The Most for your Minute Posts

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Previously we did a series of 5 posts called the Most for Your Minute on time management issues. Here are links to each of the five posts along with their titles.

1. Time is an Investment
2. The Order of Tasks
3. Invest in Technology
4. Simplicity
5. Organization

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A Time Expert’s Perspective

The March April edition of The Futurist has a short interview with John Robinson.  John has been studying how people spend their time for many years and was one of the pioneers of keeping time journals to help measure where your time is being spent.

One of the things that seems to be changing the most is the way people
are multi-tasking.  It is making the ability to track where people are
spending their time much more difficult.  Beyond just making his job
more difficult, he is concerned that multi-tasking is training people
to be unable to concentrate on a single task in ways that are
unhealthy. Other researchers are noticing the same thing especially in
the younger generation and there is concern that a decreased attention
span will manifest itself in a variety of organizational problems in
the future.

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Within Reach

Since we recently moved, I had a chance to revamp the way my desk was organized.  Today, it suddenly occurred to my that some of my setup made absolutely no sense at all.  I had arranged things so it would look nice, but things that needed to be in reach were too far away and things I didn’t need to ever touch were close by.

For example, my phone was back in a corner of my desk where I couldn’t reach it.  My wireless router was within easy reach.  The thing that amazed me the most is how long it took me to actually stop and think about how things were arranged.

So here is a challenge for you.  Take 30 seconds and look at your desk top.  Are the things you need often within close reach?  Are the things you need infrequently out of the way?  If not, do something about it.  Standing up to answer the phone may only be a minor inconvenience, but everything that slows you down adds up over time.

Make it as easy as possible to be productive.  You deserve it!

501 Ad: The Five Most Important Leadership Traits from Leadership501

Firefox Tip: Open in Tabs

The open in tabs command is a shortcut to opening multiple sites simultaneously.  This is a good technique when you want to be able to quickly open multiple sites.  I use this for opening daily news sites as well as the statistics pages for several of my servers. 

This video shows how it works.

Let me know what you think of the video and if you have any suggestions.  I’m still playing around with it and would appreciate any feedback.

A Review of Reviews

The iPod contest is providing valuable feedback on the Productivity501 website.  I wanted to share the comments we’ve received so far and I figured a Saturday post was a good place to do this.  If you aren’t interested then skip this post as it is more about the site and less about actual productivity tips. However, if you’d like to see the debate about whether or not my photo is “creepy”, read on.

If you have any suggestions or comments about the suggestions below, please put them in the comments. (Or consider writing a review on your own site for a chance to win an iPod Shuffle.)

1. John Chow thought the picture made the blog seem personable, but thought I should post more frequently. He also didn’t think the excerpts on the front page was the most “productive” setup. He couldn’t find the RSS feed link and thought I was violating Google’s rules for adsense. I’m working on getting on a more regular posting schedule, so hopefully we’ll be seeing several posts a week from now on. Also, I checked with adsense and my clocktower picture was acceptable. (I’ve changed the advertisement to make it less obtrusive and removed the clock picture based on other feedback.)
2. HiFiDel pointed out a problem with the survival simulation example and suggested that the person left on the bottom could simply tread water until it was their turn to climb the ladder. I failed to mention that the ceiling of the cave was too low to allow this possibility.  The picture I used didn’t illustrate this.
3. Steegness suggested adding easier access to the archives and said my picture looks creepy. I put a link to the archives at the bottom of the page.  I’m getting mixed reviews on whether or not my picture is too creepy. Do any other readers have an opinion about this?  Go ahead and tell me.  I can take it.
4. Gary Lee thought noticed the site was still using the old name “Productive Strategies”, thought the red colors encouraged people to stop reading, and wasn’t too hip on the “read more” options. I’m experimenting with removing the “read more” options for shorter posts.  The idea was to show the headlines from many stories on the screen at the same time, so if a visitor didn’t like the first story, without scrolling down they could see 2 or 3 other options.  What do other readers think about this?
5. Tyler Ingram thinks the red colors look a little bit too angry, doesn’t like the “continue reading” links and thought the site was fairly new. Ok it looks like the color scheme is going to have to change. Thanks for pointing out that you couldn’t get to the 2005 posts very easily.  I’ve changed how the archives show up to help.
6. Remon likes the layout and colors, doesn’t like clicking to read the rest of the post, thinks my headlines could improve, doesn’t like the large ad in the middle of the article and wants to be able to navigate to the “page two” home page like Wordpress. I haven’t been able to find a way to go to “page 2″ like you can with Wordpress, but I did put a link to the archives at the bottom to make things a little easier. I’m working on improving my headlines, but I definitely have a lot of room for improvement. I made some changes to the add in the story based on this feed back.
7. Walter Woods liked how the site was free from ads. Actually the site isn’t free from ads, but I’m glad you didn’t find them too distracting.
8. Esplanade thought there might be too many posts on the main page,  said the “click to continue reading” setup was better suited for blogs with more regular updates, and ponders the mysterious meaning of the number 501. The number is top secret.  Just joking.  I need to go ahead and write a post explaining sometime.  Also the posting volume is picking up to several times a week now, so hopefully it will make the “click to continue” setup make more sense if we keep it.
9. Jameo thought my international travel tips were a bit to limited and made some additional suggestions. Some good tips for travel.  I’ll keep them in mind for a more detailed post in the future.
10. Aczafra said that the about page made her want to puke. I’m definitely going to have to work on rewriting that. Making readers vomit is high on the list of things that will kill off a blog.
11. Frank likes the white font and comments that 501 comes after 101. Frank is actually the first person to get what the 501 is really about.
12. ProductivityGoal would like to see a bit more color and feels the black and white drawings are a little on the drab side of things. I’ve been trying to brand the site with the wood cut, black and white illustrations, but maybe that is a bit too boring. Would it help if the rest of the site fit in more with the  wood cut style?
13. Michael Yip thought the contest was a pretty cool idea, liked a few of the articles, but didn’t give any suggestions for improvement. This is on of the hard things about getting reviews–people seem geared toward not wanting to give any criticism.
14. Azeem comments that I’m more generous than John Chow and can’t  understand why there are blank spots and an Apple favicon. I think the ads weren’t showing up for Azeem, so the site probably looked a little strange.  I must confess I forgot about the favicon.  When I was originally setting up the site back in 2005 I was curious if I could replace the default TypePad favicon.  The Apple favicon was the first one I found, so I uploaded it and forgot about it. I should probably do a custom one when I get a chance.
15. AbsoluteLee suggests adding more of a storyteller’s touch and more frequent posting. I’ve kind of avoided putting personal things on the site because I want to keep it focused on productivity.  However I may have gone too far toward being impersonal. I’ll see if I can get a better balance.
16. TJantunen liked the article about Effective web browsing and Time as an Investment.
17. Shalini thought the post about asking your boss to work from home went deeper than many of the other suggestions she has seen. She should know because she works from home herself.

