How To: Listen LESS and Learn MORE

In this day and time of ever-increasing amounts of information, it can be hard to keep up. If you’re like me, you may have started supplementing your reading with audio books or podcasts. However, with the large amount of audio available, how do you ever listen to it all AND retain any of it?

Well, my solution to one accidentally presented a solution to the other. It all began when I bought my mp3 player last December. I started downloading different podcasts to listen to on my way to and from work and on my lunch break. Soon, I found several that I really liked and was going back and getting new ones from the same source each week. It wasn’t long before I found that I had more audio to listen to than I had time to listen. So, while I was playing around some of the menus one day, I found the setting that allows for me to speed up or slow down the audio that I am playing. The scale on my player goes from -8 to +8. Using the +8 setting increases the speed of the audio approximately 20% over the original recording speed. Doing this allowed me to speed up my audio (without any noticable change in pitch or quality) and allow me to listen to more in less time.

At the same time, I found that I was having to pay closer attention to what I was listening to, simply because everyone was talking faster than I was used to. So, as I began to get used to the speed of the audio, I found that I was actually able to remember more about what I had just heard than I was when I was listening to the audio at normal speed. Now, I don’t know why this is, I just know that it works for me. I’m sure there is some theory or psychological explanation for it, but, frankly, I don’t care why it works, just that it does.

So, if you want to pack more listening and learning into your day and not sacrifice time, try speeding up you audio.

WARNING: I have found that once I’ve gotten used to the higher speed audio, I want to speed it up even more, which I can do on my mp3 player. Also, if you get used to the faster speed of the audio, listening to the same program at normal speed can be dangerous to your sanity. It just seems like everyone is talking sooooo sloooooowww.

Excel Tip: Create a Hidden Workbook to Save All Your Macros, Scripts, and Formulas

If you’re like me, you use MS Excel quite a bit.  I love Excel.  I personally think that it is the greatest piece of software ever created.  In my position with my company I get a chance to use it quite a bit, and often find myself reusing the same bit of VBA script or the same formula for many different projects.  I get really tired of rewriting the same script, recording the same macro, or trying to remember exactly how I built that last formula before I can use it again.  If this ever happens to you, you will understand the frustration.

Well, a couple of years ago I stumbled upon a great tip that has saved me considerable time and frustration, and has even made me look like a hero several times.  The magic lies in a small, somewhat hidden folder within the Microsoft Office installation folder called “XLStart”. 

“What’s so magical about this folder,” you may ask.

Well, that’s what I am about to show you.

First, let’s focus on those often used macros, scripts, and formulas that you have saved in many other Excel workbooks, text files, Post-It Notes, and other divers sources.  Round all of the little nuggets up and save them to one work book.  Make sure that your macros and scripts do not make references to specifically named sheets in the original source.  If they do, I have found that it is best to either change them to the generic “Sheet#” naming that Excel uses by default.  You can also have the script prompt you for the desired sheet name if you like.

Second, try to find a way to organize all of the formulas and macros in a way that you will be able to easily find them.  I find it very useful to put the name of the formula and/or a small explanation of it just above the cell you are saving the formula in.  You should also have some sample data for the formula to use, just so you can remember exactly what it does, just in case you don’t use it for a long time.

Next, save the workbook you have just populated to the “XLStart” folder.  If you used the default installation, the folder should be located using the following path:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\XLSTART
Just remember to name this something beside Book1.  I named mine “MacroBook”, just to make things obvious for me.

The last and my favorite part of this is to hide the workbook so that it doesn’t get in your way every time you open Excel. To do this, just go to the menu bar and click “Window” and the “Hide” and select the workbook you saved.  Now, close Excel.  It will ask if you want to save the changes you made to your workbook.  Click “Yes”. 

Now, every time you open Excel, this new workbook with your great macros and formulas will be opened in the background and ready for use.  To use a macro, simple click on the macro button like you would to run a macro as if you just made it in your current workbook.  The macro selection box will pop up and you will see all of the macros listed for all open workbooks.  They will show up in the format WorkbookName.xls!Macroname.  Simply select it an run it.  To use your formulas, simply go to the toolbar, click “Window” and then “Unhide”, select your hidden workbook and it will appear.  Then, simply copy and paste the formula you would like to use into the workbook you are working on.  When done, simply re-hide the book you had hidden.

