Write It Down

Wiseman writes:

From a psychological perspective thinking and writing are very different. Thinking can often be somewhat unstructured, disorganized, and even chaotic. In contrast, writing encourages the creation of a story line and structure that help people make sense of what has happened and work toward a solution. In short, talking can add to a sense of confusion, but writing provides a more systematic, solution-based approach.

lack of clarity brings anxiety which in turn brings the sense of helplessness. It’s not uncommon to see customers in panic only because they don’t have clear picture of their situation. Putting things in writing helps to bring clarity, map all the key data points and start connecting it. One of my favorite exercises was scoping the problem. I usually started with simple question – “what’s the story?” I was expecting to hear simple stories describing the customer’s day-to-day life. While listening I tried to capture the following: Who does what trying to accomplish what? By the end of the interview I usually had plenty of one liners with key players and their desired outcomes. I called these scenarios. Then I used to list the scenario out loud to test my understanding and then adding the price tag to each – effectively prioritizing. It’s pretty hard to do it inside your head. It’s quite easy though to do so in writing. Many times by the end of the exercises the customer realized they don’t need me since they can handle it themselves or the problem doesn’t actually exist. It usually took me little more than 59 seconds but less than 30 minutes.

Perfect Future

Wiseman writes:

In short, when it comes to an instant fix for everyday happiness, certain types of writing have a surprisingly quick and large impact. Expressing gratitude, thinking about a perfect future, and affectionate writing have been significantly proven to work – and all they require is a pen, a piece of paper, and a few moments of your time

Many efforts and time can be spent on defining what to do. It takes a little effort and a different approach to save this time by just asking a simple question – What’s your desired state? or What’s your perfect future state? This simple question makes important shift in people’s minds from what to do and how to do it toward what it should be in the end of the day. It’s a common trap especially with technical people and engineers who’s minds wired to solutions and approaches. It’s quite natural for technical and engineering  people to quickly start focusing on solutions before actually defining the end state or end goal. By asking this simple question about perfect future you save lots of time that could be spent on debating solutions for undefined outcomes. Ask this simple question – What’s the perfect future like? – before debating the solution. It will make a big difference and it takes less than 59 seconds.

Transform Work Into Play

Wiseman writes:

If you set children to an activity that they enjoy and reward them for doing it, the reward reduces the enjoyment and demotivates them. Within seconds you transform play into work.

It’s not always fun to work for a customer. The customer is already in trouble or anticipate it, otherwise why calling a consultant? The customer pays premium (ton of money) for consultant. It’s not how the fun usually perceived. Consultant usually works in hostile environment having limited influence, at least at the beginning of the project. It’s lots of tension, ambiguity, and sometimes even chaos. It’s no fun for the consultant neither. The trick is to flip the fun bit and call it a game. It takes less than 59 seconds to change the mindset and call it a game, a multiplayer game. Figure out who’s the boss (the one who actually in control), figure out who’s the allies and the “enemies”, but most important figure out what’s the prize and keep an eye on it while maneuvering in the maze. Pass intermediate levels, collect “lives” and “boost kits” along the way. It’s a game and you are on the mission. Make it a game, make it fun – it takes less than 59 seconds to get into this mindset but the difference is huge.

Busting Brainstorming Myth

Wiseman writes:

A large body of research now suggests that for more than seventy years, people using group brainstorming may have inadvertently been stifling, not stimulating, their creative juices. When working together they aren’t as motivated to put in the time and energy needed to generate great ideas, and so they end up spending more time thinking inside the box.

I am not a huge fan of brainstorming where crazy ideas thrown right and left and by the end of the day nothing achieved other than wild guesses. The more people attend such brainstorming session the crazier it becomes and the more time is lost collectively. I have seen a lot of such situations where folks compete one with another who has crazier idea losing the sight of the whole purpose of the exercise. I am much bigger fan of the scenario driven approach. It takes less than 59 seconds to shift to this mindset by simply putting an end user’s or a customer’s hat on. To quickly get into such mindset everyone should individually start thinking of what one would want to accomplish. For example:

• As a developer I want to write code that runs faster.
• As a solution architect I need to outline security approach for application.
• As a an IT pro I need to be able quickly identify root cause of application’s failure.

So it’s not more of a problem with brainstorming rather how it’s organized and managed. The key though is putting yourself in the shoes of the customer by saying “As a customer I want to accomplish X” vs. trying to throw crazy solutions for unidentified problem on behalf of the customer.

Related

• Consultant Writes Proposals That Sell
• Core Practices Any Consultant Should Master
• Consultant Solves Problems Fast

image by RLJ Photography NYC

• Zero items Inbox. Keep your inbox clean, ideally with zero items in it. If there are items there it means you have unplanned work items. There is a reason why you purge your mail box almost daily. Same should be done with your email inbox. Keep it clean by following 3 simple rules: action items tag and move to the backlog/hotplate, info nuggets move to your KB folders, delete the rest.
• Prioritization.  The ultimate outcome of the prioritization is having clear list of high priority action items that make your hot plate. Organize your hot plate list using email items – see Zero items inbox. Tag the items with the categories. Categories are your projects that are important. If you have hard times to categorize specific email item chances it’s low pri – delete it, or file it in your KB.
• Backup and Restore.  Keep all your Outlook files, usually PST files, in one place. Create a folder called PSTs and every time you create new PST file make sure it’s created there vs. default location. That way it’s easy to grab these files and put it where ever you want. Very handy for backup/restore procedures. Usually it happens when upgrading to a new laptop. Saves ton of time.
• Follow up. Don’t use flags – it will only lead to more distraction. Instead, put followup items into your backlog or hotplate list, where other high priority emails are – either send email to yourself and move to the hotplate or when sending an email that requires followup put yourself in CC so it lands in your inbox, then you move it from there to your hotplate. When comes the time to process relevant emails for specific project you will naturally bump into this followup email – it will be contextual vs. random.
• Time budgeting. Block time in your calendar proactively and defensively. I do it each Monday morning week ahead. Allocate your time to high priority work items from the hotplate – this makes sure your high priority work items are given adequate time budget.
• Reducing distraction. Disable all reminders and flags – they are pure distraction. No incoming emails reminders of any kind, no flags, nothing.
• Most used shortcuts.
  • Ctrl+Shift+S – Self post to current folder.
  • Ctrl+Shift+M – New email.
  • Ctrl+R – Reply to selected email.
  • Ctrl+F – Forward selected email[s].
  • Ctrl+Shift+V – Move selected email[s].
  • Ctrl+Shift+Y – Copy selected email[s].
  • Ctrl+1/2/3 – Switch between emails, calendar, contacts.
  • Ctrl+E – search items.
  • Tab – switch focus forward
  • Shift+Tab – switch focus backward

Related

• Time Management With Microsoft Outlook At A Glance–Part I
• Time Management With Microsoft Outlook At A Glance–Part II

image by mikebaird

Basic Setup

• Offline Outlook Files. Microsoft Outlook manages its data using several file types. Use PST files to manage your offline KB. PST files make sure the information is stored locally. Create as many PST files as you wish, for example one per fiscal year, or one per subject, or keep it all in on single PST file. Keeping multiple smaller PST files makes it easier to backup and prune it. Having info offline saves ton of time vs. when it’s online.
• Search Folders. Each PST allows it’s own Search Folders. Search Folders is a static lens for your data. For example, I configured Search Folders for Security and Performance keywords since it would enable me to quickly filter the info in coarse grained manner for the topics I live and breath daily. You configure search folders depending on your needs but the key here is that it provides first line coarse grained filtering of your information. Think of it when you go searching online and the search engine offers Web, Images, Places, etc. type of filters, same here. Having coarse grained filters saves ton of time as it allows in one click slice the information mass in two or three reducing the scope of potential fine grained search.

