Blockchain

Perhaps most famously associated with cryptocurrencies, there are various applications in business that blockchain can be of use in. Really, blockchain is of great use in any situation where a record of changes needs to be kept, as the blockchain creates a record of these changes each time a new block is added to the chain - hence the name.

Originally utilized primarily by the financial industries, the utility of the blockchain has expanded to be of considerable use to far more verticals, with no signs of slowing.

AI and Machine Learning

In the past few years, we’ve gone from fearing artificially intelligent machines like HAL 9000 to carrying around a relatively rudimentary version of the sentient computer in our pockets. While our current machines and devices are (thank goodness) far less capable than HAL, they are plenty capable of assisting business processes - largely thanks to machine learning.

Via AI, directed by machine learning, your solutions can carry out predetermined processes and make informed decisions based on the input they receive. As a result, your business can take care of some if its tasks automatically, leaving your team free to focus on other responsibilities.

AR and VR

While augmented reality and virtual reality have been largely associated with entertainment purposes, the business world has started to embrace them for numerous purposes, both in terms of their internal processes and their marketing efforts. Furthermore, with today’s youth being exposed to these kinds of interfaces, they will be more familiar with them when they reach working age (and will be able to use them more productively as a result).

Has your business begun to implement any of these technologies in its workflows - even the most basic varieties? Coleman Technologies can help you do more. Reach out to us at (604) 513-9428 to learn more!

Operations change over time. It’s likely that your business’ operations don’t even remotely resemble what they were in previous years. For example, mobile technology first became more popular for computing around the year 2013, and “unified communications” was a hot commodity in the business world. Nowadays, productivity and collaboration solutions using mobile devices are some of the most basic solutions out there.

Many organizations fall into the trap of believing their past successes guarantee their future, but this isn’t necessarily the case. The reverse could be true. Here are some questions to ask if you suspect that your organization could be falling into complacency:

• Are any potential changes or growth opportunities avoided or rebuffed through the use of highly selective facts?
• Do conversations amongst your team skirt around topics like new markets, possible competition, or other developing business opportunities?
• Are failures used to postpone new attempts instead of as learning moments?
• Do meetings frequently end in a holding pattern?

Any of the above questions indicate whether or not a business has gotten too comfortable, preventing them from making sound decisions. Thankfully, once you’ve identified this complacency, it becomes easy to resolve it. Try asking these questions about your business, its policies, and its culture:

• Is there any way that your processes could be made more efficient?
• Does your business plan reflect the goals that your business is currently striving for?
• Is your service offering a good fit for your current audience? What needs will they have in the near future?
• Are there any technologies that could soon cause a disruption in your market, or could be used as an invaluable tool?
• How engaged are your employees?

Answering these questions will give you all the ammunition you need to put together a solid understanding of what your business needs to do on both a local and industrial level. Of course, this can be challenging as well, as you might encounter issues that need to be resolved before you can make progress as a business.

Coleman Technologies can help your business implement IT solutions designed to keep your business running efficiently while still maintaining the status quo. To learn more, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

1. Prioritization

One of the keys to productive work is to work smarter, not harder. By identifying what is most pressing to accomplish or otherwise needs to happen first, you can inherently increase your productivity.

Ignore Inspiration

For instance, one of the biggest causes of procrastination is taking in a project in its entirety. Seeing the entire scope of an undertaking can be intimidating, which often makes people feel as though they need to be “inspired” before they will be able to accomplish anything.

This is untrue, but can be a difficult impulse to resist. If you catch yourself falling back on this excuse, try focusing specifically on a certain aspect or piece of your greater responsibility. Once this portion is completed, you’ll most likely be motivated to continue. In essence, don’t wait to be inspired… inspire yourself through what you accomplish.

Leverage Prioritization Strategies

Another common cause of procrastination is indecision as to what aspect of a project to tackle first. Again, identifying the most important or pressing activity makes it much easier to make this decision, and there are a few ways that you can do so.

One way is to leverage something called the Eisenhower Matrix. It can be used to sort tasks based on their urgency and importance, advising you on how a task should be approached - if it should be done now, planned for, delegated to someone else, or eliminated. This tool can help you avoid spending time on activities that ultimately don’t matter as much as others, optimizing how you spend the time you have. The Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 Rule, is another means of spending your time more intelligently. By identifying the most important 20 percent of their tasks and minimizing the remaining 80 percent, many people use this principle to spend the most time on their most impactful activities.

