To be honest, I’m not a big fan of cross-referenced file systems. Specifically, I’m not a fan of systems which require you to keep a secondary index of things you’ve already filed. Whether in a card system, a notebook or a computer file, the more places you have to keep files organized, the more places for things to get out of control.

That being said, cross referencing works for some people and certain fixed types of cross references are easy for anybody to use. Also, the development of tags as metadata for electronic data serves as a type of cross reference.

What is cross referencing?

When organizing documents or records you will have those which could belong under more than one category or file name. To manage this, file the records in one category and place a cross-reference note in the other. It is important to be consistent in deciding where to file records. Cross referencing can also trigger the mind into remembering information.

One of the most common examples of a cross reference is the index of a book. A cookbook might have a single recipe listed in several places in the index. For example, chicken pot pie could be listed under both pie and chicken categories.

There are Three Basic Ways to Cross References

1. SEE – used:

When a subject heading can be referred to by more than one term. E.g., pets/dogs, anxiety/worry, auto/car.

Read more – How to Organize Your Files With Cross Referencing

Relieving stress at work is easy with these tips. Get advice on reducing and managing stress in this stress management video.

With higher office rents, increased gas prices, and more responsibilities at home, some employers and employees are coming to a mutual conclusion – it may not be such a bad idea to work from home.

While it comes under different terms, working from home can probably best be described as telecommuting.

Workers typically require a steady Internet connection and computer, copier, fax machine and phone to pull this off. That being said, there are some issues to cover with your employees before signing off on the stay at home option.

Pluses and Minuses of the Home Working Environment

First, let’s take a look at some of the advantages to employees working from home:

– Employees cut down on expenses such as gasoline;
– Employees avoid potentially long commutes, which can impact actual work time;
– Employees are typically more relaxed in the home environment, thereby likely leading to better work results.

As far as potential disadvantages to employees working from home:

– Employees are not there in person when needed for meetings, quick question and answer moments. This can lead to having to phone, text or email them several times a day;
– Employees are not under your eye during the day as in an office setting, therefore you can only assume the necessary work is getting done;

Read more – Are You Best Served Letting Your Employees Work from Home?

We all want more time. But how do you get it? The answer is to become a master of efficiency.

Let’s face it, one of the most valuable commodities in any busy person’s life is time. No matter how much we may wish for it, making more of it is simply outside the reaches of modern science. The myth of the 25-hour day, for the foreseeable future, will remain just that, a myth.

So how do you stretch more time out of your finite resource of the same? Efficiency. In short, we may not be able to create more time, but we can turbo-charge the limited time we have. Here’s how:

1. Set Daily Goals. One of the best ways to ramp up your efficiency is to set daily goals. Each morning, before your work day begins, make a list of the top things that you want or need to accomplish during the work day. Rank them in order of importance. Depending upon how long each task will take you, your list may contain two items or ten. Once constructed, use the list as your guide to keep you focused throughout the day to work towards completing those goals. Keep the list readily accessible and in plain sight on your workspace so that it will act as a constant reminder for those tasks that you want to complete in a given day. As you complete each of your predetermined objectives, check them off. If you do not complete a given goal, move it forward into the next day. This simple task of setting and monitoring daily goals is amazingly effective at increasing your productivity.

2. Delegate. If you are in a position to delegate make sure to do so. Too often we are saddled with a belief that we are the only person that can do a specific task or do it well enough. Throughout my career I have been particularly afflicted with this mistaken belief. There was a time in my career that I would type all of my own letters even though I had a secretary whose job it was to handle this task for me. I would think, it is going to take me longer to explain to her what needs to go into the letter than it would if I just go ahead and write it myself, which I then proceeded to do.

Learning to delegate is an acquired art form, one everyone should try to master. Believing that a task cannot be delegated is truly more about control issues and less about whether or not it truly can be assigned to someone else. Why spend two hours on a task yourself if instead through crafting 10 minutes of detailed instructions, you can delegate the project to another? Accordingly, if you have someone to whom you can delegate, learn how to delegate and learn how to do it well.

Read more – 7 Steps to Turbo-Charge Your Efficiency

Training activities for time management should include learning how to prioritize tasks, focusing on the needs of the business and learning how to delegate tasks. Make lists of important tasks to help improve time management skills with tips from a marketing and business management professor in this video on time management.

This article started out to be about how the little guy company can compete with a big company. Specifically, in a recent interview I was asked how a small local business can use customer service to compete when a large national competitor, known for aggressive low pricing, comes to town. As I wrote out the answer, I realized that the business strategies used by a small company competing against a big one are actually sound strategies for a company of any size. By the way, customer service is important, but in this situation, there is much more to consider.

A “Big Box” store, such as Home Depot, Lowe’s, Costco, Sam’s Club, etc. comes to town. Local businesses get nervous. How can they compete with the “everyday low prices?” How will they hold on to their customers? How will they attract new customers? After all, they don’t have the advertising budget, the inventory, the buying power, etc. While there is some reality to all of the concerns that a local or small business might have, they are really just excuses. Plenty of local and small businesses flourish, long after one of these larger stores move into their territory.

