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Vol. 2 No. 11, November 2010 Copyright 2010 by Wolf J. Rinke

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1. HOW TO SAVE UP TO 16% ON CPEs
2. NUTRITION NEWS YOU CAN USE
3. AN INEXPENSIVE ONE-OF-A-KIND HOLIDAY GIFT
4. HOW TO MAKE YOUR EMAILS WORK FOR YOU INSTEAD OF AGAINST YOU
5. HEAR WOLF "HOWL"--I MEAN SPEAK
6. HUMOR BREAK
7. ABOUT THE EDITOR
8. PRIVACY STATEMENT AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION

INSIGHT BREAK
The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.
-Joseph Priestley

1. HOW TO SAVE UP TO 16% ON CPEs
To save up to 16% on all of our easy to use, high quality CPE products go to www.easyCPEcredits.com and use the coupon on the "home page."
Hurry-coupons expire 12/15/10.

BTW--you can now search CPEs by learning codes at our website. Just go to www.easyCPEcredits.com, type in the learning code you are looking for and the search engine will list all the courses that apply. It's just another way to make your life easier.

2. NUTRITION NEWS YOU CAN USE
MORE SLEEP MAY HELP CLIENTS LOSE MORE WEIGHT
Past studies have demonstrated that a lack of adequate sleep contributes to obesity. A new study assigned 10 healthy adults to sleep either 5.5 hours or 8.5 hours each night in conjunction with moderate caloric restriction and measured changes in weight and metabolism. After 5.5 hours of sleep, participants lost less body fat and more fat-free body mass, had less favorable changes in metabolic hormones and in substrate and energy utilization, and were hungrier than after 8.5 hours of sleep. The conclusion: Sleep restriction may interfere with your patients' ability to lose weight on calorie restricted diets.
ACTION STEPS:
Encourage clients and patients to get adequate rest (>8 hours/night) so that they can lose weight healthfully and maintain their weight permanently. For additional information read Making Weight Control Second Nature: Living Thin Naturally, by Susan Burke March, MS, RD, LD/N, CDE (C205, 26 CPEUs).
Source: A. V. Nedeltcheva, et al. "Insufficient Sleep Undermines Dietary Efforts to Reduce Adiposity," Ann Intern Med October 5, 2010 153:435-441; http://www.annals.org/content/153/7.toc, accessed 10/20/10.

3. AN INEXPENSIVE ONE-OF-A-KIND HOLIDAY GIFT
Click here.

4. HOW TO MAKE YOUR EMAILS WORK FOR YOU INSTEAD OF AGAINST YOU
By Wolf J. Rinke, PhD, RD, CSP

Emails, and other electronic correspondence such as texting, instant messaging, etc., have become for many of us the Achilles heel of productivity. And no wonder many of us get too many emails. (One expert estimated that the typical Internet user gets an average of 71.51 email messages per day.)
Even though emails seem to be very "urgent" it's important to remember that most are not very important and actually not at all urgent. (If it's really important that someone gets a hold of you, they will.) Given that you are very likely not being paid to do emails, but rather produce results, I would like to suggest the following ten productivity enhancing guidelines which will enable you to make email work for you, instead of against you.

Don't Check Email on Demand
Many clients I coach make it a habit to check email as it comes in. Don't do that! You don't need to see every piece of email the second it arrives. If you're using an email program that announces the arrival of new email, turn off the program's announcement features, such as making a sound or having a pop-up screen announce the arrival of email. Checking email on demand can seriously interfere with whatever other tasks you're trying to accomplish because you will likely read the email when you check it. (See #3 below.) Instead, set aside a particular time each day to review and answer your email. Schedule the hour or whatever time it takes you to answer the volume of email you get, and stick to that schedule as regularly as possible. Just this one strategy has the potential to dramatically increase your productivity.

Don't Answer Email at Your Most Productive Time of Day
For many our most productive time is the morning. If you start your work day by answering email, you will lose that time. Answering email isn't a task that calls for a great deal of creativity. So by ignoring emails until later in the day will help you make the most of your working day.

Don't Multi-Task
Most of us are overwhelmed by too much information (TMI). To address it we multi-task. Much of the multi-tasking involves monitoring or writing emails. I see it all the time. In some meetings I attend participants spend more attention to their PDAs and PCs than the person conducting the meeting. There is only one problem-multi-tasking does not work. (I know it sounds counter intuitive.) According to a study reported by Schwartz in the November 2007 Harvard Business Review, a temporary shift from one task to another, let's say answering an email or "twittering" while working on a project "increases the amount of time necessary to finish the primary task by as much as 25%" (p.68). In fact, interruptions which have increased exponentially in recent years are costly. They consume about 28% of the knowledge workers' day, which translates to 28 billion lost hours to companies in just the United States (http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/News/News-Analysis/The-high-cost-of-interruptions-14543.aspx). So get in the habit of working on one project at a time, which likely increase your productivity by up to 25%. (Multi-tasking does work if you can transform inactive time into productive time, such as checking emails while waiting for your car pool. For other productivity enhancing strategies read my Time Management: How to Stretch Your Time Rubber Band, http://www.wolfrinke.com/CEFILES/cepd.html#C198)

Do Emails No More Than Two Times Per Day
Related to #s 1 and 2 above I suggest you get in the habit of answering your emails no more than two times per day. Ideally once just before going to lunch and the other just before going home. That way you will be motivated to spend the least amount of time on this unimportant activity.

