Author: William Gallagher

I don’t use paper notebooks, but if you do…

Posted by

0

Oh, I think you’ll love this. Every time I meet someone who is adamant that their paper notebooks are better than my clutching at Evernote and typing everything, I ask them the same question. It is always a genuine question, I promise you this, and I only keep asking because I just don’t seem to get very convincing answers. Yet notebook users persist and are deeply attached to their paper and pen. This is the question: how do you find anything?

I mean it. I had an editor at the BBC who, whatever the discussion, could flip to the right page in her big notebook and tell you what we’d said about it last year. I was fascinated. I don’t know that I would do it even if I understood it, but I know for certain that if I were a paper notebook user, I would be using this:

…notebooks are hard to organize your ideas. You either split your notebook into several sections for each ‘category’ and end up wasting valuable pages in the quieter sections or you just write your ideas as they come along making them hard to find later on.

If this sounds familiar then you are going to love this little hack I was taught here in Japan by a friendly salariman. It’s a little messy, and not something I’d use all the time but for the right subject could come in handy.

Here’s how it works. The back of your notebook will act like a tag list or index. Every time you create a new entry at the front of the book you’re going to “tag” it.

A Little Known Hack form Japan to Get Your Notebook Organised – Adam Akhatar, Highfive (12 August 2014)

This time you absolutely have to read the whole thing or I don’t think you’ll get it at all. The only alternative is for me to steal the entire article plus photos and I won’t do that because of course I won’t do it. Plus, if you like this article from Highfive, you’re surely going to like others and I need to point you at this and them all. But for the sake of enough clarity so that you can decide whether it’s worth digging into this particular full piece, here’s the end result:

notebookhacktemp

You can’t help but notice the list of words on that back page of the notebook – but look at the pages before them. Those little marks that stand out even on the closed pages are how you find everything. Do take a look at Akhatar’s full piece for more explanatory photographs and exactly how to do this thing.

And then go get Evernote for your Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad and Android devices. Sorry. I had to.

You don’t have to decide right now

Posted by

0

All stop. An email’s just come in, or a text, or a phone call. Maybe even a real person has just come up to you. That’s a scary thought. But it all demands your attention now and it all rather expects you to reply or decide or just plain do something right now.

Don’t.

I’m not saying that you should be rude to the person who walked up to you – though really would it have killed them to bring you a coffee? – but I am saying that you don’t have to react right this moment. In fact, you shouldn’t. Almost always. You know that this is bollocks when the interrupter is your boss and you, as the interruptee, rather depend on them for eating three meals a day and keeping that roof over your head. But most of the time, with most people, with most interruptions, you are better off taking a little while to do anything about it.

Inc.com has a half-excellent article about this that includes many very good points about it all but maybe gets a bit anal in the details. Writer Kevin Daum recommends that you “Create a Response Schedule”:

Setting a routine for communication can help both with your productivity and with managing expectations of the people with whom you interact. It’s frustrating to spend time chasing other, not knowing when you will get a response. I solve this problem with a simple rule of thumb. Generally, when available, I respond to texts within 20 minutes, phone messages within an hour, and e-mails within 24 hours. You can set your own appropriate timeframe, but once you have a schedule you can better manage your time. You can also let people know what to expect. Those who work with you regularly will soon recognize and respect your habits.

8 Ways to Improve Your Communication Right Now – Kevin Daum, Inc.com (16 August 2013)

Myself, I think that’s a bit too organised, it takes a bit too much work. I avoid replying to emails instantaneously – which used to be a big thing I did and it got me into day-long ping-pong conversations because I would not let go and I often had a gag I couldn’t resist – by a more brute force approach. My Mail software no longer checks for emails every picosecond. It just looks every quarter of an hour on a regular day, maybe I push that back to an hour if I’m really busy. Sometimes, especially when I’m out and getting emails on my iPhone I will tell it to not get messages at all until I have a minute and can read them.

That means that I just don’t have the issue of replying instantaneously because I don’t get the emails instantaneously.

And the point of all this is that while I am not replying to you at lightspeed, I am getting some work done. No offence.

Do read Daum’s full piece. Also, a nod of the hat to Contactzilla, a site devoted to its eponymous contact management software that I’ve never heard of before it began including productivity articles.

Merlin Mann: Scared Shitless

Posted by

0

Mann is a particularly interesting speaker that I’ve mentioned before. He’s behind the idea of Inbox Zero and I like his productivity dash. But this might be my favourite thing of his.

Not the most useful: Inbox Zero is really useful. But favourite. Mann talks less about being productive per se, more about what it is like committing to things. I actually think the opening three minutes or so of this are a bit standard-issue-presentation stuff but then I find it honest and open and rather inspiring.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Email

Posted by

0

There are only seven? What about those utter bastards who don’t put subject headings on so you have to open the message RIGHT NOW to see that it is ALWAYS trivial nonsense that seriously could’ve waited?

