As an insurance agent, you are probably operating on your own

most of the time. You are constantly on the move and relying on a computer to do all your work from making presentations to calculations and reports.

If you work from your home or a small office space utilising a computer, modem, fax machine, email or other electronic means to perform your job and communicate with your company or clients, you work in a virtual office. Even though a virtual worker may use a company email address, mailing address and sometimes even phone extension, he still works from an outside location.

A virtual office does not necessarily have to be a room in a person’s home or a designated space. A laptop in a hotel or even at the beach will do.

The virtual office worker can also be someone who owns his own business and works from his home or on the road via laptop and wireless connection. The owner of a virtual office can also be an independent contractor or freelance worker, with no ties to one specific place of business.

The benefits of a virtual office are many. For instance, many overhead costs, such as electricity, are cut out or kept to a minimum in the case of a virtual worker.

To set up a virtual office you need to do all the necessary research. Setting up a virtual office can be expensive since you will need hardware and software. You may have to do all the maintenance yourself or find a reliable vendor to do so for you. In most cases, however, the benefits far outweigh the risks.

Some of the work you will be doing in your virtual office apart from email and internet use are most likely to be creating spreadsheets to manage data and calculations, create multimedia presentations and possibly set up your own webpage to let people know of your services.

Spreadsheets

A spreadsheet, also known as a worksheet, contains rows and columns and is used to record and compare numerical or financial data. Originally, spreadsheets only existed in paper format, but now they are most likely created and maintained through a software program that displays the numerical information in rows and columns. Spreadsheets can be used in any area or field that works with numbers and are commonly found in the accounting, budgeting, sales forecasting, financial analysis and scientific fields.

Computerised spreadsheets mimic a paper spreadsheet. The advantage of using computerised spreadsheets is their ability to update data and perform automatic calculations extremely quickly. On a computerised spreadsheet – Microsoft Excel – the intersection of a row and a column is called a cell. Rows are generally identified by numbers – 1, 2, 3, and so on – and columns are identified by letters, such as A, B, C, and so on. The cell is a combination of a letter and a number to identify a particular location within the spreadsheet, for example A3.

To manoeuvre around the spreadsheet, you use the mouse or the tab key. When the contents of one cell are changed, any other affected cell is automatically recalculated according to the formulas in use. Formulas are the calculations to be performed on the data. Formulas can be simple, such as sum or average, or they can be very complex. Spreadsheets are also popular for testing hypothetical scenarios.

Setting up a spreadsheet can be fairly time consuming, although templates, or sample spreadsheets, are available with most software packages. The computerised spreadsheet can be formatted with titles, colours, bold text, and italics for a professional look. You can also create graphs and charts based on the data entered in your spreadsheet. Many packages have the ability to print mailing lists or labels.

Individuals, in addition to businesses, use computerised spreadsheet software for a variety of tasks that involve numerical data. Insurance agents can use it to calculate premiums and bonus accrued or to manage their database of policies and renewals. Spreadsheets are one of the most popular uses for personal computers.

Presentations

As an insurance agent, you will find yourself in situations where you are trying to convince a prospect to buy certain policies which will give them the right cover and benefits. Or you may be conducting motivational programmes for other agents. Making a presentation along with your talk can go a long way in making your work more useful for the audience. The most commonly used business presentation application is Microsoft’s PowerPoint.

PowerPoint is a complete presentation graphics package. It gives you everything you need to produce a professional-looking presentation. PowerPoint offers word processing, outlining, drawing, graphing, and presentation management tools- all designed to be easy to use and learn.

When you create a presentation using PowerPoint, the presentation is made up of a series of ‘slides.’ The slides that you create using PowerPoint can also be presented as overhead transparencies or 35mm slides. In addition to slides, you can print audience handouts, outlines, and speaker’s notes. You can format all the slides in a presentation using the ‘Slide Master.’ You can keep your entire presentation in a single file- all your slides, speaker’s notes, and audience handouts. You can import what you have created in other Microsoft products, such as Word and Excel into any of your slides.

Once you become an expert in using these basic software applications and master the art of communicating with your clients and company using technology, it will empower you so that you can focus exclusively on selling to new clients and servicing existing clients.

Websites In today’s computerised world, a web presence can be a very powerful marketing tool. You can give all your information on a web page that will help a person requiring a service contact you. Your web presence can range from being a full fledged web site enabled with online transactions to a simple webpage giving out your basic information.

If you need a good web site it is better to get professional services but for a simple web page you can do it yourself! Today it is easy enough to get service providers who will provide standard packages for web sites and put your content on it for a fee. They even maintain it and update it for an annual fee.

If you want to do it yourself first get yourself a domain name. A domain is your unique address on the world wide web – like premiumonline.in, for example.

In India you can get a ‘.in, .com, .biz or .org’ domain name for instance you can get yourself a name like insuremohan.in, depending on the availability of the name. This is available at a standard per annum rate on several web sites that register domain names, like www.net4india.in

The next step would be to buy hosting space in the World Wide Web available on sites such as www.bluehost.com. Various packages are available to suit different needs and budgets.

Once you have these in place or even as you are setting them up you can start creating your web pages. The language used for creating web pages is called HTML.

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a type of computer language that is primarily used for files that are posted on the internet and viewed by web browsers. HTML files can also be sent via email.

Although it may seem complex to the uninitiated, HTML is relatively simple. All text, graphics, and design elements of a web page are “tagged” with codes that instruct the web browser how to display the files. Such files are easy to recognise because they contain the file extension such as ‘html’ or ‘htm.’

In addition to the page content itself, HTML files provide layout and formatting information. HTML is not case sensitive and can be easily updated after the file is created. For the novice web designer, there are many different software utilities and programs available to assist in generating HTML pages like Microsoft FrontPage and Macro Media Dreamweaver.

Rangashree Srinivas

Related posts:

1. Insurance at your Post Office To make it possible for the over 1.5 lakh post...
2. 12 Ways to be an under-achiever Once you are reasonably well-entrenched in your career, there are...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Using a computer is literally child’s play in these times. Each one of us will readily agree that the young ones in our families are much more adept at handling computers and learning new computer skills than we are. The primary reason for this phenomenon can be taken from ‘Constructivism’ –  an educational pedagogy gaining rapid popularity. The basic premise of Constructivism is that humans learn when there is a need to know. Similarly computer skills are best picked up when there is a need to learn. The skills to be learnt are endless and are imbibed for many reasons. As an insurance agent, here’s some computer gyan that you must know!

