Owning or running a small business is like standing in front a firehose that’s blasting out an endless stream of things you should be doing. RIGHT NOW! Every day, there are a few crises to solve, employees to train, new customers to help, new industry products or services to consider, vendors or agents or salespeople who want to meet with you and a dozen or so new dot-somethings you’re supposed to sign up for and start uploading photos, updates and videos throughout the day and night. Oh, and then there’s your actual job of making or selling a product or serving a client. And what about that family you vaguely recall?

If you run a small business, you already know how to cope: You start by accepting the fact that you can’t do it all. Or, as author Greg McKeown says in his bestselling book, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, “Pursue only those things that are truly important — and forget everything else…You can’t have it all, and you can’t do it all.”

In his book, he writes, “Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.”

A SmallBusiness.com User-Favorite | Published first on 2.11.2015

What are the essentials?

“We overvalue nonessentials like a nicer car or house, or even intangibles like the number of our followers on Twitter or the way we look in our Facebook photos. As a result, we neglect activities that are truly essential, like spending time with our loved ones, or nurturing our spirit, or taking care of our health.”

McKeown advises that when considering what is essential, if you’re not 90 percent sure of doing something, just don’t bother. Don’t worry about it.” Get over the “fear of missing out” (or, as he says, FOMO). Learn, instead, the Joy of missing out (JOMO).”

And if you end up a little bored as a result, that’s okay too because “at the edge of boredom is all creativity,” he writes.

Give Yourself Permission to Stop Trying to Do it All

Says McKeown, “Only when you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter.”

via: 99u.com

(Art: Thinkstock)

(Originally posted, May, 2011) We posted this article a few years ago as a guide to the icons found on mobile apps. In general, “icons” mean emoji for grown-up developers. If you notice a missing icon or wonder what one means, send us a link of where you see it and we’ll help all our users learn what the new or confusing icon  means: tips@smallbusiness.com)

As more and more people are using mobile devices to run their lives and businesses, the people who develop applications for these devices face a challenge. Smaller screens mean less space to use words that instruct the user where to go and how to use the mobile website or app. For that reason, a whole new visual language of small symbols called “icons” is evolving. These icons are supposed to convey to the user what will happen when they tap onto or click the image.

The only problem is, sometimes Developer A and Developer B use the same image for various things, or different images for the same thing. For instance, what does and “i” in a circle mean? How is it different from a “?” in a circle? Or, for that matter, an “!”? (We included that last one, as it’s an on-going debate we have among ourselves at SmallBusiness.com.)

Here are some common icons and what will likely happen when you click or tap on them. The following icons are from the folks at Font Awesome who have open-sourced them as part of development framework called Bootstrap that was created at Twitter and became an open-source project in 2011.

Cog, Widget or Gear

We started with this one because it demonstrates some of the confusion. First off, it’s a symbol that goes by different names. In the real-world, the symbol can mean “widget,” a word that has a meaning among developers that has nothing to do with that real-world meaning. On an app or website, it typically means “settings.” Click it and you can adjust something.

Wrench

This, also, is what we mean by a confusing icon, as it can, like the cog-gear-widget, also mean “settings.” For example, Google Apps used to have a wrench icon for settings but now uses a “cog-gear-widget.”

Envelope

An envelope should mean email, right? It may. Or it may have a broader meaning, like “click on this to contact us.” Look for one on SmallBusiness.com and click it and the latter will happen.

Right Swirving Arrow

This means share. Click on it and you’ll likely see a list of ways to post the content you’re seeing onto social media sites or email it to friends or co-workers.

Another Sharing Icon

Perhaps we didn’t mention that the internet has no governing board that controls how many symbols can mean the same thing, as this one means “share” also., but wait, there’s more.

Yet, Another Sharing Symbol

We feel certain there are some nuance differences in the two previous  sharing icons and this one, but on SmallBusiness.com, we’ve narrowed it down to the middle one. This one is especially confusing because it can also mean “print.” One day, this will all be worked out by the UN.

Exclamation Point

The exclamation point in a circle means, “take note and watch out.” If it’s in a triangle, it means “TAKE NOTE and WATCH OUT.” Or, if it’s part of the logo of SmallBusiness.com, it means, “here’s your answer!”

