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What's your mentality for 2008 - paper
or digital?
Do you
have a paper memory, or do you have a digital computer memory? If you have a paper memory, this is
a very busy time of the year for you. If you have a digital computer
memory, meaning you use a computer program for certain tasks, things are a
lot easier.
I'm not
being judgmental; I'm just pointing out that if you have a personal
computer, which most people do, you can really save yourself a lot of time
- at this time of the year particularly - by using computer programs
instead of the traditional
One of
the most common computer programs used is Microsoft Outlook, which most
computers come bundled with - meaning you get it free. Outlook is a good
selection of tools to do everyday tasks for business and personal items
– email, an address book or contact manager, a calendar, and a To -
Do list, so I'll use it in our paper/computer memory comparison.
If
you're of the paper mentality, you've been busy putting up paper calendars,
marking key days like birthdays and special events, and transferring
information from your old calendars to your new 2008 ones. Regular meetings
require a lot of marking and writing - don't they? Let’s mark Friday
January 11th for that weekly department meeting – OK only
51 one more to go ...... sharpen that pencil ...
If you
use Outlook, probably most of those birthdays and special events and
meetings are already in your computer and will just repeat themselves for
2008. For example, once you enter someone’s birthday it will keep
showing up each year. For meetings and events you just set up the
recurrence of the event and they will appear automatically, weekly, monthly
or whatever.
With your
paper calendar, you have to look at it and flip the pages to see what's
coming up. With Outlook, it shows you your calendar all the time in a
variety of views which you can choose. You can even print out a paper
calendar for any period of time
in a variety of formats, if you want a paper copy.
If
you're of the paper mentality, you've probably spent considerable time
copying names and addresses over to your new 2008 address book. If you use
Outlook, there's no work to do - it's all there - same as last year. In
fact, you can even print out your address book on paper - in several small
address book formats - if you so desire.
If you
use a paper address book - does it have a line for email addresses, website
addresses, Youtube or Facebook pages, cell phone numbers, IM addresses?
Some still don't.
If
you're of the paper mentality, how do you handle your "Things to do or
tasks list". Still using that string around your finger, or do you
have those more modern yellow sticky notepads?
With
Outlook you can have a To do list, assign priorities to tasks, have due
dates, and have it remind you about tasks; even show you the percentage
you've completed.
With
paper, you probably write upcoming appointments down on your paper calendar
and maybe on slips of paper. If you need to change it - you scribble out
the old date and write in the new one somewhere.
With
Outlook all your appointments are in your calendar. Your computer will
remind you in advance when an appointment is coming up. If you have to
reschedule it - you can just drag and drop it to the new day and time,
without scribbling or rewriting.
I
recently went shopping with a friend of the paper mentality looking for one
of those combination calendar/address books which fit in a binder and used
to be so popular before personal computers automated these tasks.
Several
stores said they had nothing like that, but one very young sales woman
– obviously of the myspace/youtube/mp3 generation - did say “Oh
yeah, I remember my Grandma used one of those ...”
So
maybe next year when you face all that paper pushing again, maybe you might
consider switching mentalities. From “We must preserve the old ways
...” to using that electronic computer which can do a much better job
for you.
For Raw Bytes
This is Frank Delaney
(C) 2008 MTA Micro
Technology Associates
http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html
PO Box 31522 Spokane,
Wa 99223-1522
(509)624-7230
mailto:frank@mtamicro.com
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