Katherine Davison

When we are children we go to school and learn masses of things every day.  A lot of children find ways to take all the information in quickly.  When we start working we learn new things less and less.  Some jobs require very little learning, so we forget how to learn as we did as children.

If you have forgotten to learn, this does not mean that you cannot learn, it just means you might have to try out different ways of learning before you find the right one for you.  Don’t let anyone let you that you must do something, such as you have to down everything that is said or that you want to learn, over and over until you remember it.

Some people find the following help them:

• Participating, doing an activity, game, exercise etc
• Reading documents, manuals, books, instructions…
• Visualising
• Discussing with others
• Writing notes
• Steps to follow or plan
• Creating a phrase or song, like Every good boy deserves fudge (for the bars on the treble clef)
• Listening to music while learning

If you need to be around other people to learn, say discussing a topic, then you are interpersonal. If you can’t learn with people around, you prefer to learn with a self guided method such as reading a text book they you are intrapersonal.

The key is to find the right method for you. Try one method then see if it works, if not try another until you find the method of learning that works. Start at an appropriate level, when learning something new, are you going to start with advanced topics or start at the beginning?

Most people have heard of WordPress but are not sure what it is exactly or that there are 2 types, WordPress.com and WordPress.org.  Each has its uses but you have to know which one is right for you.

WordPress.com is the site that you can create blogs.  The blog you create is hosted by WordPress.com and you do not get your own website name for example my WordPress.com is http://kmdavison.WordPress.com it is great for people who would like a blog but not a website. If you are travelling this is a great site to post a travel log that family and friends can read.

WordPress.org is the location of the downloadable software.  Instead of WordPress hosting your blog, you can have a domain name of your choice and install it on your own webhost.  Then you can install whatever template that you would like and install any plugins to extend the site.  An example of a WordPress site is my own site http://www.KatherineDavison.co.uk and another is http://www.RedBirdCoaching.co.uk .

The basic software is a blog site with pages that can be added, but plugins make this a full Content Management System.  There are thousands of them available, some you have to pay for but most are free.  From Search Engine Optimization to e-commerce they allow you to expand and add the features that you need.  As there are so many you can test each one until you find the right one.

With WordPress.com you can have a personal blog for no cost and with WordPress.org you can create a business website for little cost.

Do you send out letters and emails to groups of contacts without personalising them?  What do you when you receive generic letters? Bin them?  Make your contacts feel special by using Mail Merge.

There are quite a few things you can do to make this a painless process. If your contacts are in Microsoft Outlook you can use the fields you never use to add custom data.  If you never use the assistant field in the contact card, why not use that for a personalised sentence?  If you do this for each contact then they will each have a truly personal document.

There are 2 ways to mail merge within Microsoft Word, you can use the mail merge wizard or the mail merge toolbar (for 2003 or the Ribbon for 2007). If you use mail merge often the toolbar is probably the quickest way because you would be familiar with the features and fields you need.

If you don’t use mail merge often then this can be confusing, this is why the mail merge wizard was created.  It is a step by step merge process that is in a task pane at the left of the window.  The top of the task pane will tell you what step you are on, and the bottom has back and forward links to move you through the steps. Each step has instructions and is easy to follow.

By following the mail merge wizard you can do mail merge occasionally but quicker then if you had to remember what steps you had to do using the toolbar. The mail merge can merge to new word documents but can also merge to emails, so the next time you have a mass email to send out, it is an option that will make your customers feel that you have only send the email to them.

click here for a cheat sheet for using the Mail Merge wizard, a step by step guide.

Do you need to decide on price increases, how much to charge, profit analysis? Normally when you set up a spreadsheet you can have one value per cell.  If that cell has several calculations that use it, when it is changed the entire spreadsheet will update.

If you are playing around with the value to see how it affects all other cells, it would be useful if you could save several values for one cell, then select which one to view.  When you have compiled several values that you would like to keep, being able to create a report would be extremely useful.

