Catégorie : Productivity

Day 558. Do you receive too many emails? If not, then you can go back to what you were doing previously. If yes, just continue reading, because I will give you my own personal 3 rules to win the email battle that take literally 5 seconds to implement and allow you to free time to do meaningful work. Before getting into those rules, I need to clarify one simple point: email is just one of the many ways to communicate and is the asynchronous way. Asynchronous means that when you press the Send button, your email can take some time to be delivered and the recipient may not be online or not in front of his or her email client, so he or she will receive it later and may answer later too. So we come to our first rule:

1. If you expect an urgent answer, do not use email, use instant message, phone the person, or walk to his or her desk. In other word: speak!
2. Put each email you receive and read in one of those three buckets: trash, archive, action. All those emails that you are copied on or that you receive because you are part of a distribution list will go to trash. But hey you tell yourself, it may be important! Sure it may. And I assure you that if it’s really important you will hear about it through other ways of communication soon! And if you feel it’s important, read and archive! As for those email that you can answer in less than 30 seconds, answer them immediately and move! For those that require some work, keep them, flag them, change them into a task and put them in your calendar. In that case apply some judgement. Some email do not require urgent action, plan them for the next day or the next week.
3. End your day with an empty mailbox. Yes, you read it well, empty your mailbox. If you applied rule two, at the end of each day, each email will have been either trashed, archived or actioned upon, your mailbox will be empty!

I always smile when people tell me they receive too many emails. You receive too many emails because you let others send you too many emails. It’s not about others, I am sorry to say it’s all about you! You are the master of your mailbox, do not let your mailbox rule!

Day 557. Some days, you do not feel going to exercise. You may be tired, do not have time, or are just lazy (sometimes it’s good to be lazy, but that’s another story). Therefore, starting is a matter of sheer will. You need to rationalize and tell yourself it’s good for you. Not only for your body of course, but also for your mind. This is what happened to me on Friday morning. I had all good reasons to not exercise: went to bed late the day before, had a plane to catch, and told myself I could skip a day. And I just did the opposite: went to the gym for 30 minutes.

It was hard to start. I did not want to go and my body was reluctant to produce any effort at the beginning. Then the biological of the body kicks in. Our body is a wonderful machine that requires exercise. Tons of medical studies has proven this point, backed up by hundred thousands of years of evolution. So our body generates hormones to help our mind feeling good. Dopamine among others neurotransmitters will make you feel good: it’s also called the reward hormone. You know that feeling when you tick a done thing on your to-do list? It’s dopamine. So when dopamine starts to flow in your body, you feel you did the right thing. And this is what happens. A few minutes after starting sweating, you are feeling good.

But the beauty of these 30 minutes does not stop at the end of those 30 minutes. The effect continues all day. You feel better, you are better, and others feel it too. So even when it’s hard to start, remember it’s gorgeous to finish, so go exercise, even if it’s 20 or 30 minutes. Just do it!

Non pas que celui-ci passe aux oubliettes, non, non, il va toujours me servir à commenter la crise qui n’en finit pas. Si au niveau international et financier, nous n’y pouvons pas grand chose, à moins de devenir patron du FMI ou président de la république, à titre individuel, les bonnes vieilles recettes fonctionnent toujours et permettent de ne pas se prendre la tête, mais j’y reviendrais en temps et heure.

Je disais donc que j’ai commencé un nouveau blog, en anglais uniquement (avec toujours la capacité offerte par Bing Translator de faire de la traduction à la volée, qui je dois le dire s’améliore de plus en plus), dont le sujet unique est la productivité. Passionné, comme vous l’avez sans doute constaté, par la productivité et l’utilisation optimale du temps, et passant une bonne partie de mes journées à travailler sur un ordinateur, il m’a semblé tout naturel de lier les deux afin d’offrir à mes lecteurs les meilleurs astuces pour faire plus, plus vite et mieux avec Office, le logiciel de productivité personnel et de groupe.

Le choix d’Office n’est pas anodin. D’abord parce que je travaille pour Microsoft, ce n’est pas un secret. Ensuite, parce qu’après avoir écrit quelques livres sur Access et PowerPoint dans les années 90, je suis resté fidèle à cet outil utilisé par plus d’un milliard d’utilisateurs sur la planète. Puis, regardant les gens se servir d’Office, je suis toujours étonné de leur utilisation basique alors qu’il existe des moyens simples et rapides de faire plus vite et mieux. Enfin, car depuis plus de 25 ans, Microsoft a apporté une myriade d’innovations dans cet outil, qui se veut aujourd’hui plus que la réunion d’un ensemble d’applications sous un nom commun.

Et puis, si je devais apporter un élément supplémentaire, c’est celui de la gratuité sur les tablettes Apple et Android, ainsi que sur les futures tablettes Windows 10. Les applications tactiles sur ces matériels sont tout bonnement géniales et laissent leurs concurrentes loin derrière. Alors voilà, ce nouveau blog, OfficeProductivityBlog.com, à bookmarker et consommer sans modération!