Sources of information

• Incoming Emails. You should be subscribed to distribution lists and boards of your interest where folks share their knowledge or ask insightful questions (which usually followed by insightful answers). Most of the time it’s worthless stuff but time to time real gem pops on the distribution lists. You can tell it’s a gem by quickly skimming through it or just by looking at the author who sent it, you would quickly learn who’s resourceful and who’s not by just monitoring it. Investing time in skimming such emails will pay off when you would need the info badly. Don’t read such emails in depth. Once the gem identified, file it into appropriate folder and move on. You will use it later, not now.
• Surfing the web. When searching the web you surly hit some good stuff. Don’t pass by! File it into your offline KB. press Ctrl+Shift+S to open new self post, add the title, the link and copy/paste the body of the info gem, then file it to the appropriate folder. Outlook will index it and will make it available when needed. It also becomes regular email item so everything related to email applies – your can forward it to your friends by just pressing Ctrl+F, something you already know and do. It saves ton of time when you search it offline using Microsoft Outlook’s instant search feature vs. trying to rely on online search engines no matter how great they are. It’s especially useful when the content is no longer available online, and that happens a lot.
• RSS subscriptions. I love Microsoft Outlook’s RSS subscription feature. Here is why: it’s where my eyes are, it makes the RSS items email items (move, delete, forward apply as usual), it removes distracting styles making it look and feel great – my eyes never hurt, it’s being indexed by Microsoft Outlook making it available through instant search.

Don’t’s

• Don’t keep PST files in the default location. Concentrate in some other place on the file system, it saves time finding them when you need to quickly back them up, for example.
• Don’t’ rely on online search. It requires being always connected, it’s slow, ineffective due to high noise to signal ratio and it requires extra work when extracting actual info nuggets from the web pages. It all wastes time.
• Don’t keep RSS items you don’t need in the original folder, it blows the online OST file as RSS puts them there by default. Either specify other location or better yet, keep pressing on Delete button ‘till your finger bleeds or until you find real gem – then move it to your offline KB.

Related

• Time Management With Microsoft Outlook At A Glance–Part I
• Configure Microsoft Office Outlook For Effective Time Management–The Happy Way
• Getting Results: From Annual Commitments to Daily Execution

image by zamer

• Backlog. Backlog is ever growing list of task or action items related to specific project. Tasks are incoming actionable emails from customers, managers, peers, partners, and self emails and posts. Many times big or vague emails should be parsed and broken into smaller action items. In the end backlog is always email items categorized per project.
• Calendar. Calendar is your time budget view. There is no such thing as unlimited budget, same with your time. Time is limited. Use it as your forcing function. Simplest way is budget your week with 40 work hours which makes 8 work hours a day. This is your daily budget you should defend from low priority work or from procrastination. Spend it wisely, wasted time cannot be returned unless you are willing to burn midnight oil. Block your time in your calendar proactively for the items in your hotplate you pulled from the backlog. It helps you quickly test if you have enough time budget. If not, you move quickly to prioritization exercise and drop off more items from your plate – you must stay on budget! Proactively blocking time in your calendar also helps protecting it from others putting unnecessary meeting requests that hurt your performance.
• Daily tasks and weekly outcomes. Daily tasks are driven by daily outcomes. Outcomes are 3 high impact things you want to accomplish this day. Example, “bug X fixed”, “first draft of the report created”, “my idea Y adopted by the team.” The tasks are derived from the desired outcomes. Write the three outcomes for each day. Look at the backlog, the hot plate,  of tasks and pick those that serve the outcomes you specified. Daily outcomes are what makes sense of your week. When Friday comes you look at your daily outcomes and what you were actually able to accomplish during the week. If that’s 80% of what you planned on Monday that’s awesome! Use simple self post mail item, Ctrl+Shift+S, to create simple mail item in dedicated folder with the table where you define your 3 daily outcomes for specific week.
• Don’t’s
  • Don’t use Outlook’s tasks, it reduces places you need to look and it reduces amount of clicks you need to make. Use incoming emails and self posts instead.
  • Don’t use flags for reminders, it randomizes you when it jumps unexpectedly degrading your performance. Instead, use emails and put yourself in CC. When you send the email it arrives to your Inbox, categorize it and move it to the hot plate. When the time comes to look at the category/project you will see the email and if it was not handled and it’s still of priority do another round of emails, then escalate or drop it off your plate.

Related

• Configure Microsoft Office Outlook For Effective Time Management–The Happy Way
• Getting Results: From Annual Commitments to Daily Execution

image by porschelinn

Expert Access Radio is a weekly talk radio show that features live, in-depth interviews with business leaders and best-selling authors from around the world. Some of their featured guests include Guy Kawasaki, Robert Kiyosaki, and Steven Pressfield.

On the show, Jay McKeever and Steve Kayser have their guests share their ideas, information, insights and inspirational stories to help listeners in their life of business, or their business of life.

Getting things done is one of the key challenges for me, I bet for you as well. Distractions are limitless and so are the approaches to solve this challenge. Here is yet another approach I am using to get things done – change tactics I have learned from the book Change Anything by bestselling authors Kerry Patterson, Al Switzler, Ron McMillan, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield. In a nutshell the tactics are: connect with your goals, learn new skills, turn “accomplices” into “friends”, get a coach, short term rewards and punishments, and change your environment.

Connect With Your Goals

?”Change Tactic: If you interrupt your impulses by connecting with your goals during critical moments, you can greatly im

prove your chances of success”

Keep the prize in front of you, resist to anything that g

ets you o
ff track. Incoming email is a simple example that gets you off track when you are on mission to achieving your goal (daily or annual). Disable all email notifications in first place so you don’t even waste your time on wandering if you need to respond now or later. It’s always later! Now you are focused on the work you have carefully planned ahead. Another tool that can help when distraction comes your way is simple prioritization based on importance/urgency adopted from Steven Covey

Read more:

• Remove Distracting Email Notifications – All Of Them
• Prioritize What You Do – Steven Covey Way [The Way That Works]

Learn New Skills

?”Change Tactic: Changing persistent and resistant habits always involves learning new skills.”

One of the key skills I learned was ability to deliver small portions of results in short iterations. I set a goal to deliver something real each day, even each hour. To make sure I deliver relevant things I needed to master another skill – creating effective WBS, or Work Breakdown Structure. Once I was able to define my goal I was immediately trying to break it into small pieces and then map it on the timeline – weeks, days, and then hours. It was forcing function to me to spend my time wisely while keeping the prize in front of me. Was I successful to accomplish all I planned?! Hell no! Many things fell off the plate, and that helped me to sharpen another skill, the skill of prioritization.

