Thomas Dowd
  • Facebook
  • Linkedin
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • RSS
  • Home
  • My Programs
    • Speaking Programs
    • Program Details
  • Products
  • Your Training Answers
  • Meet Tom
  • Testimonials
    • Testimonials
    • Book Reviews & Praise
  • Blog & Events
  • Media Room
  • Contact
Search the site...

Post from Transformation Tom™-MANAGING YOUR EMAIL: Chapter from “Time Management Manifesto”

November 29, 2016 / tomdowd / News
0

MANAGING YOUR EMAIL

 

 

 

 

 

 

According to bizcommunity.com, it was estimated that 294
billion emails are sent each day, with about seventy-five
percent considered spam, per estimates by the Radicati
Group (2010). Getting through the seventy-five percent, plus the twenty-
five percent you need for actual work, takes up valuable time. Now,
imagine that every time you receive a new message, a bell sounds or a
preview notice of incoming mail comes into view. When that happens,
it grabs your attention and starts to pull you toward multitasking. We
live in a very reactive work environment now. Sending and receiving
emails has made us slaves to this form of communication, and keeps us
leashed to whatever device gets us that information. Take back control
and be proactive in dealing with ancillary email impacts. Let’s start to
implement concrete email strategies.

• Block off and dedicate time to manage your email. Whether
you do it in the morning, before lunch, late afternoon, or all of
the above, you should have dedicated time for it and not take
them on one at a time, throughout the day.
• Ignore new messages. Rather than behaving like Pavlov’s dog
and responding to every bell that rings telling you that “You
have mail,” become proactive and take control of when you
choose to spend time reading email.
• Deal with it one time. Remember to touch an email once. Take
action on the emails such as moving it to another location or
scheduling a meeting or a phone call, but don’t read it and keep
it there. This causes you to read it multiple times.
• Resist the immediate temptation to grab your smart phone.
Don’t read emails immediately when you wake up. This will
create an instant heavy workload and frustrated state of mind.
Give yourself a chance to adjust to your day prior to checking
your email.
• Turn off the feature that confirms you have a new email or
provides a preview; you don’t want the distraction of knowing
that an email came in. If you’re blocking off time and have set
expectations with those you work with, you don’t need these
features.
• Avoid unnecessary ‘thank you’ emails. They often create an
avalanche of somewhat meaningless emails that go back and
forth. If it is truly worthy, call or write a heartfelt note. In
my first six months at a new job, I had over thirteen hundred
emails saying some version of thank you. There were some that
were heartfelt, but there were others that were less sincere and
simply read “thx.” The emails caught my attention and forced
me to stop what I was doing to delete them.
• Simplify your organization. I recommend against setting up
auto-filtering to organize emails by categories, senders, etc. It
creates the need to look in multiple places when researching or
looking for something. You should do your organizing through
file management, since you get information from many sources,
not just email. Build strong online file management systems to
assist in searching for pertinent material.

Taking a proactive, methodical, and strategic approach to email
management will allow you to take back your day and become a more
productive professional.

 

 

 

 

 

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

  • Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
  • Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
  • Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
  • The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
  • From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
  • The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

 

 

 

 

 

advice, appeal, appointment, audience, author, balance, book, business, business development, Business Training, change, Coach, coaching, competence, Confidence, control, deadline, delegate, development, Dowd, efficiency, follow up, growth, hr, human resources, Inspiration, intentions, interests, interruptions, introduction, leadership, life, Management, Motivation, multitask, network, Networking, organize, output, Personal, personal growth, planning, preparation, prepare, prioritizing, productivity, professional advice, Professional Development, recruit, recruiting, recurring, routines, speaker, speaking, speech, stress, success, tense, tension, Thomas, Thomas B Dowd, Thomas B Dowd III, Thomas Dowd, throughput, time, time management, to-do, to-do list, tom, Tom Dowd, touch it once, training, transformation, transformation tom, transformationtom, urgent, work, work life, worklife, yield

Post from Transformation Tom™-TAKING TIME TO ASSESS STRATEGIES: Chapter from “Time Management Manifesto”

November 15, 2016 / tomdowd / News
0

TAKING TIME TO ASSESS STRATEGIES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a peer of mine whom I would often call and have to
leave messages. She would never return my calls. As soon as
I sent her an instant message, she was prompt with her communication
and we were always able to get things done. By tailoring
our communication styles to her preferences, we were both more efficient.

Who you’re communicating with, what you’re communicating,
and how you’re communicating it will positively or negatively impact
your time. Confidence, influencing others, persuasion skills, setting
clear expectations, being clear and concise—all are tied to effective
communication and time management. All are a must when it comes
to being productive, not to mention building stronger relationships.
If you sit in meetings that have consistently been a waste of time,
are you confident enough to offer solutions to make them more
effective, or strong enough to say they should be held less frequently,
or even stopped altogether? Whether it is speaking up during the
meeting or after it to let the host know, communication does drive
time management.

How effective are your listening skills? Are you truly paying
attention and listening to people? Think back to the number of times
when questions had to unnecessarily be addressed again because
one person wasn’t listening? Listening is another key component of
communication and, again, time management.

I can’t state it enough: communication is an extremely important
facet of effective time management. Assess your communication
strategies, then go out and commit to and share best practices around
communication and time management. Take time to:

• Understand communication preferences for those you work
with the most. If you don’t know, then ask.
• Use the right channel based on priority. Is an email and instant
message (IM) the right channel based on the urgency or
expected actions? Don’t send an email to deal with fire drills
needing immediate attention—you can’t expect everyone to be
on email at all times of the day. You might send an instant
message to get someone’s attention, but you want to avoid
ping-ponging the message back and forth when details can be
discussed quickly on the phone.
• Be conscientious of the audience when sending emails. Give
summaries and highpoints, if necessary, and details to only
those who really need them. It saves you time in writing and
other people’s time in reading. Also, be concise by not writing
the email version of War and Peace to ask a simple question.
• Know who needs and wants to know. Don’t reply to everyone
on the email distribution (reply all) unless it is truly needed
and impacts all—it cuts down on potential unnecessary email
return responses.

