Technology does not guarantee you will become organised!

You need to USE the technology in order to achieve this.

For example, one thing I used to find with a paper diary was that some days I got so busy that I forgot to even look in the diary once I left home in the morning - the day seemed to take on a life of it’s own and run away with me.  I was often heard to mutter “it’s not good enough for me to write things in my diary - I have to look in it too…”

This brings me to one the my favourite features of electronic diaries and lists - the ability to set an alert on them.  I can even set multiple alerts on a single entry!

So firstly I had to get into the habit of putting every little thing into my iphone calendar and putting the appropriate alerts onto them.  Secondly I need to carry it with me at all times (an alert can only get my attention if I have the phone with me doh!)

Seems simple, but once I got into the habit of really putting everything in there I have found the tool to be absolutely incredible - if an alert goes off but my schedule has changed, I am reminded and then I can simply change the time on the item, say put it to an hour later or whatever and automatically it alerts me again at the right time.  That used to be a huge issue for me - my schedule changing during the day could cause me to totally forget things to do that I was carrying in my head.

Another fantastic feature is recurring events.

It used to be a ritual that at the end of the year I would have to go back through my old diary and begin transposing certain events into my new one - birthdays to remember, monthly meetings etc.

Now I can set an ‘all day event’ for someone’s birthday and tell the calendar to make it recur every year - I don’t have to do anything else!  I can have it alert me a week before the date even to remind me to organise a card or to meet up for coffee or whatever.

I attend a few monthly meetings and the calendar allows me to set for example the ’second Tuesday of the month’ as the meeting date and set it up for every month.  I love that then there is no chance of getting the date wrong for any month.

I use a setup for all of this too that backs all these things up onto a web site automatically (so as long as I am in range of an internet connection I get everything backed up including my contacts list), and it all synchronises with my computer as well.  One fear I had when I went to the electronic diary was a failure causing me to lose everything and my diary is critical for my business.  Now I have not 2 but 3 copies of everything electronically, so the chances of my iphone, computer and web storage all failing is very remote - less remote than the chance that I could have lost my paper diary!

Still the true key to success has not been so much the technology itself, but USING the technology - every person reading this entry probably has all the electronic management tools they need, but ARE YOU USING THEM?

Small business owners often find that their time revolves around a stream of little things that are necessary to keep a business running, but don’t seem to have anything to do with what they wanted to be in business for.

If you allow them to queue up, it can seem daunting to imagine how you are ever going to get through them all.

One of the most important aspects to keeping this under your control, rather than letting a million things seem to take control of you is finding a way to organise yourself that suits you.

There are many ways to do this, but the principal is preventing all these tasks from clogging up your own brains temporary storage, and into some kind of a system. This system needs to be able to track these small tasks so that you can’t forget them, whilst allowing you to concentrate and focus on the tasks you went into business to perform.

The usual suspects are typically diaries, lists, whiteboards and sticky notes, but maybe you can use technological equivalents?

There are many brands of software that accomplish these tasks for windows, Mac and Linux systems.

I would be very surprised if you don’t already have the tools you need on your computer now, even if you’ve never used them.

Maybe you can add better or more sophisticated products, but some of the very simple tools could turn chaos into manageable.

One of the things I personally love most about using an electronic diary is the reminder alarm feature. You wouldn’t believe how many tiny tasks I put into my diary - everything from making a critical phone call to getting milk on the way home, allowing me to work through my day without so much clutter in my head.

We all use the internet in business every day, or the very large percentage of us do. I wonder how many in business really know if they are on the most cost effective plan for their usage? It is common that a plan is chosen and instigated, then forgotten about. Some years down the track it is still forgotten and maybe it is no longer the best plan for your needs. Many home and business owners also just sign up with a company without really checking their options out, and I admit sometimes doing the comparisons is daunting as there are so many technical terms to trawl through that a choice is simply made on price, thinking well that looks affordable.

The internet has changed significantly over the past 5 – 10 years, providers seem to come and go, and availability in our regional areas is confusing.

For example a new Pipe Pacific Cable connecting Guam to Sydney via Papua New Guinea has been launched recently, promising significant increases in speed. Ever since the Pacific Pipe dream was announced earlier this year there have been talk of 100 MB / second speed plans. However it would now seem that speed increase is not the first change consumers will see, but larger data quotas (the amount of data you can download on your plan) for the same price will be a welcome start for many users.

Not every provider yet has access to this new cable, but negotiations are continuing with many of the large providers.

It could be a good time to start checking what your plan is, what speed you are getting and how much you can download per month. Check this against what you actually are downloading per month as you may be paying hefty charges for going over your limit.

I was reminded the past couple of weeks, of the power there can be in the written word, published on the internet.

A lady started an entity on facebook, rather than a page for herself, and people could become fans of this entity. I’m sure she knew that the entity would attract some fans, and more than just a few, but I wonder if she expected the number of fans to increase the way it did. I wonder what she thought when it reached the first 100,000?

Businesses are starting to use mediums such as facebook and twitter to communicate with their clients and some types of business are finding this very successful.

Still this case I have in mind was not a business themselves, yet

the following continued to increase, and not only that, the following began to impact on a large business to the point that they influenced that business to undertake a business activity that I doubt would have been taken otherwise.

I became a fan about 4 months back, but at that time had no idea the power this facebook entity was about to have!

The fan base increased and went over 200,000 and the power of sheer numbers caused Channel 9 to take action.

Many of you reading this have probably guessed now what I am referring to, but if you haven’t just consider the power of internet publishing – to attract a following that this morning has reached 334,673, and persuad a television station to air nearly 7 new hours of a show that finished 10 years ago. Add to that the fact that they rocketed to become the world’s largest following on twitter and you have a powerful medium indeed.

Whether or not you liked Hey Hey It’s Saturday, the phenomenon of how the internet was used is an incredibly interesting case study for business.

Ah the written word!

There is something about the written word that makes it seem valid, authentic and reliable. It can be comforting to read something, and know that if you are unsure of any content you can go back and read it again!

I believe that we used to weigh our words carefully before putting them into writing. I’m not so sure that holds as true today.

We live in an age where anyone and everyone not only can, but probably does publish, to the degree that maybe we don’t give so much consideration when putting something into print.

Communication via email has become so completely integrated that very few of us can imagine a business world without it.

Does that mean we are using the written word well as a communication vehicle – just because we are using it?

I must admit that even though I send and receive far more emails daily than I would like to count, I often find it a frustrating vehicle for a few reasons.

Firstly if I ask more than a couple of specific questions via text I find it is rare the receiver will answer more than the first couple anyway.

Secondly if I send more text than can be read on screen without scrolling, I probably wasted all that text below. That’s important as it means if I don’t say the critical things in the first section they risk being missed altogether.

Thirdly if I ask for confirmation by the receiver of important attachments in my email I rarely receive this.

I often ponder on the reasons for these 3 main points, and as I teach email communication and netiquette we discuss just such issues.

If you consider the communication issues you have had with text in your business, I wonder if you can supply the answers?