Bitsnarf

Tag: tools

  • Personal Branding

    Hello there! This is a follow-up to my Social Media Deep Clean, after spending time on LinkedIn recently to read some articles in my feed. I ran across about personal branding for EAs by making the most of your LinkedIn profile. I don’t recall the poster because frankly, this topic comes up every few months. In this post, I contribute to this topic and provide my top 5 ideas for managing your LinkedIn profile.

    Back in the early days, LinkedIn was the upscale alternative to other resume and job posting sites. It was professional, allowed people to build their network, and provided an outlet to show one’s area of expertise.

    Nowadays, it’s just like the other social media sites with sponsored content, messages from marketing/sales people trying to sell you fill-in-the-blank, and another algorithm to game, if you’re into that.

    The term personal branding puts me off. It feels like a professional human is reduced to a marketing campaign for a fancy cheese. To make it more palatable to me, I prefer to reframe LinkedIn as a professional tool.

    My advice is:

    • Look at your LinkedIn profile as if it’s someone else
    • Update your profile each time you change jobs
    • Update your profile headline and keep is short
    • Keep the descriptions of each role short
    • Pick 1 or 2 articles and post a thoughtful comment

    What makes a “good” LinkedIn profile changes every few years. If nothing else, the RIFs of the past couple of years demonstrates that anyone can be looking for a new job at any time. Best to be prepared.

    Finally, I recommend setting a time limit on how much social media you consume. My personal limit is 3 ads, then I walk away to do something productive or creative.

  • Why Journal

    Hello friends. In today’s post, I share the reasons i feel journaling is good self-care.

    Disclaimer – As with all self-care advice: if you suffer severe trauma, PTSD or other mental health issues, please work with a professional. dealing with that is putting your mask on first.

    It’s a fact that people learn and retain information better by taking a pen to paper. Want to learn more? check out this Scientific American article on the subject.

    Why pen & paper

    Digital journaling is not the same as taking a pen to paper and writing long hand for two reasons, IMHO. After working on a computer all day, I need a break from screens. When I’m journaling to counteract insomnia, a screen is the last thing I need.

    My Top 3 reasons to Journal

    1. Get what I call the time loop of crap out of your head.
    2. Explore your thoughts and feelings in a safe place.
    3. Calm your nerves.

    Let’s unpack those.

    The time loop of crap

    Everyone has bad days now and then. When you find yourself brooding over that stupid thing that happened, it can be a signal from your brain that someone walked all over one of your boundaries. journaling can help you find that boundary and work out how to deal with it next time it happens.

    Whatever you call that nagging voice in your head latches onto that stuff and feeds it back to you. Letting it roll around in your head can keep you from getting to sleep And it certainly makes you crabby.

    Explore all the feels

    Our brains are amazing. At night it gives us coded messages in the form of dreams. during the day, it bubbles up a memory via your emotions. Getting it out on paper can help you identify triggers from the past and help you manage emotional outbursts on some unsuspecting soul.

    Journaling is for you. There’s no need to share it with anyone.

    Calming

    You’ll know that you’ve got everything out of you head because you’ll feel at ease. Calm. relaxed. until the next stupid thing. which is why journaling is a good habit.

    How to start: Shop your House

    Start with what you already have: look around your house right now and you’ve probably got a blank or partially blank notebook and a pen. USE THAT.

    It’s that simple.

  • The First 6 Months

    Hello EA pros. I’ve been in my new role for 6 months and lived in Canada for 4 months. Let me tell you, I’m exhausted. Most of my spare time is focused on self-care because that’s all I have energy for. In this post, I’ll share some personal history since moving to Canada as well as my decision to shift the focus of this site in a new direction.

    My teams

    Are comprised of software development engineers and technical program managers. The teams are spread across the globe, from Germany to India. As you might guess, scheduling takes up most of my time, juggling existing meetings to squeeze in global time-zone friendly meetings.

    In addition to learning to work with new leaders and teams, we’ve moved to a new country where we don’t know anyone. The move happened so fast that we didn’t have time to donate disused household goods before we left Seattle. In our place at New West, we are sort of settled in, but still have a long way to go.

    Mental bandwidth

    All of which is to say my lack of posting is directly a result of my not wanting to come up with fresh new ideas on how to be a great EA – check out the Resources page. Every spare moment I have is spent on self-care: journaling, coloring, crafting, photography. Taking a quiet moment to have a nice cup of tea. Reading classical literature.

    That’s when it dawned on me: my super power right now is self-care.

    EAs NEED self-care

    EAs hold knowledge known to few others in the company; we know secrets we can never tell.

    We work with all levels of an organization, all types of people. More and more, we work with global teams, adding cultural and linguistic complexities. We work with a wide range of leaders, some great, some not so much.

    Sometimes we’re treated badly, experiencing everything from disparaging comments, bullying, harassment. Those of us who excel in our role treat everyone politely and professionally (at least most of the time), whether we personally like someone or not.

    It’s tiring and difficult to explain it to people who are not in this profession. That leaves us with finding like-minded peers to commiserate with, but griping about the day’s b.s. doesn’t solve the problem long-term.

    That’s where self-care comes in. While I believe everyone benefits from self-care, I feel EAs need it most. We’re so busy helping others that we may not take as much time to care for ourselves.

    We need to put our own oxygen mask on first in order to be effective at work.