So there is a debate about how creepy my picture looks.  Anyone else care to weigh in on this? Also one of the biggest suggestions is to try to put the entire post on the main page.  I’m experimenting with this and it works pretty good for short articles.  However when you have a 2,500 work post all on the main page, it tends to obscure the older posts.  What do the rest of the readers think?

The other reoccurring theme was to post more often. Generally I try not to post unless I actually have something to say that I think is valuable enough for someone to spend the time reading.  I think I’m going to try to do some shorter “Tuesday’s Tips” type posts that are (hopefully) valuable, but won’t take very long to read and try to post a few 2 to 5 times per week.  Does that seem like a good compromise?

Preparing for New Technology

Most people will change careers several times in their life, so it is difficult to use college to directly prepare for your career. Think of how many problems the average person has with modern technology.  Things are just so complex that to someone unfamiliar with them, it can be difficult to change your thinking.  This video illustrates a new technology being introduced.  Take a look at it below.

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Links: Dealing with Email

Email has become a part of our daily lives.  For some people, 75% of their work time is spent just dealing with email.  Many executives have to block out hours each day, just to keep up with all the information coming into  on email.  The ease of sending email has lowered some of the barriers to communication.  On one hand this is a good thing because it promotes communication.  On the other hand it can promote unnecessary communication that results in informational noise.

Here are a few select articles on dealing with email that may be useful in your quest for achieving balance with electronic mail:

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Behance’s Action Method Process

Behance is an online magazine that targets “brilliantly productive creative professionals”. Based on their work with creative professionals they have identified a three “bucket” (my term not theirs) approach to making sure you get the most from every idea. They call this their Action Method.

Basically you take every idea and capture the following from it:

1. Action Items - Things that need to be done.
2. Backburner Items - Things that might need to be done.
3. Reference Items - Things you need to record.

Here is a graphic from their site that demonstrates the process:

Lets run through an example. We could use something all business and work related, but right now I’m hungry which for some reason is reminding me of Taco Bell which is reminding me of late night dorm runs to Taco Bell from years ago. (I said all that in order to keep my example from seeming too random.)

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1000 RSS Readers

Productivity501 hit a milestone today.  If you look over to the right hand side of the site, you’ll see that the FeedBurner subscribers is now at 1,007. So we’ve finally broken the 1000 subscriber mark. It will probably fluctuate, but that isn’t going to keep us from celebrating!

Hurray!

Thank you all for visiting and subscribing.  If you have any suggestions on how Productivity501 could be better, please let me know.

(By the way, don’t forget about our iPod Shuffle Giveaway.  If you have a blog and are interested in winning an iPod, please consider entering.)

Convince Your Boss to Let you Work from Home

Like what you see? Click to add to Google Homepage or Reader.

According to the 2003 Census report, the average commute time is 38 minutes each way for some parts of the country. That is 76 minutes each day, over 6 hours per week or 41 work days each year. If you live somewhere that has a long commute time, it is easy to see how much time is just spent driving back and forth.

If you were able to eliminate the commute even one day per week, you would save over 65 hours per year. That is over 8 work days of time or equivalent to an extra 1.5 weeks of vacation.

