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Can YOU Differentiate Between IMPORTANT and URGENT tasks?

Posted on: April 2nd, 2013 by Deborah Plouffe No Comments

Here ‘s another FIVE MINUTE FIX that we are sharing tonight on Tuesday Night with Neworld. In fewer than FIVE minutes, you could…review your calendar and/or TO-DO list with the objective of differentiating between tasks that are IMPORTANT as opposed to URGENT.

SO, why is it so important to take the time to differentiate between the types of tasks on your to-do list?

Well, one thing that helps to define effective people is by the amount of time they spend working on important as opposed to urgent tasks.

It’s VERY easy to get caught up and be busy being busy. It’s not that you haven’t DONE anything…after all, you checked your emails and tidied your desk and returned your calls and checked your social media sites. Those are all arguably urgent things, but are they really important?

Here is our version of a diagram that’s been popularized by Stephen Covey and many other experts. It’s a quadrant that shows how important, non-important and urgent and non-urgent tasks intersect and I’ve added a list that that gives you an idea of what kinds of tasks fit into each category. It is worth it to research to learn a bit more about this!

When it comes to YOUR to-do list, here are a few tips on how to categorize them…

FIRST…set THREE tasks from the category where important an urgent intersect for the day or week, or whatever your time frame is.

HOW do you do that?
=determine how much value the task has
=think of the long term benefits…is it more important to check your inbox, or to write that article?
=do it first…it avoids distraction that comes from all the little fires that come up during the day that need putting out =have a vision of what you need to do…how does it feel to accomplish it? Does it move you toward your goals?

The natural result is that you become more effective and develop better habits.

Just a quick word about those URGENT tasks…they are like the squeaky wheel and they demand your attention. How do you tell which ones they are?
Sometimes they are VERY hard to distinguish. Try these little tests:

1-Ask yourself, “What are the benefits?” the better the benefits, the more important the task

2-Ask, “What am I trying to accomplish?” How does it fit into your goals?

3-Ask “What are the consequences if I don’t do it? Are they serious? If so, might be important (book title for Judith…Procrastinator’s Guide to the Galaxy)

4-Ask “What is the pay-off?” What is the ROI for the time spent?

5-Does it link to my Mission and Vision?

You will be surprised and amazed how mastering this exercise will really add to your productivity!

An Easter PRINT ME Puzzle…

Posted on: March 29th, 2013 by Deborah Plouffe No Comments

CLICK HERE to access this month’s PRINT ME Puzzle!

Here’s our EASTER Word Search puzzle!

Print Me Puzzle – Adverbs!

Posted on: December 7th, 2012 by Deborah Plouffe No Comments

CLICK HERE to access this month’s PRINT ME Word Search…print and share with your family and friends!

Oh, those pesky adverbs…they don’t always end in “LY” you know! Think about that while you search these out!

What’s New? Our Five Minute Fixes eBook is Set to Launch!

Posted on: November 29th, 2012 by Deborah Plouffe No Comments

Our Five Minute Fixes eBook has a cover! It’s set to launch before the end of 2012 and we are SO excited to share this with you.

We are also donating a portion of ALL the proceeds earned to support World Literacy Canada.

CLICK HERE to read more!

What Folks Have to Say…About Rewriter.ca

Posted on: October 31st, 2012 by Deborah Plouffe No Comments

As published in the October 2012 issue of Timed Write…

“I was very pleased when I read the “about us” page that Deborah Plouffe, at Rewriter.ca, created for our website at Huron Fuel Injection. With the background information that she was given, she blended the history of the company nicely with the steps that brought us to where we are today, and very professionally summarized what we do.

I would highly recommend the quality workmanship of Deborah Plouffe at Rewriter.ca.”

- Pat De Jong, HFI Ltd

Weekly eZine Source…Don’t Let Your Participle Dangle!

Posted on: August 1st, 2012 by Deborah Plouffe No Comments

Why should YOU publish an email newsletter? eZines are one of the most popular and effective tools that we can use to communicate with our prospects and customers. You know a lot about your industry AND your business that your audience will find interesting.

Through our Weekly eZine Source and blog series, we’ll cover every aspect of formulating your e-newsletter, from design to content to marketing. We’ll help you to transform your subscribers into an enthusiastic audience who will look forward to each issue and gladly share it with their friends and associates.

DON’T leave your participle dangling!

Here is a REALLY common error, which is known by the delightful name of the dangling participle (or dangling modifier). We see this all of the time…and it can be pretty tricky to detect and is easily overlooked. It is really a silent killer, though! It not only messes with the flow of your writing; it can also make your message difficult to understand.

These errors can be so silly that I’ve built several Gaffes du Jour around them! A participle looks like the form of a verb, but it’s not a verb at all; it’s really an adjective, often ending in “ing,” “en,” or “ed.”

Here is an example:

…a new nation…dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now, let’s look at a few examples of participles that are most definitely “dangling.”

Soaring majestically across the sky, we watched the bald eagles for hours. (your arms must be tired!)