Turn “Accomplices” Into “Friends”

?”Change Tactic: Bad habits are almost always a social disease–if those around us model and encourage them, we’ll almost always fall prey. Turn “accomplices” into “friends” and you can be two thirds more likely to succeed”

I made everyone my mentor. Any feedback – bad or good, harsh or kind – is a constructing feedback for me. If I was on the receiving end of harsh feedback or even personal offence I was able to keep myself calm and never fight back. It takes some EQ skill yet it’s worthy. My thinking was “if I make someone so angry chances there is reason for that.” Reflecting back on the situation I could learn many things, for example, the guy is just not my type of “customer” and I need to ignore it or walk away; or our values are way too different and if I want to win his mind and heart I need to drive my work based on his values. That way I was able to make my “enemies” into my mentors, that kept helping me identifying outcomes that matter and then getting things done.

Read more:

• Emotional Intelligence – Core Skills

Get a Coach

?”Change Tactic: Changing deeply entrenched habits invariably requires help, information, and real support from others. Get a coach, and you’ll make change far more likely.”

Put it simple and short, your coach is a shortcut. He keeps you from getting lost and when lost he shows you the path. This is what J.D. taught me long ago. A coach can recognize your potential, encourage and facilitate you. A good coach will also keep stretching you as his mentee. This will make sure you get things done today and tomorrow too.

Read more

• 4 Things Mentors Do

Short Term Rewards And Punishments

?”Change Tactic: Directly link short term rewards and punishments to the new habits you’re trying to form, and you’re far more likely to stay on track”

Getting things done is tightly coupled with time management. If I fail to get things done on time I punish myself by the fact I cannot accomplish other things I was planning to do, like writing another blog post or spending more time with my family. On the other side, if I am able to get things done on time my reward is spending more time on what I love the most – be it short term or long, it’s all about time and time is all I have. Get things done on time and reward yourself with extra time for things you love the most.

Change Your Environment

?”Change Tactic: Small changes in your environment can have a surprising effect on your choices. For example, just add a few visual cues that help you focus on your goals, and your behavior will change rapidly”

Clutter gets in a way of getting things done. My job requires long hours working with computer. If my computer environment is cluttered I am far from getting things done as planned. That’s why I am on the tools diet, by that I mean I won’t install or use any tool that would anyhow threaten my performance or introduce clutter in my environment. Practices and principles is what matter, tools come after and they should support the proven principals. If done otherwise (which I observe daily with other folks) then more clutter introduced that leads to low performance, something that hardly could be related to getting things done.

Read more:

• Email Processing On Steroids – Use Built In Shortcuts And Set Up Your Own

image by AmUnivers

Source #1: Personal Motivation

The authors write:

* Visit Your Default Future
* Tell the Whole Vivid Story
* Use Value Words
* Make It A Game
* Create Personal Motivation Statement

I followed the guidelines above. This is what I have done:

• I defined my yearly utilization in the beginning of the year, my future.
• I have broken it into whole story what would it take me to get there.
• I connected it to my values. I created mental image what would happen if I fail to stick to the story – the outcome would be going against my values such as spending less time with my family. This kept motivating me to stick to the plan and keep the prize in front of my eyes.
• I made it a game, trying to beat myself on a daily, weekly, monthly bases. By beat myself I mean how accurate I was in estimating my efforts vs. actual execution. If I was on target that counted for victory, if I was over-delivering or under-delivering that would be a defeat.
• “Boom! boom! boom!” was my motivation statement. Adopted it from one top dog. That was motivational enough.

Read more:

• Time Is Not Money. Time Is Budget
• Getting Results: From Annual Commitments to Daily Execution

Source #2: Personal Ability

The authors write:

* Start with a Skill Scan
* Employ Deliberate Practice
* Learn the Will Skill

One thing is to put good plan together another is execute on it. The key skill I needed was to frictionlessly track my execution. Another key skill was to apply simple yet brutal prioritization approaches when my plate got too busy. Obviously the Will skill I needed to learn when saying No to things that were deprioritized and fell off the plate. I practiced it deliberately on a daily basis.

Read more:

• Prioritize What You Do – Steven Covey Way [The Way That Works]
• The Power Of Saying “No”

Source #3 and #4: Social Motivation and Ability

The authors write:

* Know Who’s a Friend and Who’s an Accomplice
* Redefine “Normal”
* Hold a Transformational Conversation
* Add New Friends
* Distance Yourself from the Unwilling

I made clear rule to keep out away from procrastinators and drainers, people who don’t value no one’s time including their own. I realized it’s normal to tell those folks “gotta go” after 1 min of opportunity I used to give them to only realize nothing valuable will come out from those hollow talks. On other hand I started to reach out to folks who seemed to be very effective with their limited time at scale. If I was lucky I made friends with them and I could learn from their successful practices and share mine. After some time I created a virtual circle of like minded – those who I follow and those who follow me. Together we could help growing each other on the go with our time management practices..

Read more:

• Consultants, Beware Of Procrastinators, Disengaged, And Distracters!

Source #5: Organizational Motivation

The authors write:

*  Use Carrots and the Threat of Losing Carrots
* Use Incentives in Moderation and in Combination
* Reward Small Wins

My organization I worked for as a consultant had very simple motivation incentives. Literally, they had hard core incentives. “You make your utilization goals, are in. You miss your goals, we’ll talk and may give you another opportunity.. or not.” Simple and quite motivating. I kept sticking with the plan I made in first place. Wasting no time on low priority stuff.

Source #6: Organizational Ability, Control Your Space

* Build Fences
* Manage Distance
* Change Cues
* Engage Your Autopilot
* Use Tools

The tools usually got in a way. Hour reporting one was the key friction and time waster. To put it on autopilot I tracked my time using my offline tools, namely Microsoft Outlook. I used simple notes vs. fancy tools. By the end of week I had recurrent meeting with myself, red colored cue, where I needed to quickly copy and paste my time into the reporting tool in batch. This alone save me ton time comparing if I would do it daily.

Each week, month, and also annually I was driving my time allocation and execution based on these principles. It’ was no surprise when my utilization targets were hit perfectly usually a little higher than required, but that was done by design and working forty hour workweek.

image by Curatesegg

Managing just enough information at hand is fundamental to being focused, productive, and as a result to saving time.  I am sure you hit one or few of following situations:

• You rely on Google to find relevant information but instead you are flooded with ton of noise. You find yourself massively clicking through only to find nothing helpful behind promising links.
• You store all of the information offline and try to categorize in folders. As the information grows you forget what folder it was stored and then find yourself hysterically clicking through folders and falling back to search based on keywords wasting precious time.
• You take notes on stickies and pin them to screen or to the board on your wall. As the stickies multiply you find hard times to keep track what was first or just cannot allocate more room for more stickies realizing this does not scale well.
• You try keeping it all in your head.

I was in all of these situations and they failed me time and again – I kept wasting my time finding relevant piece of information. Here is the approach I found that I can keep up with and it serves me well – keep just enough information at hand, then file it or just dump it.

