Office Efficiency

All Certified Legal Nurse Consultants know I’m a fan of dual monitors. I can’t live without them and when I’m saddled with my laptop’s single monitor, say when I’m traveling or sitting in the back pew in church, I feel the pain. It’s funny. Once you go to dual monitors you never want a single monitor again. Just ask any of the staff members here at Vickie Milazzo Institute.

That being said, the more monitors you have, the more programs you open. The more programs you open, the more difficulty you have keeping track of what’s open. The more difficulty you have, well, you get the idea.

I’ve often wished for a way to install the handy Microsoft^® Windows^® Taskbar at the bottom or side (yes, you can move it to the side) on both my monitors. Recently I learned that the kind people at MediaChance heard my wish and made it come true! If you follow this link to MediaChance’s MultiMon download page, you too can get a free copy of their simple MultiMon, multiple taskbar program. Once downloaded and installed on all the dual-monitor-enabled computers you use in your legal nurse consulting business, it will imbed itself in your Windows start-up menu so every time you start your computer, MultiMon will start automatically with no fuss and no muss!

Once running, it will keep track of the files you have open on each monitor and display them just like the Windows taskbar. If you want to spring for $28, you can get the “Pro” version which is customizeable and does some neat tricks, but I think the free version is more than enough for most legal nurse consultants. In fact, this is one of the best freeware programs I’ve run across. MultiMon will reduce your Windows-related headaches and save you all that time you spend fishing around those cool dual monitors. Now my CLNC^® amigos, as Vickie says, you can get some real work done.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

As all Certified Legal Nurse Consultants know, I’ve written myriad tech tips that will save you valuable time for your legal nurse consulting business. Now I’m letting you in on more timesavers I regularly put to good use. For instance, if you want a little more screen depth when you’re researching medical literature for your legal nurse consulting business, you can get an extra 1/4” or so of visible screen (or just as much screen as you can get) with only a few clicks. Just right click the Windows^® XP Start button, then left click Properties. You’ll see a variety of options for the taskbar. Click in the box beside “Auto-hide the taskbar” to make the taskbar disappear until you mouse over it. Now you have the maximum amount of visible screen.

While you’re there uncheck the “Lock the Taskbar” button and click Apply. Then add a check in the “Show Quick Launch” box. It will give you a place to put shortcuts for the programs you use the most. Using Quick Launch, you don’t have to minimize your desktop or navigate through your Start menu to find a program you use on a regular basis. Instead, you simply right click the shortcut you want to place onto the Quick Launch bar and drag and drop it there (select “Create shortcut here”). This only works if your taskbar is unlocked, so once you load the taskbar with shortcuts, you should then re-lock it.

Once you’ve loaded your taskbar with shortcuts for the programs you use the most in your legal nurse consulting business, all you have to do is mouse over the taskbar and left click on the appropriate shortcut to start a program. This sure beats minimizing all your programs or sorting through your Start menu. Remember, seconds wasted build up into minutes and then into hours lost, so the more time you save, the more billable hours you’ll have as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

I don’t know about your husband (or wife), but mine is a creature of habits. Some good, some bad and some just…

For all his tech-tippyness, he even has a bad tech habit and I have his personal permission to share this one with Certified Legal Nurse Consultants (Tom, I owe you one!). Here goes: any time Tom starts searching, no matter where he is on the information superhighway at the time, he’ll go straight to either Google^® or Yahoo!^® to start his search. To get there he’ll open a new tab on whichever browser he’s got open and click “Home.” On Firefox^® it’s his customized Yahoo! homepage, on Internet Explorer^® 8 it’s his customized Google homepage and I have no idea what’s on his Safari^® page. Once the customized page has loaded, he starts getting ready to search.

Now, I’ve watched him do this. He doesn’t go straight to the search box and start typing, first he’ll scan that customized page of RSS news feeds, etc. for current updates, weather alerts, checks on how the Dow is doing and then when he’s satisfied that all is well with the world, he begins searching. By this time he’s lost at least two minutes and those minutes build up over a day, a week and a year. Every minute he’s assuring all is right with the world is one he could be spending on the ironing (Just kidding – it’s actually washing the dishes!). In all fairness, he does keep me updated on what’s going on in the world – but at a cost to his efficiency.

One of the things working in the ICU as an RN taught me is economy of movement. When you’re coding or resuscitating a patient you don’t want to be taking three steps to do something you can do in one or two. Seconds count when lives are in the balance. I try to apply economy of movement to my workday to keep me focused on the big things. I could end up needing to work all day every day if I’m inefficient, and that would interfere with my vacation plans!