Save Distractions for Later

We’ve all experienced that moment where, in the middle of one task, we suddenly have an idea for another. While this new task may be valuable or important, it can also hurt your operations by interrupting the one you’re engaged in at the moment… but again, this thought also needs to be addressed. Many people resolve this dilemma by creating a distraction list. Rather than suspending what they are working on, these people simply take a moment to jot down this idea for further consideration after their task is done. This means that they aren’t jumping between unfinished tasks each time a new idea pops up.

2. Preparation

Once you have your tasks organized properly, you need to ensure that you have properly made preparations to attend to them. Some of these preparations may sound counter-intuitive, but are no less crucial to your efforts.

Make Sure You’re in Order

If you aren’t ready to be productive, you aren’t going to be no matter what you try. Therefore, you need to be taking care of yourself, as well as your technology. You need to be healthy and rested to reach your potential, which means that self-care is a must. This also means that you should be strategic in how you approach your responsibilities. If you know that you tend to have a period of low energy in the late morning, it’s probably beneficial to avoid scheduling intensive tasks for that time. In addition, you need to be sure that you’re up-to-date on how things are done. The more knowledgeable you are, the more efficiently you’ll be able to make decisions, and the faster processes will move along.

Expect to Be Interrupted

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, as they say. This means that you should anticipate other things to interfere with your established work schedule. What if another task pops up, or a task takes longer than anticipated? Taking these kinds of challenges into account will allow you to figure out a solution preemptively, or at least a plan that allows you to adjust and adapt.

Learn from Everything

We’ve all been taught the value of learning from our mistakes - examining situations in which things went wrong, identifying why, and avoiding those circumstances in the future. However, this is only half of what you should do to optimize your productivity. You also need to identify why your successes were successful.

Once you have completed a project or process, take some time to examine it. What about it worked well, and how could that be made better? Was every aspect necessary, or could some of it be eliminated or streamlined? Doing so will allow you to further optimize your procedure to be even more productive the next time.

3. Cheating!

In fairness, these strategies aren’t “cheating” so much as they are methods of working smarter. This way, you can make sure that your tasks are accomplished without expending more resources than they need - including your energy.

Subdivide Your Tasks

Remember the prioritization strategies we discussed above? This is a similar activity, in that you take a larger concept and divvy it up into each step that needs to be completed. Instead of putting them into a matrix or focusing on a specific set of them, the idea here is to simply make your tasks appear more achievable.

Let’s say you have to plan a work event. This alone is a significant responsibility, and can be overwhelming to approach as a whole - where to start? However, you can make your process much more comprehensible by going about it piece-by-piece, effectively expanding your task into a complete to-do list. While this does give you more tasks, they will be much easier to attain and progress with. So, instead of “Plan Party for Greg’s Retirement”, your list might include:

• Buy decorations
• Buy card
• Buy ice cream cake
• Hide cake in freezer
• Have team sign card
• Put up decorations
• Take out cake
• Send email to team to gather

More tasks, but much easier to follow nevertheless.

Leverage Shortcuts

There are a great many ways that your technology can offer an easier way of doing things. Naturally, keyboard shortcuts are one example of this, but so is automation. Let’s face it, any time you can save by having your technology handle something is time that you can then spend being productive elsewhere.

Eliminate Inefficiencies

How much time do you spend debating your options for truly inconsequential decisions during the day? Chances are, it’s more than you’d like to admit. The fact of the matter is that many of the choices that we are faced with aren’t all that impactful. Eliminating as many of these choices as possible will allow you to reserve your decision-making skills for the times that you really need them.

Email is another notorious source of lost productivity, simply because people don’t use it as efficiently as they could. It is too common for what should be a very brief and simple correspondence to take far longer than anticipated. Ironically, this is often because the people involved are trying to be brief.

Instead of cutting corners on your next email, invest a few minutes into including more specifics. Don’t just say you want to meet - identify the topics to be discussed. Don’t leave the time of the meeting open-ended, offer a few availabilities. While it takes longer to write, one email written this way will keep you from having to read, write, and send a few more.

Finding Your Groove

Clearly, there are many aspects to consider when you’re trying to be more productive, and some may be more effective for one person over another. A bit of experimentation will help you to land on the approach that works for you.

Coleman Technologies can help by providing the solutions that enable some of these methods. Reach out by calling (604) 513-9428 to learn more about these solutions.

Customizing the Quick Access Toolbar

The Quick Access Toolbar can be found at the top left of the window, with default options like Save, Undo, and Redo. It’s pretty easy to spot, isn’t it? This is one of the reasons that adjusting it to your preferences can be so helpful.