Surfing the Net

Need the answer to a question? Need to find someone’s location? Need to know where to buy something or find a service? Easy, just Surf the Net! One of the most powerful utilities in recent times is the Internet. It is literally like having the world at your fingertips.

To view Web sites and find the information you need, you use a ‘browser.’ Much like browsing through books in a library, you browse Web sites on the Internet. Browsers are applications that allow you to access Web sites located on the World Wide Web. Browsers can be downloaded for free from the Internet and some of the popular browsers today are Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Opera. Here is a short history of browsers.

The introduction of the NCSA Mosaic web browser in 1993 – one of the first graphical web browsers – led to an explosion in web use. Next came Netscape Navigator in 1994, which quickly became the world’s most popular browser, accounting for 90 percent of all web use at its peak. In 1995 Microsoft introduced Internet Explorer . Another browser application Opera first appeared in 1996; although it has never achieved widespread use, having 2 percent browser usage share as of October 2009, it has a substantial share of the fast-growing mobile phone web browser market, being preinstalled in over four crore phones.

Firefox 1.0 was introduced in late- 2004, Firefox is another browser that enjoyed 24 percent usage share as of October 2009.

Apple’s Safari ‘s rendering engine  WebKit, runs in the standard browsers of several mobile phone platforms, including the iPhone OS, Google Android, Nokia S60 and Palm WebOS.

The most recent major entrant to the browser market is Google’s WebKit-based Chrome, first released in September 2008. As of October 2009, it has a 4 percent usage share.

Once you have downloaded and installed a browser on your computer, you need to know the URL (Universal Resource Locator) of the Web site you want to view and type it in the address field of your browser. The spelling of the URL which is case sensitive has to be absolutely correct.

Instant letters!

E-mail is of course the vehicle for sending instant letters. There are hundreds of e-mail addresses in the world today. It is one of the most accepted and default modes of sending and receiving communication these days. Along with the popular use of chat in these times, e-mail writing has spawned an entirely new dictionary of words and spellings. However, while writing official e-mails, it is better to stick to traditional conventions of letter writing. Additionally, the inbuilt subject line in the e-mail compose window should be used prudently – for conveying the purpose of your letter and for you to be able to later retrieve the message easily.

E-mail addresses have their virtual mail boxes at portals like yahoo, hotmail and google or at other privately owned web addresses. For instance if you have a Web site say www.insuranceagent.com, you can have your e-mail as ramesh@insuranceagent.com and so on. These e-mail boxes can be accessed through webmail services or through installed applications like Outlook Express.

Ask and Thou Shalt Find

The word ‘Search’  has taken on an altogether new meaning with the advent of the World Wide Web. The unique and amazing archiving capabilities available on that virtual Universe helps you find the answer to any query, big or small at the mere click of the mouse button! Some of the popular ‘search engines’ are Google, Yahoo, Rediff and Ask. Some search engines are geographically aligned like Accoona (China/US,) Alleba (Philippines,) Ansearch (Australia/US/UK/NZ,) Daum (Korea,) Goo (Japan) and Guruji.com (India.)

Social Media

A number of social media portals are making a strong impact on society and businesses worldwide. Some of such social networking sites are Twitter, Facebook, Orkut and Myspace. These networking sites maybe general or domain or interest specific.

They have also become popular business development and marketing tools. Many products and services are looking at using these sites to promote their business.

Twitter has become a household name in India thanks to Mr Shashi Tharoor!

Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers. Something like an sms on the internet.

Facebook and Orkut are very popular social networking sites that have scores of users worldwide. Membership is free and businesses have started using these networks for marketing. In fact there are job vacancies asking for social media experts! A number of forums and groups exist on these networks that are useful for making contacts and finding resources.

Expressing on the net

A blog is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries.

A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability of readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (Art blog), photographs (photoblog), videos (Video blogging), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcasting). Blogspot and WordPress are two very popular blogging platforms. Many of the bloggers are celebrities and highly placed individuals.

Internet Utility and Safety

Along with making your presence felt to a world wide audience, comes the question of safety and privacy. Added to this is the fact that it has become easier to manage your life by paying utility bills online and carrying out financial transactions. Today, you can transfer and receive funds from any part of the world with a few simple steps. Net Banking is a widely used transaction mode by both individual and corporate users. To keep net banking safe it is important to know about ‘Phishing.’

Phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT administrators are commonly used to lure the unsuspecting public.

Phishing is typically carried out by e-mail or instant messaging, and it often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. Even when using server authentication, it may require tremendous skill to detect that the website is fake. But some pointers to help you spot a fake site facilitating financial transactions is to look for the https:// thread in the url instead of just http://.

Also be sure who the sender is and have your senses alert for any unusual ‘tone’ even if from friends or known people. In any case it is a useful thumb of rule never to entertain communication from total strangers!

Computers have taken on a parallel existence to their users. They are as susceptible to crippling dysfunction as we are! They are attacked by ‘viruses’ which are actually tiny mischievous programmes inserted into your computer through downloads, emails and other external inputs like pen drives and diskettes. They invade various parts of the ‘system’ causing mild to grievous harm to your computer.

Antivirus (or anti-virus) software is used to prevent, detect, and remove malware, including computer viruses, worms, and trojan horses. Such programs may also prevent and remove adware, spyware, and other forms of malware. It is a must to have a powerful anti virus software installed in your computer and to carry out upgrades and maintenance regularly.

Rangashree Srinivas

Related posts:

1. A Centre to hone insurer skills The Centre for Insurance Studies and Research (known as School...
2. Now, compare ins products online! The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) has introduced a...
3. Insurance cos taking a shine to online selling More than 1 crore people have Internet connections in India...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

It’s a fast life. So much to do, so much information to absorb and so much to act upon. Insurance selling, we repeatedly say derives its strength from knowledge and communication. There is so much of knowledge available, that it will take more than a lifetime to take it all in. As for communication, the Internet has opened  up a whole new universe for us to dwell in and with it whole new networks and bonds to be sealed.

Are there ways in which we can quickly assimilate knowledge from books and the internet? Efficiently navigate the ocean of information and take our pick? Yes there are. Reading and writing are made quicker and easier with these few practical skills.

1. Speed Reading

Speed Reading can help you to read and understand written information much more quickly. This makes it an essential skill in any environment where you have to master large volumes of information quickly, as is the norm in fast-moving professional environments. What’s more, it’s a key technique to learn if you suffer from “information overload”, because it helps you to become much more discriminating about the information that you consume. It helps both in reading and understanding the key ideas or points of a book or a document.