That’s why when I search the Internet, no matter what webpage I’m on, I go straight to the search box built into the top of my web browser. Tom converted me to Firefox and I love to search right from the browser. If I’m ready to leave the page I’m on, I’ll just type my search term in the built-in search box and “Google” away. If I want to stay on the page I’m on and am just doing some fact checking, I’ll simply click open a new blank tab (Ctrl + t) and search away still using that built-in box. Firefox allows me to select the search engine I want to use:

IE8 picks Bing^®/Live search as its default and I’d have to ask Tom how to change that so I’ve left it on Bing:

I do recommend that you customize your iGoogle^® homepage and Yahoo! homepage to add RSS feeds relevant to your legal nurse consulting business. I also recommend that you search from “inside the box” to stay efficient and free of distractions.

Keep on searching – efficiently.

Success Is Inside!

The more you use your computer in your legal nurse consulting business, the higher the chance that one of your data types will become associated with a program other than the one you want to use to open it. What I mean by this is that your songs may start opening with Windows^® Media Player instead of your trusty iTunes^®. Your legal nurse consulting reports created in Word^® might start opening in Wordpad or your photos may open with some editor you downloaded from the Web instead of Photoshop^® Elements or Microsoft^® Office Picture Manager.

In other words, you either installed a program that took over the file association for that file type or you may have uninstalled a program that is still associated with that file type. Here’s another example, you choose to use Safari^® as your default web browser but Internet Explorer^® always opens up saved webpages or links within an email. Some programs are overly intrusive and by default may take over file association. This can make a person crazy.

Now, any Certified Legal Nurse Consultant can remedy this like a CLNC^® Pro! This is for Windows XP but can be done with other versions. Simply, minimize all your programs to your Windows Desktop. Next left click on Start then Settings then Control Panel. When the Control Panel opens, look for Folder Options and double-left click it (depending upon your Control Panel view it may be under Appearance and Themes). Select the File Types tab and it will eventually populate a list of File Types in alphabetical order by their file name extension (.wpd, .wpdx, .xls).

Now, scroll down that list to the file type that is opening with the wrong program. Select or highlight the file type and left click the Change button. Select the program you want to use to open that file type. Make sure the box next to Always use the selected program to open this kind of file is selected. Now click OK then Close and you’ve just corrected that annoying issue!

The Control Panel and File Associations can be dangerous places, but any Certified Legal Nurse Consultant with a modicum of confidence (and care) can fix this file issue with alacrity. Go for it – but just be careful in there!

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Every Certified Legal Nurse Consultant running a variation of Windows^® probably has at least one program that, instead of opening up to a full-screen view, pops up in a smaller window, a portion of a window or is just a quarter of its normal size. You then click it to full size, do your work and when you’re done, close the program. Next time you open it that same day, it comes up full size, or not. The next time you open it after a restart of your computer, it opens full-size, or not. Therein lies the rub, it’s not consistent, at least not as consistent as your other Windows programs.

So what’s a savvy CLNC^® consultant to do? If you’re running Windows XP and you use a shortcut to open your program, the solution is easy. First, navigate to the shortcut you use to open the program. This could be in one of three places:

1. Your Windows “Desktop” (that’s those icons on your screen).
2. Your “Quick Launch” toolbar in your Task Bar (that’s in the blue bar at the bottom left of your screen).
3. The “Start Menu” that you use to select your programs (it pops open when you click the Start button).

Mouse over the icon/shortcut for the program that’s giving you size trouble and right click it. When the menu pops up, left click Properties at the bottom and you’ll see the “Properties” box with the “Shortcut” tab open.

In the Run category, left click the Normal window selection and select Maximized. Then click Apply and Okay. Next time you run that program from that particular shortcut, it should open in the maximized, full-screen mode you selected and you’re back where you want to be!

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Every CLNC^® consultant using social media to market your Certified Legal Nurse Consulting business, raise your left hand (keeping your right hand on your mouse). That’s terrific! I know a lot of you participate and interact regularly with Vickie on Facebook^® and Twitter^TM. I also know that Facebook and Twitter can be semi-frustrating if you’re using them directly through a web browser instead of an application like TweetDeck or HootSuite^®. Why frustrating? Because you need to refresh the page on a regular basis to see the updates.

