I enjoyed this post about how to be more productive with your Crackberry, I mean Blackberry. Especially true is Nakagawa's comment, "...the people who are the most productive don’t seem to have them." I'm sure you have your beefs about Blackberry usage in your organization (or by your spouse, for that matter). If you were king or queen of the world, what "rules" would you create about Blackberry usage? In addition to the 10 the author lists, I'll add the following from personal experience: 1. Do not pretend you are listening to someone by brainlessly mumbling "uh-huh" while you are answering an email on your Crackberry. 2. Pay attention to the presenter during training sessions rather than using the time as your personal … [Read more...]
The Crackberry: A Corporate Noose or Time Leveraging Tool: Time Management and Blackberries
Controlled by your computer
I just read this quote by Lewis Eigen, uttered in 1961, which is even more profound today than it was then: "The workers and professionals of the world will soon be divided into two distinct groups. Those who will control computers and those who will be controlled by computers. It would be best for you to be in the former group." A 2001 survey sponsored by PriceWaterhouseCoopers and conducted by Harris Interactive shows that the increased use of technology such as cell phones, beepers, email, and computers has had a tremendous impact on the feelings of overwork in America. The four out of ten employees who use technology often or very often for their jobs during typical non-work hours more frequently feel overworked. About one-fifth of employees in the study said they often or … [Read more...]
Are you spending too much time surfing eBay?
A reporter asked an interesting question today: How do you know if you're spending too much time surfing eBay? While I'm all for saving time on Internet shopping and having things delivered, instead of driving around town to ten places trying to find the same item, you don't want to cross the line into an addiction. An addiction? That's right. How many hours a day would you have to devote to something before it would be labeled an addiction? Television watching? Gambling? Drinking? eBay surfing? As with anything, it can get out of hand. So I told the reporter I'd have her readers ask themselves these questions: · Do you spend more time on the computer surfing eBay listings than you do with your … [Read more...]
Spam, spam, go away, don’t come back another day!
I am rid of spam! YES, it's true! Just in the last few months, as many of you have experienced, the volume of spam I was receiving was increasing drastically. I was getting 200+ spam email messages a day, and it was killing my productivity and frustrating me to no end. Just scanning the subject lines and deleting was costing me precious time, and some spam messages were causing my Treo handheld to reset upon email retrieval. I've tried several end-user anti-spam filters, and nothing was doing the trick. Add to that multiple domains, email addresses, and aliases, and the problem was compounding daily. ENTER Mail Foundry. My webmaster, Lance Gibb, installed the appliance on his server, routed my mail (all addresses, domains, aliases) through … [Read more...]
NewsGator Inbox for Outlook 2.6 saves time
I've always used RSS Reader 2.0 as my news aggregator/feed reader, until it started acting buggy, and I explored other options. After reading other blogs and postings on the subject, I decided to try NewsGator Inbox for Outlook...and I love it! What a time saver! It integrates right into my Outlook email client and acts just like an email. It has its own folder, and I can delete, forward, store, and search blog postings just like email. It adds a nifty "Subscribe in NewsGator" item to the Internet Explorer menu. I also like the wizard that lets you search feeds by keyword. It has some disadvantages: you can only use it with Outlook, although NewsGator has different software versions as well. The only thing I don't like is you can't group … [Read more...]
Anagram Intelligence for Microsoft Outlook
I love this amazing little plug-in for Outlook. Your $30 will be well-spent. You highlight information from the text of an email, hit a hotkey, and the software instantly determines whether you're highlighting contact, appointment, task, or note information and opens the appropriate dialog box in Outlook with the information *already populated* for your review. You can try it free for 45 days. Visit http://getanagram.com/anagramoutlook/ to see a flash video and read about the neat features. … [Read more...]
Daily PlanIt Blog
Here's a blog I like called Daily PlanIt. Has a great list of top ten time management and personal development blogs/sites. I trust his opinion...mine is listed ha. Get Organized with Home Helpers cites two main time management resources: Work Wonders and Home Helpers. Check out http://dailyplanit.wordpress.com/2006/10/28/get-organized-with-home-helpers/ for a helpful list of resources. … [Read more...]
Email OCD Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
According to a report from Basex, the average "knowledge worker" — someone who is part of the growing information economy — loses 2.1 hours a day to interruptions. If those workers make an average of $21 an hour, that adds up to $588 billion a year — more than the gross domestic product of Argentina. See http://blogs.abcnews.com/scienceandsociety/2006/01/frazzing.html Then another article http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Technology/story?id=1549972 goes on to say, “Other companies, such as Ambient Devices, say keep it simple. You shouldn't have to open your e-mail whenever an icon pops up on your screen. A glance should tell if the new message is important to you, much the way you glance at a clock.” Actually, that’s a *really* bad idea. Even glancing at an email starts … [Read more...]
Laying off workers in email — a breech of email etiquette
Can you believe this? Radio Shack laid off 400 workers---via email! Talk about a major breech of email etiquette. I was just laughing at another article I read about someone being laid off via text message on her phone, and I even thought to myself, "Oh, great, pretty soon they will be laying people off via email" and boom! How rude. Out of 65,000+ people surveyed on an AOL site, 93% said email is an inappropriate way for a company to lay off employees. Let's remember one of the basic rules of messaging: the more emotional and complicated the message, the greater the need for a rich medium, such as a face-to-face conversation with a real person. How will this people remember this employer? Bitterly. When better times arise, will they want to return to Radio Shack? … [Read more...]
Create a Throw-Away Email Address
Spam can be annoying and time consuming. In a test, Northeast Netforce investigators “seeded” 175 different locations and monitored the fake addresses over the next six weeks for spam; 100 percent of email addresses used in chat rooms received spam; 86 percent of posts in newsgroups received spam. So what can you do to help reduce it? Bottom line: Don’t use your work address or personal address for open, public forums, where spammers are harvesting your email address. Create a screen name that isn’t associated with your email address or a “dummy” email address. Your ISP can automatically forward the “dummy” address to your “real” address. When spam builds up, delete the decoy. For $9.95 a year, you can get a block of 500 disposable email addresses to use from www.Spamex.com. You can also … [Read more...]
