Reader Question: Why isn’t my assistant saving me time?

I just got a personal assistant, but they aren’t saving me any time. What am I doing wrong?

Several people have asked me about this. There are many different issues that could be involved, but I see a lot of people who hire an assistant and then can’t think of what they wanted them to do. Either that, or it turns out their original ideas are all things that really can’t be handed off to someone else.

Benefits of a Large Monitors

If you are thinking about adding a larger monitor to your workspace, you might want to checkout these articles:

• Large Monitors for Productivity - Jason Calacanis
• The Large Display Paradox - Jeff Atwood
  
• Increase Your Productivity - Buy a Large Monitor! - Andrew Mason
• Dual Monitor Display Increases Productivity - Chris
• A Large Monitor Makes You More Productive - Jeremy Zawodny
• Big Monitors Can Increase Productivity? - DanB
• Enhance Your Productivity with Multiple Monitors - Mike Gunderloy
• Multiple-Monitor Productivity: Fact or Fiction? - Patrick Dubroy
  

No Flotation Devices

We signed our 15 month old daughter up for swimming lessons at the city pool. Arriving early, I read the pool rules for the regular swim periods. I hadn’t been to the pool in about 14 years and was suprised to see that they didn’t allow any type of flotation devices. No rafts, life jackets or arm “floaties”.

I asked one of the lifeguards why, and discovered that the city pool puts some real thought into their policies–much more than the local library. The lifeguard explained that when people have a flotation device, they tend to rely on it instead of their swimming skills. A child with a life raft is more likely to get into water that is too deep than one without. Worse still, parents don’t watch their children as carefully when they have the “floaties” on their arms. They decided it was safer to ban flotation devices entirely because it made people more responsible.

I realized that this is the same problem I have with many of the devices and systems that are supposed to increase your productivity. Palm Pilots, Smart Phones, and organization software are all useful, but many people think that having a good tool will somehow do the work for them. I’ve seen unproductive people buy software package after software package just trying to find the perfect tool. Their tool set isn’t the problem. The problem is that they aren’t taking responsibility for getting the work done on their own.

If you don’t learn to swim and spend all of your effort on finding the perfect flotation device, you will eventually get yourself into trouble. If you don’t learn to actually execute and spend all of your time trying to find the perfect way of listing your tasks, you aren’t going to be effective.

Most execution problems are not technology issues, they are simply a lack of self-discipline. Technology can help you keep track of things, but if it ever becomes a distraction from work, you are in trouble.

I will leave you with a few thoughts about how to implement technology effectively.

• Think in terms of return on investment - If you invest 40 hours in finding and implementing a new tool, how long will it take to “pay you back”? 40 hours in finding a tool that saves you 15 minutes each week is probably not worth it.
• Discipline first - If you are having trouble accomplishing things, start off assuming it is a problem with your self discipline. Technology may help, but work on the discipline part first. If you are not disciplined, technology is not going to help you, anyway.
• Be slow to change - If you have a process that works, don’t be quick to change to something else–especially if it involves buying a new gadget. Just because an iPhone comes with a great task management application, doesn’t mean it is any more effective than your 3×5 cards that you’ve been using for the past three years.
• Technology for collaboration - As a general rule, technology for managing what you need to do is much more useful in a collaborative environment. No matter how special, it is hard to make an application that works better than paper at keeping track of the five items you need to do today. This does not mean you should avoid any type of digital to-do list. You just need to be aware of what types of things technology is good at and what types of things will only result in marginal improvements.

Whatever gadgets or tools you use to organize your life, make sure they are actually helping you and not just giving you a false sense of accomplishment.

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False Memories

Your memory is not as reliable as you think it is. Even events that you vividly recall in your mind may never have happened. Here is an example.

I have two cousins, Josh and Sam. When they were little Sam sat on a cactus. It was a very painful experience and their mother told the story many times over the years. 25 years later, Josh thinks it happened to him. He can remember the pain, the extraction, everything–even though it didn’t happen to him. The experience was so imprinted on his mind that he has all these false memories of an event that never happened to him.

These types of memories are particularly troubling when it comes to eye witness accounts of crimes and other events where someone’s testimony could send an innocent person to prison. This is one of the reasons the police will try to keep witnesses from talking to each other before taking their testimonies. The power of suggestion is too strong and one witness can drastically affect another’s memory.