Likewise, if you’re a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant who’s bidding on business equipment on eBay^® or another auction site and you want to keep ahead of last minute snipers or just watch bidding trends, you face a similar problem. A problem whose only remedy is sitting, mouse-in-hand, and relentlessly clicking the “refresh” button on your browser.

Well my CLNC^® amigos, I have a solution for you, at least if you’re a Firefox^® user. Simply visit the Add-ons for Firefox page for ReloadEvery and install this nifty little add-on. It allows you, by right-clicking on an open web page, to select an automatic refresh interval for that page. You can even set your own custom refresh timings. This allows you to watch your Facebook wall or profile page and keep up with Vickie and your CLNC^® colleagues without the need to click the refresh button. It does have the innate danger of wiping out that half-written, pithy status update you typed in and hadn’t yet sent so be careful when you use it. Internet Explorer^® and Safari^® users are out of luck but I’ve read that the Opera^® browser has this already built-in.

With ReloadEvery installed, you always have the most current page/news in front of you and you’ll never miss a Farmburg Piglet request again. I think this is just another reason to move to Firefox as your web browser for your legal nurse consulting business.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

This week’s tip is a quickie and deals with one thing and one thing only. That pesky critter we all know as a “mouse” or in geek speak “pointing device.” Mice aren’t new and aren’t an Apple^® invention as some people believe, they date back to 1981. However, some legal nurse consultants are stuck back in the ‘80s (and I don’t mean with your hair or taste in music). Are you someone still using a standard mouse? Possibly an old “mechanical mouse?” One with a rubber ball in the bottom that needs a tactile surface like a mouse pad to work efficiently.

I know some Certified Legal Nurse Consultants have pulled themselves into the ‘90s by upgrading to a mouse with a scroll-wheel or an optical mouse that uses a tiny laser diode to mark its spot and which needs a no-reflective surface or laser mouse-pad to work correctly. Nice, but we’re a decade past the ‘90s!

Today’s smart Certified Legal Nurse Consultant uses a trackball mouse, such as Logitech’s Trackman Marble Mouse which not only helps guide the mouse more accurately (and is ambidextrous) but also helps reduce or eliminate carpal tunnel syndrome (from mouse use). I’ve replaced all the mice on the desktop computers at Vickie Milazzo Institute with trackballs. Once you get used to using one of these, they’re wonderful – no more lifting the mouse up when you track to the top of a page or moving it back to the base of the mouse pad. You simply roll that trackball like it’s going out of style! They are especially handy if you have dual monitors. Trackballs are also easier to clean and maintain and don’t require a special pad or non-reflective surface like a laser mouse. (As a side-note, I travel with a laser mouse because I don’t like the touchpad or pointing stick on the laptop but I do have to scramble for a piece of non-glossy paper to put under the mouse when I’m working on a glass or highly polished surface.)

Consider a trackball – your wrist will love it and once you get used to it, you will too.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

One thing I know for sure about Certified Legal Nurse Consultants is that they all use different web browsers and different versions of those browsers. I like to keep up to date in my software and have blogged on the importance of updating the software on your legal nurse consulting business and home computers using automatic settings where possible. But once you’re a CLNC^® consultant out on the information superhighway doing research for an attorney-client, how do you know which websites are safe and which are insidious purveyors of malware? You don’t. Not, at least without some outside help.

My customized Firefox^® browser will often warn me of bad or suspect sites while doing a Yahoo!^® search (yes, I’m a Yahooholian versus a Googallion).

For legal nurse consultants who’d like a little more advice on which sites are possibly good or bad, you may wish to consider downloading the WOT – Safe Browsing Tool from WOT Services. Web of Trust (WOT) relies on its member community to rate websites based on the individual user’s experience. You can find the FireFox add-on as a download here and the Internet Explorer^® (version 6.0 and higher) download here. If you’re a Safari or Opera user, there’s no add-on available but there is a cool bookmarklet you can get here. Drag the link to your bookmarks in Opera/Safari (then rename it something like “WOT”) and when you’re visiting a website, you can click the WOT bookmarklet and it will display the site’s rating in a pop-up. Clicking on the bookmarklet again will close the window.

This is a cool add-on. Once you’ve installed it, register for membership in the WOT community and you too can start rating websites and helping keep the web safe for surfing.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

In my 2/17 blog “Ditch Unnecessary Complexities in your CLNC^® Business,” I shared the 2010 theme we adopted here at Vickie Milazzo Institute – “Ditch Unnecessary Complexities.”