Zero Item Inbox

Email shuffling is one the biggest time wasters. To avoid wasting time on emails make sure you touch each email as fewer times as possible. Zero Item Inbox is one of the techniques to achieve this.

To have zero items in your inbox I follow the following simple rules:

• Emails with quick asks (example, “What’s John’s email address?”) – respond immediately and delete.
• Action items (example, “Prepare status report.”) – tag with relevant category, and move to the hot plate (see next paragraph for details).
• Info nuggets (example, “Here is the list of links to resources”) – move to personal KB (knowledge base).
• Spam (anything unrelated to what’s important to you) – Shift+Delete.

Read more in Keep Your Inbox Clean , Stay Focused And Productive – My 4 Simple Rules.

Hot plate

Hotplate is a place where just enough actionable items wait to be processed and then to be filed. Think of it as of categorized to-do list for your life/work projects. It should clearly tell you what your life/work projects are and it should clearly tell you what’s need to be done for each project without reshuffling the items. I use Microsoft Outlook and categories for this purpose. I have special folder called Projects, the hot plate, where I move actionable emails after I categorized them. The folder configured to group the items by the categories, the projects. It’s also configured to show the items collapsed. So when I browse into the folder I see plain list of the projects, when I expand the project from the list it shows plain list of unprocessed items. When I process the item, I file it removing it from the hot plate keeping it clean with just enough items and avoiding from growing limitlessly. Saves me ton of time

Read more in Define Your Life projects – Design And Implementation.

Annual, Monthly, Weekly, Daily Outcomes Lists

Another biggest time waster is re-work. Re-work happens when folks go off track when trying to achieve their goals. Most common problems is losing sight of the goal and being drown in unimportant tasks; or keeping on track toward the goal that’s not relevant anymore. My approach to both is mapping my annual, monthly, weekly, and daily outcomes and then precisely executing against them daily with periodic checks. I check for being on track and I check for relevance of the goal. If not, I adjust on the spot or drop it altogether due to lack of relevance.

Read more in Getting Results: From Annual Commitments to Daily Execution

Image by Erik mit k

In this post I outline how I configure Microsoft Office Outlook to serve as a tool for Effective Time Management. It outlines the following configurations:

• Setting up categories
• Creating online (OST) folders
• Creating local (PST) files and folders
• Creating Search folders
• Setting Navigation page
• Setting To-Do Bar

Setting up categories

Set up categories that will be used to tag emails, self posts, and meetings in calendar. Adding categories to actionable items such as emails and meetings provide visual clues for quicker focusing.

To set up categories

1. Open Microsoft Office Outlook.
2. Click on the Home tab at the top.
3. Locate Tags ribbon and click on the Categorize icon to expand available categories.
4. Click on All Categories. You will be presented with the list of the default categories. I usually delete them all and create those that are relevant to my life and work projects.

Creating online (OST) folders

Online OST folders are those that are managed by email software hosted on the remote servers. These are important for cases when you access your mailbox from different places or worse, when your computer needs to be rebuilt. Online folders will be always recreated based on their copy on the remote servers. Use online folders to manage your “hot plate” categorized items before they are processed and filed in local folders.

To create online folders

1. Expand your treeview navigation pane.
2. Right click on the Inbox folder and choose New Folder… option.
3. Specify arbitrary name for the new folder, I call mine Projects. This is where I collect all “hot plate” items that are yet to be addressed before being filed.

Creating local (PST) files and folders

Local (PST) folders are used to story items locally on your computer. If the computer is lost and the items are not backed up it’s impossible to restore them. The reason for storing items in the local PST files and folders is that online folders are usually limited in size and you are forced to periodically clean up. I use local PST files and folders to manage my knowledge base (KB) and file project items that were processed.

To add local data file

1. Click on the Home tab at the top.
2. Click on Account Settings.
3. On the Account Settings dialog click on  Data File tab.
4. Click on Add… option.
5. In the Create or Open Outlook Data File dialog specify the file name and the path to it and click OK. Choose other than default path, something where you remember to go and grab the file when you want to back it up.
6. To create folders in the local PST data file follow same procedure as with online OST filers described in previous section

Creating Search folders

Search folders are especially useful when managing large amount of data. I manage my knowledge base (KB) items in separate local PST file. Each item has specific keyword in it so it’s easy to set up the search folder to bring only these specific items.

To create search folder

1. Expand the navigation treeview.
2. Right click on the Search Folders node and click on New Search Folder… option.
3. Follow the instructions to create search folder based on criteria of your interest.

Setting Navigation page

It’s a good idea to add favorites view of the folders. The more projects you tackle the more items you collect, the more items you collect the bigger your KB grows and the more folders it has. At some point there are so many folders you get distracted and find yourself spending more time on finding specific folder and then finding specific item. Favorites views helps to solve this problem. I add to favorites view those folders that I use the most, for example, current projects, so they are readily available.

If the Favorites view is not available on the navigation treview follow this steps to bring it up.

1. Click on the View tab at the top.
2. Click on the Navigation Pane ribbon.
3. Select Favorites option.

Setting To-Do Bar

To-Do Bar helps to see quick timeline view  – what’s next. I configure it to show only current month and and the upcoming appointments. In majority of cases the appointments are those I blocked myself in the calendar, I never use tasks features of Microsoft Office Outlook to actually manage my tasks, I use meetings instead I set with myself. I also like the monthly view on the To-Do Bar. It shows my timeline progress on a daily, weekly, and monthly scale. Love it.

To configure To-Do Bar

1. Click on the View tab at the top.
2. Click on the To-Do Bar ribbon and select Data Navigator and Appointment options.

You are all now set to smoothly use Microsoft Office Outlook smoothly.

Related

• Free eBook: Effective Time Management With MS Outlook 2007
• Remove Distracting Email Notifications – All Of Them
• Time Is Not Money. Time Is Budget.

1. Start meeting exactly at the time it was scheduled. Do not wait for those who are late. Those who come on time do not have to suffer. Let those who’re late feel uncomfortable entering the room that’s already engaged, this should force them come on time next.
2. Decline meetings that you cannot contribute anything significant. When declining ask to include you when sending out the summary notes. If summary notes aren’t being sent, then it was not worth in first place. if the notes being sent, you have just enough info to decide if you should attend next or skip it.
3. Define clear agenda beforehand and distribute to the attendees with short lead time so it keeps fresh while in people’s inboxes. Send clear message similar to this: “This is what we are going to discuss…”. And then 3 to 5 bulleted one liners, but no more. With short and clear list of topics chances the meeting will fit into its schedule and that everyone would stay engaged and on topic. If it ends earlier even better!
4. Set clear goals/outcomes for the meeting. Defining topics is one thing, setting expectations for the outcomes is another. You can talk hours about the topic without producing anything actionable. Mitigate this risk by adding to the agenda the following one liner: “by the end of this meeting I’d like to have…” and then add the expected outcomes.
5. Summarize action items during the meeting. Project the agenda on the screen during the meeting and as you step through the agenda items add actionable notes to each. Don’t add ton of text (gosh, seen that so many times… the summary with ton of blurbage that impossible to parse)
6. When summarizing the outcomes include at least these vital three: “what”, “accountable”, “due by”. Avoid summaries like “we need to do blah and blee” – it will never be accomplished. Instead assign outcomes to real person with real dates this person can commit for.
7. Finish the meeting exactly on time. If not you let people get used to spend your time without boundaries. Also it helps educating people not to waste time during the meeting for irrelevant things that eat up time.
8. Read the summary notes out loud just before the meeting ends.  Make sure everyone understood what was agreed, what needs to be produced, who took responsibility for each action item and by when it needs to be delivered.
9. Send out the meeting and add yourself in CC so you get the summary in your Inbox as you would get any other actionable email. It has the checklist of items. If one of them yours, then start tackling it by scheduling. It would also serve you well next when you meet for the follow up meeting.
10. When meeting for the follow up meeting pull the summary as your agenda and make sure everyone addressed their work items. Close the loop.