Home

This should be obvious. It means, click here to play a game of Monopoly.

Ellipsis

Sometimes (say, if you use Google+), you may even see a stack of ellipses. We’re guessing this icon is a visual pun that means “the stuff we couldn’t…fit here.”  Clicking or tapping on the icon will reveal options related to what you are currently viewing. (Coincidentally, the next icon means and does about the same.)

Parallel Bars (hamburger or a stack of hamburgers or hot dogs)

When used as a navigational icon, either of these two “lists” mean there are lots of things the app or website couldn’t fit on a tiny screen. Typically, if you click or tap on them, some form of the navigational bar will slide in from the side or top.

Pencil

This means “edit” pretty much anywhere you see it.

Triangle in a Circle

This is a play button icon. That, or a cattle ranch brand.

Circle Arrow

This means refresh. Refresh means stay on the same page, but try to make it work, this time.

A Dot with Two Curved Lines

This is an RSS icon. It’s a magical tool that far too few people use. If you want others to be more informed than you, ignore it.

Magnifying glass

This means “search.” Even if you don’t see a search box, click on it. In fact, you can test what we mean by looking for one at the top of this screen (depending on the device you are using). Tap or click on it. We promise a search box will appear.

Beer Mug

This icon means “turn off your computer and go have a beer.”

Are you overwhelmed with too much to do? If you are an owner or manager of a small business, we know the answer: “Yes, but I need to do more.”  Rather than suggesting ways to do more, the Dropbox.com blog recently shared five ideas for doing less. While these suggestions are directed towards those who work in corporate team settings, perhaps they can inspire you to think of ways in your workplace to apply a “do less” approach for re-focusing how you spend your time.

1 | Stop editing your own presentations

Focus on the first draft. Don’t spend too much time on wordsmithing or formatting. Get your raw ideas down, then ask others to help you refine them. In the process of proofreading and revising your work, they’ll bring an important outside perspective that will strengthen not just the style, but the substance.

2 | Stop solving problems in hallway conversations

Management by walking around may sound like a good concept, but according to some studies, “drop-bys” from co-workers can take up nearly a quarter of a manager’s time. Establish a formal process for face-time.

3 | Stop attending meetings without an agenda

Beyond being a fast way to reach consensus on the key decisions that keep projects moving, team meetings help you build camaraderie and stay aware of what’s happening and what’s ahead. But without a specific agenda, that are a time sink.

4 | Stop answering instant messages

To prevent the back-and-forth of an IM conversation from derailing your train of thought, set a three-response limit for any text exchange. After that, suggest moving the thread to email (or better, a project management platform).

5 | Stop Checking email every minute

Dedicate blocks of time to check all your email at once. You might even add it to your calendar to let your team know this is how you’ll manage your email, so they have a clear idea of when to expect a response.

VIA | Dropbox Blog, “These are the 5 tasks you should stop doing today”

Do you have suggestions for things to “stop” doing? Send them to Tips@SmallBusiness.com.

Photos: Pexels

If you are up-to-speed on internet (or texting) lingo, you know that TLDR (or TL;DR) means “too long, didn’t read.” Today, having access to too much information (TMI) can be a serious drain on those whose work involves spending much of the day involved in projects and tasks that include researching and capturing information that is then transformed into understanding, wisdom and advice. Too often, some of that information gets misplaced or lost, which leads to researching and capturing information all over again. Sure, there’s Google to help you search for that lost information, but it is often locked up in a company’s own network, or on someone else’s computer. 

Sobering statistics about how much time we spend searching for information

13% | Increase since 2002 of an engineer’s time spent searching for information. (Source:  IHS Knowledge Collections Webinar )

8 | How many searches it takes a worker to find the right document and information. (Source: SearchYourCloud)

19.8% (1 day per week) | The time that is wasted by employees searching for information to do their job effectively, (Source: A Fifth of Business Time is Wasted Searching for Information, says Interact)

30% (2.5 hours) | The time each day a “knowledge worker” spends searching for information. (Source: Information: The Lifeblood of the Enterprise.)