There is a feature, it is called scenarios.  You can save several values for several cells. Each set of values has a name that you can use to remind yourself what they are.  For example if you have a spreadsheet that is sales analysis with current sales, to get the projections there is  a cell for increase which will calculate to increase current sales to give the projected sales figures.  Something like this:



If you want to see how the projected value changes as you change the percent, you could just change the figure in cell E2.  But that will not save the values and you may not remember what you have done.  Scenarios allow you to save several values and give them all name with note in a comment field.  When you want to view the value, you show the scenario manager, select the saved scenario and click on the button show.

There is also a report feature that will allow you to see all the variations in one chart.  This is extremely useful when showing other people all the possibilities.  When you add or delete more scenarios you can create a new summary report. This tool can save time and give professional results with very little effort.

A cheat sheet is available for download at http://www.katherinedavison.co.uk/products-page/microsoft-excel-2003/excel-2003-scenarios-cheat-sheet/ for £2.00.

There are quite a few date functions within Microsoft Excel.  The one I am looking at today is Date. This function was not my favourite when I was starting out in Excel.  In fact I remember dismissing it out of hand. Another trainer, think it was Dino Collins, said to give it another chance that it could be really helpful.  Thanks to Dino, I did and yes I do find it useful.

Why? The function itself is quite spread out:

Date ( year , month, day )

I think the thing that turned me off was the fact that I could not just input the current date or a cell reference with a date in and it would magically do it’s thing. No, you have to extract each part of the date. So if the date you were using was 1 January 2010 then the function would look like this:

Date ( 2010 , 1, 1 )

Not great if 1 January 2010 is in cell C4 and you have a list of over 100 to work with. This is where nesting functions within functions is useful, and 3 small functions are going to help.

Year ( date )
Month ( date )
Day ( date )

Instead of typing in an actual date you can use a cell reference, our C4 we were talking about earlier. Year (C4) would return 2010, so by imbedding (or nesting) that function within the Date function we get:

Date ( Year(C4) , Month(C4) , Day(C4) )

All this will return is the date in C4, so why use Date?  For calculating.  I can add 1 month to get a new date,because if I were to add 30 or even 31 days to the date, that would not always give me the same date next month.

Date ( Year(C4) , Month(C4) + 1 , Day(C4) )

This will give me the same date one month in the future.  I have also used this within conditional formating to format cells at a particular time, not just using the above calculation but comparing it to Today()

Date ( Year(C4) , Month(C4) + 1 , Day(C4) ) > Today()

or vise versa depending on what I want formatted. This funtion can be very powerful, even if (like me) you took one look and thought it was not.

Newsletters are great tools to get information to customers and potential customers.  They allow you to provide added value by giving information that is useful.

I unsubscribe or delete newsletters that have no value to me, if I am sent something that is all about selling to me, I don’t want to know.  If I am sent something that has some useful information and some information about products and services, I don’t mind.  As long as I find the information part useful I will read them.

If you have a newsletter, what does it contain?  Is it all about providing useful information or about your products and services.  Length is important, is it a book or a quick read?

If I open a newsletter and it is long with articles that will take me more then a minute to read, I delete.  Time is precious and if I am spending time reading a newsletter, I can’t be doing something else.  Short and to the point.  If I can read the whole thing in a minute, I am very happy and will read it.

Another consideration is, is it easy to read? What colour is the font, is the font its self clear or too curly or fancy to read easily.  Font colour is not something that most people consider.  I have several friends who are colour blind.  That means they do not see certain colours.  One person I know can’t see red.  She sees grey instead.  She knows someone who can’t see both red and green, kind of makes driving hard (which is why standard traffic lights are a good thing).  this means that if you use a grey background with a coloured heading may not be easy to read for everyone depending on what that colour is.  So if I had a medium grey background with bright red heading text, that would be grey on grey for some.

Using PowerPoint animation schemes can save you so much time when you are creating a presentation. Lets start with what animation is. It is the movement of text and objects during the presentation there is also the animation of moving between slides but I will leave that for another day.

There are a couple of ways to animate the text. Custom animation and animation schemes. With custom animation you need to select the text and decide which animation you would like, depending on the version of PowerPoint this can have a few choices (like in Microsoft PowerPoint 97) or 4 actions with many choices for each as in Microsoft PowerPoint 2003 and higher. animation schemes however have all the settings saved already so all you have to do is apply them.

