend all your time supporting your co-workers, you’ll never get your own work done. If your boss is who interrupts you the most sit down and say, “interruptions break my flow enough that they really tank my productivity for the hour. Would you rather I be immediately responsive to your IMs, or would you rather I work in the Zone and check my inboxes a few times a day at defined times?” If your boss isn’t mature enough to hear that, then he/she does not understand his/her job and you should expect them to be promoted to executive sometime in the next six months. If your boss is competent, however, it should lead to much improved working conditions during your boss’s remaining three weeks at the company.
Robbins has been on the productivity scene for a while, so he has the credentials to back up his words. He hosts a very popular podcast, takes the time out of his busy schedule to oversee frequently scheduled Action Days and is consistent with his message — and with how he delivers it. This book is the most accessible book I’ve read on the subject of personal productivity. It’s ideal for the individual who knows they need to be more productive but is using the excuse that they find self-development books tedious.
In another short except, Robbins offers his thoughts on the paper/technology productivity debate. While he loves gadgets and shiny things, he seems to reside in the camp that paper is a better tool to get stuff done:
On Technology’s Promise of Getting Things Done:
If anything, technology has helped us work more and do less . Technology certainly changes how we do things, but it often makes less work in one area while making much more work in others. And it’s expensive, requiring more work to pay for the cool technology that helps us work less.
Get-It-Done Guy’s 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More is the perfect holiday gift for someone looking to make productivity a priority and need a straightforward book to get them on their way.
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A huge list of iOS apps, the power of momentum, and sticking to good habits by using the Seinfeld method are just a sampling of what to expect in this week’s edition of Awesome Links.
90 Awesome iOS Apps for Freelancers
Our sister site, iPhone.Appstorm, has put together an incredible list of iPhone and iPad apps for freelancers — but those who don’t freelance should take a look at this list, too. A huge number of these apps are focused on enhancing your productivity and will help you get things done faster.
How to Harness the Power of Momentum
I came across this article, posted on Zen Habits by guest author Katie Tallo of Momentum Gathering, and couldn’t help but realize how important it is for every one of us to know when the momentum is building up and how to make the best use of it. No matter how hard-working and passionate we are, there are bound to be times of prolonged procrastination and laziness — and I don’t think that can be avoided. What we can do is get a lot of work done when we have momentum. That way, a bit of procrastination and laziness won’t hurt.
Getting Better at Bad: Why Practice Doesn’t (Always) Make Perfect
Skellie has written a thought-provoking article on her blog asking the question: Are you practicing just for the sake of practicing? She argues that while you think you are getting better at your work when you practice, are you? It’s not about practice…it has to be intelligent practice. A great read.
5 Procrastination Strategies to Become More Productive
The MakeUseOf blog, which usually publishes pure tech articles, has deviated with this post — and in a good way. This post offers some great productivity tips and ways to curb a lack of productivity when procrastination sets in.
The Habits Calendar Is Seinfeld’s Productivity Secret “On Steroids”
Finally, Lifehacker discusses an innovative habits calendar that can help you practice and stick to a new habit, achieve goals and make life better. Worth a read — and for some it is perhaps a method worth trying.
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Putting together a memorable presentation is very challenging work. You want it to stand out and resonate with your audience, and it’s hard enough to put together all of the information in a cohesive manner without having to worry about design. That’s why a lot of presentations end up being far less than what they really could have been. It’s like having a choice between opening a gift wrapped in fancy wrapping paper compared to one wrapped in newsprint. The shiny object always seems to win out.
To capture the attention of those you’re presenting to, you need something big and bold to help get your message across. Here’s 9 designer PowerPoint templates that will help you put together a stellar-looking presentation. Just click on each image to check out all of the features of the template.
1. Modernist
2. Utopia
3. Swiss Style
4. Media Interactive
5. BIGIdea
6. Wiked
7. Clouds
8. Modern Agency
9. Professional
Other Resources
20 Free PowerPoint Templates That Don’t Suck
28 Creative PowerPoint and Keynote Presentation Designs
14 Awesome PowerPoint Resources
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If you’re a follower of GTD productivity systems, there are scores of specially designed and tailored apps. Not so much for The Action Method. However, there are some options. One is the Action Method’s own product, Action Method Online and another is SUBERNOVA.
The basic elements of the Action Method are:
- Action Steps
- References
- Backburners
- Discussions
- Events
SUBERNOVA incorporates each of these elements in a sleek-looking package, with added bonuses for freelancers and entrepreneurs, such as time-tracking, estimate sending, and invoicing.
Action Steps
Action Steps are the crux of the Action Method. They’re also very straightforward tasks that need to be completed to move a project forward. And they should start with verbs.
SUBERNOVA allows you to create Milestones within a project, with the option of including a deadline. You can then delegate or share these tasks. If the task has a deadline, SUBERNOVA also lets you know how many days are left. This helps keep you accountable and things moving forward.
