Category Archives: career

Empty your mailbox

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Make your bed. Empty the dishwasher. Put away your clean laundry. Clean out your inbox. These tasks each take about five minutes. The completed tasks provide a sense of accomplishment while creating an order to life. These tasks are not unlike when a child is told to pick up their toys when playtime is over. It creates order and demonstrates completion.

Of these examples, the email inbox is probably the most difficult to keep clean. Unlike having dishes stack in the sink, your inbox doesn’t stink. It gets cluttered and hard to find emails, but it doesn’t stink. So it’s easy to ignore. My biggest inbox challenge is that I’m afraid of losing a key email I’ll need later. Discovering the email folder system and the ability to search gave me the tools I needed to sort, organize, and file emails in such a manner to keep the inbox clear.

Admittedly the first time I approached this plan my #mailbox had hundreds of emails. So I began with the oldest emails. Created a folder nomenclature that matched my needs and within an hour there were less than 25 emails in the inbox. Now as I finish my workday or week, I take a few minutes to plan the next day, and I tidy up my inbox.

Making your bed creates a calm environment. Empty the dishwasher ensures you have what is needed for eating. Putting your laundry away allows you to dress for success. And cleaning out your inbox makes your #workday go more smoothly.

Give it a try and let me know.

KK

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GED Grad Day

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 Today we celebrate with GED Grads everywhere. Too many times we take for granted our education and the support we had from family to complete high school, college, or trade school. Get a skill and make your self marketable to employers. Easier said than done for some who live in our communities. It is very possible that you live or work within steps of someone who struggled in school or didn’t have the support of parents to complete even the most basic education. Those individuals either give up and settle for a minimum wage job (that doesn’t come close to supporting someone) or by their own fortitude they set their goal and found the resources to finish their high school education.

Today we say hats off to you. Congratulations on sticking with it and completing your GED.

What’s next? Set your next goal and go for it! You may not know us, but there are thousands of us cheering you on.

Please share this post with #GEDGradDay and encourage someone today.

All the best,

KK

Failure to Communicate

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I communicate for a living. Story telling, blogging, marketing messaging and communication strategies. Of all the people I have worked with, the most challenging are those who think they are good communicators, but aren’t. They may be fine verbalizing an idea or thought, but ask them to write it down and disaster strikes. Some gremlin crawls in and blocks the words, scrambling them from their brain to their hands. There is no helping them understand their diagnosis. Their denial of the truth screeches like fingernails on a chalkboard.

It may be my simple mind, but I can take a complicated message and break it down into succinct statements, paragraphs or bullet points. The key is to not over-communicate. To explain how to fry an egg, there is no need to explain the reproductive system of the chicken first.

Clearly, there are far more complicated topics than frying an egg. It’s been my experience that with detailed complicated issues, the best way to communicate is to break them down into smaller, more manageable pieces of information.

So we have these non-communicators who think they are great communicators and driving us real communicators nuts. I’m not naming names, but let me encourage you to please for the love of connecting with others, slow down and really think about what you want to convey before attempting to do so. This may help. Or it may not and you may see me running away from you screaming.

Thanks for listening.
KK

 

 

Away at College

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Going away to college or just moving into the dorm at the college nearby was once an exciting prospect. Away from home and the parents. Out on your own and taking charge of your time. As parents, we spend the first 18 years of our children’s lives preparing them with the right jewels of wisdom. We hope and pray that by the time they leave, they are ready for all the good, and the bad that they will encounter.college time

We hope we’ve given them a firm foundation in their faith. We teach them that it will be only a matter of time when drugs will be offered to them and how to say no. We talk to them about sex and the virtues of not sleeping around. But there is a new issue on the block. One that our parents didn’t need to talk to us about – the lone shooter.

In the late 1940’s at the height of the atomic and nuclear bomb scare, students and citizens learned the term, “duck and cover.” There were drills in neighborhoods, offices and public places. Those of us who grew up in the late 60’s and early 70’s hardly remember these drills. And young parents today know them only as a section in their history books. Today, our “duck and cover” lessons need to be about what to do if a lone shooter comes into your classroom, dorm, mall, church, theater or any large public gathering.

Reportedly In the first 10 months of this year, there have been 10 university shooting sprees. That’s one a month. We don’t want to send our kids off to school in fear, but we need to add the terrorists to the list of “what to do if” conversations we have with them.

Thankfully, I still have some time for working this lesson into our conversation. I’m already praying for the wise words to use. We want to send our kids out into that big world with confidence and boldness. We want to launch them saying, “look out world, here I come,” just as we left home. To do so they need to be armed with the weapons of wisdom, discernment, faith, hope, positive disciplines in their lives and “what to do if.”

What do you think?

KK

Farewell 2013

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It’s half past three in the afternoon on New Year’s Eve.  I’ve spent some time in the office taking care of a few things – organizing.  The January calendar is set up and ready for the appointments I have in the first two weeks.  The whiteboard has project priorities.  There is order to my work space.

On a personal note, the checkbook is balanced (yes, I do this at least once a month and recommend it for others).  The big home projects for the coming year have been discussed and prioritized.  To close 2013, I feel the completion of 365 full and rich days. Even those with tears and challenges brought something.

It was a good year personally and professionally.  I am so proud of my son and husband for their accomplishments and letting me be on their journey just as they have rooted me on during mine.

There were goals achieved and others still undone.  Will I recommit to the unfinished?  We will see.

I have grown personally in knowledge and wisdom.  Sometimes I feel my age and sometimes my life experience. One truth is that I will never stop learning.

As we turn the last page of the calendar, may we do so with all of the optimism a new year brings.  May we breathe in the freshness of 365 blank days and look forward to all of the activities and people who will fill them.  God bless you and carry you through each one of them.

All the best,

KK

Closing November

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Before we turn our complete attention toward Christmas let’s look at the difference between thankfulness and gratefulness.  I used them interchangeably in the last six posts. They are synonymous.  One difference is that in the definition of thankfulness uses the term “aware and appreciative”; whereas the definition of gratefulness only has “appreciative of benefit” – a little fun with words.

Let me encourage you to continue to be appreciative each day and take notice (be aware) of all there is for which to be thankful.  Thankfulness can be an attitude, but it can also be an action.

Take action, be thankful.

All the best,

KK

 

6 Things I’m grateful for – One at a Time – Number 6

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Anyone can do a top ten list, but a top 6 list, that’s original – and it’s not because I couldn’t come up with 10 things.  For the next six days, there will be a post a day with something I’m grateful for.   They are not in any priority; all are equal.pencils and paper

Today I am grateful for those days when I give it all and at the end of it I am completely spent.  The activities for the day can be full of work, writing or volunteer projects. Those days have been plentiful recently and for that I’m grateful.  There is something wonderfully fulfilling about working hard, giving my all with excellence.   I can do a string of these days for a while, but when I start looking forward to time off that I know I’ve maxed out.

Slowing down recharges me for the next wave.

All the best,

KK