What to read and how?

The most important trick about speed reading is to know what information you want from a document or book before you start reading it. If you only want an outline of the issue that it discusses, then you can skim it quickly and extract only the essential facts. If you need to understand it in real detail, then you need to read it slowly enough to gain the full understanding you need.

You will get the greatest time savings from speed reading by learning to skim excessively detailed material, although the techniques you’ll learn will help you improve the speed of all the reading you do.

Technical Issues

Even when you know how to ignore irrelevant detail, there are other technical improvements you can make to your reading style which will increase your reading speed.

Most people learn to read the way young children read – either letter-by-letter, or word-by-word. As an adult, this is probably not the way you read now:

Just think about how your eye muscles are moving as you read this. You will probably find that you are fixing your eyes on one block of words, then moving your eyes to the next block of words, and so on. You are reading blocks of words at a time, not individual words one-by-one. You may also notice that you do not always go from one block to the next: sometimes you may move back to a previous block if you are unsure about something.

A skilled reader will read many words in each block. He or she will only dwell on each block for an instant, and will then move on. Only rarely will the reader’s eyes skip back to a previous block of words. This reduces the amount of work that the reader’s eyes have to do. It also increases the volume of information that can be assimilated in a given period of time.

A poor reader will become bogged down, spend a lot of time reading small blocks of words. He or she will skip back often, losing the flow and structure of the text, and confusing his or her overall understanding of the subject. This irregular eye movement makes reading tiring. Poor readers tend to dislike reading, and they may find it harder to concentrate, and understand written information.

2. Photo Reading

This is a radically new idea in which the whole notion of how we read is turned on its head.

The demands placed on you as a reader in our age of information are tremendous. The Photo Reading whole mind system can help you meet any challenge. It works with any subject matter and flexibly adapts to different purposes, print formats, rates of speed, and levels of comprehension.

The five steps of the Photo Reading whole mind system use the abilities of your whole mind with power and effectiveness.

Step 1: Prepare

Reading effectively begins with a clear sense of purpose. This means consciously stating a desired outcome for reading. For example, we might want a brief overview of main points. We might want to gain certain details such as the solutions to specific problems. Perhaps we want to complete a task and seek only the ideas that will help us do so. Purpose acts like a radar signal to the inner mind allowing it to produce the results we seek.

Empowered with a clear purpose, we then enter a state of relaxed alertness—the accelerative learning state. While in this state, neither boredom nor anxiety exist. We are exerting effort, but we are not worried about results. Have you ever watched young children as they play? They model the same relaxed yet purposeful state we seek here.

Step 2: Preview

Previewing is based on an important principle: effective learning often takes place “from whole to parts.” That is, we start with the big picture and proceed to the smaller, more detailed parts.

First we survey the written material. Our aim is not to grasp the content in detail, but to get a sense of its structure. Then we gather a list of key terms, or trigger words, which embody the core concepts or events. Trigger words alert our minds to the details we might want to explore more thoroughly later.

When done effectively, previewing is short and sweet—about five minutes for a book, three minutes for a report, and as little as 30 seconds for an article. During that time, we clarify and refine our purpose, review the trigger words, and decide whether to continue reading or calling it quits. If we choose not to read something that

does not meet our needs or interests, it is all right.

Previewing is like x-raying a book—getting a broad sense of its underlying structure. Understanding structure gives us something that learning theorists call a schema, a set of expectations about what is coming up next. When we know the structure of written text, we become more accurate at predicting its content. As a result, our comprehension and reading pleasure soar.

In summary, previewing gives us the skeleton of a book or article first. During the next steps of the Photo Reading whole mind system, we add body to the skeleton.

Step 3: Photo Read

The Photo Reading technique begins with placing ourselves more fully into the relaxed, alert state of mind and body called the accelerative  learning state. In this state, distractions, worries, and tensions seem to fall away.

Then we adjust our vision for the Photo Focus state. Here the aim is to use our eyes in a new way: instead of bringing individual words into sharp focus, we soften our eyes so that our peripheral vision expands and the whole printed page comes into view.

Photo Focus creates a physical and mental window—allowing direct exposure of the incoming visual stimuli to the brain. In this state, we mentally photograph the entire page, exposing it to the preconscious processor of the mind. The exposure of each page stimulates a direct neurological response. The brain performs its function of pattern recognition, unencumbered by the critical/logical thought process of the conscious mind.

At a rate of one page a second, we can Photo Read a whole book in three to five minutes. This is not traditional reading. After Photo Reading, we may have little if any of the material in conscious awareness, which means we may consciously know nothing. The next steps create the conscious awareness we need.

Step 4: Activate

During activation we restimulate the brain—probing the mind with questions and exploring parts of the text to which we feel most attracted. We then super read the most important parts of the text by scanning quickly down the centre of each page or column of type.

When we feel it is appropriate, we dip into the text for more focused reading to comprehend the details. In dipping, we allow our intuition to say, “Hey, turn to the last paragraph on page 147! Yes, that is the one. The ideas you want are right there.”

Other activation techniques developed while reading this book include rhythmic perusal, skittering, and mind mapping. These also help us gain access to the deeper impressions established by Photo Reading. When we activate, we involve our whole brain, connect the text with our conscious awareness, and achieve our goals for reading.

3. Writing in short hand

Though writing is out of vogue now thanks to computers, it is still an unbelievably useful tool to record and communicate ideas.  Imagine yourself sitting at a prospect’s office. The precious 30 minutes of his time he has accorded you are all you have to listen to him and record what he has said for future analysis. So you take notes. Short hand, the old fashioned way to write quickly is a very useful tool in this situation. An agent meeting a prospect can many times be from pure chance, a golden opportunity presenting itself. At that time he may not be prepared with any tool to record the meeting but a piece of paper and a pen.

Writing is cheap, the paper it is written on can travel large distances and is lightweight, printing allows a single book  to reach a large number of readers, and the written word can even survive to find generations of new readers across centuries of time.  Writing and books survived even after the invention of film, radio and TV, which are much more expensive to produce for the same quantity of ideas.  Only computer storage and the Internet have turned out to be faster, cheaper and easier to reproduce and spread than the printed word.

However, written languages were not developed with the emphasis on speed.  Writing was initially the craft of a distinct class of people, the scribes and the upper class, and they tended not to care how cumbersome their symbols were.  Even the streamlined modern shapes of the Latin alphabet, developed for printing and a mass readership in the literate West, are not compact enough.

