Here’s my teeny tiny home office! That baby is a total of SIX square feet! Until recently, my computer/bill pay/filing center was crammed into minimal square footage out of necessity. But now I have an extra bedroom to maybe turn into a guest bedroom/office (just like Sherry and John!) one day. Until I’m hit over the head with inspiration though, my humble home office will stay just like this:

1. My shelves (from Ikea) hold my printer, supplies, paper (“good paper” and “printer paper”), magazines and greeting cards.
2. My desk (from The Container Store) has a work area that rolls out to hold a laptop computer. The cubbies hold envelopes, pens/pencils, checks, notepaper and stamps. I keep the stapler, tape dispenser and label maker on the top.
3. My filing cabinet (from Staples) holds my files: house stuff on top and personal stuff on the bottom. I hate that fake plant, but I’ve had it forever and it seemed dishonest to remove it just for the picture.

So, there you have it. A little post for a little office.

Here’s another shot, to give you some perspective:

Welcome to part 2 of my three part series on where I work! Between the office and my office at home (stay tuned for that tomorrow!), I spend a lot of time sitting right smack-dab in the middle of these photos – so I figured I’d break it down for y’all.

This part focuses on the area to the right of my keyboard/monitor – where I have my active files, my phone and (spoiler alert) my fake plant.

My “active projects files” set-up is what I think is most helpful to breakdown, and I wouldn’t like it as must as I do without this little guy:

He keeps my “official” project files (the ones I bother to make labels for) organized at the top, and my miscellaneous-type project files neat-and-tidy in the three drawers underneath. I particularly like this system because I don’t have to make folders for the projects that:

• can be tossed when I’m done with them; OR
• that can go into a file I already have in my filing cabinet

The drawers keep everything I need handy, and when I’m done I can toss them in a file or toss them in the recycle bin.

Anything that doesn’t fall into one of the two excuses above, I consider an official project, and so I make a folder with a label. David Allen defines a project as “any desired result that requires more than one action step” – so the folders along the top hold all the action steps along the way.

The pretty folders in the back are key to my organization system. These are labeled:

• SIGN & RETURN TO JEANNIE
• ROBIN (my boss)
• TIMESHEETS
• EXPENSES

All the managers know that the blue folder (SIGN & RETURN TO JEANNIE) contains something that needs to be signed (and returned to Jeannie… imagine that). It’s sturdy and stands out… I’ve had great success having items signed and returned in a timely manner and I’ve never had one lost.

The “ROBIN” folder is what David Allen calls an “agenda” folder. Basically, you make a dumping ground for everything you need to review with an individual (or group of individuals) and that way you review everything at once. According to David Allen “Standing meetings and peope you deal with on an ongoing basis may need their own ‘agenda’ list” and since I only see my boss a couple of times per week, this is where I put everything to review with her.

“EXPENSES” hold the receipts for items I can expense (and the scraps of paper on which I write down my mileage) and “TIMESHEETS” hold timesheets (because sometimes these are done weeks in advance… shhh… ).

My phone set-up is pretty straight-forward: phone, paper, pens, and phone list. My favorite little tip here is that everything you pin to a board or wall looks more organized when you add a label:

The last stop of the tour of my office space, is the some-what sad looking corner:

A fake plant (did you know most offices with a plant service won’t allow you to have a potted plant (one with soil)? Sad, huh?), a photo of my dad and brother at a ball game, and a box of tissues.

One very important part of my workspace that is not pictured is my inbox. David Allen covers the inbox at length in his book (seriously, pages and pages… and it’s all good stuff!). Two tips regarding the inbox:

• Keep it empty (or nearly empty): otherwise, people won’t trust that you’ll actually get to whatever it is they want to put in there and they’ll just leave it on your desk chair
• Keep it out of your line of sight: that way, when somebody tries to interrupt you with something, you can simply say (without even turning your head!) “you can just stick it in my inbox and I’ll get to it. If I have any questions, I’ll let you know” – awesome.

You can encourage productive behavior by your co-workers (I didn’t want to say “train your co-workers” – they’re not seals). If you keep your inbox empty, they will trust that you’ll get to it and not interrupt you: everyone wins!

One item that you might notice is missing (and another favorite little organization tip) is a tape dispenser. Most people don’t use tape enough to justify the desk space. You probably don’t need this on your desk, so feel free to throw it in your desk drawer. Another item that is missing but should actually be there is my stapler (somebody had borrowed it). David Allen suggests (and I agree) that you should have a stapler that you don’t need to pick up to use.

