A Series of Unfortunate Events (Not the Lemony Snicket Version!)

This morning, as I was driving into work, my car stalled in the middle of the highway. Luckily, I was able to pull over, even though I was in the far lane, and got my car onto the shoulder. The car was still drivable, so I got into work even though I was a bit late. Instead of doing what I had planned for my lunch break, I took the car to a mechanic, and on his way driving me back to work a bee flew through the window and stung me in the face. How do you continue with your day after it starts this badly?

It can be hard to get your act back together after something like this happens to you. So how did my day change after my car broke down?

First off, I had to get into work. It took some time to get to work (longer than I had planned for), and even though my hours happen to be flexible, I didn't get to work at the hour I had intended to. Right off the bat I was running behind schedule. In this circumstance, it was essential to stay calm and focused. If you lose your cool, more things will start going wrong because you are too frazzled to handle it all. Also I had to be more efficient with my time. Instead of taking the time to make my cup of tea and my cup of apple cinnamon oatmeal before I sat down, I got straight to work and waited for a better break.

This all comes back to how to re-prioritize the importance of the tasks for the day. In this case, my work had become more important than my breakfast (although my stomach would beg to differ!), and my car needed to be repaired which was more important than the lunch I had scheduled. I was able to skip that meeting and go get my car checked during lunch. This was a much better solution than having to take time off of work.

Also, you might find that your coworkers are much more understanding of this sort of occurrence if you do not let them happen very often. If you are the type that has an "emergency" every day, they are less likely to be sympathetic when you have a real emergency. When my coworkers heard about my car and bee sting they were very understanding.

This is also a great example of what problems you should throw money at. Car problems happen to be one of the areas I know nothing about, so throwing money at the issue was important for me to do. If not spending the money means that I will be unable to get something very important done off of my list, it is not worth the cost savings.

Always try to think about what you are doing compared to its opportunity cost. What would I have lost out on if I hadn't taken my car to the shop? If I hadn't taken the car in, I would have either had to try to drive it home, therefore risking my life along with everyone else on the road with me, pay to leave it overnight or convince someone to pick me up, thereby wasting precious time just waiting around, or worst case paying for transportation home. In taking lunch off from work and paying for the mechanic I actually saved because the time I lost was small compared to the time and headache I would have had if I had put it off. The car has to get fixed regardless, so figuring out the time for it sooner rather than later was the wisest decision.

So remember when you end up with one of those bad days: Keep calm and be efficient with the time you have. Drop the less important things on your plate to accommodate the more important ones. Take care of things sooner if they will be a lot more difficult when you put them off.

I apologize if anyone was looking for the intended post of the day (using your Smartphone calendar) but I promise I will post that tomorrow! Sometimes you just have to roll with the punches. Stay tuned!

How to Get the Most Out of Your BlackBerry/iPhone/Smartphone

This week is How to Get the Most Out of Your Blackberry/iPhone/Smartphone Week!

Your smartphone can be an amazing productivity tool, or it can be the source of your demise. If you treat your phone like a PS3 by constantly playing games, or if you are always browsing the web, you are wasting the potential of your very clever piece of technology. Smartphones are capable of email, messaging, calendars, tasks lists, word processing, spreadsheets, and many other useful functions. It is your mini computer.

So what did you do when you first got your phone out of the box? You set it up with your voicemail message, added a few applications, and generally fooled around with it trying out all the cool features. My thought is that to fully benefit from your smartphone, you need to devote a solid chunk of time to sit down with it and learn all of its real functions.

If you do not take the time to set up all of the available settings, you run the risk of your phone not alerting you when you need it to, alerting you at the worst possible moment, loosing/deleting your data, or a variety of other very bad situations. Taking the time lets you tailor your customizable device to your particular needs. You are loosing on your investment in the phone if you do not take advantage of this.

Also, most smartphones have forums where people answer each other's questions about the phones. If there is something you think your phone should be capable of doing but you can't figure out how, just type a few keywords into your search engine with the name of your phone and the issue and often times there will be a solution. If you have the idea, don't let it just be "wishful thinking" and take a look.

