8 Tips For Efficient Email Management

Many people wonder how to manage emails? With the load of incoming emails increasing with each day it becomes very to keep track to all the emails.

email management is a large subject. It may not be possible to cover all the aspects in a single article but we will try to cover the most important ones for sure. Here are some great email management tips and tricks for efficient email management using Microsoft outlook. We all know MS Outlook is a great tool but most folks rarely use these outlook features which help us improve our productivity and save a lot of time. So essentially these are time management techniques by utilizing email management best practices.

Rules&Alerts

You can create a rule based on the sender, recipients or conversation topic of a given message to always move email to a specific folder. There are multiple options available

Categories

Categorize option is used to color code/ categorize items. Categories applied to a conversation will be applied to all current and future items in the conversation.

Filters

Filer email messages in current folder to to only show certain items, such as unread or flagged items.

There are multiple options available to apply the filter based on our need.

Clean Up: Used to clean up redundant messages in selected conversations.

Clean Up Folder: Remove redundant messages from every conversation in selected folder

Clean Up Folder and Sub folders: Remove redundant messages from every conversation in selected folder and all subfolders

Manage Quick Steps: Create, Edit, Delete and Rearrange Quick Steps

To Manager: Forwards selected message to your manager

Auto generated emails: Move selected emails to a folder after making the email as read

Team E-mail: Creates a new email to your team

Reply and Delete: Replies to the sender and deletes the original email

Done: Marks the email as complete, moves the email to a folder, and marks the email as read

We hope this article is helpful. Please let us know about your comments or queries and we will be happy to respond with clarification and additional tips in future.

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10 Things You Should Definitely Do Before Turning Thirty

A lot of people learn a lot of important lessons in their twenties. These lessons are lessons of life.  The intent of this article is to share these learnings with the younger generations so that they don't commit the same mistakes and are able to apply corrective and preventive measures at the right time in their twenties.

Ten things You Should Definitely Do Before Turning Thirty

1. Get engaged with a sport that you can practice - To keep you fit.
2. Learn the life skills - driving a car, swimming, horse riding etc.
3. Understand the power of compounding and invest your money.
4. Figure out your short term and long term financial goals.
5. Get out of the shadows of your parents.
6. Travel alone & travel with friends. This will add to your life experience.
7. Develop a habit of reading great books.
8. Figure out your passion and also figure out what you will NOT do in the next 30 years.
9. Get a life partner who will stay with you for rest of your life
10. Last but not the least, learn and practice how to keep your feet grounded. No matter what, don't forget from where you started.

If you are a professional, here are some key professional Do's and Don'ts that you should practice by the time you turn thirty...

• Never...Engage in lose talk, gossips, take anyone for granted, panic in critical situations

• Avoid...Writing negative things on e-mail

• Always...Protect your team, lead from the front and share the credit

Hope these tips are helpful. We would appreciate your feedback and look forward for your comments and suggestions to improve our articles and posts on an ongoing basis.

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33 Great Habits and Fundamentals of Success

10 Great Habits one should follow daily to have a beautiful life

1. Walk - For 45-60 minutes/ day. Practice Yoga.
2. Read - Great books, for example "How To Win Friends and Influence People" and "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People"
3. Think - Before you speak - Choice of words, tone, volume matter
4. Listen - With purpose, be ready and prepared to learn
5. Eat Healthy, Avoid Junk
6. Pray - Have a attitude of gratitude for the almighty
7. Share - Knowledge, Joy, Sorrow, Wealth
8. Try - New avenues, challenges unless you succeed
9. Plan - Every move of your life, not planning is recipe for failure
10. Care - For humanity, especially your near and dear ones