So, there you have my entire office area (between part one and part two). Tomorrow, I can’t wait to show you my SIX square-foot office!

This is where I spend at least 8 hours a day!

I’ve worked at my current job for more than a year, and it looks very much like this most of the time (except when I’m working on a project). I *love* it when people comment on how clean my desk is… it just makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. Believe it or not, I felt there were enough elements to my work areas to spread it out over 3 posts (2 for the office and 1 for home).

So, let’s dive right into part 1 (of 3!) of where I work:

And since I’m (apparently) a fan of breaking things down, I’ve broken part 1 into three different parts too:

1. My whiteboard calendar
2. My books/trinkets
3. My periodicals/photos

I got this magnetic whiteboard calendar at Target, because the whiteboard calendars I really love are very expensive! I prefer to reference this for dates than the calendar on my computer because it’s way fast to just glance to the left to see if the 24th is a Monday or a Tuesday. Also, I block out important deadlines (which keeps me focused) and indicate when I’m going to be out of the office (in case somebody stops by and wonders where I am).

Next, I keep my reference books within reach (including this gem Chris got me to remind me not to work too hard), along with my business cards and a lotus flower meditation toy that I received from my best friend, Shaun.

Finally, I have my less-referenced periodicals and training information, and a couple of framed photos. These are both strategically placed… the periodicals and training information are things I reference often enough that I don’t want to file them away, so I keep them clean-looking by putting them in magazine boxes. The photos are off to the side, but near the entrance because people who visit tend to comment on the first thing they see – so the photos serve as a conversation starter.

I got these frames from Ikea and “mounted” them on the fabric walls of my cubical with push pins and some double-sided tape:

So I realize this isn’t a tip that everyone can use… not too many people have a bunch of very large images they need to shrink down all at once. And not everyone has Photoshop (if you don’t have Photoshop, I have a work-around tip for you at the end).

HOWEVER, I think this handy time-saving tip is pretty awesome and maybe (hopefully) at least a few of you do too:

1. Open Photoshop and then open 5 or so of your images (depending on the size, you can go up to 10!) In this example, I’m shrinking very high quality images (30+ MB!) that they can be used in proposals (where they only need to be 3 MB) so I’m doing 5 at a time. TIP: because of the way this is set up, it’s best to do all the landscape images at one time and then all the portrait images.



2. The fancy name for this trick is “batch processing” and to do it, you need to have the “actions” panel open. If you don’t see the “actions” panel, go to Window> Actions
3. In the “Actions” panel, click on “Create New Action”
4. Name it whatever you’d like (I used “shrink”) and assign it a function key (so that it’s even faster! I used “shift F3”)



5. The “Record” button (red circle) should be on now. If it’s not, click it.
6. Do the steps that you would like on all of your photos. To shrink these file sizes, I:

   • went to Image> Image Size and then changed the height to 1000 pixels (make sure the “constrain portions” box is checked) and then hit “OK”
   • then I went to File> Save As, went to a folder I called “Proposals” (because these images are for proposals) and then changed the file type to jpg
   • then I closed the image. Your “Actions” box should look like this: 

   

7. Stop “recording” by hitting the square button (like on a VCR!)
8. The next image in your assembly line should be open (because you closed the other one while you were recording). Now, all you have to do is hit “Shift F3” for each image. Since it closes the images as you go along, you hardly have to do anything!

If you don’t have Photoshop, there may be something else you can do to shrink a bunch of images at once. This may be a function of Microsoft Outlook, so if you don’t have Outlook, it might not work…

1. In Windows explorer, navigate to the folder with the images you want to shrink (they all have to be in the same folder)
2. Highlight all the images. You can draw a box around all the images, or you can hold “ctrl” while you select them.
3. Right click on one of the highlighted images.
4. Select Send To>Mail Recipient
5. Select the option to “make images smaller”
6. Send the email with the attached (small) images to yourself
7. (after you receive the email) Save all the (small) attachments

If you have all questions, feel free to drop me a line or leave a comment.

Enjoy!

