OG Tuesday Issue #91

Start your morning with this affirmation:

You’re committed to your goals. You know why you set them. You know, in general, how to achieve them. You think you have everything in order, and yet, you’re not quite making the kind of progress you want.

Thanks to some particularly slippery and unhelpful aspects of human psychology, goals can be evasive, regardless of desire, willpower, and skill. (In some cases, our goals are just plain unattainable.)

Luckily, there are strategies you can leverage to increase your chances of success even when you’re butting your head against a wall of imaginary and self-imposed obstacles.

Tired of resetting your passwords because you can’t remember them all 😩?

Or maybe you’re out of ideas for super secure passwords for work…or juggling your boss’ 20 passwords on top of your own —

Whatever the password conundrum you may be experiencing, we’ve got your back.

Dashlane, the password manager 20,000+ companies trust, makes it easy to secure your organization’s data & up your team’s productivity.

P.S. If your passwords look like “[first name]123” this is definitely for you.

How many (millions of) emails does it take to schedule ONE meeting? If your answer is “too many,” then you need a different process, a seamless one that streamlines scheduling.

Put a new scheduling process in place in just two easy steps: 

1) Vet and select a tool designed to make scheduling easier.

Here are some options to start with:

2) Socialize and enforce the use of the tool when scheduling meetings. Use your scheduling tool of record without exception. If and when people try to send you scheduling emails and requests, simply refer them to the tool.

As you work on establishing this new process, you can also try these quick fixes for reducing scheduling emails: 

Streamline Your Work With Templates

 

We’ve compared monday.com to the Swiss army knife of project management softwares — and they’ve taken it up a notch by launching industry specific templates.

Here are some of our fave templates that you can use today (for free) —

For HR & Recruiting:

• HR Requests
• Employee Engagement Survey
• Employee Recruitment & Onboarding
• Job App Form
• Cross Company Event Planning

For EAs/Admins/Operations:

• To-Do List
• Facilities Requests
• Event Planning

For Marketing:

• Campaign Planning
• Content Calendar

Sale: 

• CRM

See More Templates

You know you’ve gotta start somewhere, but figuring out that precise somewhere can get a little tricky. Everything seems important and urgent. Everyone wants everything yesterday.

Use the prompts and mantras below to cut through the panic and indecision and get things started. 

Mantra: You cannot start on everything at once. Choose quality (focus and clarity) over quantity.

Here’s some inspiration from Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott:

“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”

Sort and resolve small stressors that take little time to complete. These are the items that aren’t super important per se, but that inevitably create stress when people follow up on status, etc. Get these tasks out of the way so you can focus on starting the real project with clarity.

Reflect on the project you want to start. What end do you have in mind? Sometimes reflecting on where you want to be is the best way to figure out where to get started.

Create a project plan, even if you don’t consider your work items a “project.” Any grouping of tasks that share one common endpoint can be a project.

What are your largest must-do steps? Are you certain they are must-dos? Classify other steps as “should dos” or “nice to dos” and forget about them for now.

Which of these must-do items could, in fact, wait until later? Drop them into a separate list and forget about them for now.

What must-do tasks are you most confident about completing? Which ones come along with a host of potential challenges or problems? You want to start off strong and save the sticky tasks for later, when you already have some progress to feel good about.

Instead, bookmark Refinery29’s list of phrases to say instead. Our faves include:

Offsite  just put out The People Leader’s Guide To Planning The Perfect Team Retreat. Get your own free copy.

Weve offers over 100 games you can play with your team to build stronger workplace culture.

Office Otter is the free automated to-do list you didn’t know you needed (until now).

The Daily Upside helps you rethink your financial news diet and gives you crisp, unbiased business insights each morning for free.

The Assist Store

Check out our Pride Month LGBTQ+ Crossword Puzzle, Caribbean Heritage Month Bingo or browse our Etsy Store.

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