60% | Percentage of executives who feel that time constraints and lack of understanding of how to find information were preventing their employees from finding the information they needed. (Source: Information: The Lifeblood of the Enterprise.)

Where information gets lost

Note: The following list of places information gets lost around the office is not the results of scientific research. It is based on my personal 30-year experience of not being able to find 19 percent of the information I needed, but couldn’t find. (Note: In a future article, we will focus on finding information on the web. The following is focused on information that’s in-house.)

In an email thread

Bouncing back and forth on an email reply thread can bury any information worth keeping (or losing). Even email that uses Google search is unfindable after 4–5 replies. Email places information in silos that are impossible for others to obtain. An email thread is where information goes to die until half of a sentence is needed to prove you didn’t do something you were supposed to.

In an email inbox

If someone has more than 100 email messages in their inbox, they may as well have 1,000. Email that is sitting in an inbox is email that will be lost, sooner or later, by one or two people. It’s silo information that can only be found via search, then, only if you are lucky enough to recall the exact words you need to find it.

In text messages

Like email, but worse.

On a server

In too many small businesses, a shared server on an office network turns into a big basket of confusion and chaos as people start making up their own filing conventions. One group will start filing information by project, another group with file things according to clients. Soon, some employees are filing photos in one file and documents in another, despite the photos and documents are both related to the same job.

How to cut down on wasted time spent searching for information

Create a company-wide convention for naming files and folders

Chances are, everyone in the office creates file and folder names using their own system. However, when two or more people are gathered around a project, a standardized filing format will reduce the time necessary to find something you need that was created by someone else. Such standardization should be a part of everything else on this list.

Train and be an example

Lead by example. This is a classic example of the weakest link syndrome: Your information management solution will be only as good as the person who doesn’t adhere to it.

Use cloud-based, office-suite software

G-Suite or Microsoft Office 365 are the leaders in the cloud-based office or productivity suite of software that includes spreadsheet, presentation, word processing and other work-related applications and features like email and file storage. (See project management, below, for advice on using office-suite software).

Use a project management software platform for all collaborative projects

There is software made precisely to solve the problem of organizing e-mail, texting, organizing and sharing digital information and the digital pieces and parts of a typical work-related project. It’s called “project management” or “project flow” software. There are several brands of project management software but the one we use at SmallBusiness.com is Basecamp 3.

Use Slack if you aren’t using Basecamp 3

Basecamp 3 and the office-communication platform Slack have several features and benefits that overlap one-another. Organizing various types of communication and collaboration around projects is the obvious similarity. However, if you use both, that overlap can quickly lead to confusing redundancies. Despite Slack having the lion’s share of hype these days, Basecamp 3 is a more robust project management platform. Slack is more focused on capturing and organizing communication related to a project, including audio and video conferences.

Instead of subscribing to email lists, use Feedly 

If you use a newsfeed organization software platform like Feedly, every time one of your important news sources publishes a new article (or podcast), it will go straight into a set of files and folders organized in whatever manner you’d like. (Here’s a good tutorial on how to use Feedly.)

Use Evernote

There’s nothing that comes close to matching the versatility of Evernote. For capturing and organizing information you want to file away for a later day, using Evernote’s filing and tagging features will enable you to find anything later.

Don’t use email to store any information about anything

It will take you twice the time it would take using project management software.

istock

Do you have tips for filing and storing things you’d like to find later. Email: Tips@SmallBusiness.com.

1 | Limit an email to four sentences

“Q: Why is this email four sentences or less? A: http://four.sentenc.es”

If you follow the link you’ll see the remarkably simple premise – limiting the length of email responses. Short emails can be composed and the signature explains that far from being curt, the intention is to increase the efficiency of communication.

2 | Set up an office blog

Do big corporations still use the term “intranet”? Automattic, the folks behind WordPress use their P2 theme (try it here) that allows different teams to maintain their own pages, where people can comment and search for information. (See our previous article about Automattic’s “no office” workforce.)

3 | Don’t check email in the morning

When you start your daily work, use the first hour of the day to do some actual work, rather than wading through emails. Later in the day, when correspondence starts to pour in, you can deal with emails knowing you have already gotten some work under your belt.