I was a BlackBerry user before today when I got my new iPhone, so this week I will comment of the capabilities of both. Tomorrow I will explain how I organized the applications on my Blackberry and how I just organized my iPhone apps. Over this week I will also share tips on using your smartphone to-do list and calendar, and I will go over my favorite apps so far. As always, please feel free to comment with any questions or comments! If you are an iPhone user, please leave a comment about your favorite apps that you think I should try.

Vegetarian Curry (Semi-Homemade)

I made this recipe last Sunday, and it was such a treat. The ingredients I used were vegetarian, but you can always add meat if that is your preference. I think it is delicious without! As fair warning though, this recipe requires a lot of chopping.

Makes 12 servings

Ingredients:

2 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
1 yellow onion, peeled and diced
5 medium-sized potatoes, peeled and diced
1 bag of carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch slices
3 tomatoes, diced
Several handfuls of fresh green beans, ends removed and cut into 2-inch pieces
1 package of fresh, sliced mushrooms
6 cups of water
1 8.4 oz box of Golden Curry sauce mix (available in Hot, Medium, and Mild)

Instructions:

1. Coat the bottom of a large pot with olive oil and place on a burner on High.
2. When the oil becomes very liquid, drop your garlic and onions into the pot and toss them around with a spoon or spatula so that they do not burn. I added a dash of water to the pot after the first minute to help the onions soften.
3. When the onions begin to get soft, add your potatoes and carrots to the pot and continue to stir. The potatoes and carrots take longer to cook than the tomatoes, green beans, and mushrooms which is why they go in first.
4. After about 5 minutes, add the tomatoes, green beans, and mushrooms and continue to stir. The pot might be quite full (mine was!), but you do not need to stir quickly. Instead, gently scoop the bottom vegetables to the top of the pot to allow the vegetables on top to start cooking down.
5. After a few minutes, add the 6 cups of water. Continue to gently stir the pot occasionally.
6. When the water gets to a boil, let the contents cook for 5 minutes.
7. Turn the heat down to low and break the cubes of Golden Curry sauce mix into the pot.
8. Continue to stir the contents. The sauce mix should cause the water to get thicker as it dissolves. Continue to stir the pot occasionally for the next few minutes.
9. The curry is ready to eat! It is wonderful to pair with white/brown rice.

I made a whole pot worth (12 servings) of this curry because it keeps so well in the fridge. Throw it in the microwave over rice or on its own; it is just as delicious and creamy as the day before. The batch that I made fed two hungry 21 year old guys and myself with enough left over for over a week's worth of lunches. This recipe is also great to make with a group because there is lots of chopping, peeling, and prepping to do for the vegetables, and it feeds a lot of people. I know when I was little we always used to help take the ends off of the green beans. Unfortunately, my little helper (my boyfriend) was passed out on the couch. Oh well!

I hope you try this recipe. Please let me know if you do! Also, look for next week's tips on using your SmartPhone to its full potential. These tips work whether you have a BlackBerry, iPhone, or other device as most of them have the same calendar and task list abilities. I will actually be upgrading my BlackBerry to an iPhone in two days, so I might mention any distinct differences in abilities. From what I can tell, for the essential programs, they are comparable technologies. So check back Monday!

Using Outlook to Manage Your To-Do List

To-Do Lists week wraps up today with a few tips on using Microsoft Outlook to help you prioritize, set due dates and reminders, and stay on top of your game. I use this program at home by choice to organize my personal life. (I organize my homework using a different system that I will explain during the upcoming Study Habits week.) Outlook is also standard at my office. Try these tricks at work to surprise your coworkers with your organizational savvy. Use them at home to allow you to ditch the messy pen and paper and allow yourself to sync your tasks between your computer and your smartphone.

Day one of this week was about writing down the tasks that you want/need to accomplish, day two was about breaking down larger projects into smaller tasks, and days three and four were about prioritizing and re-prioritizing your list. Today is all about giving you a system to handle all of those in a more efficient and effective way.