Here’s how we do raffles in Excel now:

1. Set up the list of names in Excel. All the names should be in one column.

2. Go to Random.org and use the sequence generator to generate a squence of numbers in one column:

3. Copy-and-paste the column into Excel, next to the names:

4. Go to Formulas>Math & Trig>RANDBETWEEN. Put “1″ in the first box and the number of people in the second box.

5. This generates a random number (in this case, 4) and the person with the corresponding number is the winner! (in this case, Liz Lemon!)

This is a handy little short-cut if you need to format information in a document that is not continuous. Instead of highlighting each bit and formatting one-by-one, you can highlight everything and then format all at once. This trick definitely takes some practice, but if you get the hang of it I know you’ll use it a ton.

BTW, have you noticed that the cool new word is “ton”… pay attention, you’ll hear it all the time now. I wonder where it came from…

1. Highlight (using your mouse) the first bit of information
2. Hold the “ctrl” key while you highlight the second bit of information
3. Continue holding the “ctrl” key as you higlight until you’re all done
4. Format the information as you’d like (in this case, bold and red)

Continue reading for screen captures of the steps.

Let’s say you want to make the due dates for each of these items red and bold:

You could highlight each date and format them one-by-one, OR you could highlight them all and then format all at once.

To highlight all the dates, highlight the first one and then hold down the control key as you highlight the others. This takes practice, for sure.

Once highlighted, format everything all together!

I’ve always been a pretty independent worker and consider myself sooo fortunate that all of my managers have not been micro-managers. But I know it’s important that I keep them up updated with my workload and projects. Sometimes we meet face-to-face once during the week, other times I just print the document and leave it on her desk. We try to meet once a week, but it doesn’t always work out that way

If you don’t meet with your manager regularly, this is also a good document for tracking your work load. I save each week by date (MMDDYY) so I can reference it later.

This is a forth or fifth generation document (the original was created by my co-worker and very good friend, JCo!) and with each revision it gets slightly better.  

Here’s how the document works:

• There are 5 sections: action items, projects, completed items, questions and waiting on/action items/notes.
• Action items is for items to complete during the week
• Projects is for projects you’re working on that won’t be completed during the week. There should be at least one action item for each project
• Completed items is for everything completed in the previous week.
• Questions is for anything you need clarification or approval for
• Waiting on/action items/notes is the section for your manager.

Download the template here (includes more instructions)!

I was supposed to be in Tempe from Tuesday through Thursday last week. My return flight was scheduled to depart Phoenix at 5:40pm on Thursday. Then came the high winds and with it the shutting down of SAN for 2 hours, and then PHX for 2 hours. What came after that was a long effort to get back home.

I was with my boss, my boss’ boss and a project director. Our journey home lasted 26 hours, started with a cancelled flight and included: renting a car and trying to drive home (closed freeway), booking 4 tickets on another airline (that flight was later cancelled), staying another night in a hotel room (that was the only one that still had vacancy and was 14 miles from the airport), trying to rent a car to get to California (the first rental place doesn’t do one-ways to CA), and finally getting a rental car and driving home.

Not everything here will be applicable for future trips, but hopefully bits of it will prove useful eventually!

• You’re a grown-up now:  Before embarking on each next leg of our adventure, not a single person asked me if I had to go to the bathroom or if I was hungry. Go figure – I’m a grown-up now! I’ve known this for a long time, but could imagine this would be down-right shocking to some people.
• When the boss says to meet in the lobby at 7:30 am, that really means 7:15 am. Luckily, I anticipated this one and didn’t keep anyone waiting.
• A little humor goes a long way: everyone made the best of our situation and, at times, even had a little fun.
• A little complaining goes a long way too: nobody complained on our trip, but I know some people just love to complain! I also know that even a little complaining would have gone a long way for people not liking you. Probably not liking you forever. If the people you’re with are in the same situation, it’s not worth complaining. At all.
• It’s abundantly clear right away who is interested in helping you and who is not interested in helping you: don’t waste your time talking to people who are not interested in helping you. Sometimes, it’s hard to admit that the person you’re talking to doesn’t want to help you, but you really need to. Don’t take it personally, just move on to the next person.
• Have a few things handy: a pen, a pad of paper, and a camera. The picture above was snapped after the big boss arranged for a stretch limo to take us to our hotel (14 miles away) after a rough day. We snapped some other pictures so the camera proved useful. PS: it was snapped by the limo driver and I will be nominating it for the blurriest picture ever taken. Ever.
• Charge your cell phone whenever/wherever you can: my phone never died! That also was handy.
• If you think there is any chance your flight might be cancelled, don’t check your bag: or at the very least, grab a change of clothes and your toothbrush. A poor traveler in our group checked baggage (the rest of us carried on) and was without toiletries when the flight was cancelled and we all needed to leave the airport before we harmed somebody.
• Southwest Airlines does right by its customers: All of my co-workers were flying Southwest Airlines and were all notified that their flights were cancelled early in the day on Thursday. I was flying on a different airline (I’m not going to say which one, but here is a hint) and that airline delayed flights and delayed flights even more until they eventually cancelled them – when it was too late for the flier to book a hotel room or make other arrangements. In fact, that airline kept accepting reservations even after it became clear that no planes would be departing from PHX that day. I know a bunch of people who now have a credit with that airline that they will probably never use. In summary, pay attention to what Southwest Airlines is doing – they have their customers’ best interests at heart.