With ordinary, cursive handwriting the best speed of writing is about 35 words per minute (wpm).  People, however, speak at about 150 – 180 wpm, so the scribes who needed to record important speech were faced with a physical problem of keeping up with what was said.  As a result they developed alternative, quicker forms of writing, parallel to the usual full-blown form of writing (which is sometimes called longhand.)

The scribes of the Roman Empire attempted to solve the problem by making heavy use of abbreviations in their notes together with special symbols, based on the method of Tiro, scribe to the orator Cicero.  Even Julius Caesar knew this system himself.

To this day we still use their most common abbreviations such as e.g. (Latin for “for example”), i.e. (“that is” or “in other words”) and etc. (et cetera, Latin for “and so on”. The & symbol also comes from the form of the word “Et”).  They also used simplified strokes which were faster to write than conventional letters.

A system which uses simple symbols for letters is usually referred to as a shorthand or stenography (a word which comes from the Greek words for “close writing” or “compact writing”).  If the symbols are simplified but still- recognisable letters of the alphabet, the system is more properly referred to as a system of speed writing – a very useful skill to possess.

Rangashree Srinivas

Related posts:

1. The Magic of Thinking Big by David J Schwartz Belief Makes Things Happen In the ‘Magic of Thinking Big’, David J Schwartz tells...
2. Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson, M D Roadmap to Navigate Change This management book with a cult status tells you how...
3. The One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard & Spencer JohnsonSixty Seconds to Success! Success in managing people and projects – in short, in...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Ms Amrita Goenka had been a successful insurance advisor with a leading private firm for about five years when she realised that she did not have the same enthusiasm for selling as she did in the early years of her career. She found that her work had settled into a dull pattern.

She had lost the drive to cold call and missed the thrill of selling. It started to tell on her performance and she began to despair that she had lost her abilities. In reality it was just a lack of freshness and enthusiasm having done the same thing the same way for years.

It is said after a few months of regular exercise the body learns the ‘pattern’ and refuses to respond to exercise like before. This is called a ‘plateau’ and trainers suggest cross training, that is to try different types of workouts in differing intensities, to kick-start the body back into burning calories and build muscle tone.

The same holds true for a career, particularly one as challenging as selling. On the one hand sales professionals may fall into a routine they could sleep walk through. On the other hand they may be overwhelmed by the fast changing economic scenario. We all have seen very recently how the ‘recession’ had affected customer spending, which in turn threw sales professionals into a tizzy!

In both scenarios whether it is the dullness caused by routine or the overwhelming changes, the solution is the same – keep yourself sharp! How to do this? A very fundamental way to do this is by cross training. Companies sometimes do this as a policy (see box.) It is also possible for individuals to ‘cross train.’ Here is how:

1. Cross-pollination.  Sign up for martial arts, start a blog, or join an improvement group.  You will often encounter ideas in one field that can boost your performance in another.
2. Get off the track. Give yourself a break from the same routine and do something outrageously different. Something that is not usually you. For instance round up the neighbourhood kids and hold a quiz!
3. Browse the book shelves. Go to a nearby library and browse through sections which will not hold books connected to your job. Inspiration can strike from anywhere!
4. Hold a random conversation. Strike up a conversation with a stranger who is not a likely prospect. For instance if you are at the car mechanic’s, talk to the greasy boy under your wheels. The best insights flash from the most unlikely people!
5. 5. Change your routine. Every once a week, turn your routine upside down!
6. 6. Socialise online! No matter what you think about social media personally, your customers are moving online and into the social web in droves, so you and your organisation have little choice but to figure out how to benefit from this evolution. Sign up with Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and what not. But be discriminate in its use and use it with purpose.
7. Switch places. Once in a while switch places with someone in another department. For instance if you are in sales, share your colleague’s administrative work and get him to make those cold calls for you. Prepare the ground by having a healthy exchange of ideas on each other’s tasks, challenges and methods employed to do the job. This will not only give you a perspective on how you are tackling issues but also help you improve communication skills. Articulating your own work details to another will help you understand it better
8. Assist a Junior. Go back to the early days and do the things as you did before. Juniors often have to do all the ground work. Getting your hands in the soil again will make you feel more connected. Plus, you will form a special bond with the junior!
9. Teach your Wife. Many women in India have under-utilised capabilities, their education sacrificed for family and children. Given an opportunity they come up tops. With such an asset right at home, teach your wife the ropes and make her your most trusted lieutenant! Many insurance professionals have spouses who are top performers in their own right. Often they have been inducted quite informally into the business in this manner.

10. Hit the Refresh button! If you have regrets that you cannot hit the back space button to learn some skill or complete a course you ought to have. Worry not! Just hit the refresh button because it is never too late to learn something!

Cross training by the company

Cross training is training an employee to do a different part of the organisation’s work. Training worker A to do the task that worker B does and training B to do A’s task is cross training. Cross training is good for managers, because it provides more flexibility in managing the workforce to get the job done. However, done right, cross training is good for the employees too. It lets them learn new skills, makes them more valuable, and this can combat worker boredom.

As you prepare cross training plans, you need to consider both the company benefits and the employee benefits. Carefully select the employees to be cross trained. Some people like to learn new things. Some are more comfortable sticking to what they know. Do not decide which employees are ready for a change based on their age or performance. Ask them.

Try to structure the cross training for job enrichment wherever possible. Sometimes, you may only achieve job enlargement, but that can benefit the employee as well.