For those of you who are not big fans of Microsoft, I apologise for generalizing, but this happens to be the program I use at the moment. Most task list programs work for this purpose. If you happen to use a program you prefer to Outlook, please comment below! According to my mother, RememberTheMilk.com is an excellent way to organize your tasks and access them from anywhere over the internet. I think I will be giving it a try when I get my iPhone next week since there is an app for it.

So back to the topic of organizing your tasks.

When you open Outlook you will see on the left side bar there are sections for Mail, Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks. You may have other options depending on how you have set up your settings. When I click on Tasks, my tasks appear in "To-Do list" view. This filters your tasks chronologically by due date with today's tasks on top and future tasks below. This is my favorite way to prioritize my tasks. I give tasks dates and they organize into the order I wish to tackle them in. Even for tasks that do not have specific due dates, remember my suggestion that you assign them a date so that they do not get lost at the bottom of your list. If a task gets close to its due date and you have more important things to do, it is very easy to open that task and push the due date off for when you have more time. Note: Unfortuantely, if you do not set a due date for a task, it will sit at the top of your to-do list above today's tasks. This does not seem to have a remedy, so make sure you set a date for all of your tasks even if you have to use dates that are far out.

Every time your team/department/organization comes up with a goal, throw it on your to-do list. Every little project you get assigned to do, throw it on your to-do list. In doing this you will always know what you have on your plate, or if you get a spare moment you can take the time to try to work towards long-term goals. I also use this as a way to track the history of my time spent at work. If I set a start date on a task and mark the day I complete the task, I can switch the view on my Outlook Tasks to "Timeline" view and it shows me what I was working on in a given period of time. I am able to communicate to my coworkers at any given time if I have time to take on more projects, and I am able to update them on the status of the project I am working on.

When you create a new task you give it a subject. Try not to get too detailed or your list will look scary. Instead, keep the subject simple and leave the details of the assignment in the text box. You can then set the start date, due date, reminder, and a priority. I actually never use the priority function because I use due dates to signify this instead. The reminder function can be very useful if someone assigns you something you are putting off until later. Set the reminder for the next time you want to pick up the project. As you work through a project you can update the status of the project and the percentage you have completed. Then when a coworker asks you how far you are on a project you can easily tell, and it also is a great way to make yourself feel like you are adding value when you are at work.

I plan to do a whole week on useful office tools that can help you make your day more efficient and productive without sacrificing quality or adding tons of extra work. Keep a look out for those tips in a few weeks. As always, please feel free to comment below with your thoughts or any questions, and check back tomorrow for a delicious vegetarian curry recipe!

How to Re-Prioritize When Life Surprises You

This is another continuation of To-Do Lists week! For advice about creating your to-do list, breaking down larger goals into tasks, and prioritizing see the earlier posts from this week.

I always assume that I can get all of the top items on my to-do list done in a day. I am usually kidding myself. The reality of it is that new things come up, and you are forced to push back the items you swore would get done today. Email is usually my source of this. The top things on my to-do list for the day might include: write an essay, laundry, pack overnight bag, groceries, a homework assignment (when I am in classes), post to my blog, etc. The problem is that after I have decided what tasks will be my priorities for the day, an email pops up on my BlackBerry saying, "FYI, please distribute". I say to myself, "Oh, this will be quick" and quickly forward the message after a bit of editing. Once I am done I try to redirect my attention to the task I was working on. A few minutes later I get another email, "Please read and give your opinion". I just love giving opinions, so I take several minutes to draft my response. After sending off my reply, I again redirect my attention to the task at hand.

Email is a major distraction that can crush your productivity. Phones do the same. So what can we do when we are expected to keep up with our emails and answer our phone(s), but we still want to accomplish tasks on our list? My method is to decide the priority of the emails and calls in comparison to my tasks.

For instance, the emails I mentioned above are related to the charity group that I co-chair. If I stop to think about it, those emails can just as easily be sent later that day. I star them and leave them in my inbox to get back to them that night. I never leave more than seven emails at a time in my inbox, so if I am creeping towards that number I may take a few minutes to answer them all at once. This technique is much less distracting that answering them each time I hear a ding.

