Helen Mosher

Multimedia Storyteller and Digital Strategist

Helen

Information Overload

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An overflowing in-box is a sign that you’re not processing things into your organizational system efficiently.

(originally published at AdvisorToday.com, November 2006)

Whether you’re dealing with mail, email, voicemail, memos, forms, or any other physical or virtual “pile-able” materials, the best filing system in the world will not help you if you can’t get the information from that email, voicemail, etc., into those files.

So how do you get that information moving? Productivity consultant David Allen provides a comprehensive how-to in his best-selling book, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. He opens the book with the startling assertion that “it’s possible for a person to have an overwhelming number of things to do and still function productively with a clear head and a positive sense of relaxed control.”

That may sound too good to be true, but the key is using your in-box wisely. “If you want to go for the gold, what you need to do is get your in-box zeroed out every 24 to 48 hours—paper as well as electronic,” says Allen.

What does it all mean?
Information that comes into your in-box is staged until you can assign it meaning, Allen explains. “You have to consider what I call the mighty meaning of ‘might-mean,’” he says. “Everything you receive might be something useful, might be something funny, might be something cool, might be something you don’t need at all—but you can’t tell right away.”

Here are some tips to help you discover that meaning and get your in-box moving:

1. Set aside a time to go through your in-box. Remember, it’s a processing station, not a storage depot, so you should be clearing it out regularly. But emptying your in-box doesn’t require that you complete everything in it. Rather, your goal is to figure out what everything is and how you’re going to deal with it.

2. Handle it top to bottom. If you handle the top thing first, and diligently process each item until you get to the bottom, then you’ll have an empty in-box. Jumping around tends to make you want to put things back in your in-box, and that’s a no-no.

3. Ask the right questions. As you process your in-box, evaluate it using the following series of questions:

  • a. Is this something you need to keep or something you should throw away? If you can throw it away, do so immediately.
  • b. For things you need to keep, is it something you need to act on or information you need to store? If you’re going to store it, put it in the appropriate place immediately.
  • c. For things you need to act on, is it something you can do in less than two minutes or something that will take more time? If you can do it in two minutes, go ahead and do it. If you can’t, add it to your “to-do” list, or whatever system you have for reminding you of actions.

4. Know when to pile. Sometimes you need piles, notes Allen, so that you can visually connect with the problem or project you’re working on. But don’t let unprocessed piles stack up. If you have several stacks of things to deal with, process all of them with the same diligence.

5. Create a “tickler” file. If you have to submit a form by a certain date next year, where do you put the form? The tickler file! Use 12 monthly folders and 31 daily folders to create a perpetual filing system. You can arrange your longer-term tasks by filing them into these folders. Each morning, retrieve your action reminders so that you can complete everything on schedule. Every time you empty a daily or monthly folder, move it to the back of the bunch so it becomes “next month” or “next year.”

Keep it flowing
It takes practice and determination to manage your in-box, but once you master it, you won’t drop details. “Your in-box is really just a holding station,” says Allen, who also has a free e-newsletter packed with productivity tips available at his website, www.davidco.com. “As long as you’re going to see the bottom of it in a reasonable amount of time, you can throw anything in there and let your brain relax until you can get to it.”

Adventures in Nats fandom

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Last night I was honored to be invited to the Nats Clubhouse Social, a gathering of folks whose social media and blogging presence help the Nationals get more visibility. I’ve run a fan page for Jayson Werth on FB for 7 years, and was lamenting to a couple of people that I wasn’t sure what my next Nats social persona was going to be now that Jayson’s moved on. Fortunately, Nats pitcher Sean Doolittle was having none of that, and I got to joke around with him and his wife Eireann a bit. Proud to be a Nationals fan, and excited to be starting a new baseball project (to be announced!). In the meantime, I’m sure I’ll be blogging about baseball here a bit more now.

That time I gave a speech when I wasn’t yet in third grade

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People have often commented on how comfortable I am in speaking roles. Thing is, I have to know my material down pat.

What most people don’t know is that I gave my first speech when I was 8 years old.  I revisited this yesterday at Thanksgiving, spent with a friend. It turned out her dad had worked at the same place my dad had, though not at the same time.

In connecting these dots, I realized that one of the things that made me know what year my dad had left that organization was that it was the same year I had given my speech. In sharing this, I date myself. But it’s an important story. The speech I gave was about my dad.

You see, he has cerebral palsy, and that year he was working for the Commonwealth of Virginia in their office on developmental disabilities.  There wasn’t an ADA back in those days, and my dad faced a lot of discrimination. So it was no small thing to be a rising third-grader, standing up in front of a conference of 300 people convening to talk about disabilities and tell them that my dad was awesome.

We cheered with him when the ADA was passed but we still have a long way to go with regard to seeing people for who they are rather than what condition or disability they have.

