Brown bag recap: Prevent Online Communication Overload

Yesterday NPower hosted another free brown bag workshop. The topic was Preventing Online Communication Overload. The tips and tricks covered were not necessarily revolutionary. Rather, they were things we need to regularly remind ourselves of in order to keep from being overwhelmed by email, social media, and even our smartphones.

NPower’s Ash Shepherd covered strategies to set priorities, remain focused, and, ultimately, be more efficient and effective in our work. And, since it was an NPower training, we naturally shared some great technology tools that can help you to organize and manage information. As always, the slide deck and resources from the presentation are posted in the knowledge center on our website.

I encourage you to check them out and select just one strategy to implement and see if it helps you stay focused and avoid distraction. Starting next week, I will be utilizing the tip to try using a pen and paper. For next week's writing projects, I will be kicking it old school and actually writing instead of typing. I hope this strategy will enable me to bring a new level of focus to my writing and avoid being taken out of “the zone” by incoming email and the desire to check Facebook.

If you couldn’t make it to the brown bag, we’ll be offering an extended version of this presentation as a low-cost webinar on December 15. The final free brown bag of 2011 will be Pre-Planning a Website Project, and takes place on December 8. Bring your lunch and we’ll provide the coffee and dessert. We’ll be continuing to offer free brown bags throughout 2012 with lots of interesting new topics, so check out our online training calendar for more info.

- Mandi Moshay