Sunday afternoons are a great time to make your plans and prep for the coming work week. Let me rephrase that, Sundays are the greatest time of the week to make your plans and prepare for the coming work week. Now, with being said, what do you do?
Personally, there are several things that I do to prepare. I am going to share them with you over the coming weeks. I will break them down into their own groups to make it easier for me to write about them.
First, I make sure I go into the week with all my portable devices fully charged. I am talking my laptop, tablet, cell phone, voice recorder, camera, and Bluetooth devices.
The need to have your devices charged and ready for use goes without saying. There is nothing worse than stumbling into that perfect photo opportunity, to find out your battery is dead. There goes that once in a lifetime shot. The same applies to your laptop or tablet device. Then you are forced to go old school and write things down with paper and pen. While there is nothing wrong with paper and pen, there is something wrong with carrying a brick around for the sake of carrying a worthless device all because the battery ran out.
By taking the time on a Sunday afternoon to charge your electronics you get an opportunity to do a PMCS. For those that do not know what PMCS is, let me explain.
PMCS is a military acronym for Preventive Maintenance Checks and Services.
According to the Wikipedia entry: PMCS is “the checks, service and maintenance performed before, during, and after any type of movement or before the use of all types of military equipment. Most pieces of military equipment have a PMCS chart used to go over every detail needed or noted to ensure the proper function of every mechanical item or non-mechanical surface.”
This means you get the opportunity to check equipment before you actually need it. Then if there is an issue with the equipment you are now aware of the problem and can adjust accordingly. Being aware of the condition of your equipment will reduce the need to unnecessarily replace devices, thus saving you time and money.
Another by product of checking your gear before the start of the work week, is that while others that are ignoring or taking their equipment for granted you will become the go-to person because your stuff is in order while the other guy/gal is scrambling to catch up.
Of course, one charge is not going to keep your smartphone going for the whole week but it is nice to know that you can wake up tomorrow morning with a full charge and ready to face the day.
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