My dad still is no different from any other dad. 

Save that Dance for Temple University Libraries Latest Archive

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PHILADELPHIA, MAY 23, 2002

GRANT HELPS LIBRARY RECORD DANCE HISTORY

If dance is poetry in motion, shouldn’t it be in a library?

It is now, thanks to the efforts of Mary Edsall, curator of the new Philadelphia Dance Collection at Temple (PDCAT), a collaborative effort of the University Libraries, the dance department at the Esther Boyer College of Music, and the local and regional dance community at large.

Established in 2001, PDCAT will document and preserve the history of Philadelphia dance and its contribution to the region’s culture.

“I spent two years working in the community, locating materials, talking with people and finding out if there was a need [for a dance collection], and there was,” said Edsall, a doctoral candidate in dance. “Our mission is preservation, documentation and artist education.”

The collection includes posters, playbills, programs, business records, sound recordings, press files, videotape and photographs. Dance itself is ephemeral, Edsall said, but through recordings and documentation, the collection allows people to study the history of dance through more than just the performance.

“It really runs the gamut. We might even want to get architectural and set designs; it’s interesting from a research point of view to see how people redesign spaces,” Edsall said. “Costume designs are works of art in themselves.

Edsall emphasized that PDCAT was going to be a very active archive. It is housed currently at Paley Library, as part of the University Libraries’ special collections department. Among the collections that have already been acquired are archives of Philadelphia Ballet, Philadanco, the Philadelphia Dance Alliance, the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, and Group Motion Dance Company.

“This is not a cellar-based collection that we found in someone’s basement and we’re just going to let gather dust,” said Edsall, formerly a curator of Harvard’s theater collection and a dance archivist at the Library of Congress. “With my experience, I have seen a lot of what works and doesn’t work. That’s invaluable to me as we’ve tried to build a collection here, so that we can create something that is unique for Philadelphia.”

Edsall’s devotion to Philadelphia dance comes from her background as an undergraduate at Stockton College in southern New Jersey. Despite being surrounded by teachers from New York (where she went to get her master’s degree, at Columbia). some of her fondest dance memories come from Philly. “I saw dance in Philadelphia all through the 1980s,” Edsall said. “I had an emotional connection with the city. Some of the first avant-garde I saw was here at the Painted Bride.”

One of Edsall’s first dance teachers at Stockton impressed upon her that there was a need to start collecting stories and records to document not only dance but also the lives of the dancers. That teacher later died of AIDS, she said. “We were losing the first generation of American modern dancers through natural causes, and then we were losing a whole separate tree ring to AIDS. That’s when I decided this is what I was going to do.”

Edsall holds a second master’s degree in library science from the University of Maryland, as well, which makes her the perfect curator of the library collection, according to University Librarian Maureen Pastine. “She has built quite a reputation in the field,” Pastine said. “Because of Mary’s expertise, she will be able to equip our staff to do the cataloging and eventual digitizing of visual archives, something very important in the world of dance.”

Edsall was likewise thrilled when Temple Libraries agreed to host PDCAT. “They didn’t only agree to host it, they were excited about it,” she said, “It belongs here.”

Temple is the natural home for the collection. The Esther Boyer College has one of only four doctoral dance programs in the country, and the University Libraries have experience dealing with Philadelphia-specific collections with its urban archives department. “This partnership is an exemplary model in which artists’ work becomes the basis for artistic production, research and community Pride,” said Luke Kahlich, dance department chair.

PDCAT was recently awarded a $30,000 grant from the Delmas Foundation and a $77,000 grant from Dance Advance, a program funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. These grants will help fund the curator position and facilitate the video documentation of several important local dancers. Other fundraising efforts are ongoing.

Edsall noted that the PDCAT would prove useful to dance students who wish to recreate or trace the history of particular ballets, for instance. Changes in choreography and style analysis are as much a part of dance research as is chronicling dance history.

“This collection belongs to everybody,” Edsall said. “This is a lifelong effort–as long as people dance, there will be the dance archive.”

Originally published May 23, 2002 in Temple Times. It was a commencement feature, running a bit longer than a normal Temple Times feature. Reprinted with permission.

 

Professional Development: Inbound Marketing

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I’ve been working on getting my marketing chops back up to snuff as part of my “summer homework” and when I realized how much was out there, I started gobbling it all up! My current role doesn’t do much in the way of digital marketing so I thought it important to get back up to speed in case opportunities cross my path. But the lovely thing is that these tests are confirming to me that while these processes may have technologically evolved a bit since the last time I did this kind of work, the fundamental principles of marketing and even many of the methodologies are still very much important. This is the first of several online certifications I’m currently working on with a goal of achieving fluency in Google, Facebook/Instagram, and Hubspot after a few years away.