Even without witnesses clouding each other’s memories a single witness’s mind can fill in all kinds of unknown details. The policeman asks “What color was the thief’s hat?” and the witness’s mind thinks “This must be important, so I’ll concentrate very hard. I can’t seem to find any memories of the color, but maybe it was blue.” Then the brain tries it on for size and visualizes a blue hat. Now the witness has a mental image of the thief wearing a blue hat and informs the police that the thief was undoubtedly wearing a blue hat because they have a distinct mental picture of it. It is entirely possible that the thief was wearing no hat at all and the witness simply provided details in order to fill in the blanks.

This is why it is so important for people to be trained on how to ask questions without creating “facts” from pure imagination. It is kind of related to the horse that could “count” and do addition by pawing its hoof. It was later discovered that the horse was simply picking up very subtle clues from his owner about when to stop pawing. The owner wasn’t even aware of this.

One of the methods used to study false memories is to show people lists of words like:

• stove
• cook
• sink
• pan

Adults will tend to “fill in” other words. For example, they may remember seeing the word “kitchen” or “pot”. Some recent research has found that this doesn’t happen as much in children. Some people are hoping that these results will help boost how much credibility is given to the testimony of children in court cases. On the other hand, children can often be even more susceptible to suggestion through leading questions.

While the understanding that our strong memories may, in fact, be false is not very comforting, it can be a great help in dealing with others. When we realize that two people’s memories of a particular event maybe significantly different, it is easy to focus on the reality of the situation instead of the reality of the past. It is more productive to accept people’s perceptions and move on from there, rather than try to convince them that their strong mental image is incorrect.

If you are intersted in memory, you might enjoy our javascript tool for memorizing verbatim text and our  list of 10 memory resources.

Contests

We have number of contests going on right now. The Belkin Concealed Powerstrip Giveaway, the Bento Software Giveaway, and the Fruitfultime Software Giveaway are all still open for entries. Each contest has a different way to enter so be sure to check them all out. If you have any suggestions for future, prizes, please leave them on this post.

Five Things You Didn’t Know about OS X Terminal

This video shows five things that most people don’t know about using the terminal in OS X.

5 Things You Didn’t Know about OS X Terminal from Productivity501 on Vimeo.
Just in case you want to make sure the items look interesting before taking the time to watch, the five things are:

1. You can drag folders and files into the terminal.
2. How the open command works for files and applications.
3. Safari style tabs in terminal.
4. The “say” command.
5. Copy to and from the clipboard using the command line.

If you have some killer tips for using the terminal please share them with others in the comments.

Server for Productivity501

If you are looking for a dedicated server, be sure to checkout Server Pronto. Productivity501 has been hosted there for quite some time now and I’ve been very happy with their value.  There aren’t many places you can get a dedicated server for less than $30 per month. (If you sign up using the link, it helps support this site.)

Interview: Managing Wires

We interviewed a number of bloggers about how they manage the wires in their office setup. Wireless technology was the most frequently mentioned solution, but there are a bunch of other great ideas as well.
Organization interview question: What is your best tip for managing the multitude of wires in a typical computer setup? (182)

Use a good computer desk or table along with zip ties to keep everything out of sight

John Richardson from Success Begins Today (rss)

I’ve also had good luck with using double sided velcro for this purpose. Another thing that seems to work well is using black electrician’s tape to tape up cables that are longer than what you need.

I use as many wireless devices as possible; I hate wires on the work surface. I use bluetooth mice, keyboards, and headsets. The wires I cant eliminate are neatly coiled and grouped with velcro or cable ties

Mark Nassal from Stress Free Productivity 101 (rss)

My wireless mouse and keyboard probably done more to clear the wires off my desk than anything else.

Besides eliminating the wires through bluetooth devices, the best thing to do is to have them all clustered together behind the monitor and out of sight. The visual and physical distraction of all of those cords drain at your focus. In a pinch, I use trash ties and rubber bands to keep all of the wires together, and I position my laptop so that the wires immediately take a run behind the TV

Charlie Gilkey from Productive Flourishing (rss)

Charlie is making an important point here. You can change your layout to minimize the amount of wires that are visible. I once had an office where my desk was positioned next to a closet. It was easy to hid things because I put a lot of my equipment (printer, network hub, etc.) in the closet. This cut down on visual clutter because I only had a few wires running out to my desk.

Bundle them together with Velcro straps. I also try not to unfurl them any longer than they need to be in order to reach from the computer to wherever the connected item is on my desk

Damian Bariexca from Apace of Change (rss)

Sometimes investing in the proper length cords is the best thing you can do. Short of that keeping the excess wrapped up tightly and out of site makes things much easier to manage.

I keep all my tech tools–scanner, printer, shredder, charger, etc.–in an armoire. A surge protector powers them all and plugs into the wall behind the armoire. Taming wires is hard, but keeping them behind closed doors is easy

Eva Holtz from College Admissions Secrets (rss)

This is a good idea if you have the furniture to do it. A closet works as well.