Making these changes is fairly simple. Your first step is to access the Quick Access Toolbar’s options. Under File. select Options, and in the window that appears, click Quick Access Toolbar in the sidebar menu. It should look like this...

From here, you can see that the typical Save, Undo, and Redo options are in the Quick Access Toolbar - which is all well and good, but you can easily use keyboard shortcuts to accomplish the same things.

You might find a different assortment of tools more handy to keep in your Quick Access Toolbar. Altering them is simple enough from this menu, all you have to do is select the item and click the appropriate button, Add>> or <<Remove. The list on the left defaults to Popular Commands, but there are plenty of options to choose from, based on your needs. For now, we’ll stick to Popular Commands.

Let’s assume you use Word to put a lot of data into context, so you use a lot of lists and tables… and it needs to be spelled correctly. You can easily change your Quick Access Toolbar to meet these preferences.

Once you’ve done so, just click OK and your changes will be saved. You can always revert to the default settings by using the Reset option as well.

Customizing the Ribbon

The Ribbon in Word is where you find your options like Home, Insert, and the rest. Depending on your usage, you may not have much of a need for some of these options. Let’s assume that you don’t have any purpose for the Mailings tab, or the Draw tab, for that matter.

Again accessing File and Options, this time we’re looking for Customize Ribbon, which looks like this:

Just as we did with the Quick Access Toolbar above, you can adjust what is displayed in the Ribbon. Since we’ve established that - in this example - we have no purpose for either the Mailings or Draw tabs, we can uncheck them to remove them from the Ribbon display.

Customizing the Status Bar

At the very bottom of the window is the Status Bar, which can be altered to provide other valuable information based on what you have prioritized. Doing so is very simple: just right-click on the Status Bar, and select (or deselect) the options.

There you have it- three ways to customize Microsoft Word to better suit your purposes. For more technology tips, make sure you subscribe to our blog!

A Rose by Any Other Name
Frankly, it’s pretty easy to observe that “busy” and “productive” are anything but synonymous. We all know those people who seem to be constantly running around, working on this or that. Are these people busy? Certainly. Are they actually accomplishing anything? Maybe, maybe not.

Look at it this way - you can be ‘busy’ doing anything. However, in order to be ‘productive,’ you need to actually produce something. It doesn’t matter if it’s a completed sales proposal, an email explaining away the confusion around a particularly convoluted subject, or… anything else, really, as long as it helps to advance the business’ goals.

The Inherent Issue in Comparing the Two
Unfortunately, much of our context for determining between busyness and productivity comes from the least objective source there is - our own perception.

Look at it this way: let’s say that you gave a research assignment to two employees, with a deadline of an hour. If you left, only to return and see one employee watching YouTube videos, and the other one typing away, who would you see as being the productive one? In the moment, you would probably say that it was the employee who was still typing, and not the one watching videos on the Internet. However, what if I told you that the employee watching videos was actually watching videos related to the task you had assigned, and the other was working on what would likely be their fourth unpublished novel? Or that the employee watching the videos had long since completed the assignment, and was taking a well-deserved break, while the employee who was still typing was only doing so because they had goofed off for much of the time you were away?

This illustrates two considerations: how much different productivity really is than pure busyness, as well as how similar they have the potential to be. In order to keep from fooling yourself into thinking you’re being productive when you’re really just looking busy, try asking yourself a few questions as you commence.

For example, you can take a look at how you spend your time, and compare it to what your responsibilities really are at their core.

For instance, let’s say that Bill’s job was to ensure that the company remained secure. If Bill was able to complete all of his day’s tasks in the morning, but then spent the rest of his day reading things online, what would that be considered? Well, that depends. If Bill was reading the latest Bowling Enthusiasts Weekly articles at his desk for the rest of the afternoon, that’s hardly productive. However, if Bill was researching improved cybersecurity practices to enact in the company... that’s a pretty productive way to spend the time.

A Few ‘Keeping Busy’ Red Flags
Of course, none of the following activities have to be time-wasters, they just happen to be in most situations, or require a very specific job responsibility to be considered productive. For instance, many job responsibilities don’t actually require the Internet to be used, so any time spent on it is arguably a waste. The same can be said of social media, and especially email.

Of course, there are also many exceptions to this rule. In essence, you have to use your best judgement, evaluating if a given activity is actually the best use of your time or not.

