Jul10

Never Write Vague Emails Again: 3 Email Writing Tips from the Military

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Never Write Vague Emails Again: 3 Email Writing Tips from the Military

In the early years of the internet, I was extremely guilty of writing poorly formatted emails in ridiculous fonts. They would start with some sort of apology like “sorry for the long email” or a meek request like “can I bother you for a minute” then proceed to write a long drawn out email. These emails would turn out to be a short story.

Thankfully my email writing skills have vastly improved over the years. Also, hurray to no longer using comic sans!

We all have to admit that there’s always room for improvement. In honing my email writing skills, I take stock from the military. I learned how to format emails from an article I read: “How to Write Email with Military Precision”. This has greatly helped me in writing concise messages, be it email, copy, or SMS messages. Surprisingly, the way the military write emails isn’t like the curt, one-word email messages Shark Tank star and Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban, is notorious for. Here’s how they do it:

Perfectly worded subject line:
They start where it matters, at the beginning. Right off the bat, they already have the purpose of the email on the subject line. This makes perfect sense, the recipient will know straight away what the email is for so nobody has to waste time weeding through words to find out what the purpose of the email is. This strategy also does away with writing a pointless “hello” in the subject line. Here are some examples of the keywords they use in the subject line:
● ACTION – Compulsory for the recipient to take some action
● SIGN – Requires the signature of the recipient
● INFO – For informational purposes only, and there is no response or action required
● DECISION – Requires a decision by the recipient
● REQUEST – Seeks permission or approval by the recipient
● COORD – Coordination by or with the recipient is needed

This cute little acronym called BLUF:
BLUF stands for Bottom Line Up Front which means the leading line (first few lines of your message) states the purpose of the email and the action required. Yesss! This saves everyone sooo much time. Imagine if everyone wrote emails this way.

Short and Sweet:
Time is a valuable resource and no one understands this better than the military. We can all agree that concise emails are better than long ones, so as much as possible, the military tries to fit all texts into one pane so that the reader won’t have to scroll or read through a lot of hullabaloos.
● Pro tip: they consistently use the active voice when sending emails.
○ Passive: A background brief of the project was submitted by the marketing team yesterday
○ Active: The marketing team submitted a project brief yesterday
■ The active voice sounds better and more concise, right?

How about you? What are your favorite email writing hacks for sending better emails? Share your tips with us in the comments. Stay humble and hustle hard!

Written by Jaie O. The Help

Jul2

The Internet of Things: Modernizing Your Home Office Using Smart Technology

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The Internet of Things: Modernizing Your Home Office Using Smart Technology

Last week, we talked about “How to Set Up a Home Office without Breaking the Bank”. For people who spend a few days here and there working from home – a small but functional home office will do. However, professionals who work completely from home are more invested in their home offices than those who use their office for ad hoc work or side hustles.

A dedicated home office can provide at home workers the professional environment they get from traditional offices in work buildings but with a few more perks. First off, home offices can give you the freedom to do away with the dreaded commute and terrible traffic. You also have more control over your immediate work environment – if it’s too cold, turn the AC down and if it’s too warm turn it up. You can also customize your own home office according to your requirements but still keep it professional.

The top concerns of creating your own home office space is how to reduce unwanted distractions and how to keep clutter from taking over the work space. The Internet of Things (IoT) devices can help you.

What do you mean by The Internet of Things?
Wikipedia describes The Internet of things (IoT) as the extension of Internet connectivity into physical devices and everyday objects. Embedded with electronics, Internet connectivity, and other forms of hardware (such as sensors), these devices can communicate and interact with others over the Internet, and they can be remotely monitored and controlled. Some examples of which are the smart home gadgets that control light, heat, ventilation, and AC.

Got money to burn?
The market is filled with fun things that can help you reduce unwanted distractions so that you can focus on work. Some are extremely useful, while some are…well, kind of pointless. To make it easier for you to sift through the market offerings, here are some of the fun and useful things:

A smart speaker
Gone are the days when a speaker just plays music and boosts sound. Nowadays, a smart speaker can act as your personal assistant, an extension of your phone, and a central control hub to control all of your other smart devices. This is something you can boss around and will always be “happy to help”
● Google Home with Google Assistant
● Amazon Echo with Echo Show
● HomePod with Siri

A smart plug
Have you ever left the house and second guess yourself if you unplugged the curling iron? Well, with a smart plug, you can control any appliance that’s plugged into it and turn it on and off remotely. For environment control, you can control heaters, a/c, and lamps from anywhere with just a few taps on your smartphone.
● iHome smart plugs
● D-Link smart plug
● Tp-link smart plug

A smart coffee machine
This is a “nice-to-have” item that’s on every remote worker’s wishlist. It’s surprisingly affordable and will provide you with work fuel on an uninterrupted schedule.
● Nespresso Expert Espresso Machine
● Brew Genie
● Smarter Coffee

What’s your favorite smart gadget? Share them with us in the comments. Stay humble and hustle hard.

