Maria's Musings

Time Management!!!

Time's such a funny thing, isn't it?

I don't mean funny as in ha! ha!, I mean as in funny=strange.

Why does everything seem to take longer than one thinks it's going to take?
And why does every job with a deadline have to have an extension to the deadline OR we pat ourselves on the back that we've finished JUST IN TIME?

And if those two things hold true (which seems to be the case) how can it be true that as humans we tend to overestimate what we can achieve in one day and yet UNDERESTIMATE what we can achieve in one year?  That's a saying I heard that certainly seems to hold true for me - how about you?

I've just finished building a website for a partnership in which I'm involved (Gregory Green's Ceramics Painting Studio). I breathed a sigh of relief when it was done because I'd estimated it to take half a day and it's taken three times as long!  I guess I just didn't think through all that had to be done when I made my guess at the timeline.

My New Website is Live!

Phew! After thinking about it for ages and then talking about it for another ages and then working on it for what felt like ages, my revamped website is FINALLY LIVE as of this afternoon.

I realised that my old one had got a bit muddled, having grown piecemeal and I was getting some unkind comments from certain people who shall remain nameless (right?).

So this one's divided into three separate parts, each of which it like a mini-site for the three main things I do within the field of presenting. When people visit the home page, they get to choose their area of interest so they don't end up having to wade through what's not applicable to them.  My three areas are: 

1. Sales Presenting for Client Products;
2. Giving Talks on How to Present Well;
3. Training and Coaching Others to Present.

My computer equipment was so overwhelmed that the moment I'd uploaded all the files, everything disconnected itself and stopped working for a few hours.  I guess it was all as relieved as I was...

Wonderful Ask Database

So I mentioned in an earlier posting that I've set up a campaign on the terrific Ask Database to find out what people most want to learn about presenting and public speaking so I can gear my training and writing toward what people want.  This is, I believe, preferable to how some companies run their businesses.  I'm sure many of them have taken the lyrics in The Jam's song, "Going Underground" quite literally, i.e. "the public wants what the public gets".

To make it worthwhile, and as a thank-you to my newsletter subscribers dedicating their valuable time to answer this question for me, I've offered a free future teleclass attendance.  In order to get the teleclass, they need to remember to leave their email address along with the question.

You Wouldn't Think So!

Well my first post to my brand new blog was going to be a really upbeat affair but it's turned into the story of a bit of a sad tale instead.

I spent yesterday afternoon creating and sending out an email to my entire subscriber list at Ladders of Success, where my subscribers can sign up to receive free Presentations and Public Speaking tips and get a free presentations tips e-booklet for their trouble.  I wanted to give everyone the link for the e-booklet in case they'd had any difficulty downloading it previously.

I'd also set up a system through my Ask Database so I could offer my subscribers a free presentations teleclass in exchange for them helping me with a survey by answering a simple question.  Sounds simple so far, right?