Also read How To Stop Procrastination and Improve Productivity

23 neat fundamentals of success

1. Work hard + Work Smart
2. Be Disciplined
3. Be Organized
4. Learn how to communicate
5. Learn how to negotiate
6. Know when to speak
7. Know when NOT to speak
8. Don't just see, but observe
9. Don't just listen, but pay attention
10. Have an attitude for gratitude
11. Dream
12. Don't just Dream but Think
13. Think
14. Dont just Think, but Act
15. Believe in Yourself
16. Share Knowledge
17. Help Others
18. Set Goals
19. Create Plans
20. Be prepared to fail
21. Be prepared to rise
22. Learn to manage your personal finance
23. Be ready to learn. Always. From people, books, audios/ videos, blogs, forums  - all the time, from all the possible sources

Read More:  Ten Things You Should Definitely Do Before You Turn Thirty

Lesson Learned In Life

What do people learn in their twenties?

Early 20s:
People actually learn Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Maths, Engineering, Medical, Arts etc., that is stuff which helps them earn their daily bread.

Mid 20s: They learn basics of business, corporate culture, real hands on work, reality check with college girl friend/ boy friend etc. This is where you actually understand whether all those studies were important or not. That all that you studied for is either materializing or not.

Late 20s: Either you get married by this time or you are about to get married. Life is changing for ever. This is the time my friends you realize that all that matters in life is to take "responsibility" and "ownership" of oneself.  You also realize that all the advise you got from your parents was for good, all friends don't stick with you forever. Moving on is reality.

What are the lessons people most often learn too late in life?

Ego

• Your Job is more important than your Ego
• Your Boss is more important than your Ego
• Your family is more important than your Ego

Finance

• Not learning the right skills to make money will make your life miserable
• They never teach you to manage your personal finance in school/ college

Communication

• 80% of your success in professional and personal life is because of the way you communicate and negotiate. Just 20% is skill based

Planning

• If you are engaged in unplanned rut day over day for years then there are chances that you will do it for the rest of  your life. Without planning you are setting yourself for continuous failure which will keep you busy and fake you for success

No one is Indispensable

• Whoever you are, Whatever you do, You are NOT indispensable. Sooner or later someone or other will replace you. You need to continuously upgrade your skills to remain in demand

Emotions

• You need to show Love in your action and not just in your words
• Jealousy is a wasted emotion. You will not get anything out of it. People you hate are going to succeed; people you like are going to sometimes do better than you did. Your kids are going to be smarter and quicker than you are. Accept it with grace and move on

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How To Stop Procrastination and Improve Productivity?

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How To Stop Procrastination & Improve Productivity

As per Wikipedia: Procrastination is the practice of carrying out less urgent tasks in preference to more urgent ones, or doing more pleasurable things in place of less pleasurable ones, and thus putting off impending tasks to a later time, sometimes to the "last minute" before a deadline.

Let's face it. Most people procrastinate, this comes to us naturally.

So what we are targeting for is to complete the top urgent items on time/ in preference over the the lesser urgent items/ pleasure items as per priority.

How to STOP Procrastinating?

1. Take a print out of prioritized items on your list in the order of urgency.
2. Add a deadline to the items. Stick this printout on each wall of your house, including the washroom. Add it on your desktop wall paper, smartphone background etc. This way you will see them in front of your eyes and your subconscious mind will remind you of the deadline.
3. Get into a deal with your partner/ spouse/ brother/ sister/ friend that with each deadline missed you will pay them one day of your salary for each day lost.
4. Continue to do this unless you get into this "habit" and stop procrastinating naturally.

How to improve Productivity?

1. Stop context switching: Don't move frequently from meetings to emails, to social media to coffee breaks, do one task at a time.
2. Get rid of unplanned daily rut:
   Just following daily routine without any planning leads to immense waste of time. This will keep you busy for most of your daytime but you will not be productive at all. Get out of it => Plan your year, month, week, day.
3. Avoid Wasting time on activities which don't add value:
   Examples:
   
   • Gossiping about people is a classic way to waste time.
   • Watching the same movies/ videos over again and again multiple times is an example of wasting time because you stop "thinking" of what you are doing. You just do it because you are addicted to it.
   Technology addiction: As most people said "Browsing Internet without Purpose" is the top way people waste time in the modern era.Smartphones, Laptops, Tablets eat your free time and get you into doing/ reading/ browsing something which you didn't intend to.
   