The same thing goes for my phone. If I am unable to screen my calls, and someone gets me on the line when I am in the middle of something, I decide whether the thing they need from me is more important than what I am working on now. If it is more important, I deal with it on the spot. If it is something that can wait I say, "I would love to help with that, but I am tied up at the moment. Can I call you back at six to discuss this?" When I get off the phone, I immediately write "Call [person's name]" on my to-do list and set a reminder for 6 to call them back. Try not to say you will call back "later" because that sounds very noncommittal, and you leave the other person waiting for your call which is not very respectful of their time. Setting a time to call them back also makes you more likely to call back because you cannot procrastinate doing it. Now it is a date. You do not show up at the restaurant a day late for your date, do you? Well, maybe you do, but neither of you end up happy for it. Setting a time to get back to people also reduces the potential for never-ending phone tag.

I am currently trying to teach my coworker to email me instead of calling. Unfortunately for me, he is the type to call every hour with something "urgent". And by "urgent" I mean "could be relevant in the next week". Not something I should drop everything for this instant. Also, he doesn't understand when he has made his point and the phone call can end. He can tie up ten minutes explaining something that could be a few sentences in an email. After the phone call is done I have to revert back to what it was I working on when he called, and it takes a few minutes to get back into a flow. I can let myself get interrupted for an hour a day for these kinds of interruptions, or I can screen his calls. I have this theory that you can train a coworker to email you instead of calling if you are immediately responsive to email, but never pick up your phone. You can have an email conversation in less time because you can skim over the filler information and get to the real meat of their issue faster than letting them babble. I will let you all know if this plan pans out. Also, I will have a whole week focused on communication, so keep an eye out!

It can still be hard to redirect your attention back to your original tasks when you mentally evaluate the importance of your interruptions. Conversely, if you take the time to give your full attention to all of your emails and phone calls when they happen, you will never get back to your tasks at all. Prioritizing the importance of your daily interruptions will allow you to use your time better to keep up with the things that are the most important to you.

So remember, ask yourself what things are more important to you to filter your disruptions. As always, please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts or questions, and stay tuned for tomorrow's post on great ways to use Outlook Tasks to help you prioritize, set due dates and reminders, and stay on top of your game.

How to Prioritize Your To-Do List

This is post number three of To-Do Lists week! Check out earlier posts from this week on creating your to-do list and breaking down larger goals into tasks.

My to-do list sometimes seems endless. I put every little thing that comes to mind that I think I might want to do on the list. Maybe I need to schedule an appointment, but I remember that on a Sunday when they are closed. I set myself a reminder to call them the next day. If your mind runs like mine, you can get a lot of things onto your list in a day. With all of these small to-do’s ending up on the list, you need to organize your list to keep from total list system failure and causing yourself undue stress.

Evaluate what you need to do (or think you need to do) in comparison to your goals.

If you could only get one thing done from the list today which task would it be? Put that task at the top of your priority list. With the remaining items, follow the same process: if I could only do one of these, which would I do? Going through this process for the whole list organizes all of your items by priority. Now all you have to do is work down that list. Be mindful of items that have very specific due dates. Some of the items on my list (no matter how much I value them) have to take a sideline to the tasks with due dates that have to be completed sooner. These priority items need to be higher up on the list in order for me to get to them in time. Check out Friday's post for more ideas about how to never miss a due date.

Try to take your to-do list and prioritize the items, and don't forget to read tomorrow's post on re-prioritizing your to-do list when life surprises you!

Breaking Down Your Bigger Tasks

This is the second post of To-Do Lists week!

Even when you think a task that pops into your head is bigger than just one action, put it on your list. Sometimes you do not know the individual steps to get to a bigger goal. One of mine recently that I threw on my list was "Apply to graduate school". I threw it on as something that was not due in the short term, but that I still wanted to have it on my back-burner. When I had more time, I went back and replaced the task with individual tasks of the steps it takes to accomplish the bigger task. Now my to-do list says, "Fill out graduate school application", "Write essay 1 for graduate school application", "Write essay 2 for graduate school application", "Write essay 3 for graduate school application", "Get official transcript for graduate school application", "Ask for recommendations from two professors for graduate school application", and finally, "Graduate school application Due". By breaking it out into steps all the way through the due date of the application I was able to set dates to do each part. That way the task does not sit on the bottom of my to-do list until it is too late. The idea is to keep your very important tasks as underwhelming as possible.

