Alexandra Levits Water Cooler Wisdom How to Automate Your Day (Morning)

Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom How to Automate Your Day (Morning) This is the first in a three-part series on how to automate your day so that you have more time for the important things, stay at the top of your game, and remain relevant and marketable in your field. Smartphone Productivity Hacks Let’s start with wrangling your smartphone. If you’re like me, sometimes the smartphone can be more trouble than its worth, especially when the old Wi-Fi connection is spotty. However, as an Android user I recently discovered Tasker. Apps like Tasker essentially allow your phone to read your mind by using contexts to trigger tasks or setting changes. A context could be something as simple as the day of the week, a headset being plugged in, having a certain battery percentage, or entering a certain location. Once a context takes place, it triggers an action like turning off auto-sync, loading Pandora, or sending a text message to a certain person. For the iPhone users, apparently the official Apple store is a bit behind the eight ball on automation features. iPhone users can jailbreak their devices to run a host of non-Apple apps similar to Tasker. Saurik‘s alternative app store, Cydia, is considered a main repository of these and must be downloaded to your jailbroken phone. And yes, allegedly all this is legal â€" at least for now. In any case, each morning have a look at your Tasker or Jailbreak settings to get your phone running at maximum efficiency for that day’s activities. Next, there is the Holy Grail of automation that is the If This Then That, also known as IFTTT, app. IFTTT connects up to Google apps and others and allows them to talk to each other without your intervention. Basically, you create your own recipes so that if a particular trigger is present, and action is generated. One example of a recipe? “If I am endorsed on LinkedIn, publish a tweet on Twitter.” Best of all, IFTTT works with over 50 online channels from Dropbox to the Weather Channel, rendering the automation implications incredible. Each morning, I look at my phone to see if rain is predicted via the Weather Channel and I’ve been sent a text telling me to bring my umbrella. Think of what your phone can tell you before you even leave the house! IFTTT is extremely powerful and can quite literally save you hours each day. For additional morning productivity hacks, check out the full post at Intuits Fast Track blog.

Your Personal Branding Can Start at a Young Age - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Your Personal Branding Can Start at a Young Age - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career At thirteen my mother found me secretly reading a movie star magazine. She kindly explained, you arent pretty enough to be a movie star so you should develop your personality. Now, do not take her words as insulting. I didnt and I dont. Till her dying moment she was my biggest fan. She did not say those words disparagingly at all but rather to do me a favor to get me to focus on more than wanting to be pretty. I took her words to heart and decided to develop my personality that became my goal. The local library had a self-improvement section and that summer I read every single book in it. I went down the row reading anything related to personal development: manners, etiquette, confidence, character, public speaking, comportment, appearance, psychology, humor, even selling. Some of you may remember Psycho-Cybernetics and of, course, How to Win Friends and Influence People which were two titles that got read more than once. So what happened after the summer when I headed back to school with all that new found knowledge? Nothing. I was still a gangly, tall, skinny, eye-glass wearing, self-conscious teenage girl. Just because I read the books didnt mean Id understood or captured all the good advice but it was a start. Recently I had the occasion to reminisce with an old class mate and over lunch she commented, you know in high school you were pretty nice to everyone, pretty funny, pretty interesting, pretty smart, pretty confident acting, and I was pretty jealous of you. That was not my self image at all so it was a pleasant surprise to hear thats how this friend remembered me. And I got to thinking that maybe I was pretty enough after all. The beauty of maturing is that you have eye-opening moments and they help you put your life in perspective. Im glad my mother told me the good advice. Unbeknownst to her she gave me a head start for my ultimate profession as an executive coach and speaker on leadership communication. Id like to hear your own early life-shaping experiences. Write your story to me at debra@debrabenton.com.

What to write to make your business card sing

What to write to make your business card sing A few weeks ago I wrote about the braided career. The idea is that in order to create stability in a world where career change is frequent and job security is non-existent, you need to be managing three things at all times: your personal life, what you are doing for work now, and what you might want to do next. These things are intertwined, and make for an interesting, stable, but complicated life. If you consciously braid then you keep things in order. But how do you translate that to a business card? What do you call yourself? The answer is that your business card should directly reflect the story you are telling about yourself in the moment. And in fact, the issue of what to put on your business card is actually a very fundamental question. The best way to get a clear sense of who you are is not to philosophize with your head in the clouds, but rather, to describe yourself in sentences. Sometimes this means writing a lot, sometimes this means talking a lot. This is why keeping a diary keeps some people feeling centered and talk therapy keeps other people centered. Its also why when you are working on your elevator pitch about yourself, you get better and better with practice, because you understand yourself better each time you talk about yourself. When you meet someone new, and they ask you what do you do? Blogger Pam Slim gives a great answer: She says to answer what you want to be doing. That is, you are under no obligation to tell people your day job. And you dont need to confess that you want to be a designer but the only thing youve designed is the web page that says youre a designer. Everyone starts somewhere. Bill Gates sold his first computer before he had manufactured one. He did that by saying that he does it and then someone hired him to do it. This is fair play even expected play in business. So you need a business card that says what you want to be doing, if you are ready to start doing it. If you are doing two things and they are related, like designer and illustrator, you can put a slash on the card. If you are doing things that are unrelated, like designer and travel agent, then have two separate cards. This way, when someone is going on a trip, you can give them the travel agent card. If designer is also on the card then it looks like you are less focused on travel, whether or not its true, so leave it off. In this sense the card is like a resume its not your life story; just put on the card what you want to get hired to do. You can do fine with a very basic business card, and there are plenty of places to order these online. But here is a site with really incredible business cards, that I spent way too much time looking at. (Thanks, Marina.) But before you go there, a word of caution: The wrong font can ruin your image in one second. So dont get fancy unless you know how. And hey, if you still have a corporate day job as well, dont forget to carry around cards for that, too until you can quit.