Keeping Meeting Notes Organized

If you're overwhelmed by what crosses your desk, it's worth considering the benefits of having a file folder for each month of the year and a file folder for each day of the month. This idea, the "tickler file," sytem has been in practice for years.

Create a file for days 1-31 of the month, and place it at the front of one of your file drawers. Behind that, have a file for each month of the year. If it's the second day of the month, for example, but you receive something that you won't need to deal with until the 15th, then put it in the file for, say, the 13th to allow yourself some slack. If anything comes in that you don't need to handle now, put it in your tickler file. This yields some immediate benefits. It keeps your desk clear and eliminates a lot of worry about where things go.

As the days and months go by, you continually take files that were in front and put them in the back. Once you get this system in place, you'll find that many of the things you file may not need to be acted on later. The benefits of this system are immediate.

Life a is Desk. Clear Yours!

To prehistoric man, life was a spear. Today life is a desk. Joe Sugarman, in his book, Success Forces, explains that by clearing your desk every evening, you automatically have to choose what to work on the next day. This is a discipline that yields a marvelous sense of breathing space with which to start each day.

To ensure that your desk and office environment supports you, invest in yourself. If you need them, room dividers and sound barriers are available in a wide variety of shapes and sizes and can improve upon any existing sound barriers.

Use the end of the day and slow periods to keep your desk orderly and better prepare yourself for high octane output when you're ready to get started again.

Every evening, after you've cleared your desk, acknowledge yourself for what you accomplished that day. Don't beat yourself up for what you didn't do. If you can do better, you will, maybe not at once, but soon enough.

Offering Your Sharp Attention

Science has shown that your brain works best when it gives sharp attention in one direction, so such as when you practice doing only one thing at a time. If you doubt that this is sound advice, then you can set up a very easy test in your own home.

Take any three tasks, such as drawing stars on a piece of paper, linking paper clips, and stacking pennies. Now play against someone in your family. Each of you has to do the same number of tasks, perhaps it is to draw twenty stars, link twenty paper clips, and stack twenty pennies.

One person proceeds doing each task individually, by drawing all twenty stars on a piece of paper, linking all twenty paper clips together, and stacking all twenty pennies. The other person has to rotate between the three tasks, doing three or four stars, two or three paperclips, three or four pennies. All other things being equal, who is going to win every time? The person who doesn't switch tasks frequently will be the winner.

Hopefully not During Meetings

Workers waste more than two hours a day on average by surfing the Web, conducting personal business, chatting with co-workers, and just zoning out, according to an online survey conducted by AOL and Salary.com.

Available and Responsible

For any large meeting you’re holding, the availability and responsiveness of the AV staff can be crucial:

* Is the staff immediately accessible and located on the meeting floor?

* Is the AV specialist able to handle all equipment problems?

* How responsive is the staff to requests from the coordinator, trainer, or speaker?

Exercise While You Speak

"Scientists have found intriguing evidence that one major reason so many people are overweight these days may be as close as the seat of their pants. Literally," reports Lee Dye for ABC News. "According to the researchers, most of us sit too much."

"In most cases, exercise alone, according to a team of scientists at the University of Missouri, isn't enough to take off those added pounds. The problem, they say, is that all the stuff we've heard the last few years about weight control left one key factor out of the equation. When we sit, the researchers found, the enzymes that are responsible for burning fat just shut down."


Jeff's take: I knew it! I've always felt energetic standing in front of audience. I even I switched to a stand up desk in January 2006. Anthropologically speaking how could it be any other way?

Mutli-tasking on Conference Calls

Ninety percent of people who participate in conference calls find things to keep them busy besides following the discussion, according to a new survey from audio and video conferencing company InterCall.

Cellphone Madness

HealthDayNews.com: Cell phones and pagers, part of the technological revolution that was supposed to liberate everyone, is tethering people to their jobs to an unprecedented degree, to the point where family life is suffering. The study limited the blame to cell phones and pages, and not computer-based communication such as e-mail. Cell phones and pagers were linked to increased psychological distress and reduced family satisfaction for both sexes.

The research, by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee sociologist Noelle Chesley, appears in the December issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family. "The use of cell phones and pagers was linked to increased distress and a decrease in family satisfaction over time," said Chesley, an assistant professor of sociology. "There is clearly a link between using the technology and experiencing increased access."

Annual Benchmark Survey

WorldTravel BTI's Annual Benchmark Survey reveals that 55% of corporate meetings include between 50 and 250 attendees; 41% include fewer than 50 attendees; and 4% include more than 250 people. In terms of frequency of meetings, 37% of corporations hold at least 100 meetings annually, and 63% hold fewer than 100.