Ahhh…more blog bling. You’ll have to scroll down to see it but it’s down there on the right sidebar and looks like this:

My recent books added to LibraryThing. Because this list will get updated as I add new books, I want to take a moment to recommend two of these books.

Take Back Your Life: Using Microsoft Outlook to Get and Stay Organized

This is the book I have been reading for a few months, and I have to say it has made a huge difference in how organized hyperorganized I am and how productive I am. As the title says this book shows you how to use all the bells and whistles of Outlook for time management and project management. The key point that this book makes is that the majority of your time should be spent on Meaningful Objectives. After all, none of us will ever have enough time to do everything. So you have to decide what is important to you and then do things that relate to that. I actually took a week and did some of the exercises in the book and typed up a list of my meaningful objectives. Now when I am asked if I can do something, I take a look at, or think about, my meaningful objectives to make sure that what I am being asked to do will contribute to those in some way. This won’t work for everybody, but if you are the kind of person who likes to put things in writing and want to learn more about Outlook this book is for you!

Never Check E-Mail In the Morning: And Other Unexpected Strategies for Making Your Work Life Work

This book by organization queen, Julie Morgenstern, will give you some strategies to deal with your full inbox. Her biggest tip, as the title of the book says, never check e-mail in the morning. Instead spend the first few hours of the day being productive before you let e-mail take you hostage. For most of us, this rule is impractical at best. But Morgenstern gives some alternatives, such as: check your e-mail in the morning but only to see if anything urgent is in your inbox. Then close your e-mail and only check it every two hours.

This tip is one of the hardest to do, but on days when I don’t leave Outlook open and only check e-mail two or three times in a day, I get a lot more accomplished. Most of the time I do leave Outlook open, but I have turned off all the new message notifiers which I find to be distracting.

Technorati Tags: learning 2.0, learning2.0, PLCMCL2, productivity, time-management

I remember when I first attended a demo for staff of RSS feeds. It took me a while to get it, and at that point I was not reading nearly as many feeds as I am now. I discovered, quickly, that a News Reader is a must to keep up with information.

Years ago I used My Yahoo. Last year I tried Bloglines but did not like the linear form of it. Then I tried NetVibes and appreciated its visual appeal. I quickly learned that NetVibes was only manageable with a limited number of feeds. Then NetVibes added tabs, and I was in love… until my account got erased and all my feeds and links were lost. After that I switched back to Bloglines and have never turned back.

One of the best features about Bloglines is that it is not just for RSS feeds. You know all those e-mail subscriptions that you sign up for that clutter your Inbox? You can have those sent directly to Bloglines and keep them archived there!

Here’s how to subscribe to an e-mail newsletter with Bloglines:

Step 1: After logging in to Bloglines, click Add in the upper left column

Step 2: Click Email Groups in the right window pane

Step 3: Add the name of a Yahoo or Google Group or click Create an Email Subscription

Step: 4 Fill out the New Email Subscription Form and click the Create Email Subscription button

Step 5: In the Email Subscriptions window you will see a list of your email subscriptions followed by a Bloglines e-mail address. Select and copy this e-mail address.

Step 6: Go to the Web site that has the subscription form. Paste in the Bloglines e-mail address. This is your new e-mail address for this subscription only.

Step 7: After you have subscribed to the newsletter, go back to Bloglines and you should see a feed listed for your e-mail subscription. You will notice an envelope icon next to it. Click on the feed to view the newsletter.

The best part about this is you can easily “unsubscribe” by deleting the feed. You can add an unlimited amount of e-mail subscriptions or feeds. If you start getting spam in your feed you will have a good idea of where it originated from (since each feed can have its own bloglines e-mail address).

Technorati Tags: Bloglines, learning 2.0, learning2.0, PLCMCL2, productivity, RSS