Try and keep less wiring around the computer. Go for a wireless keyboard and mouse and if you attach any extra peripheral for a particular purpose then do remeber to detach it later. More wires you have, the more clutter it will create

Abhijeet from Jeet Blog (rss)

Another vote for wireless. Keeping equipment that is only used infrequently off your desk is a great idea. I have a sheet fed scanner and a flatbed scanner. Since I only use the flatbed occasionally I leave it put up and only pull it out when necessary.

Another tip is to buy equipment that uses minimal wires. For example, my flat bed scanner is powered off USB, so there is no additional power cord. My ScanSnap requires USB and a power brick. USB probably isn’t strong enough to power the ScanSnap, but it sure would be nice to have a single cable.

Most cords come with a twistie tie or rubber band, so I just pull out only what is necessary and put the tie back on. But for the most people I would recommend just do whatever to get them tucked and not worry about

Ryan Cole from Practical Productivity (rss)

This helps, but you still end up with a mass of wires that can get tangled. Just getting them out of sight works well if you don’t redo your desk very often.

Honestly, I just plug it all in and chuck the wires behind the desk where I don’t have to think about them ;

Joel Falconer from JoelFalconer.com (rss)

Out of sight. Out of mind. I have a glass desk so there isn’t really anywhere to hide things behind the desk.

I have so many electronics and move things around so much that I just keep them off my desk and out of sight when I’m sitting at computer. I keep them safe from the cats, and I keep the outlets handy to me.

I don’t waste time trying to overly manage them or make them look good because I change things around a lot. For cable that we run throughout the house we use a staple gun to keep it attached to door ways and baseboards

Ariane Benefit from Neat & Simple Living (rss)

If your cords are thin enough, you can sometimes stuff them under the baseboard on carpeted rooms. Best Buy has an almost paper thin phone cable that works very well for this. If I could just find a thin network cable I’d be set.

The only cord in my computer setup is the power cord. I have a MacBook and I wirelessly connect to my printer, NAS, stereo speakers, and phone headset. I don’t use a mouse. And, I have a virtual Windows installation, so instead of three machines I use one. On the other side of the room where the printer and NAS live, I have their wires bundled with velcro ties and labeled at both ends

Erin Doland from Unclutterer (rss)

I have done this before and I really like it, but I find I end up with very bad ergonomics and my wrists start to hurt. Also I’m kind of addicted to my 30 inch monitor. If the ergonomics don’t bother you this can be an ideal way to keep things tidy–especially if you can keep your equipment in a closet or other piece of furniture.

The best way to answer this is to look at my article 5 Ways to Reduce Cord Clutter.

LJ from simpleproductivityblog (rss)

LJ’s article has 5 methods for dealing with cords.

By best suggestion is to eliminate as many of them as possible. Go wireless! You can get a wireless version of just about anything today. Of course, many of us use wireless networks, but there are also wireless mice, wireless print servers, and wireless keyboards. Why mess with the tangles and ugliness of cables? I say throwing them out is the only way to manage them.

Jeff Nickles from My Super-Charged Life (rss)

The wireless print server is something many people overlook. Usually the best place for your printer isn’t directly on your desk anyway, but many people keep it there so they don’t have to run wires all over the place. My printer isn’t wireless, but it does have a network connection. I keep it on top of a storage cabinet plugged into my wireless router.

Get a desk that has a back all the way to the floor

Honestly though, the only answer I can think of is to go wireless wherever possible. Other than that, I’ve had some success with rubber bands and zip-ties.

Sam from Sam I Am (rss)

This is a very good idea, but if you live somewhere dusty, you’ll have to find a way to keep it clean. I’m still partial to my metal frame, glass top desk so I can’t use Sam’s method.

I disconnect what I don’t use (scanner, Wacom tablet, webcam and more) and store them away. I hide the rest of the wires.

Soon it’ll be different, when I buy my iMac with wireless keyboard and wireless mouse, connecting to my wireless internet, integrated webcam, integrated drive, integrated everything. What wires? Maybe one to a USB hub far away, so I can connect stuff that doesn’t have wireless technology

Lodewijk van den Broek from How to be an Original (rss)

Keeping things put away helps a lot. This is another reason it can be very useful to have a closet or some type of storage area where you can put everything.

Tasks Everyday

I briefly spoke with Suvidh from TasksEveryday about their virtual assistant services. A full time VA from them runs $1116.20 per month.  For a MBA, the cost is just under $3,000 per month. They were featured in a short piece on CNN and the video is on the front page of their site.

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