I have even been doing this for my blog posts. For instance, I wanted to talk about how I make my to-do lists. Instead of writing one massive post that covers all the steps and tricks to making a working, manageable to-do list, I have broken it down into individual posts for each one. Not only is it much less overwhelming, but I can be done with each of my posts quicker. It is much more satisfying to have a smaller post done than no posts at all! The small wins strategy can also be very motivating. I find I am much more likely to take time out of my day for a smaller project than I would for a looming larger project. I will shy away from those every time.

So remember, keep your bigger goals on your lists until you have time to break them down into realistic steps. Set dates for the smaller tasks to work up to accomplishing that one larger goal. Use a small wins strategy to keep motivated by making the smaller tasks small enough to finish in a short amount of time. And of course give yourself a huge pat on the back every time you can cross off one of your tasks. Be proud of what you have been able to accomplish. Some people never reach their goals, so you should feel amazing about yourself when you do.

Please leave a comment if you try this for a particular project. I would love to hear about any success stories! Also, if you have a larger goal and you simply cannot come up with individual steps to reach it, comment on this post and I will gladly try and assist you.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's post focusing on the how to’s of prioritizing your to-do list!

Creating Your To-Do List

This week I will be focusing on To-Do lists! I will post how to’s on creating your to-do list, breaking down bigger tasks to make them more manageable, prioritizing your tasks, and re-prioritizing when life surprises you.

I love lists. I love making lists of things to do, things to pack, RSVP lists, groceries, everything. It is what makes me tick. I know that I am an exception, not the rule. Most people do not enjoy having to come up with lists. The truth is: lists can save you from a lot of future pain and embarrassment. Are you forgetful? I know I am. Ever had something really important to do but you completely forgot about it? Keeping all of your thoughts on paper (or in my case, a smartphone) will save you from banging your head again a wall after forgetting that something. All it takes is carrying a small pad of paper or smartphone with you for all of those reminders or potential to-do's that pop into your head throughout the day.

One trick: also take that pad or phone to bed! Leave it on the nightstand before you go to sleep. When you are falling asleep and think about the one thing that you really want to get done the next day, roll over and quickly write it down before you fall asleep and forget. I forgot to do this recently and instead of remembering to bring more oatmeal into work the next day, I forgot it and went without breakfast. Not fun. I don't know about you, but I am pretty grumpy when I am not fed.

So remember to write down all of your thoughts to create your to-do list, and stay tuned for tomorrow's post on breaking down the bigger tasks on your to-do list! Later we will go over prioritizing all of those items that you have written on your to-do list. As always, please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts or any questions you might have!

Spinach-Artichoke Quiche

Makes 2 8-inch quiches

Ingredients:

6 eggs
3 cups of milk
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp white pepper
1/4 tsp salt
1 14-ounce can of artichoke hearts, chopped into small pieces
1 cup of spinach, finely chopped
1 cup of parmesan cheese, freshly grated
2 pre-baked 8-inch pie shells

Instructions:

1. Pre-heat your oven to 375 degress.
   
2. Mix the eggs, milk, nutmeg, white pepper and salt together in a medium bowl.
   
3. Place the spinach, artichoke hearts, and parmesan cheese into the pie shells.
   
4. Pour the mixture from your bowl evenly between the two pie shells.
   
5. Place the quiches in the oven and bake for 45 minutes to one hour until the custard is set and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Note: If you use processed Parmesan cheese, use less salt in the custard mix. If you use frozen spinach, squeeze out the water after defrosting.

I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I have. Anyone can make these quiches; they are foolproof!

This week will be To-Do list week! Stay tuned for tomorrow's post on creating your to-do list.