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Five Focus Areas For Onsite Offshore Delivery Model

Most delivery projects in the global IT setup are executed in a dual or multi-shore model. This requires the team to be located at multiple locations, that is, in more than one city, more than one country and also in different timezone across the globe.

Fundamental driving factor of this framework is the need to provide 24*5 or 24*7 coverage with follow the sun model. Customer and client organizations want the IT service providers to have distributed teams with key subject matter experts at all locations. This is imperative to cater to the business need of continuous support.

This is an exciting model which provides immense growth and business opportunities to the IT service providers, however there are certain challenges which are intrinsic to the model and it is advised that all IT providers plan proactive risk mitigation and avoidance strategies in their service delivery operations.


Here are the five key focus areas for the Onsite Offshore delivery model:

Continuous information exchange

Since the team is based out of multiple locations, it is critical to ensure that all team members are updated on the latest operational information and system changes.

Placing Right Individuals In The Right Roles

Customer facing roles are critical. It is of prime importance that right individuals are placed in customer facing, engagement management and leadership roles. This will determine long term success of the overall service delivery model.

Building Synergy

Building synergy between the onsite and offshore teams is critical. There may be scenarios where the team members don't get along with each other or there may be jealousy or other issues, hence it is very important that the leadership brings in the feeling of integrity and the feeling of one team which is essential for success.

Equal Opportunity

Few things can be learned only by experience, so it is essential that all team members get equal opportunities. Rotating resources between onsite and offshore may be one of the key aspects to groom talent and providing everyone equal opportunity to get the right experience.

Understanding The Pain and Challenges

While onsite team is exposed to customer they have to face the heat in the difficult times. Most of the times they need to cover for the mistakes done by offshore team. On the other hand offshore team always depends on the onsite team to get latest information and system updates. They may have infrastructure or logistics challenges too. Understanding the challenges of each shore and planning risk mitigation is a very critical aspect for success.

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How To Retain Critical Talent?

One of the key aspect of Project Management is to retain critical talent. Within the resource management function a project manager needs to be very proactive to identify the top, critical talent and work towards their overall grooming and prosperity.

Here are the key steps that a manager need to take...

1. Identify Top talent and Critical talent.
2. Inspire them.
3. Motivate them.
4. Provide them the right environment to work. 
5. Create Healthy Competitive Teamwork.
6. Provide them them the right set of tools, technologies and training required.
7. Provide them right feedback and direction for growth and learning.

After doing all of the above, if the critical talent still wants to leave and given the fact that he/ she is a top and critical talent then the manager needs to negotiate with them and if required with the company(HR) to retain them - this is a manager's job responsibility and he/ she is absolutely not going any far beyond what the project management job role demands.

This will ensure that the risk associated with attrition of critical talent is avoided/ mitigated. Thus business of the company and project revenue, margins, sustainability, credibility will be NOT be adversely impacted.

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15 Leadership Qualities Of Great Project Managers

Leadership Traits

Here are some key leadership traits that separate great project managers from average project managers

• Meticulous Planning

• Eye for detail

• Ability to drive meetings and discussions to logical conclusion

• Takes end to end Ownership

• Ability to communicate clearly and listen carefully

• Tact Sensitive in critical situations

• Ability to read individuals

• Provides direct feedback and is open to receive direct feedback

• Creates environment of trust

• Motivates and mentors the team

• Exhibits excellent written and verbal communication skills

• Quick learner with a zeal for continuous learning new business domains

• Great sense of commercial orientation

• Excellent at general project management skills like risk and issue management, quality management, human resource management, procurement, schedule management, scope management, cost management, change management, estimation etc.

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