10 Time Management Tips That Work

Time. It’s all we have, yet we never have enough. Chances are good that, at some time in your life, you've taken a time management class, read about it in books, and tried to use an electronic or paper-based day planner to organize, prioritize and schedule your day. "Why, with this knowledge and these gadgets," you may ask, "do I still feel like I can't get everything done I need to?" 

The answer is simple. Everything you ever learned about managing time is a complete waste of time because it doesn't work. 

There are only three ways to spend time: thoughts, conversations and actions. Regardless of the type of business you own, your work will be composed of those three items.

Practice the following techniques to become the master of your own time:

1. Carry a schedule and record all your thoughts, conversations and activities for a week. This will help you understand how much you can get done during the course of a day and where your precious moments are going. You'll see how much time is actually spent producing results and how much time is wasted on unproductive thoughts, conversations and actions.

2. Any activity or conversation that's important to your success should have a time assigned to it. To-do lists get longer and longer to the point where they're unworkable. Appointment books work. Schedule appointments with yourself and create time blocks for high-priority thoughts, conversations, and actions. Schedule when they will begin and end. Have the discipline to keep these appointments.

3. Plan to spend at least 50 percent of your time engaged in the thoughts, activities and conversations that produce most of your results.

4. Schedule time for interruptions. Plan time to be pulled away from what you're doing. Take, for instance, the concept of having "office hours." Isn't "office hours" another way of saying "planned interruptions?"

5. Take the first 30 minutes of every day to plan your day. Don't start your day until you complete your time plan. The most important time of your day is the time you schedule to schedule time.

6. Take five minutes before every call and task to decide what result you want to attain. This will help you know what success looks like before you start. And it will also slow time down. Take five minutes after each call and activity to determine whether your desired result was achieved. If not, what was missing? How do you put what's missing in your next call or activity.

7. Put up a "Do not disturb" sign when you absolutely have to get work done.

8. Practice not answering the phone just because it's ringing and e-mails just because they show up. Disconnect instant messaging. Don't instantly give people your attention unless it's absolutely crucial in your business to offer an immediate human response. Instead, schedule a time to answer email and return phone calls.

9. Block out other distractions like Facebook and other forms of social media unless you use these tools to generate business.

10. Time. It’s all we have, yet we never have enough. Chances are good that, at some time in your life, you've taken a time management class, read about it in books, and tried to use an electronic or paper-based day planner to organize, prioritize and schedule your day. "Why, with this knowledge and these gadgets," you may ask, "do I still feel like I can't get everything done I need to?" The answer is simple. Everything you ever learned about managing time is a complete waste of time because it doesn't work. There are only three ways to spend time: thoughts, conversations and actions. Regardless of the type of business you own, your work will be composed of those three items.Remember that it's impossible to get everything done. Also remember that odds are good that 20 percent of your thoughts, conversations and activities produce 80 percent of your results.

As an entrepreneur, you may be frequently interrupted or pulled in different directions. While you cannot eliminate interruptions, you do get a say on how much time you will spend on them and how much time you will spend on the thoughts, conversations and actions that will lead you to success. 

With that said, please allow us to buy you some time by letting us handle timely and reliably all your Printing, Banners and Large Graphics projects so you never have to miss a deadline. View our website www.marketinkgroup.com or Call us at 877.990.1616

 source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/219553

The prettier side of PMS

Everybody knows what PMS is, right? Well, that is if you are thinking of the syndrome that many women experience every month with their cycle. But few people know the other meaning of PMS, one that professionals in the world of design and printing must deal with everyday, only this kind of PMS is pretty and fun. We are referring to Pantone, a system for matching colors used in specifying printing inks, hence the term PMS = Pantone Matching System. We hope you find this information useful to help you understand the colorful details of Pantone, what it is and how it works. We bet you next time you hear the term PMS, a happier and prettier image will come to mind.

What is Pantone?

Pantone is a standardized color matching system, utilizing the Pantone numbering system for identifying colors. By standardizing the colors, different manufacturers in different locations can all reference a Pantone numbered color, making sure colors match without direct contact with one another. The most commonly referenced colors are in the Pantone solids palette. The Pantone Solid palette consists of 1,114 colors, identified by three or four digit numbers, followed by a C, U, Or M suffix. For example, Pantone 199 Red can be identified as Pantone 199C (C= Coated Paper), Pantone 199U (U= Uncoated Paper) or Pantone 199M (M=Matte Paper).

History

Pantone developed the first color matching system in 1963, which consisted of a large number of small cardboard sheets, printed on one side with a series of related color swatches and then bound into a small "fan deck". This system was referred to as the Pantone Matching System, or the PMS system. It's goal was to allow designers to 'color match' specific colors when a design enters production. This system was widely adopted by graphic designers and reproduction and printing houses and is still used today to specify colors for a wide range of industries.

Other Pantone Palettes

Pantone also has a Process palette, which consists of more than 3,000 color variations digitally created with CMYK process printing. Process printing requires the use of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black ink.Work printed using CMYK is also referred to as 4 Color Process Printing. These guides are only suitable for four-color process printing, and are used to design color build using CMYK, in various combinations. The Pantone Color Bridge can be used to convert Solid Colors into CMYK percentages. Process guides can be found on the 4-Color Process and Color Bridge page.

Pantone also has a Textile palette, which consists of 1,925 Pantone for Fashion and Home colors, identified by two digits, followed by a hyphen, four digits, and then a suffix. They also have a name, as a secondary identifier.The Fashion and Home colors are used by fashion, textile, and apparel designers and manufacturers worldwide.

