When you think you know it all …

… think again!  When you use an application daily you do tend to think you know pretty well everything there is to know.  As a writer I use Word every day and understand many of its tools like style sheets and bullets, so I think I am pretty good; certainly lots of my clients, colleagues and friends are quite impressed.  Then I saw an online tip I didn’t know about – and it was really, really useful.

OK there are one or two things I don’t know – maybe.  Then I went to a networking event and an IT trainer was doing a quick tips session – and I learned some more things I didn’t know that I didn’t know. OK maybe I’m not as smart as I thought I was.

• If you use online tools like Hootsuite and you are uploading posts for social media it can be tedious counting the characters to ensure you don’t exceed the limit – there’s a formula that will tell you that.
• If you want to change all the dates in a column – there’s a formula for that too.
• If you want to create running balances – there’s a formula for that as well.

If you spend lots of time scrolling up and down your My Documents or Dropbox folder to find the one that begins with ‘S’ – there are ways to put the ones you use the most at the top of the list.  There are so many seemingly simple things that you could do in seconds instead of minutes – if only you knew it was possible.  The trouble is that we don’t know what we don’t know.

So what is the moral of this tale?

Even if you know what you need to learn, it’s worth talking to your IT trainer with a wish list of what would make life easier if only there was a way to do it.

• What irritates you?
• What do you find yourself spending time on that is boring and time-consuming?
• How long do you spend wandering about in menus and sub-menus finding things you know are there, but you can’t remember exactly where?

Imagine what it would be like if you could tap a couple of keys and all this tedious laborious stuff was done!  How much better would you feel?  How much more productive would you be?  How many things would get done that currently get ‘parked’ because they are ‘hard work’?

• Find out how to update your email signatures so all the links and images work.
• Find out how to use template documents – so you’re not simply typing over the last version, and maybe forgetting to save it with a new name.
• Create professional, consistent documents so everything that you send out represents you as a class act.

As a reputation marketer I really recommend getting someone to make sure you are as professional and productive as possible – and watch your reputation soar.

Today’s blog is brought to you by Lesley Morrisey – otherwise known as Lesley Writer you can find her website here.