4 | Use Slack (etc.)

Slack encourages employees to use a system of direct messaging, video and audio chat all organized into projects. It works, as long as everyone on a team uses it.

5 | Use a project management platform like Basecamp

Basecamp, the popular project management platform that has been around since 1999, provides the direct messaging organizational magic of a platform like Slack with a more robust project management approach.

6 | Schedule standup meetings

More regular face-to-face meetings mean less email, but they must be quick and efficient.

istock, Basecamp.com, four.sentenc.es

VIA | Econsultancy.com

Google’s advice for businesses that use its cloud-based productivity software G Suite includes some universal tips for improving the e-mail flow among any group of co-workers. Here are some of their tips.

1 | Use smarter subjects in your email

Typically, email is grouped together with the same subject in conversation threads.

Make your original subject line precise and descriptive so that messages are linked together in a relevant way, easy to find.

Good subject line: Acme Inc proposal meeting follow-up assignments
Bad subject line: Follow-up

If the topic changes later,  change the subject accordingly. That way, you won’t have any unrelated messages linked together in your inbox.

2 | Be deliberate about who you send email to

Need to send a message to a mailing list? Consider if everyone in the group really needs to get the message, and explain at the start of the email why you’re sending it to that group. If you don’t expect a response from some recipients, use the Cc or Bcc fields in the email to just let them know what’s going on.

3 | Make it obvious when you’re adding or removing someone from an email conversation

When you have email conversations with large groups of people, it’s sometimes difficult to know when someone is added or dropped from the thread. For example, in Gmail,  you can use the plus (+) or minus (-) sign when adding or removing people from a conversation. Type “+Bob” at the start of the message when you add him to a conversation to let everyone else know he’s joined the conversation. Later, if you want to limit the discussion to a smaller audience, let people know you’re removing others by typing “-Bob.” Now, everyone knows exactly who’s included in the conversation.

4 | Use video or chat instead of email

If an email thread is getting long or confusing, it may be easier to talk in person. Use Skype, Facetime, Google Hangouts, etc. Chat can cut through the chatter of email, as well.

5 | Attach discussion items to email

It is challenging to hold people’s attention in a long email or email thread. Keep email messages short and add attachments to your messages for the long, detailed information like discussion items for an upcoming meeting.

VIA | Google G Suite Learning Center

istock

Also on SmallBusiness.com

Six Ways to Use Email More Efficiently in 2016

A recent study by the McKinsey Global Institute study found that only 39% of a worker’s time is spent on role-specific tasks. The other 61%? Reading articles in SmallBusiness.com, perhaps? Not likely, however responding to email is likely high on the list. Recently, Ben Taylor writing for the Dropbox Blog, rounded up some suggestions for wasting all that time. We’ve added some of our favorites, as well.

1 | Cut out as many meetings as you can

One of the best things about working in a small business is the lack of meetings. However, if you do have lots of meetings, here are some suggestions for trimming the time.

• Cut back on the number of people attending the meeting
• Know exactly what the goal of the meeting is beforehand — and prepare
• Communicate in other ways, like using project management software
• Have the meeting at the coffee machine and finish it before finishing your coffee

2 | Use Project management software

Most of the time-sucking things that waste your day can be organized and managed using a project management platform. At SmallBusiness.com, we use Basecamp 3. Use it constantly and you’ll wonder what you did before it existed. There are other project management software platforms, but Basecamp is the Goldilocks for use: not to big and not to small. Just right. Best thing: You don’t lose stuff that you recall may have been, wait, no it was somewhere else.

3 | Phase out email as much as possible

See #2.

4 | Sleep

Sleep deprivation costs U.S. businesses more than $60 billion per year. A well-rested employee working six hours will often beat a sleep-deprived person working 10. Suggest they do the sleeping at night, however.

5 | Take breaks

Career coaches suggest that simply switching work tasks is often not enough. In order to recharge, you should step away from your desk at least once every 90 minutes, say the experts.

VIA | Dropbox Blog

istock

Even people who read (or listen to) lots of books don’t always accomplish the goals of reading: Goals like gaining new insights, learning new facts, making connections where they had never seen them before, among many, many others. Unfortunately, soon after we finish reading the book, we quickly forget those insights. Author James Clear offers three gems of advice for going beyond reading a book, all the way to capturing and taking away what you gain from your reading. 

