Archive for the ‘Time Management’ Category
July 22nd
The Hamster Revolution is chock full of practical advice on how to manage your email before it manages you.
Here’s a tip: Receive fewer by sending fewer.
While email may be the quickest channel of communication, it doesn’t mean it’s the best channel. When you need to discuss something, talk. Face-to-face communication gives you the opportunity to gauge body language and voice inflection. Or, pick up the phone. It’s faster to speak than to write. Words in writing can sometimes sound harsher or more sarcastic than intended.
Included in the book is a landmark case study that shows how 2,000 Capital One employees cut their email time by 23%. In a world where employees may spend up to 40% of their time writing and responding to email, that’s a great time savings.
If you need a time out from boring, crotchety, or bombastic emails, you can always take a break with Hamster Dance!
July 18th
We recently got a very helpful tip from a reader named Ellie:
I have always had a problem with using pencils in planners because the lead rubs off onto other pages and it just looks messy. However, in some situations you don’t want to use pen because things change so much. My solution to this predicament was using Frixion pens, which come in a variety of colors and are completely erasable.
According to Ellie, JetPens.com has a big selection of Frixions and other erasable (and non-erasable) pens. “Some critique the Frixions for not having the strongest colors,” she writes, “but I don’t really mind. They also make highlighters, which I’ve recently tried and really like.”
Personally, I use ordinary ink and the oh-so-sophisticated scratch out method, but the Frixion certainly sounds like a tidier idea. Anyone else have suggestions? How do you ‘pencil in’ your appointments without, well… penciling them in?
July 17th
I spend my day battling distractions. For example, I have to resist (often unsucessfully) checking my email constantly. When I’m on the web, I skip from one link to another.
Constant distractions and interruptions–email, text messages, calls, appointments and meetings–make it hard to focus long enough to get a good chunk of work accomplished or do creative thinking.
Help may be on the way.
Maggie Jackson is an award-winning author and journalist known for her penetrating coverage of U.S. social issues. She writes the popular Balancing Acts column in the Sunday Boston Globe. Her work has also appeared in the NY Times and on the National Public Radio. 
Her latest book, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, details the costs of our inability to pay attention. 
Jackson related how attention has begun to be mapped, tracked and decoded by neuroscientists who now consider attention to be a trio of skills: focus, awareness and “executive attention,” the ability to plan and make decisions.
To combat distractions, some pioneering companies are creating places or times for uninterrupted, focused creative thought. I.B.M. employees practice “Think Fridays” worldwide, avoiding or cutting back on email, meetings and interruptions. Other firms are setting aside unwired, quiet rooms.
How do you avoid or manage distractions?
July 8th
Ribbon Farm is a blog about business & innovation.  Written by Venkatesh Rao, he often illustrates his ideas with whimsical and thoughtful drawings. He works at the Xerox Research Center, where his research is in the areas of the “Future of Documents” and “Future of Work.”
Here’s his illustration of the evolution of work-life balance patterns as shaped by changing cultural attitudes over the last century. 
July 7th
A reader from Ontario recently asked whether we had any kind of planner that extends more than 1 year ahead: “I do a lot of long-range planning as a promoter and would like to have a planner that would give me say, 2009 to 2014.”
We don’t, unfortunately, but I figured I would open up the question to the wisdom of crowds. Do you do much long-range planning? Is there a system that you use?
June 27th
Stewart Brand, author, visionary thinker, and environmentalist, wrote a book about a new form of human thinking about time and responsibility for the future.
The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility, introduces the “Clock of the Long Now Project“–a gigantic mechanical clock in the Nevada desert, as monumental as Stonehenge, and engineered to record time over 10,000 years.
In concise essays, Brand touches on the mathematics and philosophies of time, episodes of history, and arguments for stretching out our perceptions of time, the benefits of long-term thinking, reversing our shorter and shorter attention spans.
The idea to build a momument scale, multi-millennial, all mechanical clock as an icon to long term thinking came from computer scientist Danny Hillis. 
Brian Eno, a board member of the Long Now Foundation, described their mission: “The idea is to extend our concept of the present in both directions, making the present longer…Civiliations with long nows look after things better. In those places you feel a very strong but flexible structure which is built to absorb shocks and in fact incorporate them.”
June 19th
“Packed Calendars Rule Over Executives” was the subject of Carol Hymowitz’s “In the Lead” column in the Wall Street Journal this week. Several executives, including Daniel Vasella, CEO of Novartis, share how they get free from a crammed agenda.
Vasella “keeps himself in check” by occasionally stepping back to evaluate his plans, questioning whether he could do his job differently.
Mark Hurd, CEO of Hewlett-Packard, makes sure he has some breathing space on his calendar. He leaves time every day for things that just come up.
Kathleen Murphy, CEO of ING US Wealth Management, believes that the single most crucial element for surviving a packed schedule is to have a competent team to which you can delegate important jobs.
“At my level you can’t get caught in the weeds,” she says, “you have to move back to a more strategic position.”
June 11th
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Dumb Little Man is a site dedicated to providing “a handful of tips that will save you money, increase your productivity, or just keep you sane.”
Tired of dealing with endless emails every day? Does emailing back and forth seem to be most of your job now? This article will help you cut it back.
Here are a few other tips:
- Call instead of email.Â
- Check your email early in the morning, at noon, just before you leave the office. Try not to check during the rest of the day - leave it for work, meetings, socializing in person.
- Be brief in your email.
- If you use a Quo Vadis Agenda Planning Diary, you can note your priority emails for the week in the dashboard box or in Daily Notes. Take care of them first.
June 9th
In addition to more space for Sundays, a reader (and student) from New York City recently suggested that we add more time slots between 10-12 PM, when college students in particular are often still busy and scheduling plans. What do you think—could you use these extra hours? Let us know in the comments!
June 6th
Are you going on vacation this summer? Will your kids be traveling solo, or going away to camp? If so, you might want to check out Forms4Parents.com, a website created by New York based lawyer (and mom) Linda Kagan that can help you organize your child’s and your summer travel. Here, Linda talks about what you’ll need to get ready:
Summer is here. Our children will begin to travel with grandparents, on their own or with a teen travel organization, and likely to other countries.
To make the experience better for our children (and those daring enough to travel with them), it’s best to make sure the proper travel and medical forms are in place. That way, you’ll know that you won’t be called on suddenly to sign a medical authorization, and that your children won’t be stopped at the border because a notarized authorization is not in hand.
The key is having comprehensive information about your children’s doctors, allergies, medicines, special needs, insurance, etc. on the forms that will accompany your children as they (or you) travel. In addition, it always helps to have the family rules clearly outlined for your children and their brave caregivers to minimize the endless negotiations about which tv shows, computer games, bedtimes, chores they can watch and must do. You should also provide contact information for each parent.
To make it easier, I created a website that allows parents to create necessary travel, medical and other types of authorizations, as well as a Family Rules form, online in a matter of minutes. It’s called Forms4Parents.com, and it’s dedicated to helping you organize your child’s and your summer travel.
Happy travels!