Asian Efficiency, a site that I like very much, has a piece that I think is more about you than it is about your email. Specifically, number 1 of these sins is definitely your fault:

Opening email first thing in the morning.

When you open your email first thing in the morning, you are opening up Pandora’s Box. There is both good and evil that could be waiting for you in there. However, the sin comes from the false urgency you get from all of the good, the bad and the ugly emails.

Why is starting your day with email so deadly?

Willpower tends to be higher earlier in the day. That means you’ll be able to provide your best energy and effort to your most important task (MIT).

When you open and respond to email first thing, you are basically telling the world, “What I had in mind for today is not nearly as important as what you had in mind.”

Responding to urgent requests early will also train the requestor to send you more urgent requests. You will then find yourself spending more time working on “other people’s agendas” rather than your own.

Tackling email early in the day is one of the most sinister of sins because responding to emergencies can make you feel productive, responsible and even important. However, more times than not this habit prevents you from creating long term, lasting value.

Starting your morning with a number of little emergencies found in your inbox has the tendency to creep into the rest of your day. If you’ve ever found yourself exhausted from work at the end of the day despite the fact you did not accomplish anything you intended to… early am email could be the reason why.

The 7 Deadly Email Sins – Zachary Sexton, Asian Efficiency (undated but probably 28 July 2014)

Read the full article for more about what exactly you can do instead of that and six more things that I hope you’re doing now because I know I am. We can stop it together, right?

Fight! Fight! Fight! – The Make-Up Sequel

Posted by

0

Just yesterday I found a Fast Company article recommending that we stop being peacemakers and sometimes just land a good punch in first. Naturally, as a civilised man, this didn’t appeal at all. Naturally, as a writer, the dramatic implication appealed a lot. And very naturally as someone who writes for a living, the notion recalled Very Many Incidents where it would’ve been a Very Bad But Oh So Right idea.

Now Fast Company is saying well, hang on a minute there, let’s think about this.

You’ve had an interaction with a coworker during which you felt hurt, angry, misunderstood, and wronged–clearly it was an upsetting and difficult situation.

You’ve Just Had a Fight with a Coworker – Now What? – Robert V Keteyian, Fast Company (13 August 2014)

Translation: you lost.

Keteyian’s full article accepts that sometimes the only way to deal with it is to say you should see the other fella: there are people you will never convince or be convinced by, there are people who fight for fighting sake and there are times their fight is not with you. They say it’s about some particular project you’re both working on but actually they’re seriously narked that they are on this job instead of having got the promotion they so rightly deserve. In all these cases and more, let it be and maybe practice a bit more in a boxing ring.

But when both sides are actually reasonable and both sides want the right thing, talk about it. This means asking them for a chat – good luck with that – but it also means digging in deep about yourself:

Now, here’s the really hard part. Change the story you developed–in which you got hurt–to include what you learned from the other person.

The reason this is so hard is that the emotional impact is embedded in your experience. What happened to you is what happened to you. However, the beliefs you connect to that experience need to include your new understanding, what you just learned from your coworker.

Getting to that understanding with someone can be tricky. When difficult interactions are revisited, one person may say, “I may have said that, but it’s not truly what I meant,” and the other may respond, “Yes, but if you said it, then you must have meant it.” This, of course, leads nowhere.

When talking, be sure to give each other enough time to fully express thoughts and feelings; talk about what’s really important to you; explain how you were affected by what the other person said and did; and apologize for anything you said or did that hurt the other person.

Be sincere about it, though, would you? None of this “I apologise if I caused you any offence you namby-pamby weakling” stuff.

Read the full piece for more about how to start this dialogue and handle it too.

How to battle the summer productivity slump

Posted by

0

Wait ’til winter.

Alternatively…

A 2012 Captivate Network study of 600 white collar workers in North America found that productivity drops, on average, by 20% during summer months.

CEO of Growbiz Rieva Lesonsky recommends offering your employees a little extra time off to help them through the summer productivity slump…

“Lots of companies offer summer hours where employees get every Friday afternoon off or every other Friday off. Knowing they have Friday off can make employees less likely to call in “sick” on sunny Mondays.”

If summer hours aren’t for you, why not offer flexible working options over the summer so each employee gets to work from home for a few days. Or offer a few extra holiday days that can only be taken over the summer months.

