I’ve written before about how I love to get up early because that’s my most productive time of the day — but I don’t think we’ve ever talked about how to optimize those productive hours to get the most stuff done. I have my own tricks; I’d love to hear what you guys use as well. (I usually can be focused enough without time management techniques during this time — but they can be super helpful during other times of the day. Pictured: Pomodoro Kitchen Timer for Action Logging, originally uploaded by AndyRobertsPhotos. )
1) Know what you want to do. I always find this time is best to focus on ONE THING, not a whole to-do list. I don’t even WRITE my to-do list until later in the day, to be honest. When I get up early, I do the one thing that I need/want to do, and nothing else.
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As today is Administrative Assistant’s Day, I thought we’d have an open thread about what the best thing your secretary/assistant has ever done for you. We’ve talked about what you can delegate to assistants before — what DO you guys delegate? What do you look for in a great assistant?
For my own $.02, the best assistant I ever had was only mine for a short period — she was attached to a partner down the hall who had a niche practice, and when the partner moved offices, so did my secretary. But in addition to being pleasant and nice, she was really smart — I felt like I could give her anything and she would do a great job with it. I wish I could remember something specific she did that went above and beyond, but really she was just generally excellent!
(Pictured: Files, originally uploaded to Flickr by Velo Steve.)
Reader B writes with a great question: should she leave her well-located office and move to a bigger one down the hall?
There is a large office that has been vacant in our firm for 9 months or so (another associate was let go). I have a small office, but I like the location of it. It’s right next to the partner I work for and the assistant we share, and there’s always activity around it, which suits my work style. The large office is down the hall a bit, in a quieter area with less activity and visibility, all of which are “cons” for me. I’ve been going back and forth with asking to move (I know they’d say yes). I think the large office looks better to clients, I’ve been here for several years now, and I’m the only attorney still in a small office, the rest are occupied by paralegals. Any thoughts as to size versus location and which is more important?
Tough, tough question. My gut reaction is you should stay put because you seem happy in your current office… but your points about the paralegals and clients are serious things to consider. (Pictured: Office Hallway HDR Test, originally uploaded to Flickr by WintrHawk.) Whichever one you choose, you may want to read our suggestions on office decor.
I suppose the first question to ask is whether there are any dream offices — i.e., larger offices, near your partner or in other active areas — even if they may be occupied at the moment? [click to continue…]
Today, reader D wonders if she has to make her own Franken-planner to find the absolute best planner out there…
I realize this may be a bit too late to be useful for the upcoming new year, I would love to see a post regarding the various paper calendars/planners Corporette users prefer. I was digging through archives and read the entire post/comment thread regarding
notebook and legal pad preferences, and I thought a similar thread about planners would be just as interesting. A girlfriend and I struggle every year with finding the “perfect” planner, to the point we try to cobble together some sort of Franken-planner on our own. We’ve actually discussed starting our own company to remedy this problem.
Actually, for people who can afford to wait, mid-January is a great time to get planners and calendars on deep discount — so let’s talk about it. Readers, what is your favorite planner/calendar system?
(Pictured: Super cute custom day planners by Erin Condren, available at Tiny Prints (get 20% off any order + f/s when you spend $99, offer ends 1/10).)Personally, I use a number of systems… so maybe a Franken Planner is needed!
- Daily planning: As I mentioned, I recently gave up my Palm Pilot and switched to an Android phone. I looked around for a good calendar program, and came up with the following solution: I use Google Calendar (for free) and sync it with Pimlical (which cost about $25 if I remember correctly). Google Calendar is great because it gives me notifications on my Android, my iPad, by email, and more — it’s very hard for me to forget appointments or whatnot with the system! Pimlical is great, though, for a more permanent record of what I was doing and when. I tend to take a lot of notes in my calendar program — for example, every time I see a doctor I record my vitals and any topics discussed on the appointment in Google Calendar. Oh: another thing that’s nice about Google Calendar is that I can invite Outlook users to events — so when we book an airline flight, for example, I can instantly give my husband the details and put those on his calendar as well.
- Longer distance planning: Something I’ve done for a few years now is to use my Palm Pilot software to print a yearly calendar, with each month getting its own page. I liked Palm because each day was a big enough block that you could write in it, but with only 12 pages the whole “packet” wasn’t too huge or crazy to actually use. I always put all vacation days on it — federal holidays and the like — and would primarily use the packet to plan vacations. (When vacation details are finally set I put everything relevant into the Google Calendar.) When I was planning my “maternity leave” for Corporette I used the planner to keep an eye on which posts I had scheduled for which day, which needed more editing, which days still needed a post or two.