After rotting in the root cellar for weeks, my sister returned with some apples.(Yuck…a decomposing sister!)

Sizzling on the barbecue, I wanted to taste the hot dogs.(sounds like you’re hotter than the dogs!)

Here’s the problem. Your readers (and grammarians) automatically expect that the opening phrase should always modify what immediately follows. So, the participle phrase MUST describe the noun that immediately follows it. If it doesn’t, then you’ve left your participle dangling.

Let’s look at how to correct the problem. The easiest, and usually best, way to get around this is to turn the sentence around to from a simple sentence with a subject, verb and object. Look at how we’ve turned these around.

For hours, we watched the bald eagles soar majestically across the sky.

My sister brought us some apples that had rotted for weeks in the root cellar.

I wanted to taste the hot dogs that were sizzling on the barbecue.

Remember; don’t trust your grammar checker to detect these, as they can be very easily overlook them. The more that you keep the concept of subject/modifier agreement in mind, the more easily you’ll be able to spot these errors and remove them from your own writing.

Rewriter.ca Recommends…

Posted on: April 10th, 2012 by Deborah Plouffe No Comments

Cathy Mendler from A New Leaf Organizers.

We really enjoy working with her as a client and associate and we salute her new website, products and no-cost offerings.

Deb’s Pick – A New Feature to our Timed Write Newsletter

Posted on: April 7th, 2012 by Deborah Plouffe No Comments

Here’s a mini-review and recommendation for one of my favourite books:

The Success Principles: How to Get from Where

You Are to Where You Want to Be

by Jack Canfield

I’ve always been an admirer of Jack Canfield, and, in my humble opinion, this is one of his very best books! Its 64 (!) chapters are filled with business advice and moral principles that can help anyone, regardless of their current circumstances. You can open the book to any chapter and find an inspirational thought and a lovely snippet of wisdom.

I have only one criticism for this book—that is wasn’t published sooner so that I could have read it twenty years ago!

Quick Quotes

Posted on: April 3rd, 2012 by Deborah Plouffe No Comments

(As published in the March 2012 Rewriter.ca Timed Write Newsletter)

This is a new section where we turn to our readers for one of their favourite quotes. This month we’re featuring Dawn Fletcher, who publishes the QUOTE OF THE DAY email program for NEWORLD COACHING. Here’s one of her favourites:

“Quite often we change jobs, friends and spouses instead of ourselves.”
-Akbarali H. Jehta

If you’d like to see YOUR quote included in this section next month, send us an email!

Weekly eZine Source-Strategy #18

Posted on: March 7th, 2012 by Deborah Plouffe No Comments

Why should YOU publish an email newsletter? eZines are one of the most popular and effective tools that we can use to communicate with our prospects and customers. You know a lot about your industry AND your business that your audience will find interesting.

Let’s look at Strategy #18.

“How-to” articles are one of the most commonly accessed resources online AND the most shared. The search engines love them! Like the press release ideas that we talked about a few weeks back, they are VERY easy to repurpose all over again to many aspects of your marketing.

You might think that people aren’t really interested in learning how to do anything else. We’re busy enough already, after all! However, those crazy, busy lives that we lead are exactly the reason that we seek out those “tips, tricks and methods” articles…to make things easier for ourselves.

Instead of taking you through a step-by-step process of how to write a “How-to” article, (YOU are the expert in your own business, after all) we’ll single out the three most important tricks (one per week) to get your readers to stop and READ your article both in your newsletter AND later when you let it loose on the Internet.

Last week, we looked at headlines and coming up with titles that attract readers and entice them to keep reading…making sure that the title isn’t the LAST thing that they read!

This week, we’ll continue to talk about headlines again because they are SO important. Statistics tell us that about 80% of readers will slow down and read a title, but only 20% will go ahead and read the email or the article attached to it. THAT is how important this topic is.

Specifically, we’re going to talk a little bit about making your headlines more PERSONAL. Showing how YOU did something implies that it might be possible to others to do this too, but there is a specific way to do this…and NOT to do it!

The best way to illustrate this is through examples. Can you spot the difference in these headlines? The first one in each case is a perfectly good headline, but the second and more personal one is ultimately…just plain better.

HOW TO EARN 100k In Facebook vs. HOW I EARNED 100K In Facebook

HOW WE MEET OUR CUSTOMERS’ EXPECTATIONS vs.HOW WE EXCEED YOUR EXPECTATIONS

HOW TO WRITE KILLER COPY vs. HOW I LEARNED TO WRITE KILLER COPY

More than anything else, a good personal headline is a cue to get started. There’s no ambiguity, no hedging, no beating around the bush. You are conveying a direct message that will (hopefully) motivate your readers to learn something that will help them…and the cool thing is that FIRST they need to read your article!

So! There are a few ideas of how to use your titles to engage your readers even before they start to read! Next week, we’ll wrap it all up by showing you a whole bunch of ways to repurpose your newsletter articles into other areas of your marketing.