I’m in lovely Tempe, AZ until Thursday (1/21). It’s raining and I miss home. I don’t like flying or traveling (unless I’m on vacation!) because I get all kinds of sick: air sick, car sick, home sick… it’s okay though. I like my job a lot so I don’t mind traveling for it.

Since I was going to have 3 days in the office and 2 after-work (causal) events and 1 potential business dinner, I needed a variety of outfits. Continue reading for my plan…

Here is my plan outline:

Day 1:
Travel day, office day, casusal dinner with friend

Outfit 1: (office)
Black slacks, black high heels, grey/black striped shirt, cardigan

Outfit 2: (dinner with friend)
Tan pants, grey shirt with yellow shirt, black cardigan, black flats

Day 2:
Office day, potential business dinner, casual drinks with friend

Outfit 1: (office)
Black wrap dress, black high heels, black cardigan, necklace

Outfit 2: (dinner)
Same as office

Outfit 3: (casual drinks)
Tan pants, yellow (with stripes) and grey shirt, black cardigan, black flats

Day 3:
Office, traveling home

Outfit 1:
Black slacks, black high heels, grey shell shirt, black cardigan, necklace

My thinking was this:

• I’m gone for 3 days, but I didn’t want to check a bag. My carry-on is smaller than your average carry-on… I consider that a challenge!
• My second “office” outfit should be able to go from the office to dinner, but should also be my lightest outfit since it is the one I would be packing
• Whatever I wore on the first day, I should also be able to wear (pieces of) on the third day – and it should be my bigger/heavier items (slacks, high heels)
• Notice a theme? Everything is black/grey/tan/yellow.

If you would like to download my packing list, you can get it here!

You’ll notice that I have “batteries for camera” on there… yeah, I didn’t bring those. That’s why my pictures are crummy… I’ll post some more once I get some batteries!

This trick is so handy if you have a table with contacts, or if you’ve exported contacts from Outlook into a table, and you would like to create a block of email addresses separated by semicolons that you can copy-and-paste into the “TO” field of an email. The example I have here only has a few emails (of my favorite female sitcom characters), but you can follow the same steps for a lot more email addresses!

Here’s an example of what you might have in Excel:

If you want to create a block of email addresses (separated by semicolons) that you can copy and paste into the “TO” field of an email, read more

Here’s how you do it:

1. In Excel, highlight the list of email addresses. Start from the last cell in the column and highlight up. Copy and paste the list into Word.

2. In Word, highlight the table and select Table Tools> Layout> Sort (in Word 2003 it’s Table>Sort) and then “OK” (this sorts out all the contacts that don’t have email addresses). Highlight the blank cells and delete them by right clicking and selecting “delete rows.”

3. With the table still highlighted, select Table Tools> Layout> Convert to Text (in Word 2003 it’s Table> Convert >Table to Text).

4. Make sure “paragraph marks” is selected and then hit “OK”

You now have a list of email addresses, separated by paragraph marks (you’re almost there!)

5. Highlight the text and select Home> Replace (or ctrl + f, then select the replace tab). In the “Replace” window, select “More” (see 2). Place the cursor in the “Find what:” field, then select “Special” (3) and “Paragraph Mark” (4).

6. In “Replace with:”, type “; ” (semicolon with a space after it). It should look like this:

Select “Replace All”

7. You now have a list of email addresses, separated by semicolons.

You can copy and paste this in to the “TO” field of an email and send it out!