Posts by Helene Segura, M.A. Ed., CPO®
Productivity Lessons from the Facebook Outage
When Facebook crashed last week, millions of people around the world were sent into a tizzy. In addition to the Facebook outage, Instagram and WhatsApp (both owned by Facebook) also went down. All three platforms were offline for six hours. Here are some takeaways from the Facebook outage. Do you have a back-up communications plan?…
Read MoreProductivity Boost – The Importance of Recharging
Too many times we forget to put “recharge” on our to do list. We do our best to accomplish tasks for our work and personal lives, but we don’t make a conscious effort to plan for taking a break from pushing ourselves. In fact, most of America does not completely recharge. In 2013, American workers…
Read MoreWhat is Time Blocking or Time Boxing?
Whether you call it time blocking or time boxing, the overall concept boils down to this: You make appointments with yourself to focus on certain subjects or tasks. Here are a few keys to time blocking or time boxing: Know your professional and personal priorities. This should drive your decisions. Determine how much time you…
Read MoreThe Tool Every Home Office Needs
“What is the single most important tool every home office needs?” A journalist recently posed this question to organizing and productivity experts. This was my response: The single most important tool every home office needs is a battery backup. APC is a popular brand, but they’re not the only ones: If there is any kind…
Read MoreStrategic Planning for Q4 – Where Exactly Are You Going?
Do you ever feel like you spend so much time dog paddling, doing your best to keep your head (or at the very least your eyes and nose) above water, focusing on that to do list every single day (hoping to knock out at least a few items)…that you never pause to lift your head…
Read MoreHow to Smoke a Boston Butt Roast
Whether it’s Labor Day weekend or an ordinary Saturday, it’s always a great time to barbecue pork! If you don’t have a lot of time to study how to smoke a Boston Butt (aka pork shoulder), here’s a quick tips list: *Fire up your grill It will take anywhere from 30-45 minutes for your grill…
Read MoreHow Can Time Tracking Help You?
As I was archiving some of my writing from ten years ago, I was reminded how strategic best practices stand the test of time, unlike fad hacks that are popular today but fade over time. Case in point. The following is an excerpt from a written interview with a journalist in which she asked me…
Read MoreHow Do I Get People to Use My Appointment Scheduler?
A client asked me last week: “How do I get people to use my phone appointment scheduler?” She’d begun to use a scheduling platform (think Calendly or ScheduleOnce). She was worried that people would be turned off by being told to use an automated digital calendar system to schedule a phone or Zoom meeting instead…
Read MoreProductivity Boost – Fixed Wireless Internet in Rural Areas
If you’re a city dweller, you might be wondering why someone who lives in the United States of America in the 21st century is writing about how to find high speed internet service. But if you live in a rural area, you might be down on your knees right now, hoping that this time, you’ve…
Read MoreWhat to Do If You Lose Your Vaccine Card
You now have one more object to be responsible for: a vaccination card. It’s one more item you need to keep track of, to know where it is at any given moment, to protect from the elements, to keep pristine when you need to carry it. But your vaccine card is different from any other…
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