Rangashree Srinivas

Related posts:

1. Cos cut staff medical perks No fewer than 188 companies including large corporations such as...
2. Refresh, Expand, Power up! They came, listened and were recharged! About a thousand delegates...
3. 12 Ways to be an under-achiever Once you are reasonably well-entrenched in your career, there are...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

How often have you wished you had more than two hands and more than 24 hours in a day? Every manager or sales professional at the peak of his career will find more tasks on hand than the capacity to do them! It is no surprise then that ‘delegation’ is considered a popular management mantra.
The very popular practice of delegation is actually not that easy. It requires
a resetting of the mind, the ability to let go to an extent and excellent communication skills.
Often professionals are frozen by the fear of delegating, lest the secrets of their success be exposed. This is a mind-set that has to be given up! In fact the energy generated from ‘sharing’ can be extremely fulfilling to not only the delegated but also the ‘delegator.’  By sharing your burdens you also share expertise and skills. Thereby your burden has decreased and the delegate has learnt something new.
This brings us to the idea of ‘letting go.’ Which does not mean in anyway that once you have delegated a task you can ignore it completely. By giving a clear picture of the outcomes expected and a basic template to work from, the letting go process of delegation acquires meaning. A proactive but non-interfering approach to delegation can work wonders.
A successful manager knows how to delegate successfully. Delegation is more than just assigning a task to someone. Even moms and dads who try to get their children to perform chores around the house have learned the secret to getting someone to do a task. What is the secret? It is really very simple when you think about it. Communication is the key factor in any successful delegation. Without accurate communication, the project will soon become dead in the water and eventually be lost at sea!
When you delegate a task to someone, make sure you are communicating exactly what you expect him to do. While many managers are delegating, their employees are hearing something entirely different. The best way to delegate is to put your expectations in writing. It does not have to be a fancy five-page report; it can be just a few paragraphs. That way, everyone can agree on what needs to be done, how it can be accomplished, and when the deadlines are. And be certain that both parties understand everything in the memo; ask questions before the project is begun, and you will save time and heartache later.
How to delegate

1. Evaluate Tasks
Before you go about delegating tasks, take a good look at what needs to be done, and decide what can be delegated, and what needs to be done by you. Is there a certain way something needs to be done — a way that you alone understand? Is it something that you really want to do? Maybe you can’t find the best candidate to delegate it to. However, if there are tasks that can be done by someone else and would really help by freeing you up to do other important work, delegate away!

2. Find a Good Fit
Not all tasks can be done well by all people. While you may be surprised by how capable your children, spouse and co-workers are once they try a new task, also keep in mind what their strengths and weaknesses are before you assign tasks. For example, if something needs to be done a certain way, be sure you are giving that task to a detail-oriented person. If something needs a creative eye or a soft touch, delegate it to the artist on hand. It’s also a good idea to break bigger projects up into smaller tasks and delegate those, rather than dropping a big project into someone’s lap. One mistake people make when first learning to delegate tasks is inadvertently setting people up to fail. If you match tasks with strengths, everyone will be happier.

3. Encourage
People may be reluctant to help at first. Try to let people know what is in it for them, rather than just piling on the work and demanding it be done. Remember, you do not want to perceived as ‘bossy,’ and they do not want to be pushed into anything. When presenting the task, focus on the end result, the shared goal, or any kudos or rewards they may earn upon completion. Or, if they are going to be doing the delegated task just to help you out, be sure to let them know how greatly their help will be appreciated.

4. Praise
Once the tasks are done, be sure to give high fives and recognition. Try to make the praise public – letting the whole office know of your co-workers’ excellent contribution, for example, or making a special announcement at dinner that certain family members were extremely helpful. Focusing on the great job people do and the fabulous end result makes people glad they helped, and more excited to take on new responsibilities in the future.

5. Relax
Relax, both in the stress management sense as well as the perfectionism sense of the word. If you allow others to help you and then relax your standards of perfection a little when it comes to their performance, you will be much more successful at delegating tasks, and you
will have more cooperative people to delegate to!
Stress is a leading factor in many serious health problems today. Learning to reduce your stress could be as easy as learning to say yes to offers of help. Do not be afraid of recognising your limits and sticking to them. The payoff could be quite rewarding in reducing stress levels for you and giving a sense of accomplishment to others.
Almost everyone, at some point in their life, has taken on more than they are able to get accomplished.
In the workplace it may not be as easy to delegate tasks. Promotions and pay increases often depend on an individual’s own performance. When possible, allow coworkers to take over a share of the responsibilities. If one person tries to do all the work of the whole department it could easily lead to resentment, adding only more stress to the situation. Spreading the workload around could lead to a more unified department. Everyone will feel responsible for whatever success the company achieves. It is also important for each person to accept their responsibility at doing the best they are capable of in the workplace.
In delegating tasks, remember to make the task assignment appropriate to age and skill level of the individuals. The goal is to reduce the level of stress in your life. The less stress in your life, the happier you and everyone in your life will become.
Six Steps to Delegation
1. Delegate habitual activities, such as fact-finding missions, completion of rough drafts, problem analysis, data collecting and entry, and photo-copying.
2. Delegate any work that falls out of the range of your expertise like accounting, website and graphic design, software updating, legal issues and human resource affairs, such as payroll.
3. Give jobs to competent workers who are eager to do the job, Don’t give duties to someone simply because they’re available.
4. Explain what you expect. Make the finished result or product crystal clear to the person you assign a task to. Let him be in charge of how he tackles the project in order to get the desired result.
5. Ask for formal or informal progress reports. For a major task, a full-fledged progress report is a wise request, with graphs or charts documenting how the assignment is progressing. For smaller assignments, a quick email can detail how much progress an employee has made.
6. Check with employees for project updates. Make it clear that they can ask you a question at any time.
Rangashree Srinivas

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

43pm_productivity man

Good work habits

43pm_productivity man

Often, we find ourselves overwhelmed by a big project that has to be done. It is as if we are standing in front of a big hill all of a sudden. But if we had anticipated this hill we could have prepared ourselves by doing some ground work earlier to make the ‘climb’ easy.

Likewise when faced with a huge task we can come through without stress if we are prepared. So preparedness is the key to the successful completion of a difficult task.

What if a very big task has been suddenly assigned to you? How prepared can you be for that?

Mr Shantanu Ghosh was a middle level sales manager with a reputed private sector General insurance company.

The company joined hands with a new partner and Mr Ghosh’s role changed overnight.

He was given many responsibilities, the biggest and most immediate among them to formulate a training module for the new sales force that was to be inducted as a part of the company’s expansion programme.

This meant understanding and absorbing the foreign partner’s vision and work methods; assessing growth targets; assessing the calibre of new recruits; understanding the business culture in the areas of expansion and a whole lot of other little nuances that were necessary for a really effective training programme.

Scalability and finding trainers who could implement this programme so the delivery could be done in a relatively short span of time was another issue.

Mr Ghosh took up this challenge with enthusiasm and was very successful. An important cog in the wheels of the company’s growth, the well trained sales force became a name to reckon with.

How did he do this? He took the sensible approach of breaking down one huge challenge into bite sized tasks. Here are some pointers to show just how he did it:

1 Ground work:

Even if you have a very short span of time to complete the task, set aside at least 10 per cent of that for making preparations. This helps in getting all the details right at a later stage when you do not have the luxury to look into it.

