When Canada went metric I never fully adapted. I am okay with some conversions, like temperature, while with others I have to do the math or look it up on a chart. Even without the different units for measuring, there is time zone and currency conversions that I often need to do.

I have different sites bookmarked on my computer for each of these. Then I found a new site which has all the information I need on one page, at Convertworld. This is a great reference tool that calculates just about any conversion you’ll ever need.

www.convertworld.com

Be sure to bookmark this site. It’s a great reference tool!

Schedule meetings — even a coffee date with a friend — can take hours as you each look over your calender, send e-mail and voice messages back and forth as you search for times when you are both free.

I found a service on the internet call Presdo. You simply sign up, type in an event, invite your friends and Presdo sends off the invitation. Your friends can suggest new dates and Presdo sends back the time options. 

www.presdo.com

 Here is handy reference web site to check out:

Link to Keyboarding Reference Site

This site gives you links to other sites where you can learn, or practice your keyboarding skills in these following areas:

• Speed
• Dexterity
• Touch typing
• There are even games!

One of the philosophies I learned from my mentors is “use what works.” In other words find what really speaks to you, use that, and leave the rest behind.

To illustrate this from my own life, last month I took a one-day seminar on time and e-mail management. I came away with some great tips and a new system to try out.

The tips, as I said, were great — definitely a time saver. Did you know you can set up template shortcuts that run from Outlook? This alone was worth the course. Now my frequently used files such as invoices and course brochures are generated with one mouse click.

Other parts of the course did not ’stick’ so to speak.  It was an organization system based on Steven Covey’s book 7 Habits, using the 4 quadrants (Important/Urgent, Not Important/Urgent, etc.) I love this approach and was excited to try it. 

It took me the better part of a day to set it up: the folders with the 4 quadrants, the colour coded category flags for individual messages and finally moving messages around to their new homes.

What I quickly found is that it actually took more time because each piece of e-mail required more complicated decisions:

1. What quadrant does it fall into?
2. Do I even want to keep it?
3. What category is it?
4. How easily do I need to access it again?

Within a week I went back to my original e-mail filing system which is what I learned from Sally McGee, in her book “Take Back your Life.” Her method worked well for me but was a bit out of date. Easily fixed, though.  

So what is the lesson here?  Be willing to explore different approaches and then use what works for you. Leave what does not work as well behind and in so doing, you will become the expert in your own life and create your own organization systems.

In case you are curious about that book, here it is:

© Deborah Redfern 2008. All rights reserved.

I use my mouse way too much and after a day of computer work I have a flare-up of wrist pain. These key shortcuts would definitely cut down on the mouse work and I imagine it would save time once they are memorized. Each time I switch from keyboard to mouse a few seconds is lost. 

I now also know why strange things happen on my keyboard after my cat has walked or laid on it…

Using the Control Key plus letters or numbers gives these results:

(CTRL) +
B   Bold text
U   Underline selected text
I    Italic text
L   Left Align selection or paragraph 
E   Center Align selection or paragraph
M  Indent paragraph or selection
1   Single-space selected lines
2   Double-space selected lines
5   1.5-space selected lines
Space  Turn on AutoCorrect
Del Delete the word to the right of the cursor
Backspace Delete the word to the left of the cursor

F7 Key — that’s a big stretch way at the top on my keyboard. Certainly breaks the flow of touch typing. Nevertheless, with F7 you can spell check. F7+ Shift toggles the Thesaurus.

This is a great article by Samuel Dean of Web Worker Daily:

Many of us writerly types spend a lot of time in Microsoft Word, and I even know a few Web designers who like to use it and Microsoft Excel for doing simple site prototyping work. Whether you’re sentenced to use Word all day by a dictatorial IT department, or it’s simply your word processor of choice, you can save time and have more options by mastering a few easy shortcuts.

The seven tips I’ll list here are very easy to learn. They work in most versions of Word, and under Windows or on a Mac:

Read complete article.…

http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/08/04/getting-the-most-out-of-ms-word/#more-1003