Projects
Creating a project in SUBERNOVA is easy:
- Enter the project’s name
- Select a client
- Set the base price (Or set it to zero if you’re charging by the hour, it’s advertising based, etc.)
- Enter the start date
- Enter the deadline
- Write a quick a description
SUBERNOVA has an awesome project overview that consists of:
- The client
- The project name
- How many milestones are needed to complete the project
- Timeline in the form of a progress bar
- Number of days left to deadline
- Whether the project is quoted, invoiced or paid
- Price of the project
- Timer to charge by the hour
So, essentially-everything you would want to know about a project is right at your fingertips-meaning less time spent searching and more time spent on Action Steps.
Milestones
Milestones let you break down larger projects into specific Action Steps. You can either choose to assisgn a dated deadline or just mark it as a task.
There are a number of ways to sort both projects and milestones in Suubernova:
- From all clients or projects
- Due Today
- Due Tomorrow
- Due within 1 Week
- Due within 2 Weeks
- Due later than 2 weeks
- By client/project
- By sharing options (For projects either shared by yourself or shared with your from others. For milestones, either assigned to someone else or assigned to yourself.)
This helps you keep focused on exactly what needs to be done, while allowing the flexibility of letting you choose how you view projects and tasks best.
References
Notes, links, files, mindmaps, wireframes — every project has some sort of material that you’ll need to reference back to during the course of it. SUBERNOVA allows you to add links to any project — perfect for keeping track of the relevant information you’ll need.
While you can’t upload a document, Google Docs and Writeboard allow you to create a password-protected link. Add the link to your project and you’re set.
Backburners
Backburners are those ideas that you want to do, but can’t do yet. Maybe you don’t have the resources…or the time. Perhaps another step or project needs to be created first. SUBERNOVA lets you pick a start date for each project. This way you can keep track of what you would like to do (or plan on doing) but don’t have to worry about currently-unactionable projects cluttering up your workspace.
Discussions
SUBERNOVA offers collaboration and communication in two ways:
- Collaboration through tasks and projects
- Scheduled emails
Scheduled emails are a godsend for those of us who don’t want to send an email at 3am on a Saturday that we have finished the project or have some questions, but also don’t want to forget to send that email.
Events
SUBERNOVA lets you subscribe to Project and Milestone dates and deadlines through an iCal format, allowing those dates and deadlines, to well, show up on your calendar. SUBERNOVA also offers email notifications of deadlines and the iPhone app allows for push notifications.
Important Extras for Freelancers and Small Businsesses
If you’re a freelancer or small business owner, SUBERNOVA has a number of awesome features designed for you in addition to the ones mentioned above.
Time Tracking
Time tracking is available right in SUBERNOVA. Just go to projects, hit start, and you’re good to go. Want to stop the timer? Click on it again and it stops. Simple and convienent.
Estimates and Invoicing
Finally, a full-featured invoicing option that:
- Integrates with your project management app
- Allows you to send invoices from your own domain name
- Allows for recurring invoices
- Includes a downloadable PDF link to invoices and estimates
- Allows for company branding
- Integrates with PayPal
- Is affordable-even if you’re just starting out! $14.99 for unlimited estimates, invoices, clients, projects AND milestones!
Email and iPhone Push Notifications, iCal subscription, and RSS Activity Feeds
To help keep you updated and on task, SUBERNOVA offer the ability to receive daily updates through email, iPhone push notifications, subscribe to the calendar that includes all your deadlines, AND subscribe to an RSS Activity feed a la Basecamp.
No matter what you’re preferred method of tracking and keeping on top of dealines is, SUBERNOVA has you covered.
For Even More Productivity for Anyone: Keyboard Shortcuts
Let’s face it-navigating by keyboard is much faster than using a mouse or trackpad. SUBERNOVA thought of this and has a number of keyboard shortcuts for routine tasks:
Available Versions
SUBERNOVA is a web app, but there’s also an Adobe Air App, an iPhone app and an iPad app available.
Overall, if you’re a freelancer or entrepreneur interested in using the Action Method, you really can’t go wrong with giving SUBERNOVA a shot.
(For more information on SUBERNOVA, you can check out our sister site, Web.AppStorm’s previous coverage.)
Do you want to your writing to be more memorable?
Forget about crafting beautiful prose. Trim your memos, presentations and e-mails with bullet points.
Benefits of bullets
- Take less time to read
- Allows readers to scan a page
- Makes it easier to dig deeper into important points
- Information is easier to remember
- Quicker to write
Tips for using bullets
- One idea per line
- Keep language neutral
- Just the facts
- Less exaggeration
- Refrain from boasting
- Write as few words as possible
- Short words
- Simple words
- Use numbers instead of bullets when listing:
- Items in hierarchical order
- Items ranked in order of importance
Of course not everything can be a bullet point. You need to write some parts in long form to keep from sounding too abrupt.