• Note down your thoughts: Spend an afternoon just jotting down your random thoughts about the job. Your reaction, impression, ideas, plans. At this stage write whatever comes to your mind.
• Join the dots:  Later, you will find a jumble of thoughts. Look at it again and you will be able to pick out a sequence of things that are going to work. Imagine these to be dots on a puzzle. Join them and you have a roughly workable map of execution.
• Refine: Flesh out the plans and modify/delete for a really strong strategy.

2 Outsource!

• Resource list: Whenever you meet a person who strikes you as possessing a particular unique skill or trait, make a note immediately. Buy yourself a sturdy business card dossier and stock up with blank cards the size of business cards. Have them pre inserted in the dossier. When you file the card of the person you have met, make notes about their skill sets that may be of use to you later.
• Review: In your spare time, scan the dossier to refresh your memory about the persons you met.
• Retrieve: When faced with the ‘big’ task you can draw upon some of these resources to help you.
• Outsource: Assign minor tasks that can be done independently to the identified resources. Take care that these assignments are not critical by themselves but a small part of the larger picture. This way you can free yourself of the nitty gritties and focus on the total task

3 On the field!

• Gather the pieces: As the assigned tasks are being done, get your pieces of strategy in place.
• Slice and dice.  Break complex projects into smaller, well-defined tasks.  Focus on completing just one of those tasks at a given time.
• Single-handling.  Once you begin a task, stick with it until it is 100 per cent complete.  Do not switch tasks in the middle.  When distractions come up, jot them down to be dealt with later.
• Randomise.  To give yourself a break, from time to time pick a totally random piece of the larger project, and complete it. Like read up on a new motivation technique or write the synopsis for your presentation.

A big task is not really that insurmountable when you have chopped it neatly and systematically into do-able units.

Rangashree Srinivas

Related posts:

1. HDFC Life among best 50 firms to work for HDFC Life Insurance has been adjudged one of the ‘Best...
2. LIC drops infra bond plan. Dubai Reliance Capital, the financial services arm of India’s Anil...
3. The Most Powerful The Most Powerful Force…Making Compound Interest Work for You We saw in in insurance++ in theJanuary 2011 issue of...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Mr Jaiprakash Hegde had completed his post graduation in Commerce and was contemplating further studies or a banking job, when he met a sales manager of a leading private insurance company who said his company was  recruiting agents.

Inspired by what the sales manager told him about the perks and challenges of the profession, he took up a job at the company.

Soon he realised that it was not regular sales job selling one thing or the other where today you can sell an air conditioner and tomorrow a refrigerator, but a people oriented profession where you help people articulate their needs and fulfill aspirations. With this, he also realised that to understand others he needed to understand himself first.

With an unrelenting quest to seek self knowledge, Mr Hegde met up with peers from the profession, enrolled in community projects, practiced meditation and read loads of books. Within two years he was one of the top achieving advisors of the company and held as an example for other recruits.

Know yourself and seek self-improvement – In order to know yourself, you have to understand your ‘be, know, and do’ attributes. Seeking self-improvement means continually strengthening these attributes.

This can be accomplished through self-study, formal classes, reflection, and interacting with others.

By knowing yourself and what you stand for, you can contribute to your business or company significantly. When you find the ‘I’ in you, develop these big ‘I’s for greater productivity in your job.

Your ‘I’s

1. Ideas

Regardless of how junior you are in an organisation, you can have ideas that positively affect the company. Do not be contented with just doing your own work. Do not be shy or embarrassed about sharing them either.

What is the worst that can happen? Your idea is laughed at and rejected? Well, then use the opportunity to turn it into something positive. When you ask why it cannot work you will learn something new. That information can be used to come out with better ideas.

2. Impact

Be smart enough to choose some projects in a year that are considered a challenge for your level of experience. Be hard working enough to see it through. But have the wisdom to cross check with your managers to make sure it is a challenge and not impossible for your experience. That way you can create an impact in the company.

This positive work behaviour ensures that you are not just the average worker clocking in and clocking out without making an impression.

3. Impeccable

This means to be flawless in your language and dressing. Know that you are judged at all times. First impression or not, people judge you on how you talk and what you wear. You are lucky if you work in a company with dress codes, then just dress accordingly. Being impeccable when it comes to dressing does not mean expensive clothes. It simply means to dress well.

Being impeccable with your language does not mean using bombastic words. Quite simply, it means maintaining decency in speech at all times and in all situations.

4. Independent

Learn to work independently. In this age of empowerment, most employees are given the freedom to fail. Even if this culture is not practiced in your company, learn to work with minimal supervision. When you can work independently, it allows your manager to concentrate on other things.

But remember to always update your manager on what and how you are doing. Working independently as part of positive work behaviour will help you be tremendously productive.

5. Ignite

Be a sounding board for your colleagues. Take the initiative to start something. It does not always have to be work oriented. It can be something that reflects your social commitment. For example, you can start a blood bank among your colleagues and network with a local hospital. You will be perceived as a person who likes to ‘help.’ A very attractive characteristic in the agency profession.

6. Interest

Show interest in your company’s initiatives. Be an interested party in things involving your department. As part of positive work behaviour, show interest in new initiatives of your company. Give it a chance and support them.

7. Intangible

Do not always focus on the tangible benefits when working. There are a lot of values in doing things that at the moment does not seem to benefit you. For example, helping a colleague on a project. Volunteering to cover for someone who is sick. Taking on an extra project when your boss seems inundated with work.

Positive work behaviour like these may not have immediate tangible benefits but helps in the long run.

8. Integrity

This positive work behaviour means to have a sound moral character. Practiced at its most basic level it can be as simple as not talking bad about a colleague and gossiping. Do not be drawn into wrong doings like cutting corners. Do not inflate the attributes of a product just so you can sell and fulfill targets. Be honest in your dealings with colleagues, clients, business partners and suppliers.

A person with a well developed ‘I’ almost always achieves great success and satisfaction not only in his professional life but also in his personal life.

Rangashree Srinivas

Related posts:

1. Three Simple Ideas that Drive High Performance Jim Ruta in this special column, tells you about the...
2. The One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard & Spencer JohnsonSixty Seconds to Success! Success in managing people and projects – in short, in...
3. Why Buyers Buy: Tackling the Trust Deficit A prospect’s frankly expressed doubts about your professional integrity should...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Ms Asha Jain, an advisor in a private Life insurance company, is waiting at a client’s office reception while updating her prospects’ database on her laptop. On another browser window she is catching up with industry news feeds from Google news reader. She wants to be up-to-date with the latest information while talking to her client.