Communication plays an important role when establishing
priorities and making all of us conscientious about being productive
and not wasting time. Looking at how you’ve chosen to communicate
in the past and establishing new reliable strategies will enhance your
efficiency.

 

 

 

 

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

  • Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
  • Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
  • Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
  • The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
  • From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
  • The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

 

advice, appeal, appointment, audience, author, balance, book, business, business development, Business Training, change, Coach, coaching, competence, Confidence, control, deadline, delegate, development, Dowd, efficiency, follow up, growth, hr, human resources, Inspiration, intentions, interests, interruptions, introduction, leadership, life, Management, Motivation, multitask, network, Networking, organize, output, Personal, personal growth, planning, preparation, prepare, prioritizing, productivity, professional advice, Professional Development, recruit, recruiting, recurring, routines, speaker, speaking, speech, stress, success, tense, tension, Thomas, Thomas B Dowd, Thomas B Dowd III, Thomas Dowd, throughput, time, time management, to-do, to-do list, tom, Tom Dowd, touch it once, training, transformation, transformation tom, transformationtom, urgent, work, work life, worklife, yield

Post from Transformation Tom™-COMMITTING YOURSELF: Chapter from “Time Management Manifesto”

November 1, 2016 / tomdowd / News
0

COMMITTING YOURSELF

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have you ever been on a conference call and waited several
minutes after the start time of the meeting to actually begin?
What if each time a person joins late, the host stops
and provides a catch-up summary? Is that fair to people who joined on
time? How about meetings that extend beyond the scheduled end time
with no regard for what anyone else may have scheduled next? I’ve been
in all of the above, in each of these roles: on time, late, host, and guest.
As the host, I finally made a commitment to start the meeting on time
and end on time. Commitment is a critical skill in time management. I
realized I needed to be more committed with several factors of my time
management. By committing myself to building better habits, I found
that others started to practice similar techniques.

Understand your own commitment level. Be fully invested in
improving your time management skills, and be respectful of others’
time, as well. Think of examples in which you must commit and start
to create the right actions and habits. Here are some examples:

• Commit to start and end times you set for yourself. If you said
you would spend an hour on a project, stick to that time. If
you’re not done with a task, set up a new time to complete it.
• The same holds true as the host of a meeting. Start on time
and end on time. In a meeting, you may want to say, “Out of
respect for everyone’s time, we’re going to get started.” It’s not
always easy, but many times we enable the process. With every
new late attendee who joins, we do a quick recap. As much
as we want everyone on the same page, it makes the meeting
inefficient and is disrespectful to those who did join on time.
You can offer to catch them up after the call or have them
read the meeting minutes, but it’s important to try to limit the
constant recaps for the late arrivers.
• As the end of a meeting approaches, you may want to say, “I see
we only have a few minutes remaining. We’ll end the meeting
and cover the rest at the next meeting,” or set up a new time
to finish that works for everyone. Going beyond the end time
has a downstream effect for many. Showing respect for other
people’s calendars builds the right habits for everyone. Be
committed to making it happen.

Stay focused on doing what you set out to do, starting by sticking to
what you allotted for time on your calendar. This will keep you on task,
build a strong time management reputation for you, and ultimately
save time for not only yourself, but others. Looking back at incidents
when you let time drift or found yourself not committing to what you
set out to do will provide you with a good snapshot of what needs to
change and what new habits to establish.

 

 

 

 

Thomas B. Dowd III’s books available in softcover, eBook, and audiobook (From Fear to Success only):

  • Now What? The Ultimate Graduation Gift for Professional Success
  • Time Management Manifesto: Expert Strategies to Create an Effective Work/Life Balance
  • Displacement Day: When My Job was Looking for a Job…A Reference Guide to Finding Work
  • The Transformation of a Doubting Thomas: Growing from a Cynic to a Professional in the Corporate World
  • From Fear to Success: A Practical Public-speaking Guide received the Gold Medal at the 2013 Axiom Business Book Awards in Business Reference
  • The Unofficial Guide to Fatherhood

See “Products” for details on www.transformationtom.com.  Book and eBook purchase options are also available on Amazon- Please click the link to be re-directed: Amazon.com

 

advice, appeal, appointment, audience, author, balance, book, business, business development, Business Training, change, Coach, coaching, competence, Confidence, control, deadline, delegate, development, Dowd, efficiency, follow up, growth, hr, human resources, Inspiration, intentions, interests, interruptions, introduction, leadership, life, Management, Motivation, multitask, network, Networking, organize, output, Personal, personal growth, planning, preparation, prepare, prioritizing, productivity, professional advice, Professional Development, recruit, recruiting, recurring, routines, speaker, speaking, speech, stress, success, tense, tension, Thomas, Thomas B Dowd, Thomas B Dowd III, Thomas Dowd, throughput, time, time management, to-do, to-do list, tom, Tom Dowd, touch it once, training, transformation, transformation tom, transformationtom, urgent, work, work life, worklife, yield

Subscribe

Connect with me on Facebook Connect with me on LinkedIn Watch me on YouTube Subscribe to my Blog Feed! Follow

Join My Mailing List

    First Name

    Last Name

    Your Email (required)

    (c) 2020. All rights reserved. Web Design by Jason Bobich