The Most for your Minute Posts

Previously we did a series of 5 posts called th 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.

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Iron Chef - A Productivity Fable

Tortoise and Hare were both known for their culinary expertise and were invited to a face-off on the Iron Chef. Soon after the competition began, it was clear that the Hare was significantly ahead of the Tortoise. The audience was amazed at the speed with which Hare mixed ingredients, poured them into another container and tossed the mixing bowl aside to move on to the next step in preparation.

Tortoise on the other hand seemed to be well behind. It wasn’t that he was going slower than Hare, but the audience agonizingly watched as he carefully cleaned each bowl, pan and utensil and put them back in their place after use. Tortoise was making progress, but was well behind the Hare in completing his culinary masterpiece.

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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.)

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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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Is Stupidity Killing America’s Productivity

When a society makes it a huge priority to protect people from their own stupidity, it will eventually grind to a slow bureaucratic halt. I have to show my ID to buy Sudafed, spray paint or glue because someone has decided I might use these items to do something stupid.  However, I can buy bullets without an ID.

When it comes to the safety of society as a whole, I’m much more concerned about a couple lunatics running around with an unlimited supply of bullets than teenagers armed with nasal decongestant and super glue. Yes I know that teenagers can use those items to make drugs, get high, and glue all their fingers together.  Using drugs can cause permanent brain damage–but seriously, with all the anti-drug education, if they don’t realize doing drugs is dangerous, don’t they have some type of damage already?

[Read more]

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