  • Delegate Category Rule Set-up

    Hello EA pros! As you know, I recently changed teams at work. I support two new executives and their teams that do not intersect. The two interim EAs were quite happy to turn these leaders over to me. For my first week on the job, I got hammered with incoming meeting requests and needed a way to manage incoming invites so I re-examined using Outlook Rules to apply Color Categories.

    I added 3 new colors: one for each leader and one for the org to keep track of the leadership team level mechanisms. I created a simple rules (one condition and one result with no exceptions) to manage the flood of emails.

    Here are the instructions to applying a color category to incoming

    Color Category for Delegate Invites

    Before you create the rule:

    1.       Open the invite

    2.       Open Properties (File > Properties)

    3.       In the Internet headers box, find the target email.  It should looks something like this: X-MS-Exchange-Inbox-Rules-Loop: alias@company.com Copy the italicized code

    4.       Close the message

    Create the rule:

    5.       From the Ribbon, select Rules

    6.       Create Rule

    7.       Select Advanced Option. Step 1: Check “with specific words in the message header”. Step 2: click specific words and paste the code from #3 above (should be on your clipboard). Click Add.  Click OK.

    8.       Click Next. Step 1: assign a Category. Step 2: click Category and select your color category

    9.       Click Next. Choose an Exception, if appropriate.

    10.   Click Next

    11.   Finish Rule Set up. Step 1: Name the Rule (short name is best). Step 2: check both boxes (run rule and turn on rule)

    12.   Click Finish

    If you set the rule up correctly, your delegate meeting invites are color coded!

    As mentioned in my post 3 Simple Outlook Automations, I have rules for moving meeting invites into a Meetings to Schedule folder plus 2 other rules.

    I’m going to create a rule to move incoming emails with the words “meeting request” in the subject line into the Meetings to Schedule folder. It won’t catch all the emails, but it would catch some and reduce the time I spend manually moving meeting requests to that folder.

    Standard work tip: use this wording in the email subject line:

    Meeting request | 30 minutes | Name of meeting

    Ask the folks you work with you use this format and share your rule to help your EA besties save time.

    What Outlook time savers have you set up? Leave a comment & share your tips and tricks.

  • Outlook Email Quick Part

    Hello EA pros! A quick post to show the steps for using and inserting a Quick Part into an email. Using Chat GPT and other AI tools is fine when it’s appropriate but there are simple automation tools that require a small amount of time to set up that will save hours of time in the long-run.

    In the enterprise Office suite, this feature is called Quick Parts. In the free Office Online Outlook, it’s called My Templates. For this post, I’ll call this feature Quick Parts.

    Why use a Quick Part? As EAs, we get the same questions over and over: where do I find the list of team email distros? How to I request office supplies? How to I get my desk tech updated? No matter what questions you regularly get, here’s my rule: when you answer a question 3 times, make a Quick Part.

    Open a new email and write your response. This text can be formatted and include links.

    When you’ve fine tuned this message, select the entire block of text. On the Ribbon, select Insert and then select Quick Parts. The pop-up will offer you the chance to save the highlighted text. Choose this and then create a very simple name for this Quick Part. Send the message you created

    The next time you get this question, Reply and put your cursor in the body of the email, select Insert on the Ribbon and select Quick Parts. Then find the message you created by name and insert. Send. Done.

    Below is a screenshot of an email I made using My Templates.

    As EAs, we are very busy. Finding effective automation tools is an easy way to save time that can be spent on higher priority projects for our leaders.  

    It may seem like a small amount time in the moment, but think about how many times you answer certain questions over and over. Five minutes here and there adds up to many hours in the course of a year.

    Develop a habit to think about how much time you spend on ‘simple’ tasks. This time adds up over the course of a year. Should they spend that time on low-priority tasks they can delegate? 

    Doing this builds critical thinking skills that you can apply to your leader and start acting as a strategic partner with your executive.

  • Priority Matrix

    Hello office pros! The next three posts will feature my favorite tools for EAs. I feel the most important skill a strategic EA uses is data analysis. The ability to compile, analysis and make data-driven recommendations to your executive will transform your career from a calendar jockey to strategic business partner. Today’s post about the Priority Matrix.

    Back in college, the financial aid office had a sign on the wall behind the desk that read: Your lack of planning does not constitute an emergency on my part.

    Effective prioritizing is key. Without it, you’re running around reacting to requests rather than taking stock and focusing on what is actually urgent and important.

    Everyday, you’re dealing with your stakeholders, direct reports, vendors, all manner of people who want your and your executive’s time. There are only so many work hours per day and none of us want to work 10 – 12 hours per day every day. Having a system to prioritize will help you work efficiently and efficiently. The last you want to do is spend days on a low priority/low urgency project, or as I like to call these: Someday Projects, which means they’re probably not going to rise in urgency or importance.

    The priority matrix pretty straightforward to use: take your list of tasks, drop them in the quadrants below based on your and your executive’s priorities. Then start working on the tasks in the upper right quadrant (high urgent & high important), next work on the upper left quadrant and so on.

    I find the Priority Matrix particularly useful when I’m having a bad day – maybe I’ve got a migraine coming on, didn’t sleep well the night before or it’s just a Bad Brain Day. Tools like the Priority Matrix help me focus and plan.

    I hope you’ll give the Priority matrix a try.

    If you’d like a copy of this form, check out my article, So You Want to Become an EA for this and other handy forms, in pdf format.

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