Let Your Email Program Manage Your Email As Much As Possible
Effective email management starts with setting up and using filters. If you're using an email program such as Outlook, you can configure email rules to send your spam directly to the trash can, or spam folder, meaning that you don't waste your time reading and deleting it.

Declare One Day a Week Email Free
I've made this suggestion to many of my clients with dramatic results. What it means is that on Fridays (most companies prefer Friday) you may not initiate or answer any emails, period!

Avoid Email Wars
While coaching a number of high tech managers I had to mediate an intractable disagreement between two of them. It all began when they started an email argument that resulted in about a dozen emails going back and forth on the same subject. With each email the intensity of the arguments escalated. And all of this happened … are you ready for this … while they were both on vacation. That incidence resulted in the IT department instituting a new email rule. The person who wants to initiate the fourth email on the same topic is responsible to pick up the phone instead. (For more on why this happens see Recognize the Limitations below.)

Always Ask: "Is There A Need For This Email?" Before Writing Anything
Writing emails is just too easy (compare it to writing a traditional letter and you'll see what I mean). So we write a lot of them, and forget that every time you are sending an email, you are imposing on someone's time and energy.

Avoid CCs and "Reply To All"
Only send a copy of your email to people who have a real need to know and who know what you want them to do with the information. Avoid sending CCs just to cover your "behind" (CYA). Similarly minimize the use of the "Reply to All" function. Only use it if you really need your message to be seen by each person who received the original message. I belong to several Dietary Practice Groups (DPGs) that suggest that inquires from their LISTSERVs (an automatic mailing list server) be answered using the "Reply to All" function. It resulted in totally overwhelming my in-box to the point that I unsubscribed to all of them except one. Always remember that sending an email is an imposition on someone else's time-act accordingly!

Recognize Email Limitations
Email, like any other mail, provides you only with one-way communication. All you have is words, and words alone doth not communication make! Words are often the least important. What really counts, especially if you are trying to persuade someone, is your body language, facial expressions and voice modulation. (For more help with this read The Power of Communication: How to Increase Your Personal and Professional Effectiveness http://www.wolfrinke.com/CEFILES/cepd.html#C197.) Hence even though email works well for information sharing, it should never be used for important stuff like negotiation or persuasion. For example, if you are negotiating for a raise, or if you are attempting to persuade a patient, go make a personal visit or at the absolute minimum pick up the phone.
There you have my top ten productivity enhancing guidelines which will make email work for you, instead of against you.
For further strategies read my new CPE program: Manage Electronic and Traditional Meetings and Correspondence More Effectively (C210, 10 CPEUs), from which this article was extracted, http://www.wolfrinke.com/CEFILES/cepd.html#C210.

5. HEAR WOLF "HOWL"--I MEAN SPEAK
Recommend me to the meeting planner of your upcoming state or local dietetic association and I will help make your next meeting a "howling success." As a way of giving back, I speak to ADA groups at significantly reduced rates.

6. HUMOR BREAK
A father had been teaching his three-year old daughter Kylie the Lord's Prayer for several evenings at bedtime. Each time she would carefully repeat the lines from the prayer, and although she didn't always get it right it made her Dad proud.
Finally after the fifth day she decided to go it alone. Her father listened intently as Kylie carefully enunciated each word, right up to the end of the prayer: "Lead us not into temptation," she prayed, "but deliver us from email. Amen."

7. ABOUT THE EDITOR
Dr. Wolf J. Rinke, RD, CSP is the president of Wolf Rinke Associates--an accredited provider of easy to use CPE home study programs for nutrition professionals since 1990 available at www.easyCPEcredits.com. He is also a highly effective management consultant and executive coach who specializes in building peak performance organizations, teams and individuals, and an author of numerous CPE home study courses, audio/video programs as well as several best selling management, leadership and self-development books including Make it a Winning Life--Success Strategies for Life, Love and Business. In addition he is an internationally recognized keynote speaker and seminar leader who delivers customized presentations that combine story telling, humor and motivation with specific "how to" action strategies that participants can apply immediately to improve their personal and professional lives. Preview a demo at www.WolfRinke.com or call 800-828-9653. If you have questions, or would like him to address a specific issue or topic please e-mail him at WolfRinke@aol.com.

8. PRIVACY STATEMENT AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION

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