The most important part of Mobile Email

Many people overlook the most important part of a mobile email solution.  It is easy to get caught up in the idea that it is going to be so wonderful to have access to your email where every you are.  The fact is, if you can’t delete emails from your mobile device in a way that will delete them from your desktop computer, your mobile solution is probably going to cost you more time than it saves.

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10 Steps Toward Safely Relying on Technology

I know many people who have easily lost a week of their valuable time because of a technology glitch.  If you are willing to invest time and money on technology to make  you more productive, you need to give make sure you don’t wipe out all of the productivity gains through an unexpected failure of your equipment.

The following list covers 10 things you can do to minimize the impact of of Murphy’s Law on your productivity:

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Contest Winner

Congratulations to Barrett in Indiana on wining the Effective Executive book contest! We didn’t have as many entries as I was expecting (considering we have about 100 people check the site every day in their RSS readers).  All in all that says something about the audience of this site.  I think most people who are interested in a blog about how to be productive, don’t have time to add something else to their reading list.

I guess we might do better with a contest that gives the winner an extra 30 minutes of free time. :)  We’ll probably do some more contests in the future that are targeted at people who already have a full reading list.

Contest: The Effective Executive Book

For quite awhile I’ve been meaning to run a contest giving away a book on being effective and productive.  So here it is, we are giving away a copy of The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker.  This book talks about how to be effective as an executive.  Drucker defines executive as someone who is responsible for their contribution. 

Even if you aren’t officially an executive at work, the fact that you are reading a blog on productivity means you do take responsibility for what you accomplish.  The book talks about the need to focus on doing the right things.  I found it to be very insightful and I’ve given away several copies to friends already.

Ok for the rules: 

• To enter the contest you have to add a comment anywhere on the site between now and 1 am October 7th Central Time.
• Comments must be on topic, but can be made on any post on this site. 
• If you want to enter the contest, but don’t have anything to say just add a short comment to this post (that counts as being on topic).
• Spam comments will be removed.
• Winner will be chosen randomly from all valid comments.
• Winner will be contacted by email.
• The book will only be shipped within the US.

Good luck!

Streamlining your business

Owners of small businesses are particularly concerned about productivity.  For a small company the difference between being highly efficient and moderately efficient can be the difference between profit and going out of business. Most efficient  practices are also applicable to personal productivity as well. However, with businesses, small productivity gains can be replicated over many people multiplying the  gains well beyond the benefits you’d get just for yourself.

A focus on productivity can let you cut your costs so you can make a profit even when your competitors are losing money. Here are eight key points to consider when establishing productive practices for your business.

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