1 | Make all of your notes searchable

Clear says having searchable book notes all saved in the same place is essential for returning to those ideas later. Doing this means you can find something even if you can’t remember the name of the book where you read it.  Clear stores his book notes in Evernote and gets notes into the software in three ways:

1. For audiobooks, he uses his laptop to create a new note whenever he starts reading a new book. He types his notes in as he listens to the book.
2. For print books, he follows the same process except he places the book on a
   book stand making it easier to read and type (instead of putting down and picking up the book constantly).
3. His favorite way to read and take notes is to use a Kindle Paperwhite. It requires no typing. He merely highlights a passage while reading. Then he uses the software application Clippings to import all his Kindle highlights to Evernote.

2 | Integrate thoughts as you read

Clear focuses on how the book he’s reading connects “with all of the ideas that are already knocking around inside my head.” Whenever possible, “I try to integrate the lessons I’m learning with previous ideas.” When those insights happen, he adds them to his notes.

3 | Summarize the book in one paragraph.

As soon as he finishes a book, he attempts to summarize the entire text in just three sentences. “It’s just a game, but I do find it to be a useful exercise because it forces me to review my notes and consider what was really important about the book.”

VIA | JamesClear.com. “Reading Comprehension Strategies: How to Retain More of Everything You Read”

HT | Lifehacker.com

Also on SmallBusiness.com

9 Tips For How-to Stop Procrastinating And Get Started on That Big Project

istock

If your business uses the subscription version of Google’s cloud-based productivity software G-Suite (formerly Google Apps for Work), you can now benefit from Google’s decision to make its note-organizing software, Google Keep, a fully-integrated G-Suite application. While there are some administrative benefits that come with the integration, for users, the most visible change is the ability to display side-by-side and drag-and-drop content (text and images) between Keep and Google Docs. 

How to get Google Keep to display on the right side of a Google Doc

To display (or turn-off the display), pull down the “Tools” menu.

What are the benefits of this feature?

If you use Google Keep to collect notes and images from around the web, you can drag and drop those elements into a Google Doc. This can be great when you are writing something, say, an article for SmallBusiness.com. (Tip: Using Google Keep to collect notes is easier to do if you add the Google Keep extension to your Chrome browser.)

Great feature, but Google Keep is not Evernote

Whenever there is an announcement about Google Keep, we see articles that suggest Keep is Google’s answer to Evernote. The users of Evernote (and there are bazillions) do a lot more with the software than grab content during their web surfing. Indeed, one of the most common complaints from longtime users of Evernote is that it has too many features and uses. Evernote is an aircraft carrier sized platform for content capture and organization. Google Keep is a nice sailboat note-taking tool.

Google sees Keep as a small feature that has found a home on its GSuite platform. Evernote is the entire focus of the company that owns it. Oh, and another thing. Evernote just moved its data to Google Cloud storage.

You can find out more about Google Keep here.
If you administer a G-Suite account, you can find out more here.

Images: Google.com

Evernote is one of the tools we use to manage SmallBusiness.com. For that reason, we take notice whenever they update their apps or desktop software. Yesterday (January 17, 2017) was a big day for the information organizing platform as they released a major upgrade of their iOS app, Evernote 8.0 for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Here are three things we like about the upgrade

1 | Faster ways to find notes

The home screen has been removed giving the user immediate access to the most recently updated notes. A quick tap of the alarm clock located at the top of any note list brings up all the notes you’ve set up with reminders. To see only those notes associated with particular tags, tap the tag button located at the top of any note list and select the tags you want to filter for.

2 | Faster ways to take notes

The “+” button is used to let Evernote know you want to take a note. Long press the same button and slide your finger to record audio, capture images (such as business cards, whiteboards, and receipts), and set up notifications to remind you to take action on a particular note. (See animated gif above.)

3 | More color

Evernote 8.0 provides more ways to style your text. Use different colors and sizes to create headers and subheaders, call attention to key points, or make it easier to recall information.

8.0 video via Evernote