Work Samples | Sue Darby, MOS

Archive for the ‘Work Samples’ Category

Working Smarter Not Harder. Word & Outlook’s Quick Parts

Thursday, January 20th, 2011

I got to thinking about how to “save” good snippets of language used in the e-mails I send and vaguely remembered a new feature that Word 2007 (earlier versions do NOT have this feature and I am not sure how it works in 2010 as I don’t work in it) has and went hunting for it in Outlook too. It’s called Quick Parts. How it works:

1. Write something really cool that you know you’ll use over and over again

2. Highlight it

3. Go to the Insert tab and look for the Quick Parts drop down

4. Add the item to the Gallery with a name of your choosing

5. Next time you need to tell someone the same thing such as “you are missing blah blah blah” you can simply insert the pre-written language that explains it in detail

No more wasting time typing it over and over again for common things! Thought this might help us work smarter not harder! Pass it on if you know of someone else it can help!

Battle Plan

Monday, January 3rd, 2011

At one point in my life I had come to a crossroads. One portion of my life was ending and another just starting. Overwhelmed by the number of tasks on my “Never ending to do list” I broke it out into a 10 page Battle Plan.

I had just started at Nine Star Education & Employment as a Career Development Mentor & Computer Instructor. My first morning I was updating my plan and my new boss walked past and became intrigued by what he saw on screen and asked me to do the morning workshop. That morning, not having any other pre-prepared materials 6 copies of my personal plan went to clients.

I spoke from the heart in my first speaking gig professionally. I outlined what I needed to accomplish and wanted to accomplish and what I had already done.

Over the coming months I would re-write it into what you see in the flash below for public consumption. Each month I updated what I had done and expand my presentation and after 2 years of Americorps I was able to cross off many items on it and “toot my horn” on how it worked. This inspired several clients who also wrote their own versions and came back to tell me that it did work.

While I no longer work for Nine Star I know for a fact that my Battle Plan is a regular workshop given by my former bosses and passed on to clients and others.

I have since moved on to creating even more specific Battle Plans for projects in my life. I have one for my websites & businesses, one for my children, one for buying a house (completed in 2010) and my personal one.

If you find that this idea is of use to you, wonderful. Please let me know as I love knowing that my ideas inspired others.