Pretty much anybody you ask will tell you they’re pressed for time. There just aren’t enough hours to get it all done, yadda yadda yadda. So we prioritize, streamline, and simplify. You can improve your efficiency until you’re blue in the face, not to mention very tightly wound, but you still aren’t addressing one of the biggest time and energy wasters in your day: incoming information. As my 12-year-old daughter, Meagan, would text on her phone: “TMI” (translation: Too Much Information). If the 21st century has brought us anything, it is WAY too much information. You can watch several channels full of cable news 24 hours a day. You can surf the internet on any topic until you can’t see straight. Most people could heat their home with the amount of junk mail they receive … [Read more...]
Eliminate interruptions for better concentration
Interruptions abound—a co-worker drops by to chat, the phone rings, and your boss sends you an email to handle something, pronto—all at the same time. With a flurry of activity, you respond to these various demands. All prove to be low priority, and an hour later, you return to your initial task, your energy waning. You decide you’ll work on the project in the afternoon, when your energy picks up again. Of course, after lunch, there’s some crisis, and after fielding a volley of phone calls and unscheduled visits from co-workers, the day ends, and the project is yet again unfinished. You’ve lost your momentum. Much like your car has to work harder to accelerate from a complete stop, so does your brain. Although interruptions are a normal (and … [Read more...]
Addicted to Email
I have a friend who jokes there are always three people in her bed: herself, her husband, and her Blackberry. I was in California last week on vacation with my family and witnessed people typing away on their Blackberries while at Disneyland, with their children tugging at their pants legs, asking to go see Cinderella. I was presenting a seminar yesterday, and one participant kept looking up to say, "Would you repeat that"? not because I wasn't clear, but because she wasn't paying attention to me---you got it---checking her email during class. Examples abound but the bottom line is Americans are addicted to email. Slaves to the Send/Receive button, countless workers sit at their desks, waiting for the next Desktop Alert, beep, cursor change, envelope in … [Read more...]
Reduce the noise
Feeling overwhelmed? Try this little experiment---turn off your computer volume. Your psyche is constantly bombarded with all the little clicks and dings your computer makes when it performs the smallest operation—simply decide you don’t need it! You only need the volume turned up if you’re watching a file with sound, such as a video. You will be completely amazed at how much more calmness you exude and how much peace of mind you feel if you try this! Encourage your co-workers to turn off their computer volume as well, to minimize the overall background noise in your office. This is especially helpful if you work in an open-space office with several cubicles. To further reduce noise in your life, trying driving with your radio off. You don’t have … [Read more...]
The Crackberry: A Corporate Noose or Time Leveraging Tool: Time Management and Blackberries
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...]
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...]
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...]
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...]