In older versions of PowerPoint there was an animation toolbar that has schemes such as typewriter complete with the sound of a typewriter as the letters came in. By the time version 2003 came out they had changed to a task pane (usually down the right side) and had more professional choices.

There are groupings of subtle, moderate, and exciting. Don’t let the heading exciting put you off, there are a couple of really professional looking animations in there. Neutron however is not one of them, it is wild and not appropriate for most corporate presentations. The scheme is applied to all text that uses placeholder, ie the text boxes that are already on the slide when it is inserted.

There is also a button to apply to all slides, this is best done once all slides have been added. Then going through the slide show will let you see if the presentation animated as it needs to. If you have the odd object or picture that needs to have animation added they can have custom animation applied.

Katherine

The world seems to have become closer in the past 20 years. my parents emigrated to Canada 40 years ago, growing up we didn’t have much contact with the family. Christmas cards and the rare phone call. not everyone had a phone here in the UK, whereas in Canada everyone I knew had one.

Once when we didn’t receive a card from a relative we told them the pony express had been hijacked. They were not sure how we lived in the wilds of Calgary. By the time I move over here the internet was starting and email was available for anyone. I didn’t have to call home, a quick email would work.

Then came other internet communications, instant messaging, voice calls, video calls. The weekly video call with skype makes you feel close. The only thing that makes you realise the world is a large place is time.

I have a webex with New York, have to think about the logistics of when we are both available. When I email, they acne reply any time. This morning I emailed so it is there when they get into the office, they send me emails after I’ve eaten dinner. The webex is different. We have a few overlapping hours before it is cutting into my evening.

New York to London is not that bad, it makes you think about the logistics of web conferences with people further afield. Japan and London must be hard, stay up late or get up early?

It makes you think where we are going to be in 10 years. Will most people work in offices, or use an avatar? Will video conferences create a virtual meeting room where our video will project to a position, or use the avatars with voice only.

What an adventure.

Sitting in an office, working for someone else, and waiting for payday.  Might think that it is a good idea to give it up and work for yourself.  The thing is, the grass can be greener, but it might not be.

As a freelancer, you have to find work so you can pay your bills, if you don’t work, you don’t get paid.

This is great if you can get enough clients, start with one, they tell someone etcetera.

There are other ways to get clients, working through agencies, employment and agencies who specialise in your type of job. If you work through someone else then you may not be able to set your own rates, or even tell the client that you have your own business.

When you work for a company you can have an off day and you still have a job, but when you are freelancing you mess up the job and you probably will not work for them again. Sick days, holidays, all paid for when you work for someone else, you do not get paid for them when freelance, you don’t work, you don’t get paid (don’t think I can say that one enough).

Setting or accepting a daily rate is another issue. Think I will talk about that one later.

I am an old administration clerk, by old I mean more actual age then mental age.  I became a clerk before computers were common.  The typewriter was a large part of my desk.  It makes you appreciate paperwork on the computer.

Anyone remember carbon paper, triplicate has a whole new meaning.  When I was little my mom used to bring home old waste paper and carbon paper and I would play with it, it was so much fun.  When I worked in an office with carbon paper it was not so much fun.  Typing up large documents was even worse.  If you had a table of contents you were in for a hard time.  I used to do those last, type them up and pray that there were no more changes to the document.  If there were, you might be able to retype one page, but if text was added, you would have to retype from that page forward.

Computers have made our lives so much easier, but I still see people who use Wordprocessors as if they are typewriters.  Typing a document then adding a table of contents manually, if they change the document then they have to go through the table of contents and make changes.  I learnt a long time ago that sometime change is a good thing,  if you are using a tool you might as well learn how to use the features, a little time spent now could save you a lot of time in the long run.

When I write long manuals I have several table of contents within, one at the beginning for the whole manual and then at the beginning of each chapter a short list of all the topics within that chapter.  Both can be update by the computer, all I have to do is right mouse click on the table of contents and select update field, and the table of contents will check all the text with the document to see if it has moved and if it has update the page number.

Too easy.  Saves me hours of work!

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