Related

• Time Is Not Money. Time Is Budget.
• Free eBook: Effective Time Management With MS Outlook 2007

image by sarkasmo

Work 40 hours a week, the rest is life. This is my personal system for getting results at work. The main question here is – how do I make sure I produce high impact results without breaking this boundary?

I took principles outlined in J.D. Meier’s book – Getting Results the Agile Way – as a baseline (full disclosure – I was reviewing the book’s drafts).

The keys to my system are:

• Simple lists of outcomes
• Mapping outcomes to timeline
• Prioritization based on importance and urgency
• The rule of 3
• Reflection and adjustment

Personal Commitments

At the beginning of each year every employee at Microsoft builds his commitments for the next fiscal year. It is very heavy process and everyone is committed to it. There are many tools and resources to support this process. I am building my commitments based on these three pillars:

• My discipline commitments. Each discipline – Program Managers, Software Engineers, Testers, Consultants, and others – offered predefined set of common to the discipline commitments. I am Programming Writer, I have mine, specific to the role.
• My organization strategy. There are many Programming Writers at Microsoft – some write guidance for Windows Server, some for Windows Phone 7, and some for Windows Azure. Each org has its own strategy so that everyone should focus on specifics of the organization he belongs.
• My personal aspirations. That’s my personal development and growth. This is where I am completely free to express my aspirations for my growth – it can be anything that supports my growth and in some way related to the two above.

At the end of the day, when the exercise for writing personal commitments completed, I have simple list what I need to deliver throughout the year. A plain list of commitments.

Annual Deliverables Map

Now that I have my list of commitments I need to spread it throughout the year. It’s unreasonable I would work toward each commitment from day one. Or as Gerald Weinberg puts it in his Secrets of Consulting book:

“The wider you spread the thinner it gets”

What I do is create Annual Deliverables map. It is a simple table with months as rows and projects or themes (meta projects) as columns or swim lanes. It is really easy to shuffle and reshuffle the commitments list until it makes sense to me.

Now that I have a map I can pave the path to each deliverable. It means I can work backwards and put on the map sub deliverables for each commitment. Each deliverable should support building up the overall commitment:

Done. I have annual plan broken into monthly deliverables. I can test my progress each month and see if I am on track or off.

Weekly Planning

Here I adopt and adapt principles from Chapter 7 – Design Your Week.

At the beginning of each month, which is usually correlated with the beginning of week I create a new monthly planner which looks similar to the following:

Using this template I follow the following steps to build my weekly plan:

1. I look at month’s deliverables I need to produce and think what outcomes should contribute to it.
2. I map the outcomes on the week’s days
3. Repeat this for all monthly deliverables.
4. Shuffle weekly outcomes so it makes sense taking into account holidays, moods, priorities.
5. Scan through the week’s outcomes and drop lower priority items.
6. Repeat it until each day has only three outcomes to deliver.
7. Go to my calendar and proactively block time for each outcome. This is where I can perfectly sense and test if I have enough time for each one. I might have meetings I must attend, or other reasons the plan won’t fly. If it does not – go back and brutally cut more from the table.
8. Done. Outcomes planned, time blocked meaning resources allocated. It’s time to execute.

I conduct this exercise at the beginning of each week.

Daily Execution

Each morning I start fresh. I open my calendar and I perfectly see my daily schedule for daily results. I do not need to to think and spend time what’s to do or how much time I need to spend on it – it is just there. No excuses. Just do it. Boom Boom Boom.

Reflection, Re-prioritization, and Adjustment

At the end of the day I see what I was able to accomplish while sticking to the daily plan. I mark as done what’s done. What what wasn’t accomplished is treated as follows (it’s either or):

• Drop it, just drop it.
• Push down to other day of the week and drop other item instead.

The key is keeping only 3 daily outcomes.

It is simple prioritization game. Since there are only few items in the table, 3 per day, it is easy to see which one is more important than the other. Just drop the lower priority one.

If I feel I drop more items then I accomplish chances my planning is too ambitious, so I go back and plan accordingly or tell my manager I won’t be able to deliver it. The beauty is that I am able to spot the bad trends early enough vs. realizing it at the end of the track. No one likes last minute surprises, especially managers.

image by kwanie

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Apple iPad(16GB, Wifi)

Getting Results the Agile Way: A Personal Results System for Work and Life in printed version. The book is available completely for free online at www.GettingResults.com.

If you are still wondering what gift to buy for the holidays to your friend, wife, son,  colleague, or anyone who’s dear to your heart look no further.

It’s my secret weapon that helped me to get promoted twice, take names with customers, get networked with key people, avoid stress and burn out, hit my numbers and beyond, and almost never work more than 40 hours a week. And much more.

What Is In The Book?

The book does not show “Look Inside” feature on Amazon. But that should not prevent you going online at www.GettingResults.com and enjoy the entire contents of the book, here is the table of contents:

• Acknowledgements
• Contents at a Glance
• Foreword
• A Word from the Author
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 – Why Agile Results
• Chapter 2 – Agile Results Overview
• Chapter 3 – Values, Principles, and Practices
• Chapter 4 – Hot Spots
• Chapter 5 – Monday Vision, Daily Outcomes, and Friday Reflection
• Chapter 6 – Design Your Day
• Chapter 7 – Design Your Week
• Chapter 8 – Design Your Month
• Chapter 9 – Design Your Year
• Chapter 10 – Results Frame, Personas, and Pitfalls
• Chapter 11 – 25 Keys to Results
• Chapter 12 – 25 Strategies for Results
• Chapter 13 – Motivation
• Chapter 14 – Mindsets and Metaphors

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Kindle Wireless 6″

It’s Not Just Another GTD

The biggest difference for me when I compare J.D.’s approach to others such as  Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity or The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich is that Getting Results focuses on core principles first versus on techniques on how to keep up with work overload. Another big thing is that the book is a reference – you do not have to read it all to start applying the practices outlined there in order to get instant results. Want to get motivated? – jump to Motivation chapter. Want to change your mindset and adopt relevant mindset? – no problem, jump to Mindsets and Metaphors. Want to outline your annual portfolio of results? – go ahead and jump to Design Your Year chapter.