Now here is the reality of the situation. It doesn’t matter if it is a major chain store, a big-box store, a discount store, etc. And it doesn’t matter if it is a small or local business. It doesn’t matter what type of business or industry. Any type of business that moves into your area, large or small, will pose many of the same competitive threats.

So, what can you do?

1. Decomoditize your business. A business gets caught in the commodity trap when they sell the same goods and services as their competitor, and other than price, the customer doesn’t see a compelling reason to do business with one company over the other. This is where customer service becomes the strategy of choice. A company can distance themselves from the competition with customer service that provides an obviously better overall customer experience.

Read more – Six Strategies to Compete In Business

Close your eyes and picture the Zen-like state of your desk in a paperless world. When you need data from the last quarter, you speak to your computer and a soothing voice responds with the information. When it’s time to pay the bills, you instruct your computer where the payments are to come from.

Now, look at the paper sitting on your desk, dressers, tables, shelves, filing cabinets, etc.

The ideal of a paperless office has been around for at least three decades. While individuals, such as Eric Mack, experiment with paperless solutions, or online services offer paperless solutions, paper usage has increased significantly.

In 2003, Canadians used a whopping 2, 867,442 tonnes of paper, compared with 1,198,100 tonnes two decades earlier. Source: CBC News

For whatever reason, you’re stuck working with paper. Here are some tips for managing your piles (paper, that is).

1. Keep only the work at hand visible. If you’re working on the month-end report, have it in front of you. Other pending work should be stored in some form of filing system, which makes it easy to retrieve, but keeps it out of sight.

2. Have a fixed time each day to process routine paperwork. There are regular systems that dump a daily amount of paper on our desks: mail, filing, circulating files, etc. Set aside a few minutes every day to make sure this paper dealt with and not left piling up on your desk.

Read more – 6 Quick Tips For Managing Paper

Learn how to perform this variation of the coin fold trick in your office in this video from a professional magician.

If you’re unhappy at work–or anywhere else, for that matter–it’s because you’ve made yourself unhappy. There’s an easy way to change that.

Let me start off with a little story.

I once knew a saleswoman–young, divorced–who got a diagnosis of breast cancer. She had to work and raise two kids while fighting the cancer. Even so, she managed to be happy at work, noticeably happier than her co-workers. In fact, she not only won her battle with cancer but subsequently became one of the top salespeople at Bristol Myers.

She was not, as it happens, naturally cheerful. Quite the contrary. When she started full-time work, she was frequently depressed. But she turned it around, using the techniques I’m going to provide you in this column.

That saleswoman once told me: When you’re unhappy, it’s because you’ve decided to be unhappy.

Maybe it wasn’t a conscious decision; maybe it crept up on you while you weren’t looking–but it was a decision nonetheless. And that’s good news, because you can decide instead to be happy. You just need to understand how and why you make the decisions.

What Are Your Rules?

Happiness and unhappiness (in work and in life) result entirely from the rules in your head that you use to evaluate events. Those rules determine what’s worth focusing on, and how you react to what you focus on.

Many people have rules that make it very difficult for them to happy and very easy for them to be miserable.

I once worked with a sales guy who was always angry at the people he worked with. The moment anything didn’t go the way he thought it should go, he’d be screaming in somebody’s face. He was making everyone around him miserable–but just as importantly, he was making himself miserable, because just about anything set him off.

For this guy, the everyday nonsense that goes on in every workplace was not just important, but crazy-making important.

Read more – How to Be Happy at Work

Everybody faces challenges in managing certain aspects of their lives. Someone who loves to go trail riding on a bicycle will have no problems motivating themselves to exercise. However, putting aside time to sit and read might be problematic. On the other hand, the reader might have problems putting down the book and getting active.

This self-management checklist can be applied to any area of your life where you need to gain some control.

1. Set specific goals. You can’t measure achievement if you don’t know where you’re going. Set specific goals such as: I’ll walk for 30 minutes per day; or I’ll write a 1,000 words each day; or I’ll lose 20 pounds.
2. Set specific times. You need to determine when you are going to accomplish your goals. Work with specific times; whether it’s a deadline for a one-off project or regular times for on-going behaviour.
3. Track your progress. Write it down. You can use a journal, a calendar, a graph or any other form that works for you. Make sure you track both your successes and failures so you can refine your systems.
4. Set rewards or penalties. You’ll need some motivation to help you move forward. Set small rewards to mark the completion of small steps. Set larger rewards to mark major accomplishments. You might even set penalties for not reaching goals. You could, for example, make a donation to a food bank every time your weight went up instead of down.
5. Take small steps. If you’ve been sitting in front of the TV for ten years, don’t try and run a marathon tomorrow. Changing a habit takes time and you need to start slowly.

Read more – A Self-Management Checklist