Cascading Windows

Recently I've had a lot of windows open on my computer throughout the day so it got me thinking about how I manage to sift through everything. One tip I wanted to pass along was cascading windows. To do this go to your toolbar at the bottom of your screen and right click the grouping of files (e.g., Word documents, PowerPoint files, even your outlook) and select "Cascade." This will bring up all the files at once but staggered so you can see them all at the same time.

You can also close the group when you are done - by right clicking on the task bar and selecting "Close Group." And don't worry about loosing changes to files as you will be prompted to save any files that have changes not yet saved.

PowerPoint Masters - Handouts

In our summer training sessions, we learned about working with the PowerPoint slide master from Jayne. In addition to this, you'll notice there is also a master page for handouts. Often when printing workshop handouts, I'll find that the current date prints out. This is due to the date existing on the handout master. To adjust simply go to "View," select "Handout Master," and delete the box containing the date.

Juggling Multiple Projects

Within our team, as all of you know, we're ALWAYS juggling multiple projects. However, if you're in the office the week before I leave for an extended overseas trip, you'll be familiar with the mad rush to move a month's worth of projects forward concurrently...

So...lessons learned from this:
1. Take a step back and look at due dates within the next 6 weeks
2. Chunk time - block it off and make appointments with key stakeholders (we've had lots of teleconfs, GoToMeetings, and meetings in the office this week)
3. Give every project some attention
4. Communicate what's been done and what needs to be done next
5. Delegate where necessary
6. Strategically decide to set lower priority projects aside
7. Plan for longer days (i.e., realistically, schedules don't work perfectly, so allow some wiggle room)
8. Leave space for cool new opportunities or important requests (we've actually put 4 new certificate programs on our "books" this week - things we'd thought of but wouldn't have chosen right now to focus on except that opportunities came together and it made sense to pursue them)
9. Be kind to each other - in the midst of juggling multiple priorities, mistakes will be made or communication will be misinterpreted. Check in often...and assume positive intentions :-)
10. Laugh...a lot! Without humour, we'd never get through busy times!

Thanks everyone - see you after October 18th!

Glitzing Things Up in Word

We had a lot of fun this week creating a "job aid" for an assessment framework. I'll let Deirdre share how to make the letters curvy on a SMART ART diagram but I used some of the 3D features to set off text boxes.
To create this type of text box within Word, I:
1. Clicked on Insert, then Text Box
2. Selected "Exposure Quote"
3. Selected Shadow / Drop Shadow / First Option
4. Typed in Text Box
5. Right Clicked / Chose Format Autoshape
6. Chose Fill Colour

Moving Sheets in Excel

In Excel you have two ways you can move a sheet:

1. Selecting the tab with your cursor and dragging it to the desired spot
2. Right clicking on the tab, selecting "Move or Copy," and then choosing the sheet you'd like the current sheet to go before.

The first option is great for a short move; however, in longer documents (e.g., the project update) it's easier to use the second option.

Prezi - A New Presentation Tool

Our latest "cool tool" is Prezi - introduced to us by two different presenters, we decided to play with it a bit this week and try it out. Here's one example of a prezi - it's worth looking at as it also talks about corporate "story" and we've discussed trying to document our story for Life Strategies - perhaps this is one way to capture it with words, quotes, pictures, and a timeline?

Here's another example - a wee bit long, but perhaps some of you would be willing to create a Prezi with 10 things about you...to share here and with our students?

Looking Ahead to Fall

It's the last day of summer vacation for school kids and the first few days of September have been the beginning of what looks like a very busy fall season for our team - between Deirdre and I we have taken on 3 new contracts in 3 days!

Juggling multiple projects (and/or larger projects with multiple smaller components) requires extra organization and planning. To help us out, Cassie will be creating a dynamic Gantt chart (which we'll likely house in our project update) to anchor key milestones for projects and see, at a glance, where we need to focus our energy for the week.

If you have other scheduling/organization/project tracking tools that keep you on track, please let us know. This is an ongoing challenge for independent contractors (like many of you) and for project-based organizations like Life Strategies.