I practice this and it gets me results instantly, the agile way. So anyone can. If you wish giving a great present on the holidays Getting Results is the one you should be looking at.

 
by ralphbijker

David Allen – the man behind the GTD brand and the book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity – offers the GTD Mastering Workflow seminar. Here is the promise:

What You’ll Learn

• Highly effective and simple techniques for handling email, paperwork and projects.
• How to implement specific action steps to make sure that you are aware of all of your commitments (to yourself and others)
• How to capture what has your attention, and place it into a system that you can trust – day in and day out
• How to clarify and organize your work, and reduce your sense of overwhelm in the process
• How to file paperwork, reading, emails, notes, and more – so that you can find it all again where and when you need it

Whoa! That’s exactly what I need! … Or do I?

As a field consultant I have developed my personal approaches when I was working for Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS). In this post I am reflecting on my approach to the workflow and the techniques I am using.

Handling Email

There are 3 simple principles I follow:

• Zero Inbox policy. It prevents wasting time on scanning and rescanning your Inbox. More info: Keep Your Inbox Clean , Stay Focused And Productive – My 4 Simple Rules.
• Reduce places to look for emails. Looking for emails in fewer places saves time on jumping over different folders looking for the right email. I have three places where emails leave: Inbox, Projects folder, Archive. More info: Time Management: Boost Personal Performance With Caching Techniques
• Read email proactively, not reactively. Reading emails is distracting unless you do it intentionally. Most people read emails as it comes following some kind of notification. That’s reactive approach and it is distracting. Remove email notifications, stop distraction, read emails proactively. More info: Remove Distracting Email Notifications – All Of Them.

Managing My Attention and Commitments

To manage my attention and commitments I use the following 3 rules that focus me on stuff that matters, prioritization, and time management:

• Stuff that matters. First I identify stuff that matters, my life projects. It is related to work, family, personal development, etc. More info: Define Your Life projects – Design And Implementation
• Prioritization rules. I adopted Covey’s prioritization rules that are based on Urgent/Important attributes. Extremely simple and practical. More info: Prioritize What You Do – Steven Covey Way [The Way That Works]
• Time management. My approach for time management is simple – I treat it as a budget. Allocate time for stuff that matters upfront, then execute against the plan. More info: Time Is Not Money. Time Is Budget.

Organizing Work

Once I identified the stuff that matters and allocated time budget for it I use annual, monthly, weekly, and daily rituals to organize my work:

• Annual plan. Annual plan helps me identify my annual time budget.
• Monthly plan. Monthly plan helps me break down the time budget into weekly budget taking into account holidays and other potential leaves.
• Weekly plan. Weekly plan helps me allocating specific time budgets to specific life projects.
• Daily ritual. Daily ritual is basically executing against the plan.
• Weekly ritual. Weekly ritual helps me reflecting on what I have accomplished during the week and make proper adjustments to the week to come.

More info: Free eBook: Effective Time Management With MS Outlook 2007

Information Management

My information sources are mostly based on emails I receive and the RSS I am subscribed. The trick is filtering the info and funnel it to my personal topical knowledge base.

• RSS filters. I am subscribed to many feeds so scanning the feeds efficiently for new posts saves me time. More info: How to Use Outlook 2007 RSS To Effectively Aggregate And Distill Information
• Personal Knowledge Base [KB]. My personal knowledge base is based on Outlook folders. For each topic I have dedicated folder. Each time I encounter an info nugget I just move it into the folder for further reuse.
• Use keyboard. Using keyboard and mastering shortcuts is essential for fast performance. Using mouse is inefficient. More info: Email Processing On Steroids – Use Built In Shortcuts And Set Up Your Own.

Should I attend David’s workshop?

Related Books

• Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully
• The 80/20 Individual: How to Build on the 20% of What You do Best
• Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used
• First Things First

by kwerfeldein

The 80/20 Individual: How to Build on the 20% of What You do Best by Richard Koch is the book I needed to read long ago. If you still have not read it do it now. Do not postpone it. It is engaging read and it is full of practical insights from successful entrepreneur.

For some reason I think it served (or could serve) Tim Ferris as a good prototype when he was writing his The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich.

In this post I share few ideas from the book.

Creating Is Rearranging

Koch writes:

Creation is rearranging things that already exist.

The best example for it is www.Wikipedia.org. It is huge value created by rearranging the information that already exists somewhere else.

What could you do to create by rearranging? You could collect your best practices and publish it is a free eBook. I have done it recently. I published a small PDF file that consolidates some of my professional practices. The result was quite incredible – few customers called me asking for a service after reading it.

Be An Oddball

Koch writes:

The psychologist wants unusual characters who have a few fantastic strengths. If you have these, the corporation couldn’t care less about a long laundry list of things you can’t do well or even do at all.

I cannot speak for myself how crazy I am [I know many who knows me would] and how it helps me to survive corporate jungle life. The best way to affirm it is calling out that successful companies indeed embrace weirdness as a strength.

Belong

Koch writes:

To create you must belong.

Oh… this one is essential. The best prove for it is Maslow Hierarchy of needs for self realization. One of the needs is “Love/Belonging”. Does it explain the burst of social networks recently? I think so. People want to belong to their communities. Now they have the tools that break the limits of time and space. He who wants to realize himself cannot do it on his own, he needs to belong to his community of like minded.

Making  A Difference

Koch writes:

His greatest reward , as with all 80/20 individuals, was in making a difference.

When your basic needs are fulfilled, when you belong to community of like minded, you want to make an impact – the difference. For me, it is about sticking to my values and doing the right thing for my family, for my customers, for my employer, for my friends. It is not uncommon that doing the right thing leaves you without the reward you deserve. Fight hard for the reward, but if you lose no one can take away your own pride about the fact that you made the difference. Make the difference.

Life Is An Experiment

Koch writes:

Life is an experiment. We are running in a maze, and the 80/20 principle signposts the exit.

This one breaks the mold of common wisdom about first impressions. The best example I can think of is getting hired with my current employer. When I first got into HR department for an interview it was a complete fiasco. I left a seriously damaged first impression. It taught me a lesson. But I did not give up. Next time I came prepared. The result was twofold. #1 – I got hired with a company I wanted to work badly. #2 – I started this blog and the first post was just about that – Prepare For Job Interview.

Practice This – Get Results

• Experiment with your life – make a solid collection of life time experiences.
• Read The 80/20 Individual: How to Build on the 20% of What You do Best – identify your stuff that matters and focus on it.

Angelica Menefee, Founder and president of Trampoline, Inc. I think you have to have a lot of self-discipline Roger Howard, Head of shipping department, data processing company. I’ve always been a reader, but I read a lot more now. It’s relaxing. It gives you an avenue to direct yourself in. Michael Jones, Part-time consultant for Six Sigma, Gulf Shores. I decided to get into consulting because I’d been working too many hours. I have a lot more control over what I do, and I sleep better. Lisa Blanton, Founder and president of the Collings Group. Work-life balance has become less difficult since I became my own boss. That was the only way to really manage it. LaMonte Guillory, Internet business strategist I even talk about my personal life in business fashion—so we could bring some balance to our work-personal life Lou Hoffmann, Founder and president of the Hoffman Agency The key is having more control of your time and how you control your job Practice This – Get Results Get disciplined – get The Power Of Saying “No”  Read more – Learning Capability Is Your Core Competitive Advantage Consider consulting as a career path – Consulting – What’s The Deal? Make your life’s business plan. Start with your time budget – Time Is Not Money. Time Is Budget. What’re your secrets of healthy work-life balance?