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Adding Shortcut Folders in OS X

Here is a short video showing how to add short cut folders to your side bar in OS X.  The video shows me adding the folder ebooks and then removing the folder (it disappears in a puff of smoke). I use this to keep project files in easy reach.  Since it is simple to add and remove folder or other items, the side bar can function as a work area to keep track of things you need fast access to.

One benefit of this is that the items will show up when you  do a "Save As" or "File Open" as well. This little trick saves me a tremendous amount of time because I can quickly reconfigure things for whatever I’m working on. When I’m busy with a particular client, I’ll put their folder in the sidebar.  When I’m writing for the 501 websites, I’ll put my "content" folder in the sidebar, when I’m programming my "workspace" folder goes in the sidebar.

 

I think you can do something similar with windows by putting shortcut folders on your desktop.

(This is my first experiment with adding video.  Let me know what you think in the comments.  Especially let me know if it doesn’t play on your computer.)

Previously Popular Posts

This week I was reworking the archives in response to some of the suggestions from the iPod Review Contest and ended up going through some older posts all the way back to 2005. I wanted to wrap this week up with a few links to some previous posts:

• Two Type of Technology Users - Also known as the myth of gadgets, this post looks at how different people approach technology. So which type are you?
   
• Social Glass Ceiling - The people you surround yourself set a limit on how much you can accomplish.
• The Rat Experiment - Managing others perception can help you be more productive and effective.
• Investing in Exercise - Another rat experiment that showed the importance of exercise.
• The Perfect Tool - Sometimes searching for the perfect tool can make you less productive than than settling for a good tool and getting to work.

Just a reminder about our current contest.  You can win an iPod shuffle by posting a review of Productivity501 on  your blog.  Checkout the details here.

You Shouldn’t Always Look for the Right Tool

When I was 13, I set my room on fire for the first time.  I had found an electric fan that I assumed had been wired together by my uncle (and electronics guru).  When I plugged it in, there was a loud pop, some sparks and a flaming piece of the switch flew to the floor and started burning the carpet.

I took off running downstairs for the fire extinguisher in the kitchen.  My mom (who happened to be in the room) calmly walked over and put the fire out by stepping on it. It turns out that the fan had been wired together by my 11 year old brother who had hooked a 12 volt automotive fan into regular household wiring cord with an automotive switch, shorting the connection between the two wires.

Anyway, the point is that, while my mom’s shoe was definitely not the perfect fire fighting tool, it was the best thing for the job.  By the time I had gotten the fire extinguishers and then figured out how to turn it on, the fire would have spread on the carpet and done quite a bit more damage.

There are times where the best tool to use is the one that lets you accomplish the task immediately–even if it is slightly awkward to use.

The Most for your Minute

(In this series of posts, we are looking at some components of good time management.)

Organization

If you are disorganized, it will be very difficult to make good use of your time.  When you can’t find important items, it is easy to spend 15, 30 or 60 minutes each day just looking for stuff. When you have a "place for everything and everything in its place" you can focus on your actual work and not just managing your "things".

When I was in college, I asked my grandmother to make me a patchwork quilt and matching pillow case for my dorm room bed.  I liked it a lot and it gave my room a distinct look and made it trendy in a way that only dorm rooms can be. (My neighbor covered every square inch of his room in tin foil and I couldn’t really compete with that.)

Time spent searching isn’t productive.  Time spent finding what you need is very productive.  Anything you can do to keep yourself from having to search for something will reward you in the future.

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Experiment with Online Tools

I spoke to two community college classes this morning about technology and the internet.  I took a quick poll and was amazed at how few of them had ever bought or sold anything on eBay.  It isn’t like eBay is some new tool, but most of them had never used it.

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The Most for your Minute

(In this series of posts, we are looking at ways to better manage time).

Simplicity

Complexity is the nemesis of productivity.  One of the fastest ways to gain time is to reduce the complexity in your life. Sometimes this means trimming functionality to the things you actually need to do instead of trying to do everything.  For example: Rather than invest a bunch of time and effort in setting up our home theater to show broadcast television, the VCR, game console, etc. I just set it up to play DVDs.  We could move some wires around to watch something else, but since that only happened 2 or 3 times a year, the simplicity of having one remote was well worth it.

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The Most for Your Minute

In this series we are looking at different ways to manage our time or to "Make the Most of Each Minute".

Invest in Technology

Technology has an incredible potential for helping you make the most of your time. It wasn’t that long ago that getting information took weeks because you had to call a company or write a letter and then wait for it to arrive in the mail.  Now you can get most common information online quickly and easily.

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The Most for Your Minute

(In this series of posts, we are examining ways to better manage our time.)

The Order of Tasks

There is a survival simulation where you are trapped in a cave.  There is a single ladder going to the surface that can only hold one person at a time.  There are two other individuals with you.  One is younger than you and can climb faster.  The other is older than you and can climb slower.  Your job is to  decide the order that people should leave the cave–oh I forgot to mention there is water rising and if you don’t do it in the correct order, someone will drown.

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