Post No. 6: Some Organizational and Time Management Tips for the New Year for Your Small Business

Organization and Time Management Tips

© 2013 and 2015, the Institute for Applied Common Sense

A few months back, I was contacted by a young lady who indicated that her management of her small business consisted of chaos, and that she was extremely disorganized.  She reached out to me for some simple advice, and I jotted down a few things which immediately came to mind. Over time, I will come up with some other recommendations.   However, since this is the New Year, I thought it appropriate to share these with you so that you can start the New Year on a good foot.

1.       I used to have my employees perform re-organizations of their offices every Memorial Day (I called it Spring Cleaning), and every Thanksgiving. If you do not periodically conduct a major cleaning, you will continue to live in chaos or a state of disorder.  In my view, it affects your ability to think clearly and organize your life;

2.       Your body's ability to handle things, as well as your mind, and your energy, all fluctuate.  Only perform difficult tasks and hard work when you feel your best and are highly motivated.  When you are not, do not;

3.       A corollary of No. 2 is that if you monitor your typical day, you will note various patterns.  For example, when I worked in an office, I found that I typically drifted off around 3:30 – 4:00 pm, so I started leaving the office and going to the movies, working out, or running to the dry cleaners, and then returning later;

4.       I wake up every morning to a "to do" list.  Break down the items into Today, Tomorrow, and During the Week categories. Make sure that your "Today" list is realistic, and that you do not unduly place pressure on yourself.  Each day, shift over the things that you are unable to complete, and re-formulate your list;

5.       Keep a clean desk, and have any resources, reference materials, and supplies which you use regularly close by so that you do not have to get up and look for them. Also, keep them in ample supply;

6.       On your clean desk, only have one task or matter in front of you at a time. After all, you can only work on one matter at a time. Having multiple tasks on your desk only makes you feel disorganized;

7.       The same principle about clutter applies to your e-mail inbox. Clean it out at the end of the night, and only have 10 -15 e-mails in your inbox. Use them as a sort of "to do" or reminder list;

8.       Get in the habit of using a "tickler" or reminder system. You might also buy a large 2'x 3' calendar and put it on your wall. Use red ink for events where you have to show up, black for business, blue for personal, etc.  I like being able to turn from my computer and look up on my wall and figure out what I have to do for the entire next month or two.  Doing so with a small calendar on an electronic device screen is far more difficult to use to gain a comprehensive view of what you are doing down the road;

9.       Not everything in life is digital or electronic in form.  Get yourself a 4 or 5 drawer file cabinet, or buy some heavy duty reinforced "Banker's Boxes" from Staples or Office Depot, and some file folders, and PUT EVERY PIECE OF PAPER IN A FILE FOLDER, with oldest docs in the back, newest in the front, and in chronological order. At the end of the day, make sure that every piece of paper is in its proper file folder, including the task you were working on just prior to retiring. You will not believe the sense of "order" you will feel;

10.     When you receive your mail, attach the envelope in which it came to the paper inside, and write the day and date on the envelope. By noting the day of the week, it will refresh your memory as to what happened or what you were doing when you need to remember it later;

11. If it helps you, use different color paper for different purposes. I print out or write notes to the file and internal stuff on blue paper. Copies of things I send out are on yellow. The overwhelming majority of incoming docs are white. I use green to keep track of financial stuff, such as checks, time sheets, expenses, etc., which are accounting and book keeping issues.  When I need to flip through a paper file, I can quickly find what I am looking for; and

12.     If something is complex, write out a chronological timeline for yourself, or an outline of the important issues.

Post No. 4: Why We Need to Start More Small Businesses in America

© 2012, the Institute for Applied Common Sense

There are two things we do religiously, neither of which has anything to do with religion. 

First, we watch Turner Classic Movies daily.  By doing so, particularly those out of the 1920s through the 1950s, we re-visit many societal issues. (And you thought we were simply entertaining ourselves.)

Second, we read two books simultaneously.  One is invariably a school textbook, circa 1960s or 1970s, and the other is a book which students were forced to read, and which might be termed classics from other eras, such as Don Quixote, Death of a Salesman, Wuthering Heights, Bulfinch’s Mythology, etc. 

By engaging in these exercises, we’ve come to appreciate the meaning of the phrase, “The more things change, the more things stay the same.”