One strategy to help you with this goal is to ditch perfectionism. As nurses, perfectionism is not only rewarded, it’s expected. You make a mistake and someone can die. I’m sure those kind of mistakes don’t go over well with your boss either (not to mention the patient). But do your internal documents for your legal nurse consulting business have to be so perfect? Misguided perfectionism can keep you from stepping out and going for the big things for your CLNC^® business or it can rob you of enjoying your business and your life.

I am surrounded by perfectionists (lots of Virgos) at Vickie Milazzo Institute and I often suffer from the perfectionism obsession myself. Ten drafts of a document is not uncommon. Over the years, we’ve had to acknowledge that perfectionism is important for the big things that count (like a report for your attorney-client) but can actually detract us from the big important things when we apply it to the small insignificant tasks that we all have to do. The advent of computers has made this problem worse than ever. In the old days of typewriters, it was difficult to revise and reprint a document and people were very careful about making revisions. Today, we can move a comma or a line of type and reprint it to our heart’s content without even questioning the gain.

Growing up in New Orleans, Louis Armstrong was an icon. I often think if he had been a perfectionist, we would never have heard him sing “What a Wonderful World.” The great Satchmo came close to perfection as a trumpet player, but his voice, his unique, gravelly voice was certainly untraditional – sometimes not hitting any recognizable notes, sometimes incomprehensible, but ALL THE TIME – his own unique expression of his interpretation of the music.  And it wouldn’t BE such a wonderful world without THAT song.

If you think about it, when you’re demanding perfection on the wrong stuff as a legal nurse consultant, you too miss notes, high and low. Then, instead of moving on, you’re sidelined by rejection or imperfection. Now, instead of looking at your attorney-prospect list, you’re looking in the refrigerator. And guess what? Unless you work in the morgue, there are no attorneys in the refrigerator!

Think back to the first attorney who said no to you. Is that so important today? Can you even remember that attorney’s name?

Ditch perfectionism! Lighten up when you pick up the phone for that next attorney call or write that next report. If you don’t get that perfect case, or your perfect attorney-client doesn’t give you those perfect glowing reviews, don’t give up… That’s nothing more than a perfect experience to learn from.

Only you can properly assess where it’s okay to ditch perfectionism in your CLNC^® business, but do make it a goal. When you ditch perfectionism, you free yourself to spend time on the important and BIG things that will propel your legal nurse consulting business to the next level and keep those attorney-clients coming your way.

Success Is Inside!

I’d like to begin today’s blog by giving a birthday “Shout Out” to Vickie:

Happy Birthday Vick – with what’s in the works, I know 2010 will be your (our) best year ever! Thanx for sharing it with me (I’ve got one of your favorite bottles of wine to go with your favorite dessert tonight! Woo-hoo!).

Now that the important stuff is out of the way, let’s start techin’! Many, if not all of you, are automatically updating the Windows^® operating system using the “Automatic Updates” function (or you’ve bookmarked the Windows Update webpage) for your home and legal nurse consulting business computers. That’s great for Windows but we all have a lot of other programs on our systems – many of which need updating too.

Some of the biggest offenders are those cool programs from Adobe^® that we all love. You know which ones I mean – Flash^®, Shockwave^® and even Acrobat^® – all are security risks from time to time. How do you stay up to date on these? Well, Adobe is finally taking steps to update some of its programs automatically – read this article – but not until April 13! In the meantime, my CLNC^® amigos, you’ll need to visit Adobe’s Security Center to see the list of “buggy” programs and Adobe’s recommended steps for dealing with them. It may involve determining which version of each program you have and uninstalling it or it could be as simple as downloading the newest version. In any event, you should visit this page on a regular basis. You can also sign up for security alerts here so that Adobe can tell you when there’s a new patch, etc. available.

If, like many Certified Legal Nurse Consultants, you’re using the Firefox^® web browser as an alternative to Internet Explorer^® you’ll need to keep on top of updates too. Open up your Firefox browser, left click “Tools,” then left click “Options,” then click “Advanced” and finally click the “Updates” tab. Make sure the boxes next to “Firefox” and “Installed Add-ons” are checked and close those boxes being sure to save your changes. This way you’ll be automatically notified each time Mozilla updates Firefox or one of your add-ons is updated. You should also take a minute to visit Mozilla’s Plugin Check page to be sure all your Firefox plugins are up-to-date.

I know it’s a lot of work, but you need to keep on top of your updates. They’re not going to do it by themselves (yet).

Keep on techin’,

Tom