- I also have a big monthly calendar (for 2012 I used Snapfish to make baby-centric ones and then gave them as gifts to my parents, my in-laws, my grandmother, and my brother) that we hang on the wall — I also write friends’ birthdays on that one (and, um, decorate it with stickers, because I like to indulge my inner 8-year-old). It’s great for glancing at the calendar occasionally to see whose birthday is coming up, what the date will be next Wednesday, etc, etc. Something I really liked about Snapfish was that I could select individual dates to recognize — and so, for example, I have a picture from our wedding album on May 30 to commemorate our wedding anniversary… for each grandparent’s birthday I have a picture of him or her holding my son… it came out really nice. (After coupons and the promotions they had going on, each calendar only cost about $9, so it was more about the time invested to make it… but I’m really glad I did.)
- Finally: I have a little teeny calendar at my desk that I got through Vistaprint — basically each day just shows me the monthly calendar (just the big numbers) and a picture (of course this one is baby-themed as well). (Just an FYI: Vistaprint is offering 50% off all custom-printed calendars, including little desk-sized ones like the one I got.)
The other big aspect to planners are tasks, I suppose. I’ve written before of my love for
Remember the Milk, but I tend to use that for longer distance planning rather than actual things like “remember the milk” (it seems more efficient to either a) directly add it to my cart in Fresh Direct, b) head out to get some, or c) text my husband to pick up on his way home). I use it for TPS reports (if I see a cute dress for a Splurge, or in a certain price range), as well as to manage my growing addiction to ordering things online (i.e., remember that X is to arrive in Y days, you should get a refund for $100ish in 3 weeks, etc). Beyond that I use Post-Its, to be honest. I know my brother just spent a fair amount of money on a good iPhone app to implement the “
Getting Things Done” system, but I can’t remember the name of it now — I’ll update this when I do.
Readers, what is your favorite planner/calendar system? Do you share calendars/planners with multiple people, i.e. your secretary or your significant other? Do you have multiple systems, like I do?
How messy is TOO messy of an office? I’ve worked with all sorts of people when it comes to this. There are the people with the super-bare office — completely clean desks with perhaps one photo on it. I’ve worked with folks where it was so messy that it seemed like they could film an episode of Hoarders in there. And I’ve worked with people where it was “controlled chaos” — one of my bosses memorably kept about 10 tall piles of manilla folders on her desk at all times and would have to go through each pile to find what she needed. Personally, I’ve always been on the messier side of the spectrum, but with the caveat that I can almost always find what I need in under ten minutes.
I suppose I’ve assumed something about each of these coworkers — it is, after all, a bit of a window into how the mind works. I always imagine the bare-office people sitting there grinding their teeth at the slightest noise outside their office that interrupts their concentration — the kind of people who, if their daily schedule gets off by five minutes, their day is irreparably ruined. On the converse, I’ve imagined the truly messy office people (the “how did they get that pile of papers so high?” people) always think a clean office is a good idea in theory… when they get around to it, right after they finish that novel and those other 3 ambitious projects that they never quite seem to start. That said, for my $.02, the only people I viewed as “less professional” because of their office space had to do more with decor (a big sports-related beanbag chair, an overly pink, matchy-matchy desk set) and less to do with “mess.”
But as a junior employee, are you better advised to keep your office space orderly and neat — even if clients and superiors don’t visit your office frequently? When does a messy office cross the line?
Readers, what do your offices look like? What do you wish they looked like? What assumptions do you make about other people based on their office space?
For those of you who live a flight away from your parents, I thought I’d share my trick for the holidays, which I use to avoid traveling with gifts. It’s pretty simple, so here goes:
I send packages to Babette.
See, my mother’s name is Linda Vogele — so we’ve worked out a system through the years where if she receives a package for Babette Vogele (and this is kind of a year-round system at this point), she knows not to open the package. She puts it aside in one of her many closets (ah, the joys of living in Ohio!) and when I come home I open all of the packages, wrap them, and slip them under the tree. If it’s an occasion for which I’m not traveling home (say, her birthday or Mother’s Day or whatnot), I can direct my father to the appropriate box and he’ll open it and package it nicely and present it whenever her other gifts are being opened. (My mom tends to open all of the mail that comes to the house so this is primarily a problem with her stuff.) It’s a simple system, but I like it because it saves me from stressing about how to get gifts home, and it also means that if I see a good deal online for something my mother would like I can act on it, without having to remember to tell her that it’s coming, what it’s for, or who gets it.
Why Babette? Well… why not? We don’t know anyone with the name personally, so there’s no confusion.
Readers, what are your tips and tricks for holiday shopping?
(Pictured: Ribbons & Bows, originally uploaded to Flickr by david_s_carter.)