How to Get Out of the Summer Productivity Slump – Mark, no surname given, Contactzilla (11 August 2014)

I work for myself and I’m not honestly sure whether that would make it easier or harder to get some time off in the summer months. But I’ll ask myself, I’ll put my best case forward to myself and see what myself says.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

Posted by

1

When we write we know to put characters in conflict but in real life, we avoid that all we can. And quite reasonably so. But sometimes, it might be worth a bit of a scrap:

While some people plow through conflict to get their way, a 2010 study by Provo, Utah-based leadership training firm VitalSmarts found that 95% of employees have trouble voicing differences of opinion, which results in a loss of roughly $1,500 per eight-hour workday in lost productivity, doing unnecessary work, and engaging in active avoidance of co-workers for every crucial conversation they avoid.

“We’re constantly faced with choices and conflicts. We work through the vast majority. The conflicts that get the most attention are the ones that go bad or go wrong,” says Peter T. Coleman, psychology and education professor at New York City’s Columbia University and author of the forthcoming Making Conflict Work: Harnessing the Power of Disagreement.

Somewhere between browbeating and caving in every time you’re faced with someone else’s preferences, there’s a middle ground out of which can spring innovation and ideas.

How to Use Conflict to Your Advantage at Work – Gwen Moran, Fast Company (31 July 2014)

Moran’s full piece goes on to give five pointers on how and when to do it, starting with choosing your battles wisely.

An English professor on the dying art of the password

Posted by

0

First passwords went from the “Open Sesame!” kind of literature to stuff we type to log on to things, then they went from actual words to incoherent symbols in an attempt to be more secure, now they don’t seem to even be all that secure.

News this week that Russian hackers have stolen 1.2 billion passwords makes me want to throw up my hands in resignation and change all my passwords back to “password.”

As a professional wordsmith (English professor and writer), it saddens me that these “words” we’re supposed to “pass” when we log onto our email and bank accounts even remotely share the same categorical denomination as the words that actually embody value for humanity: Words like “April is the cruelest month” or “The answer is blowin’ in the wind.” Today’s passwords aren’t words. I demand a new term for them.

The Lost Art of Passwords: What We Lost When Hackers Conquered the Internet – Randy Malamud, Salon (9 August 2014)

As a professional wordsmith, I twitch at the ugly repetition of the word ‘lost’ in that headline but I don’t write an article about it. And I just use 1Password to get around most of Randy’s problems. Still, Malamud’s full piece is part entertaining rant and part collection of password gems such as my new favourite from the Marx Brothers:

Wunderlist 3 – the best free To Do app?

Posted by

0

Usually a question in a headline means the article will conclude ‘nope’ but this time, it’s more ‘perhaps’. When I do The Blank Screen as a full-day workshop, I include a section on To Do apps that begins with why you should use OmniFocus but pretty quickly goes on to why you shouldn’t and what you can use instead.

The reasons you shouldn’t use OmniFocus boil down to two: it doesn’t work on PCs or Android so if you do, there’s no point. And as reluctant as I am to say this since it has been such a big part of my life for a couple of years now, OmniFocus is not for everyone. It’s powerful and it’s complex and it costs a lot more than free.

Personally, it’s worth it. But if you’re just looking into this whole business of To Do apps, it’s hard to slap down a lot of cash straight away. Still, any To Do app is better than none and all of them are better than working on Post-It Notes that you keep losing.

So I recommend Wunderlist. Full disclosure: I’ve barely used it myself as I came across it after I’d swapped to OmniFocus. But I like what I see very much and, more importantly, it’s been recommended to me by attendees of The Blank Screen workshop too.

Now version 3 is out and the makers say:

Ten months ago – after launching Wunderlist 2, introducing Wunderlist Pro and Wunderlist for Business – we set out on a journey that we knew would take some time. Seeing millions of you organize your daily life with Wunderlist, share your grocery lists, track your favorite movies and run your business, we made a plan to rebuild Wunderlist from scratch, with the goal to make it better, faster and most importantly, ready for the future.

Although you couldn’t see the complex technology behind Wunderlist 2’s simple interface, you certainly felt the bumps in the road. Your lists didn’t always sync smoothly from your phone to your computer, you were missing a more modern interface or you wanted Wunderlist to be integrated with your calendar and others apps you were using.

Today, with Wunderlist 3 we are introducing the product we’ve always envisioned. One that sets the foundation for all the great new features and regular improvements that are going to come until the end of the year and beyond. It’s the fastest, simplest and most powerful Wunderlist you’ve ever used.

Wunderlist 3 is here – Wunderlist official site

Take a look at the makers’ video:

And now go download Wunderlist for iOS, Android, Mac, PC and more on the official site.

Video: how different To Do apps make you work

Posted by

0

There is nothing like trying out a To Do app for yourself and before settling on OmniFocus. But there is this:

Robert McGinley Myers of the Anxious Machines site has made a video showing the major To Do apps in action and talking about what is and isn’t satisfactory about them. I’m shocked how many of these I’ve used and recognise.