This may seem like a long way to go save some simple formulas, but trust me, if you have any complicated formulas or macros that you find yourself re-creating very often, you will quickly come to love this little tip.  So, give it a try and let me know how you like it.

Effective Time Saver Series, Part 2

OK, this one is not going to be new to anyone, really, but I think it is still one that is overlooked.  If you want to save yourself 5-10 minutes every morning, lay out what you are going to wear the night before.  This works for a couple of reasons:

1. If you decide the night before what you are going to wear you save the time of making that decision first thing in the morning while you may not be in the best frame of mind to be making decisions.
2. By laying out what you want to wear ahead of time you save yourself from making the realization at noon that you are wearing one black sock and one blue sock.

I know this is a very small thing, but you can really get your life organized by tweaking just the small things.

Effective Time Saver Series, Part 1

In the two jobs I worked at before my current job I worked close enough to home that I could go home everyday for lunch. Besides being a great way to get away from work and relax, it was also a great time saver for me. The reason this is true is because I love television. I could sit and watch from sunrise to sunset if given the opportunity. However, with a job, a wife, and a young child I don’t really get that opportunity very often, so I need to maximize the time I do get. That’s where my beloved VCR (no, I don’t have TiVo, yet) comes into play.

Here’s what I did. Whenever something was coming on that I really wanted to watch without interuption, or was in the same time slot as something my wife wanted to watch, I simply taped it. Then, when I went home for lunch, I just watched the show I taped, fast-forwarding through the commercials. I could usually watch an hour show in about 35 to 40 minutes. Saving me time and arguments with my wife about what to watch if our shows were in competition.

You might be asking, how does this help me save time? Well, imagine you really like TV, but you are really busy. If you have a show that comes on at 7pm and 8pm but you are too busy to watch, simply tape them and take care of the other business you have. After that, you can watch your taped programs without the commercials in less time that if you had stopped what you were doing and watched the shows. Let’s face it, there’s no way to be productive during commercials.

Getting Things Done (GTD) and ADD

Although I probably would have never thought of this myself, it seems a natural match:  ADD and GTD.  Meg Edwards, a coach at The David Allen Company, her article makes a pretty good case that GTD would be a great way of helping the child/adult struggling with ADD to stay organized and on task.  Let’s face it; don’t we all suffer from this just a little?

A Quick Afternoon Pick-Me-Up

I discovered a great afternoon pick-me-up recently that I felt I should share. If you’re like me you often get that mid-afternoon slump where you feel just a little less motivated than normal. Maybe you have a meeting to lead or a presentation to make in the afternoon and you feel less than confident or have a lack of “gusto”. Well, I have found that doing a quick tidying up does a world of good for me.

Let me explain. One recent afternoon, about 2:30 or 3:00 I was finishing up completing the last stage of my caffeine processing when, standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom I noticed how out-of-whack my shirt was. Naturally, not wanting to look like a slob, I completely un-tucked my shirt, tucked it in nice and neat. It was then that I noticed one of my shoes was coming untied, so I bent down and retied tied it. Of course, you can’t just tie one shoe because then one is tight and one is loose, so I tied the other. Suddenly, with my freshly-tucked shirt and tightly tied shoes, I had a new burst of energy and confidence. I’m not 100% sure why this works, but I have tried it several times since then and it hasn’t failed me yet.

Give it a try and let me know what you think.

How To: Remember Names After Meetings

If you work for a company that has lots of meetings with lots of different people and have the same trouble remembering names as I do, I have a great tip for you. Over at his blog, Gurno.com, Adam Gurno has posted a great tool for remembering those names. I used to use this at a previous job when I had meetings with people that I didn’t often interact with. It works really well and is very simple. Basically, the idea is to draw a rough map of the meeting area and map out where each person is sitting. This way you can have a mental image of which face was where and a hard copy of each name in each position to go with it. That way when you see one of your meeting participants again you have a better shot at remembering their name.

I used to employ this method my simply drawing the table and participants either at the top of my paper or in the margin. I would suggest being subtle about this and let everyone believe that you’re just really good with names and faces.

Adam expands on the basics of this method with some very good ideas, so it’s definitely worth checking out.