The textbook we've been reading here recently is Technology in Western Civilization.  What we’ve taken away from our re-reading of this book is that the most powerful forces in society affecting individuals are forces over which individual citizens have the least control.  Individuals respond to movements and do the best they can to survive.

The movie which caught our attention featured Barbara Stanwyck as a mail order bride. (Imagine that!) In The Purchase Price (1932), Stanwyck is on the run from her mobster boyfriend. She heads to North Dakota during the Depression to marry a struggling farmer.  Months later, she visits a neighbor’s home to lend a helping hand, only to find the woman on the floor with a new born baby.  Stanwyck takes charge of the situation.

The next couple of minutes dazzled us.  Our former big city girl unleashes an arsenal of survival skills, and sets about wrapping up the delivery, cooking, sewing, milking, repairing, hammering, and doing anything necessary, followed by trekking home in a blinding snowstorm.

And then it hit us - why we’re so anxious, debate the role of government, and ministers daily suggest that we’ve pissed God off. 

Except for our families, and perhaps fellow parishioners, we’re pretty much out here all alone.  We don’t mean to suggest that government should do anything for its citizens other than defend our borders, and provide police, and maybe fire services.  However, after reading Technology, we have a better appreciation of how government stepped in to assist people, long before the New Deal, after throngs left (by choice?), their rural, agrarian roots for major industrial cities during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Few of us can do the things that Barbara did.  Instead, we “want to be like Mike.”  We’ve reached a point where most of us are totally dependent on cash revenue from some source to pay others to do things for us.  Also, we’re generally not that talented in basic survival skills (like sucking rattlesnake venom out of a wound), although we might be great computer people, electricians, ad execs, doctors, or truck drivers. 

We all get compensated with cash for our services.  According to Technology, currency was one of the great inventions of humankind.  But it came with a price.

What we came to realize by the end of the movie is that we are far less capable, at least as individuals, of helping one another because we are not sure whether we can help ourselves.  We’ve become dependent on employers, customers, clients, or worse yet, the government.  Very few voluntarily chose the route of the 47%.

King Kong ain’t got nothin' on insecurity.

A half-way decent job in a manufacturing plant, enabling one to take care of one’s self and one’s family (and develop a little self-esteem along the way), was a big deal at one time.  And then they shipped trinket making to cheaper real estate, and warned us [via Toffler’s Future Shock (1970), and The Third Wave (1980)] that we were transitioning to a service economy.  But the provision of services and the assembly of information don’t amount to much if no one is willing to pay for those services.

As a wise man once said, “Something only has as much value as someone is willing to pay.”  And connecting what one has to offer with someone willing to pay became far more difficult in the global economic expansion.

There’s little question that we are anxious, and even some are angry. And that debate about the extent government should be involved in our lives is a legitimate one, because there aren’t any other obvious options.  And while it is true that families aren’t as large, connected, and based in the same field as they used to be, it’s not God doing it to us because he’s pissed off.

We’re doing it to ourselves.  And only we individual citizens have the solutions.

And that’s only common sense.

Post No. 3: Check Out the New, E-Book Version of My Guide on Amazon.com

I am pleased to announce that an electronic / digital version (e-book) of my Starting Your Business - The Fundamentals Guide is now available in digital format on Amazon.com . To make it available for virtually anyone to purchase, I decided to keep the price relatively low - $7.77.

Of course, e-books sold on Amazon.com can be read using their proprietary Kindle device.  However, e-books can also be read on regular PCs, smart phones, and tablets. Amazon even has an application to assist you in that regard - for FREE!  Simply click here, and you will find it.

Not thinking about starting your own business at this point in time?  You can still give the e-book to someone as a gift.

We ordinary citizens, who are not elected officials, have been asked to believe by powerful corporate interests and their colleagues to whom they contribute huge sums in the way of political contributions, that we should leave it up to them to create jobs.  In fact, we citizens have more power than we might appreciate to invent and innovate, develop new technologies, and transform those new ideas and technologies into businesses, which create jobs.  Here is your opportunity to get in on the ground floor of the resurgence of American business.

Starting Your Business - The Fundamentals

I have generated a guide for those individuals interested in starting their own business, and for those managers of existing businesses, who now realize that they should have employed more structure and planning at the start.

You will receive the benefit of years of my experience.

Come join me on the journey to financial and vocational independence.

You Need This Guide to Assist You. It Contains All of the Issues of Which You Should Be Aware.