Meanwhile on the phone, she is keeping tabs on the baby sitter at home who is watching over her 10 month old son. She is also looking up recipes on the Internet for the Maharashtrian sweet dish puran poli, which her 8-year-old daughter wants for dessert.

Welcome to the world of multi-tasking! In today’s world, working women are like multi-armed goddesses whose arms are actually multi-tasking abilities. Increasingly men too are adopting multi-tasking strategies to get more done in a short time.

Multitasking is also a much revered skill at the workplace today. But how do we define multitasking?

Does it mean doing several things at the same time?

Does it involve juggling several jobs or assignments?

Does it mean having diverse skills and making optimum use of them?

Attempts at multitasking can be honed and polished into a fine skill by some and could just backfire with others.

Multi-tasking Tips

Here are some tips to make sure your multi-tasking efforts do not backfire!

1.Mix not

If you are engaged in very routine tasks that do not conflict much with each other in terms of their required inputs, outputs and mental processes, then you can manage. But when the tasks are specialised or critical. Like driving and talking on the mobile phone, you are probably better off concentrating on just one task at a time.

2.Switch smart

Pay very careful attention to how tasks are divided into various subparts. Tasks have natural breakpoints in them, where one part of a task joins the next.  If you are aware of these break points while switching between tasks, it works. Stopping mid-way when some part of a task is still under way can be counter productive. By learning to recognise the natural break points, you can learn to schedule actions in tasks and become better at switching efficiently from one task to another.

3.Think like a woman

Many evolutionary psychologists have argued there is a behavioural divide that has been inherited from gender roles among early humans. In prehistoric times, men served solely as hunters, anthropologist Helen Fisher has said, while women handled every other job. That is why women are, by nature, good act handling many tasks at a time. Stereotypes of women being more efficient multi-taskers persist: A 2003 Rutgers University survey found three quarters of women think women are better at multitasking than men. One third of men agreed.

4.Add value

Multi-tasking should bring a sense of value addition to the same job. It will be short sighted for an insurance agent to look at only insurance needs of a client. So to be a complete solution provider, he must learn to deliver the client’s immediate insurance requirements and switch his attention to other needs. Then he becomes a financial advisor who will be looking after all the aspects of his client’s financial portfolio. In this way he multi-tasks and adds value to his job.

5.Balance time

Multi-tasking involves ‘effective time management,’ striking a balance and finding your own comfort zone. Never get into the ‘fingers in many pies’ syndrome in the name of multi tasking and enter the stress zone.

6.Passion for more

The sheer passion of involvement or enjoying the fact that ‘‘you can make yourself more useful and do many things and attend to various needs at varying levels’’ adds to the sense of job satisfaction.

7.Multi-tasking and You

The job you hold, the amount and kind of responsibilities delegated to you, the number of hours you can spend and the quality of work you can deliver needs to be spelt out. Your strengths and limitations, your ambitions and needs: You choose how much, how fast, how often and how many. Some of us are happy doing the same thing over and over again and getting paid for it at the end of the month. Some of us need more challenge and variety out of our work.

8.Challenge factor

Multi-tasking at your current level leads to other levels and that is a natural progression. The ‘challenge’ factor keeps you going. You can do other things and do them well.

9.Public/Private

There is another kind of multitasking where your family, social life and private moments jostle with each other to find their own time and space. When your day is full of reviews, planning, recruitments, meetings gently but firmly let family members know when you will be there and when you will not be able to make it. The same goes to meeting clients at work.

10.Honesty pays

While multi-tasking be tactful and also honest. Honesty is the key to doing more than one thing and being present in more than one place at the same time. Those who know your value will accommodate.

Go ahead multi-task and get more out of life!

Rangashree Srinivas

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Time! Time! No time yaar! So much to do! I wish a day had 24 more hours…

Common chants we hear and mouth everyday. An insurance agent’s most valuable resource  is time.

A second late: that moment when you could have clinched a deal is gone. A minute late: the client you were trying to call, his phone is busy! An hour late: the client has forgotten all about you!

Even while settling claims, time is of paramount importance. To the client and to you. No one forgets the agent who got a timely settlement for a bereaved client.

Time is not just counting the seconds, the minutes and the hours. It has a qualitative side too. There are ‘times’ of the day when our energy levels are high and those when we have zero motivation to do anything. If we determine what times suit us best by simply observing ourselves for a week or so, we can be much more productive.

Knowing this, time can be tamed with some insights into how we actually use our time every day.  Here is what the experts have to say:

1 Peak times

Identify your peak cycles of productivity, and schedule your most important tasks for those times. Work on minor tasks during your non-peak times.

2 No communication zones

Allocate uninterruptible blocks of time for solo work where you must concentrate. Schedule light, interruptible tasks for your open communication periods and more challenging projects for your no communication periods.

3 Timeboxing

Timeboxing is a time management technique commonly used for planning projects. It was originally created for software development.  Here the schedule is divided into a number of separate time periods, normally two to six weeks long, with each period having its own deliverables, deadline and budget. You can use a modified version of it.

Give yourself a fixed time period, like 30 minutes, to make some headway in a task. Don’t worry about how far you get. Just put in the time. Once you have got over the starting trouble, you will be able to complete the task easily.

4 Batching

Batch similar tasks like making phone calls or attending to minor work into a single chunk, and complete them in a single session.

5 Early bird

Get up early at 5 am, and go straight to work on your most important task. You can often get more done before 8 am than most people do in a day. The day will seem much longer!

6 Cone of silence

Take a laptop with no network or WiFi access and go to a place where you can work without any distractions, such as a library, park, coffee house, or your own terrace.  Leave all your communication gadgets including your mobile phone behind.

7 Tempo

Deliberately pick up the pace, and try to move a little faster than usual. Speak faster. Walk faster. Type faster. Read faster. Go home sooner!

8 One minute only

Once you have the information you need to make a decision, start a timer and give yourself just 60 seconds to make the actual decision. Take a whole minute to deliberate and argue with yourself but, at the end of the minute, come out with a clear choice. Once your decision is made, take some kind of action to set it in motion.

9. Punctuality

Whatever it takes, be on time. Arrive early.

10. 30 days

Identify a new habit you would like to form, and commit to sticking with it for just 30 days. A temporary commitment is much easier to keep than a permanent one.

You will find that the habit has become part of you!

