nafa and ooo

My two good friends 'nafa' and 'ooo'.

Being productive means paying careful attention to your time and where and how it gets used.  As part of my workflow and productivity I have two good friends 'nafa' and 'ooo', acronyms I’ll introduce you to shortly.

One thing about time is that you can't control it, you can't make it go faster or slower or wind it back. You can only control how you spend it; in some ways it's like currency except each day you're given a fresh supply to spend how you see fit.

Leveraging time and leveraging resources.

Most people can't work as an island in business, you need a team to support you.  Part of your team might be the professional services that support your business such as your accountant, solicitor and business advisors.  Other members of your team are your staff, of course, and the third level may be the people you outsource to, such as your graphics designer, web developer, copywriter and more.  Some services should outsourced or, if you have the time and expertise, you may choose to do them yourself.

The new breed of outsourced services now include people you have never actually met but trust though reviews, escrow services and 'star' ratings.  They are services like Fiverr, Odesk, Elance, Freelancer, Virtual Assistants and many many more.

Even if you're a small business or solopreneur you rarely work in isolation, you really can have quite a team behind you to help your business function.  Scheduling your time and the ability to manage your 'team' and their output, plus managing your personal time and still leaving time to earn an income is very important.

Introducing ‘nafa’ and ‘ooo’.

I have two good friends ‘nafa’ and ‘ooo’ who I work with every day when I need to manage my time, work with a team or schedule appointments with clients.

They are nafa (not available for appointments) and ooo (out of office), they help my planning and let my team know through my shared schedule when I'm available, in the office but not available or just away from the office.  They have become even more important to me wIth the avalanche of scheduling tools and plugins such as Scheduleonce, Timetrade and Bookeo.

Identifying your available time for clients is critical for keeping up service levels, as is putting time aside for working through tasks and projects.

So why don't you just use 'busy'?

I've never liked using the term 'busy' from the old Microsoft Outlook days.  I didn't think it was enough of a description when working with my VA's of the past and staff members.  ‘nafa’ and ‘ooo’ are better friends and tell a better story.

‘nafa’ and ‘ooo’ make my daily planning easier and support good time management practices for me and my extended team.  I encourage you to adopt and work with my friends ‘nafa’ and ‘ooo’ as well.  Use them to make better use of your time.

The common terms I use:

• nafa - not available for appointments.
  
• ooo - out of office.
  
• Travel - allowing adequate travelling time between appointments and meetings.
  

Enjoy productive days ahead.

Leave a comment, I would love to hear your thoughts and what ‘friends’ you use to make your day more productive.

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