Written by Jaie O. The Help

Filed under Administrative Support | Comments Off on The Internet of Things: Modernizing Your Home Office Using Smart Technology
Jun24

How to Set Up a Home Office without Breaking the Bank

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How to Set Up a Home Office without Breaking the Bank

Most of today’s companies offer their employees the ability to telecommute or work from home for a few days a week. This has been a recent trend in multinational companies and is offered as one of the perks depending on your position in the company. Companies like Oracle, Deloitte, IBM, CBS Interactive, and Viacom are some of the companies that have flexible work from home policies.

This is why more and more people are carving out spaces in their homes to serve as their mini home offices. It’s no fun and it’s not very professional to work off of the dining table or on a laptop on your bed. So a lot of work from home professionals have opted to create a dedicated space at home for a mini office.

You don’t have to completely renovate your house to include a home office. You don’t even have to add another room. You can work with what you have to create a great space for working from home without having to spend a lot of money. Here are a few tips on how to set up a home office without breaking the bank.

Look for unused space
Do you have a guest room? Is there a walk-in closet roomy enough to fit a chair? Is the space underneath the stairs usable? What about the huge landing between the first and second floor, can you use that?

Not everyone is lucky enough to have a spare room so we have to use our creativity and look for areas in the house where we can fit a desk and an office chair in. It has to be a dedicated workspace though. It’s hard to concentrate on work when you work off the kitchen table and the kids are eating. Carve out space where you don’t have to move your stuff for around, like when baby needs a diaper change and you have to use the same table you work on.

Minimalist requirements
Think about what you need. Do you need a desk? How about a chair? Does it have to be big and bulky? Will a simple chair do or do you need an ergonomic chair? Do you need file cabinets or display cabinets?

Pare down your requirements to just the basics so that you can fit them into the spaces in your home. For example, my setup is just a simple desk with a 2 layer side shelf and an ergonomic chair that isn’t very big and imposing. It is in a small quiet corner of the living room, next to the sliding doors that lead to the garden. It’s a small space that has natural lighting and a great view of plants and pets.

Be a DIY fan
You don’t have to hire a contractor for things you can do yourself. If you want to have an accent wall for a beautiful background during video conference calls you can probably get away with painting the wall yourself. You can also hang a pretty framed photo or some artworks in the background. You can even put decals or wallpaper to define the space as a workspace.

You can also build your own desk. Take 3 side cabinets of the same height and connect them by putting a board across. Be sure to measure your space first so that you know that the desk will fit. You can paint or stain them to be a uniform color and look like 1 desk instead of 3 different furniture pieces.

What about you? What are your DIY home office tips? Share them with us in the comments Stay humble and hustle hard!

Written by Jaie O. The Help

Jun17

5 Nifty Google Chrome Extensions to Make Life Easier

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5 Nifty Google Chrome Extensions to Make Life Easier

My favorite web browser is Google Chrome. It is secure, easy to navigate and compatible with almost all OS and mobile devices. You can sync your preferences and bookmarks across all devices, making it easier to access your accounts on different devices. I especially like the extensions available in the Chrome Web Store. Extensions make my job easier. If you haven’t tried extensions or don’t know where to start, please read on.

Browser extensions are small software modules used to customize the web browser. They do a host of tasks that help people out with productivity, tracking, management, information wrangling, etc. To get them, you go to the Chrome Web Store to see a large selection of browser extensions. Here are 5 of my favorite and most used ones.

Adobe Acrobat – This extension makes it possible for you to convert current web page to an Adobe PDF file (Windows only) and easier to do so because you no longer have to open and load up Adobe Acrobat DC/Adobe Acrobat XI. You can convert web pages to rich, high-quality PDF files that maintain the look and feel of the original content straight from the website. You can find the Adobe Acrobat browser extension here.