]]> http://practicethis.com/what-accomplished-people-can-teach-you-about-work-life-balance/feed/ 13 http://practicethis.com/program-yourself-for-extremely-fast-performance/ http://practicethis.com/program-yourself-for-extremely-fast-performance/#comments Thu, 22 Jan 2009 07:04:10 +0000 alik levin http://practicethis.com/2009/01/22/program-yourself-for-extremely-fast-performance/

Some call it GTD, some call it Kaizen, some just call it discipline. Call it what ever you like. If you want to perform extremely fast you better adopt proven performance practices. You must program yourself the way the world fastest computers are. Program yourself to perform fast when

by Katiya Rhode-Singh

checking emails, reading news, attending meetings, selling to your customers, delivering services, blogging.

Why?

They say “time is money”. If you can save yourself time, you surely save yourself tons of money. Here is how I save.

Process Emails Fast

I have this silly habit of asking everyone the question “how many email items you have in your Inbox?”. The answer varies from hundreds to thousands. Yesterday I visited an old friend – he has 26,000 thousand emails in his inbox…

You spend enormous time keeping emails in your inbox. Stop it! Trash it all – it is all stale. Starting from tomorrow follow simple practice – keep your Inbox clean! How?

• Spam goes directly to trash (delete it immediately!)
• Emails that require time investment – block time in your calendar and stick it there. Now delete it from your Inbox.
• Knowledge emails – move it to your knowledge base folder.
• Fast forward emails (“who’s the guy that repairs….?”) – answer immediately and delete it from your Inbox.

Is your Inbox clean now? Are we clear now? Good. Next.

Fast Forward Meetings

Meeting mostly is the biggest performance killer. Here is how to save time on meetings.

• Stop calling a meetings. You have plenty ways to communicate your message effectively.
• Stop attending meetings. There is really few reasons to attend a meeting. There are many more reasons to call a meeting off.
• When at a meeting keep the goal of the meeting before the attendees.
• During the meeting track the following: action item, the owner, the expected result, the timeline.
• When the meeting is over you should have meeting summary ready to be sent – send it right before the meeting ends.
• Start and end meeting exactly when it was schedule.

Sell Fast

I heard someone saying the software prices are either $500 or $100,000. Think about it. If the product costs $500 there is a little risk of buying it. It is also unreasonable to have sales guy attached to the product that costs that little. When the product costs $100,000 the risk of buying is huge. The prospect needs a little push to decide. This is where the sales man kicks in. It is also reasonable to have a sales guy for $100,000 product to cove her costs.

I am usually involved in low end service packages. Here is what I do.

• Create simple SOW (Statement Of Work), very simple. That simple that the prospect won’t ask you to meet in order to discuss the details.
• If the prospect asks for a meeting – refuse. Explain it is part of the work.
• If the prospect insists to meet – tell her the truth, that meeting will actually cost you more than the delivery.
• If the prospect insist – give her the phone number of another service provider.

Deliver Services Fast

Enable fast service delivery following these simple practices.

• Create well defined procedures to follow when delivering the service.
• Create simple checklists to follow and check your work.
• Prioritize – focus on high return for your time. Ignore the rest. Communicate it to the customer.

Deliver the service and go home fast.

Blog Fast

Are you aspiring part time blogger? How do you stay alive in the blogosphere ocean when so many sharks surround your? This is what I do:

• Collect topics for blogging during the week. Generate topics pipeline.
• Write your blog posts week ahead pulling the blog topics out of your pipeline.
• Use templates for your posts, do not write from scratch.
• Stop using a mouse – use shortcuts.

“Practice as if you are the worst, perform as if you are the best.”

Practice This – Get Results

• Clean your Inbox – save time on scanning it over and over again. 
• Call that stupid meeting off!
• Shorten sales cycles by selling narrow brands. “The wide you spread it, the thinner it gets“.
• Deliver your services on spec – save on customizations. Customers will appreciate on time delivery of what was promised.
• Blog super fast – generate topics pipeline, use templates, write blog posts week ahead.

My Related Posts

• Keep Your Inbox Clean , Stay Focused And Productive – My 4 Simple Rules
• The Power Of Saying “No”
• The Secret Behind GTD [Getting Things Done] Revealed
• On Writing – John Lennon, Gerald M. Weinberg, Me, You, And Outlook 2007
• Prioritize What You Do – Steven Covey Way [The Way That Works]
• Boost Your Blogging Productivity With Post Templates
• Email Processing On Steroids – Use Built In Shortcuts And Set Up Your Own

Have you had this situation? You are focused on solving some sort of problem and then  – boom – telephone rings. You pick up the phone (big mistake!) and hear answer machine running some sort of marketing campaign….

by NathanFromDeVryEET

The focus is lost. The solution you were THAT close is now THIS far and you need to start it over… ARGGHHHH!

Have you?

Interruptions are fact of life. You cannot avoid it completely. Then how do you get back to your work after the interruption? How do you protect your productivity from losing time and getting back on speed when switching back and forth?

In software engineering it is called Context Switching and State Management. The system with better State Management performs better (faster and more reliable).

Can I apply State Management to my personal performance? My answer is “Yes”. Here is my technique.

Manage State With Outlook 2007

Microsoft Outlook 2007 is my choice for managing my state. I am a consultant and I work on

multiple projects. Projects that run concurrently. Some projects run continuously, some get drained and then get back to life on and off. I need the ability to get on speed no matter what – either the project is fresh or stale. I need to hit the ground running. Always. To do so I follow these simple rules:

• Keep my inbox clean. This rule helps me reduce time on scanning my inbox again and again for action items.
  • Keep Your Inbox Clean , Stay Focused And Productive – My 4 Simple Rules 
• Categorize each action item. This rule helps batch relevant related action items. It helps reduce context switching and stay focused on specific topic.
  • Define Your Life projects – Design And Implementation
  • The Fast And The Peaceful
• Stop using the mouse. This rule helps me get more from my hands. Mouse must be moved in order to get to the specific area. My hands are always on the keyboard. No time is wasted on moving. Also, when using the mouse my eyes are involved. When using keyboard only I can type without help from my eyes. Eyes can be focused on something else in parallel to typing. By the way, parallel computing is one of the biggest promises of today’s computer performance improvement.
  • Email Processing On Steroids – Use Built In Shortcuts And Set Up Your Own

All these rules are designed to spend less effort on finding the relevant action items.

“The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be. “ – Bruce Lee

Self Test

• Can you list your current projects fast? What’s the overall number of the project?
• Can you tell me where you are at in each project?
• Can you tell me what’s next in each project?

What’s caching?

In computer science, a cache (pronounced /kæ?/) is a collection of data duplicating original values stored elsewhere or computed earlier, where the original data is expensive to fetch (owing to longer access time) or to compute, compared to the cost of reading the cache. In other words, a cache is a temporary storage area where frequently accessed data can be stored for rapid access. Once the data is stored in the cache, future use can be made by accessing the cached copy rather than re-fetching or recomputing the original data, so that the average access time is shorter.

