Business Opportunities Weblog

August 12, 2008 by Rich Whittle | 1 Comment

marcandangel.com:

I spent some time listening to one of my colleagues confess her utter distaste for the Windows Vista Start menu. “The system is organized all wrong. The programs I need are buried and the ones I never use are right at my finger tips. I waste so much time digging through menus,” she said.

“But you can easily rearrange that,” I replied. She looked down with a despondent expression on her face. “I know,” she said. “Someone else told me that too, but I haven’t taken the time to figure it out.”
Suddenly it dawned on me, you have to spend a little time now to save a lot of time later.

Here are a few ideas to help kick-start the practice of spending minutes to save hours:

1. Learn to Search Google Effectively – If Google is the prime portal to the information superhighway , Google’s advanced search operators are the most efficient vehicles on the road. Once you learn them, you will find what you seek in half the time… every time.

2. Organize Your Space – How fast can you access something in an organized space? Instantaneously! Spend a little time organizing your space and you’ll forever spend less time searching and more time doing.

3. Research and Use the Right Tools – Possessing the right tools can easily shrink a mountainous task into a molehill. The time you take to find the right tool will be repaid 1000 times over.

4. Uncover the Shortcuts – Keyboard shortcuts, driving a less congested route, hitting 2 birds with one stone, etc. There are simple shortcuts for almost everything you do. It’s worth your while to uncover them. Once you do, you can shave a few minutes off your tasks on a daily basis. Compound this over a year and you’ll saving hours of precious life.

5. Automate Tasks – Spend the time necessary to automate everything you can. Create checklists to help you remember things. Design templates to speed the process of recreation. Utilize modern technologies to automate bill payments, data backups, to-do list reminders, etc.

For ten more ideas, go here.

Photo by red_marc.

In Advice, Productivity, Strategy | 1 Comment