Asana – This extension makes it possible for you to quickly add and search for Asana tasks from any webpage. Other features include: putting tasks directly in any project, quickly adding a task description and assign to a teammate, selecting the appropriate assignee from a dropdown menu, inputting custom fields to your new tasks, and adding the current URL as a task, so you can read articles later or share them with teammates. You can find the Asana browser extension here.

Google Docs Offline – This extension makes it possible for you to get things done offline with the Google Docs family of products. Sometimes we have problems with an intermittent internet connection, or sometimes we may have NO internet connection at all. You can still access Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive without connecting to the internet with this extension. You can find the Google Docs Offline browser extension here.

Grammarly – This extension makes it possible for you to make sure your messages, documents, and social media posts are clear, mistake-free, and impactful. It is a contextual spelling checker and grammar checker that detects misspelled words, correctly spelled words used in the wrong context, and fix hundreds of complex grammatical errors, including subject-verb agreement, article use, and modifier placement, among others. You can find the Grammarly browser extension here.

Speedtest – This extension makes it possible for you to take a Speedtest directly from our Google Chrome toolbar to quickly test the internet performance without interruption and measure how fast the pages load with Web Speed. You can get ping, download, and upload speeds within seconds through this browser extension. You can find the Speedtest browser extension here.

What are your favorite browser extensions? Share them with us in the comments section. Stay humble and hustle hard.

Written by Jaie O. The Help

Jun10

How to Stop Being a Workplace Doormat

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How to Stop Being a Workplace Doormat

Imagine you are sitting at your desk, hard at work on today’s reports and daily tasks, trying to finish your self-imposed work deadlines by the end of the working day. A colleague saunters on to your desk and “cheerfully” asks you to “help” do something that isn’t on your task list or even remotely your priority. In fact, this is something that your colleague has to be doing themselves, but for some reason, they need your expertise, and they need it now.

When you work at an office, there will always be interruptions, it’s just inevitable. Most of the time, we don’t mind being interrupted and gladly welcome a quick break. If it’s just a small favor and an easy one, I’m sure most people won’t mind helping out a colleague. However, if you’re working as an assistant some people will see you as a shared resource and would capitalize on the fact that you have access to any and all resources in the office. Some are even annoyingly in your face, asking you to simply do the work that they should be doing themselves. How do you deal with colleagues who think you are their assistant when you’re just clearly not?

Stop helping them:
You are reinforcing bad (and very lazy) behavior by trying to “help them out.” Clearly one of you is relying heavily on the other to do their job. If they keep asking you for help, remember that NO is a full sentence. Don’t promise to help them, out some other time.

Here are a few helpful and tactful answers you can use for “can you help me with this?”
• Sorry but I am busy with tasks for (executive/client/customer/boss) and I won’t be able to handle your request.
• What are the things you have tried so far?
• I am on a tight deadline and won’t be free to work with you on that anytime soon.
• I can’t help with that right now.
• Can you ask (suggest the name of the expert)? I’m sure they’d be happy to help you.
• Sorry but I’m working on a priority project and need to focus on this for the next few (days/weeks/months).

Set expectations:
Make sure it is clear that you are an Executive Assistant or an assistant to this and that client, and not a general office assistant – which means that you are not there to serve them with work that they are paid to do by themselves. You answer to one person and are there to assist this person strategically. If you spend your time, shuffling between your immediate task and trying to help others finish theirs, you are not maximizing valuable time helping your boss or client become more successful. You are also doing your colleagues a disservice by not letting them learn new skills on their own. Your refusal to do their work is a teaching opportunity, not a selfish move.

Seek a meeting with your executive, boss or client:
Sometimes we are too careful to come across as snarky – and we’re careful about our image at the office. Nobody wants to be portrayed as the bad guy. If you can’t confront your colleagues or have a hard time saying no, you can enlist the help of your executive, boss, or client. Explain that your colleagues or that the team is going to you as a resource person for their individual projects and task and that “helping them out” is taking a lot of your time that would have otherwise been spent working on your priority projects. Check with your boss if they agreed that this is an okay practice. In most cases, your boss would have no idea that this is happening – this will give you more leverage to push back. If a colleague gets pushy, you can refer them back to your boss.

It’s time to set clear boundaries so that you get to do what you love and not live your life pleasing others. What is your go-to pushback line? Share them with us in the comments. Stay humble, hustle hard.

Written by Jaie O. The Help