A cache has proven to be extremely effective in many areas of computing – Wikipedia

Can it be “extremely effective” in areas other than computing? My answer is “Yes”. Here are few techniques I adopted from computing to my real world. Specifically, I apply the techniques to how I manage my tasks.

Caching Principles At Work

To make it effective for the cache one must follow the principles (adapted from performance engineering):

Cache the data in the form closest to that which you can use. I manage my tasks in Outlook 2007 as email items (I do not use Outlook’s built-in tasks features which requires additional actions that only add overhead). Managing tasks as email items is very handy since it is easy to manipulate it – scan it, edit it, move it, and email it. I do not waste time to transform it in order to take any of these actions. Discard stale data in your cache periodically. I follow a simple discipline to discard the tasks that are of no interest any more (finished, deferred, dropped, etc). This helps me keep my tasks lists clean and easy to scan saving time dramatically.

• Set cache limits. When my number of tasks grows beyond of limits I set beforehand (say 20 tasks per project) I know time to sweep the list and clean it. This helps focusing only on significant tasks – those that get me close to the project’s goals faster.
• Choose the right cache location.  I decided to use Outlook and email items as my cache location. Why? Since it helps me manage it in form closets to that which I can use it (read first bullet). Also it synchronizes nicely with my mobile phone. Even my shopping list I manage this way (and My wife knows it perfectly).
• Avoid distributed caches. My tasks are stored in one place – Outlook email items folders. No other places. Otherwise I’d waste tons of time and energy looking for it and synchronizing it.

Results

• My context switching (one of the biggest killers in software performance) is optimized so when I switch from one project to another I can easily pick up on the most relevant tasks in no time.
• I do not waste time in looking for tasks related to the project.
• I give my mind relief from remembering unnecessary stuff.
• I work faster and accomplish more in less time. And then go home.

This post describes my approach of investing my time as a budget – annually, monthly, weekly, daily. It also describes briefly the result this approach gets me.

by zzzack

Annual Time Budget Plan Execution

How’s big your annual time budget? Is it 12 month? 365 days? Let’s see:

• Total days - 365.
• Public holidays – It depends on your geographic location and few more factors. Let’s take 10 days, for example.
• Sick days – Yes, plan to be sick – it is not unusual to be sick, so plan to be. Say, 6 days annually you take day-off as sickness leave.
• Community Service – like military reservist or other, I am sure you have some sort of community obligations, either voluntary or not. Let’s take 18 days, for example.
• Vacation – how much do you have? I cannot tell you mine as I am signed for NDA about this one. Let’s take 20 days, for example (imaginary number, not actual one).
• Training – planning to build your skills? You better. Say 8 days a year you want to invest in training.
• Unallocated time budget – this one is important. Military folks know it better. You never throw all your troops to attack the enemy. You must have fresh reserve for the moment of truth. You can call it time buffer. Say 6 days. Either you decide to take more vacation days, or train more, or get sick for longer period. This budget is just for that.
• Weekends – 52 weeks * 2 weekend days = 104

What’s left for work is:

193days = 365 – 10(public holidays) – 6(sick days) – 18(community service) – 20(vacation) – 8(training) – 6(unallocated time budget) – 104 (weekends).

Quick check. Let’s examine the budget we have:

• Working hours – 193(available)*8 (working hours) = 1544
• Utilization – this is the number calculated based on available workable hours which is 40 weekly hours times 52 weeks = 2080. Utilization of 70% would require your to invest 2080 * 70% =  1456 working hours. This is what your employer is expecting you to invest in work.

Seems like we are over the budget:

1544(available work hours) – 1456 (required utilization) = 88 hours(tolerance).

In case you are under the budget you must decide to be sick less, work for your community one day less, train less, or use unallocated budget to cover the deficit.

Monthly Time Budget Plan Execution

To control your time budget build a table similar to the following:

• Hours – Actual column. This is where you are going to capture your actual monthly results.
• Hours – Planned column. These are the hours you plan to invest this month. This one should cover the utilization you are required to satisfy.
• Tolerance column. This column should show how uptight you are with the hours this months. It shows the tolerance for you to shuffle your hours. The formula is [Hours - Avail] – [Hours - Planned]. Notice that in February, March, June, and July you have negative tolerance. It means that you do not actually have enough time. What you need is decide to either shuffle HSVTU column or work more during other months.
• Hours  – Avail column. This column shows available hours for investment. It is calculated as all workable hours (40 weekly) – HSVTU hours.
• HSVTU column. Holidays, Sick leave, Vacation, Training, Unallocated hours. I’ve scattered it randomly – it is all up to you and your region’s holidays calendar.

The goal here is that hours reported in Hours – Actual column will be equal or more than in Hours – Planned column. That way you will hit your Utilization target.

Weekly Time Budget Plan Execution

Weekly time budget control is based on monthly budget available. It is shown in Hours – Planned column in the previous table. These are the steps I follow to manage my time budget weekly.

• Identify key projects. It is reasonable to say that you should be knowing what projects you will be involved month ahead from now. Make a list of these projects and allocate monthly time budget for each. Say, Customer X 14 hours, Customer Y 14 hours, Training Z 7 hours, etc.
• Block time in the calendar. Go to your calendar and block time proactively in weekly manner so that the blocked time will sum up to the budgets you allocated to each project.
• Report time invested. Report invested time daily.
• Adjust according to tolerance. Each weekend sum up the invested time and compare to the planned time budget. If you are under budget use available tolerance to allocate more time to invest and catch up next week.

Daily Time Budget Plan Execution

This is my daily practice of executing on what I planned.

• What’s on the table? According to allocated time in my calendar I know what project I need to invest my time budget. The other question is what are the tasks I need to complete for the project? I use my Inbox to manage tasks categorizing it as follows (names are fictitious, except mine):

• Prioritize. It is obvious you need to prioritize your tasks to stay within your time budget. Prioritize key tasks that should take you to the goal/objective of the project. The rest of the tasks? Let few balls drop – it is better than the project’s failure.
• Report investment. Once I am done with the projects – either time is up or the tasks are completed – I report the time I actually invested and move to another project according to my schedule. As you can see I invested in Customer X more than planned and invested less in training (Demo calendar is for planned hours, Utilization calendar is for actual hours I invested).

• What’s next? Next project should show in my Calendar and the tasks are the emails in my Inbox grouped under the same category.

The Result

This approach demands a lots of discipline and practice but it surely pays off. Here are few results that it allowed me to achieve:

• I breath with full chest. No more fire alarms.
• I know what I do and why I do it.
• I know what’s next – in no time. Try me, ask me.
• No more surprises – no more unplanned disappointments.
• My works/life balance has never been better before.
• My work week stays within 40 hours. It may go up though, but only if I want it.
• I see my family more.
• I invest more time in my life projects – mind, body, spirit.
• I am calm. That’s quite an achievement for me, take my word…

Self Test

• Do you feel nervous and uptight?
• Are you chasing project tasks?
• Do you feel you are out of time?
• Can you tell me what projects you currently have?
• Can you tell me what exact tasks you need to perform for each project to achieve the goal?
• Can you tell me you have enough time to complete those tasks?