Useful Links
PowerPoint Revolution: 21st Century Design
Old-school Marketing for Old-school Clients: Using Pamphlets, Letters and Postcards
6 Tips for More Effective Email
(Images courtesy of Michael Cory under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 generic license.)
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The conventional wisdom for remote workers with families is that it is essential to create clear separation between work time and family time. “Make sure you have an office with a door, and keep that door closed during business hours”. But what would happen if we turned that wisdom on its head?
Working From the Heart of the Household
I’m writing this article at the dining room table late on a Monday afternoon. I’m sharing the table with my wife, two of my children and a constantly changing number of cats. Sometimes the conversation gets distracting. Occasionally, my two-year old climbs onto my lap and interrupts my work.
The gurus of productivity would say that by mixing work and family time I’m shortchanging my family and killing my efficiency. Which is true to a point, and I wouldn’t want to spend all of my time splitting my focus like this. But for me, the ability to work from within the living system of my family is one of the reasons I chose to work from home.
Bringing Work and Family Back Together
And being surrounded by family can be more than just a distraction from work. The notion of drawing a strict line between home and work is a relatively recent innovation. For much of human history, a family’s labor and it’s recreation were organically intermingled. As children grew up, they were smoothly integrated into the work of the household, often learning their parent’s trade from a young age.
I’m not advocating a return to child labor. But mixing work with family time can actually bring a family closer together, take some of the sting out of unpleasant tasks, and ward off burn-out.
Here are some of the ways you might mix work and home life in a positive way:
- Wear the baby. In my office I have both a traditional sit-down desk and a standing desk. I’ll often put our youngest, who is still an infant, in a sling around my shoulders and work standing up for an hour or more. I’ve found it easy to gently rock the baby back and forth while tapping out code and collaborating with my remote coworkers. My wife gets a break from the baby, the baby gets “daddy time”, and I burn some extra calories to boot!
- Teachable moments. Before writing this article, I was producing an episode of the Wide Teams Podcast. Our teenaged daughter was sitting at the table looking bored, so I invited her to look over my shoulder. For the next half hour I showed her how I mix the show together and turn it into a blog post, explaining things like audio compression and frequency analysis along the way. As a homeschooling family, we regard moments like these not just as extra credit, but as a core part of their ongoing practical education.
- No matter what your profession, as a remote worker you can draw lessons out of just about any part of your work. From updating a website, to writing code or copy, to interacting with clients, to balancing the books, there is knowledge to be passed on. As an experiment, try giving your kids a license to climb into your lap or pull up a chair during certain hours of the day. You might be surprised at the questions they ask and all the skills they pick up. And if nothing else, you’ll never regret the extra time spent with them.
- Many hands make light work. The natural next step from teaching your children about what you do, is getting them to help. Having the kids help out with your work isn’t just for family farms. After going over the audio mixing process with my daughter a few more times, I might ask her to take over the post-production of my podcast. Younger children can be tasked with tidying up the office – and you might be surprised how eagerly they do it if it means spending more time with you! As they get older you may even be able to employ them and garner a tax deduction.
- Partial presence is better than none at all. We’ve all had one of those projects – the deadline is close, or has already flown by. The client is unhappy. You’re working twelve-hour days, or worse. You can’t remember what color the sky is. Of course, in a perfect world you’d never have a project get out of hand. But back in this universe, it’s sometimes a choice between working overtime and not getting paid.
- Unlike your office-bound counterparts, though, you do have once choice: you can choose to hole up in your office with your work, or you can choose to camp out on the couch. When you choose the couch, even if it means you are head-down in your work while the family watches TV, at least they can see you. And you can look up from time to time and be reminded of why it’s all worth while.
Conclusion
If you work from home, I don’t recommend spending all of your working hours in the midst of your family. Anyone who does creative work needs periods of intense, uninterrupted focus. But when you choose sometimes to work in the midst of the happy chaos of family life, it can actually serve to bind the family closer together. And even if your productivity isn’t at 100% during those times, you may find that integrating your work and home life has compensations that more than make up for the loss.
(Image courtesy of ogimogi under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 generic license.)
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This week’s episode of the WorkAwesome podcast features an interview with ZURB’s Chief Instigator, Bryan Zmijewski that was conducted just after the release of their new web service, Verify. Host Mike Vardy also delves into the world of iPad and iPhone productivity including what’s now possible with the recent updates in the iOS — as well as the endless discussion about paper vs. digital task management.
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(Congratulations to Michael Ross for winning the Paid to Exist program offered for commenting on last week’s podcast. He happens to be a freelance web developer and writer — and hopefully the program will benefit him. Watch for more contests coming soon…)
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