11. Super Slow

Commit to working on a particularly difficult project for just one session a week for a total of 15-30 minutes. Clean up one small shelf. Discard ten clothing items you do not need. Write a few paragraphs. Then stop.

12. Dailies

Schedule a specific time each day for working on a particular task or habit. One hour a day could leave you with a finished book or a profitable business proposal a year later.

13. Denial

Just say ‘no’ to non-critical requests for your time.

14. Recapture

Reclaim other people’s poor time usage for yourself. Visualise your goals during dull speeches. Write out your prospects list during pointless meetings.

15. Race to finish

Estimate how long a task will take to complete. Then start a timer, and push yourself to complete it in half that time.

16. TV free

Turn off the television and harvest many usable hours.

17. Timer

Time all your tasks for an entire day, preferably a week.  Even the act of measuring can boost your productivity, not to mention what you learn about your real time usage.

18. Reminder

Add birthday and holiday reminders to your calendar a month or two ahead of their actual dates. Buy cards and gifts during that period instead of at the last minute.

19. Do it now!

Recite this phrase over and over until you are so tired of saying it that you give in and get to work!

20. Reverse gear

Work from the back and schedule a task. When you read a backward plan, it does not look very different from a traditional forward plan. However, creating a backward plan is very different. It forces you to think from a completely new perspective, to help you see things that you might miss when you use a traditional chronological process.

Rangashree Srinivas

Related posts:

1. Max New York’s ‘catch-up-on- lost-time’ plan Max New York Life Insurance has launched Fast Track Plan,...
2. The One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard & Spencer JohnsonSixty Seconds to Success! Success in managing people and projects – in short, in...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Mr Suresh Kumar, an insurance agent, was frustrated with his career and personal life. Though he had grand plans and visions of making it big like some of the role models  in the industry, he just seemed to be going nowhere. He found his days overwhelming, filled with personal and professional commitments. He just could not understand how time flew by  with barely a fraction of his plans having materialised by the end of the day. He was losing interest in the profession and thinking of leaving when his business manager listened to his woes and talked to him.

The manager took Suresh under his wing and monitored him closely from then on. He soon found that Suresh’s lack of success had nothing to do with competence or shortage of contacts. His was a problem of poor management of time and resources. With a few suggestions and tips to improve his work habits, the manager turned around Suresh’s career which is steadily rising now!.

What magical suggestions did the manager make to bring about such a change? They were nothing but home truths that all of us grow up with like ‘Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.’ Cliched as they may sound, there is no denying the wisdom of these sayings. Experience shows that cultivating good habits is one of the most important requisites for a successful life.

Our professional life also calls for forming certain ‘good habits’ that will  our productivity, paving the way for sustained success. The ‘Productivity’ series from this issue of Premium will elaborate on some valuable work habits to develop and internalise.

Here are 13 everyday good work habits you can adopt right away to identify the really important tasks and get them done!

1.Daily goals

Each day you may have a number of things to do. You may plan your day back to back with activities, but a single phone call or visitor may make your plans go haywire. Without a clear focus, it is easy to succumb to distractions. Set targets for each day in advance. Decide what you need to do and do it.

2.Control-Delete!

Your to-do list may be filled with a number of tasks, some essential and some non-essential. Just as you would discard old clothes, discard non-essential tasks from your daily list. Just delete it.  If it does not need to be done, get it off your to-do list.

3.Worst first

Procrastination is the bane of our productive lives. To defeat procrastination learn to tackle your most unpleasant task first thing in the morning instead of delaying it until later in the day. This small victory will set the tone for a very productive day.

4.Mini milestones

When you begin a task, identify the target you must reach before you can stop working.  You can decide to call 15 prospects today. Do not end the daywithout calling each one of them.

5.Pareto

The Pareto principle is the 80-20 rule, which states that 80 per cent of the value of a task comes from 20 per cent of the effort. Business management thinker Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed that 80 per cent of the land in Italy was owned by 20 per cent of the population. It is a common rule of thumb in business that ‘‘80 per cent of your sales come from 20 per cent of your clients.’’ In the insurance context, we can say that 80 per cent of sales success depends on 20 per cent of the total effort you take. So, focus your energy on that critical 20 per cent, not wasting time on the non-critical 80 per cent.

6.Aim and Shoot

Take action immediately after setting a goal, even if the action is not perfectly planned. You can always adjust course along the way. Waiting for the perfect plan to appear will just make you lose your way in details with no destination in sight.

7.Deadline

Be totally aware of your goal at all times. Set a deadline for task completion, and use it as a focal point to stay on track.

8.Quad 2

In his famous book ‘First Things First,’ author Stephen Covey offers a time management approach that describes a framework for prioritising work aimed at long-term goals, at the expense of tasks that appear to be urgent, but are in fact less important. His 2×2 matrix classifies tasks as urgent and non-urgent on one axis, and important or non-important on the other axis. His quadrant 2 has the items that are non-urgent but important. These are the ones he believes we are likely to neglect; but, should focus on, to achieve effectiveness. Separate the truly important tasks from the merely urgent. Allocate blocks of time to work on the critical Quadrant 2 tasks, those which are important but rarely urgent, such as physical exercise, writing a book, and researching a training programme.

9.Continuum

At the end of your workday, identify the first task you will work on the next day, and set out the materials in advance. The next day begin working on that task immediately.

10.Bite sizes

Break complex projects into smaller, well-defined tasks. Focus on completing just one of those tasks.

11.Add-ons

Add a task you want to habitualise onto one of your existing habits.  For instance, call one client for a referral after you eat lunch or send thank-you notes after you check email.

12.Triage

The concept of ‘Triage’ originated on French battlefields during Napoleonic wars, where doctors used to prioritise among the wounded and the dying. The principle being, ‘save the lives of those who could live with timely treatment by ignoring those that are going to die anyway. This concept can be applied to daily tasks by attending to the really important ones and ‘killing’ the non-important ones which are only going to drain your mental resources.

13.Conscious procrastination

Delay non-critical tasks as long as you possibly can. Many of them will cease to exist on their own and need not be done at all.

Incorporate these ideas into your work day and find that you can achieve a lot in a short time.

Rangashree Srinivas

Related posts:

1. HDFC Life among best 50 firms to work for HDFC Life Insurance has been adjudged one of the ‘Best...
2. The One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard & Spencer JohnsonSixty Seconds to Success! Success in managing people and projects – in short, in...
3. ‘Protection’ drive on United Bank of India has launched a ‘Protection Campaign’ in...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.