Pantone also has a Plastics palette, which consists of 735 transparent and 1,005 opaque plastic color chips. The plastics palette is used primarily by industrial designers and manufacturers worldwide to specify colors for molded and fabricated plastics. Finally, Pantone has the Goe Palette, which contains 2,058 chromatically-arranged solid colors, and should not be confused with the Pantone Solids Palette. This system is relatively new.

How Does Pantone Work?

The Pantone Solid Colors Palette, with over 1100 unique, numbered colors, was originally devised to help printers and designers specify and control colors for print projects. This is the most widely used Pantone palette, with colors sometimes referred to as 'PMS' (for Pantone Matching System) or 'spot colors', and is used in the graphics, print, and publishing, industries.

We, here at Marketink, live a very CMYK rich life, but we also love Pantone colors because they are all about personalization, just like us. Every print job is done catered to you, your needs and your deadlines. Browse www.marketinkgroup.com or Call 877.990.1616

Source:http://www.colorguides.net/pantone.html

14 Essential Tips for Meeting a Deadline

Regardless of your job title, meeting deadlines is crucial. If you don’t meet them your boss gets mad, the client gets mad, someone somewhere is unhappy.

Your reputation is pretty much the only thing you have to go on -- your bread and butter. And your reputation is generally based on two things: the quality of your work, and how well you meet deadlines.

Today, we'll focus on meeting deadlines. Sure, you can do great work, but if you don't turn your projects in on time, you won't get many repeat customers.

1. Care about deadlines. This is the first step, as many people are very lax about deadlines. You have to be very serious about meeting them, and make them a priority. And make breaking a deadline a cardinal sin in your book. Once you've done this step, the rest is just logistics.

2. Keep a list of projects & deadlines. If you care about deadlines, you'll write them down, and have one place that you check often to make sure you know what's due and when. I use a simple online list, but you could use paper. Which tool you use doesn't matter, as long as you use it.

3. Communicate a clear deadline. Be sure that you and the client are in agreement with a specific deadline, including time of day (and factor in time zone differences as well). If the deadline is fuzzy, you will have trouble meeting it. If the client doesn't give you a deadline, you need to ask for one.

4. Work in a cushion. It's wise to build in a cushion for your deadline. To get a clear idea of how long a project will take, break it down into smaller pieces (see below for more). If you aren't sure exactly how long each of those pieces takes, break them down into even smaller pieces. And for each piece, add a small cushion to your time estimate. Then add up the time estimates of all the pieces, and you'll have a cushion built in. This will allow for delays, and if you finish early, the client will be pleased.

5. Have a clear outcome. You and the client should both agree on a clearly defined outcome. Don't skip this step, or you could be sorry later. If you turn in a project that's not what the client wanted, you'll have to do extra work, meaning that you'll miss the deadline. If you're not absolutely clear what the outcome should look like, ask some questions of the client until you are clear.

6. Break down the project. This is standard advice for any project, of course, but that's because it works. Don't try to tackle an entire project. Tackle one step at a time. Again, you'll want to break it down into smaller steps, give a time estimate for each step. Each step should be small enough that it takes an hour or less, so it's not too intimidating.

7. Focus on the first step. Now that you've broken the project down into smaller steps, just focus on the first one. Don't worry about the rest for now. Give the first step your full attention, and get going. You'll feel satisfied when you complete it, and can check it off your list. Then focus on the next step.

8. Block off adequate time. When you're going to work on a step, be sure to have it blocked off on your day's schedule. If you're not blocking off time for your most important tasks, you're probably not getting the important stuff done. However else you work during the rest of the day, for your freelance projects, block off a good amount of time for each step, and treat it like a doctor's appointment -- you can't miss it.

9. Have a start and complete date for each step. When breaking down a project, give a start and complete date for each step, so you can get a good feel for the timeline of the project, and whether you're on schedule or behind. It also keeps you on track if you know when each step should be started and completed.

10. Communicate with each step. Once you've completed a step, send the completed step to your client if possible. Sure, it won't look like a completed project, but you can show that you're making progress, you keep yourself on track, and you can get feedback communicated from the client. Better to know early on that you're headed in the wrong direction than at the end of the project.

11. Don't overcommit. One of the biggest causes of missed deadline is that we commit to more than we can handle. Learn to say no if you cannot commit to finishing a project on time.

12. Learn from mistakes. If you bust a deadline, take a few minutes to analyze what went wrong and how you can avoid that in the future.

13. Stay up late. If you planned badly, or just procrastinated, and you're up against a tight deadline, do whatever it takes to meet it. That means staying up late and working long hours if possible.

14. Negotiate and meet a second deadline. If you absolutely cannot make deadline (you probably overcommitted), you should contact your client and negotiate a second deadline. It's much better to do this than to let the deadline go by without any communication. Whatever you do, be sure to meet this second deadline. Two missed deadlines in a row is bad news for your reputation.

Hey. Don’t beat yourself up. We all make mistakes. The whole point of life is to learn from our experiences. With 20+ years meeting tight printing deadlines, we have enough experience to help you stay on top of yours. Marketink is your go-to company for Faster and More Reliable Printing, Banners and Large Graphics. View our website www.marketinkgroup.com or Call 877.990.1616

Source: http://business.tutsplus.com/articles/14-essential-tips-for-meeting-a-deadline--fsw-240