Don’t forget, Coleman Technologies has plenty of solutions to help you boost your productivity. Reach out to us at (604) 513-9428 to learn more!

One Account, Two Accounts, Three Accounts, Four…
Based on your work responsibilities and how your office is structured, it is quite possible that you need regular access to multiple email accounts. You could have one you use internally, one for communicating with clients, one to reach out to vendors, one to use to sign up for resources… you get the point. When all is said and done, that’s a lot of email messages.

However, you presumably have other work responsibilities beyond just checking your email, so switching between all of them just isn’t a practical option. Well, it just so happens that you won’t need to switch, as the email client you choose will be able to consolidate these multiple accounts for you. Before we get into how, we need to make sure that we’re speaking the same language here.

- An email account is the individual address used to send or receive a message. In your organization, you might have and . Likewise, each employee may have a different account for their different responsibilities - for instance, and .

- An email client is the program that allows you to send and receive emails. Gmail and Microsoft Outlook are two perfect examples. If you have multiple clients stored on the same server, they can be used pretty much interchangeably, each client presenting all emails. An email client also has a few features that enable you to better keep track of multiple email accounts, provided you have set it up to do so.

Let’s go over your options now.

Multiple Inboxes
The people who developed the email clients that we use weren’t naive. They understood that a given user isn’t going to be tied down to a single email provider, and certainly not a single account. This is why email clients can support multiple inboxes, assuming they are configured correctly. Multiple inboxes allow a user to access a single client to manage multiple email accounts, streamlining the process greatly and enabling customized organization.

Multiple Email Personalities
On the other hand, some users don’t mind leveraging one inbox, but might still need to utilize more than one address in their correspondence. There is also a method that enables the use of a single, catch-all inbox, but enables the user to select which email address (in this case, known as personalities) their response is sent from.

To do so, you will first need to set up an email account that you do not give out, as it will serve as the catch-all address that all of your emails ultimately accumulate within. Once it has been set up, you need to set all of your other accounts to forward their contents to that mailbox - your internal IT resource should be able to help.

Once your messages are all being sent to the catch-all account, you will be able to respond to these emails from the address that they were originally sent to.

Setting Up Inboxes and Personalities
In order to accomplish either of these tasks for your client of choice, you will need to adjust a few settings.

Gmail
To add another account to your Gmail client, you’ll need to access your Settings, which means you have to click on the gear icon. Once you’re in your Settings, you should see a tab labeled Accounts and Import. Under that tab, there is a Check mail from other accounts section. Click on Add a mail account, and follow the instructions provided.

To add additional personalities to your Gmail account, you’ll need to again navigate to the Accounts and Import tab. There, you will find a section labeled Send Mail As, with the option to Add another email address. This will also allow you to choose your default email address.

Outlook
As it happens, there are too many different versions of Microsoft Outlook and too many variables to allow us to provide a walk-through. Fortunately, Microsoft does offer some documentation that instructs users how to manage their "connected accounts.” Of course, you can also call (604) 513-9428 for our assistance, as well.

Are there any solutions that you frequently use that you’d like some extra tips for? Tell us which ones in the comments section, and don’t forget to subscribe!

Once you have your content selected, whether it’s text or an image, all you have to do is press two keys.

To cut a word or phrase from one place in your content, press Ctrl + X. To copy this content instead, keeping the original and duplicating it elsewhere, press Ctrl + C. Pasting your content is just as simple - with the place you want the content added selected, press Ctrl + V. This will insert your content where you want.

If you happen to be copy-pasting from a website to another document, it may not be a bad idea to paste it without bringing any formatting from the website over. Otherwise, it is apt to look funny on your documents. Pasting without formatting is almost as simple as regular pasting, you just add another keystroke in the middle: Ctrl + Shift + V.

Of course, any of the tasks can be accomplished with the mouse alone. Right clicking on a word, an image, or a group of selected text will bring up a menu that includes all of the above options. However, your cursor is generally more accurate than the mouse, so you may have to undo your efforts (Ctrl + Z) a few times before it’s right.

Real World Example:
Let’s say you want to send a webpage link to someone in an email or instant message. In your web browser, click the address bar (that’s the part with the ‘http://… “). That will highlight the URL. Hold down Ctrl and press C. Then go into your email or instant messenger, click where you want to paste the URL, and hold down Ctrl and press V.

Whichever you use, it’s bound to be more time-efficient than rewriting anything that needs to go in a different spot. Make sure you subscribe to our blog, so you can be alerted whenever we upload more content!