Professor Laura Little Goes a Long Way to Bring Learning to Students

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LauraLittle.jpg

From Temple Times Archive, June 2004, Temple University
Republished May 23, 2017

Laura E. Little is not afraid to go to great lengths–or great distances–to get her message out to Temple University students. The James E. Beasley Professor of Law and 2004 Great Teacher Award recipient got word of her recognition while at Temple University Japan, and just before departing for a nine-day stint in China. She has also taught at Temple University Rome’s summer program. “Japan, China and Rome have all been part of my mid-life impulse to understand the international environment,” she said in a recent e-mail interview. “After 9/11, I resolved that I would try to learn more about international law and urge my children and students to become less insular.”

Little will be one of three Temple faculty members to receive the University’s prestigious Great Teacher Award on Thursday, April 8, during a Faculty Awards Convocation at Mitten Hall on Temple’s Main Campus.

Little graduated from Temple’s James E. Beasley School of Law with honors in 1985. After her graduation, she secured prestigious clerkships for a U.S. Court of Appeals judge and at the Supreme Court for the Honorable William H. Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States. During her studies at the University, she met her husband, Richard Barrett, who is an assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting transnational crime and an adjunct professor at Temple.

“Rich and I have shared teaching duties in all of these locations,” she said of her international experiences. “He and I actually shared a course [International Criminal Law] for two summers in Rome. He is here with me in Japan, and we are teaching our own courses. Our two children (ages 11 and 13 years) are with us, attending an international school and living with us in a tiny apartment.”

Despite the cramped quarters, she is enjoying her experiences in Asia. In Japan, she is teaching American J.D. students and Japanese lawyers who want to earn an American law degree and take the bar examination in the United States.

“Some of the Japanese lawyers are very well-established in their careers; I teach several CEOs and managing directors of information technology companies,” Little said. “I would describe nearly all my students here as self-starters, all of them having mustered the gumption to find themselves in an American law school classroom in Asia.

“In China, my husband and I are delivering lectures to various audiences, including judges, prosecutors, law students and Chinese officials,” she continued. “Most of our lectures are part of a rule of law initiative Temple Law has developed in connection with the United States State Department.”

Little is no stranger to recognition by her students and peers. She has won the George P. Williams Memorial Award for Excellence in Teaching three times, in 1993, 1997 and 2001. That four-year interval is “not a coincidence,” according to her nomination packet.

Once someone receives the award, which is given by each year’s graduating Law School class to the faculty member who “has made the most significant contribution to the[ir] Law School career,” she cannot win the award again for four years. “In short,” her nomination packet continues, “whenever Professor Little is eligible to receive the award, she wins.”

She also has received the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, and the Friel-Scanlon Prize for outstanding scholarship.

When Little is in front of a classroom, she is acutely aware of what it is like to be a student, she said. By putting herself in her students’ shoes, she is better able to convey to them what they need to understand difficult but important foundational concepts in her regular courses-Conflict of Laws, Federal Courts and Jurisdiction, Civil Procedure I (a required course for first-year law students) and Remedies.

“When I attack a problem or legal issue that I’m trying to teach for the first time, I am self-conscious about my own thought process and what my mind needs to do in order to understand the material,” said Little, adding that she used varying strategies for different learning styles. “I then try to reproduce that process in small increments as I plan my presentation of the problem or issue to the students.”

And one of the best parts of her job, she continued, is “standing in the classroom watching the light bulb go off for students as they first understand a difficult concept.”

Dozens of students, alumni and faculty members wrote in to support her nomination, and they uniformly praised Little’s ability to get these difficult concepts across.

“One of the traits that sets Professor Little apart as a master teacher is her enthusiasm and support when students seem to ‘get’ a concept,” wrote one student. “She genuinely rejoiced in students’ achievements and tried to assuage disappointments.”

“Professor Little takes classes fraught with abstract ideas and presents them in a clear, comprehensible way that empowers students with a knowledge of the class material,” wrote another student. “She brings an energy to these classes that invigorates otherwise dry subject matter-it is no wonder that students consistently fill her classes, even when those classes begin at 2:30 p.m. on a Friday afternoon.”

As a Temple Law alumna, Little received recognition from her colleagues both as a teacher and, in some cases, as a former student.

“I knew her as a student. I know her as a colleague,” wrote one fellow faculty member. “Knowing Laura in any capacity is a privilege . . . Laura is a model for what a university professor might be. She attains the standard of excellence we strive for.”

Little was modest about the recognition, as some of her colleagues and students predicted she would be. But she thanked everyone, and made special note of the influence of her colleague and former professor Robert Bartow in her teaching.

“The award is different from many because it is premised on the recommendations of students and colleagues,” she said. “I am honored to have gotten a vote of confidence from them.”

Helen Thompson
Associate Editor
Temple Times