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?

You need to prioritize to achieve results while keeping sane lifestyle. But how do you prioritize one thing over another?

Adopt Steven Covey’s advice – Urgent/Important quadrants as he outlines it in his First Things First book. It works for me and it should work for you too.

Steven Covey offers simple technique – Urgent/Important quadrants – to prioritize your activities should your care for achieving results.

Chance Brown shares absolutely coolest mindmap images of the concept.

Below is how it’s represented on Wikipedia:

Important but not Urgent

Focus here. This is the main focus area. Day-to-day work. Directly impacts your personal achievement. This quadrant includes the following areas:

• Planning. Plan Ahead Or Plan Your Back Up Plan
• Exercise. Grow Quality – Not Quantity
• Delivering. 3 Easy Steps To Become A Superhero
• Recreation. 4 Dimensions Of Personal Power

Important and Urgent

Switch quickly. Identify the event as Important and Urgent. quickly switch, enter [SWAT/under fire] mode (custody of J.D. Meier). Hit the goal. Return to “Important but not Urgent”  quadrant (usually recreation).

• Emergency.
• Urgent family matters.
• Lifetime opportunity.
• Disaster.

Not Important but Urgent

“Say NO until your tongue bleeds” – adopt this advice from Harvey Mackay. For more cool real world advices read his book – Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive: Outsell, Outmanage, Outmotivate, and Outnegotiate Your Competition.  The technique seem to produce more enemies than friends, but in the long run it pays off. You are your best friend. Take care for yourself first when you need to balance your time (notice – you are in “Not Important” quadrant!).

• Interruptions. Keep Your Inbox Clean , Stay Focused And Productive – My 4 Simple Rules
• Meetings. Avoid Meetings At Any Cost, Or At Least Get Most Out Of It
• Distractions. Remove Distracting Email Notifications – All Of Them

Not Important and not Urgent

Careful. Do not mix this one with recreation in the “Important but not Urgent” quadrant. Stay away from this one! Just stay away from it.

• Trivia.
• Busywork.
• Email shuffling.
• Time wasters.

Self test

• Define your life projects. Do you know what you spend your life for? If you do – can you write down it as a simple list?
• Set goals in each. Do you know what you want to achieve? If you are – can you write down it as a simple list?
• Allocate time. Are you aware of how much time you invest in your life time projects? If you are – how much for each project?

More details in Time Management – Do You Control Your Life Or Life Controls You?

Allocate time (T-i-m-e) and manage it.

by laffy4k

I use Outlook 2007 Calendar to manage my time for each life project. It holds not only work meetings but all my life activities.

After defining the life projects as Outlook 2007 categories I block time in the Calendar proactively. I monitor it through my time control dashboard based on Vista Sidebar. For each time slot I peacefully process relevant pipeline items tagged with similar category. Fast-to-done.

Step-by-step recap

Following are the steps for implementing the time management system.

• Dream
• Define Your Life projects – Design And Implementation
• Block time proactively for each project
• Create action items pipelines for each life project
• Fill the pipelines with the action items
• Control context switching between the life projects
• Process items fast
• Iterate

What life projects can look like?

J.D.Meier’s suggests the following life projects in his Life Frame post:

• Mind
• Body
• Emotions
• Career
• Financial
• Relationships
• Adventure

Matthew Kelly suggest similar list in his The Dream Manager book:

• Physical
• Emotional
• Intellectual
• Spiritual
• Psychological
• Material
• Professional
• Financial
• Creative
• Adventure
• Legacy
• Character

What are yours? How do you manage time for each?

]]> http://practicethis.com/time-management-do-you-control-your-life-or-life-controls-you/feed/ 3 http://practicethis.com/email-processing-on-steroids-use-built-in-shortcuts-and-set-up-your-own/ http://practicethis.com/email-processing-on-steroids-use-built-in-shortcuts-and-set-up-your-own/#comments Wed, 18 Jun 2008 20:13:00 +0000 alik levin http://practicethis.com/2008/06/18/email-processing-on-steroids-use-built-in-shortcuts-and-set-up-your-own/ Are you sending tons of emails? Receiving even more? Looking for the ways to make it faster, save some time, and go home by 5?

Say “No” to the mouse. Set up your email environment for pure keyboard operation.

by acroamatic

Mouse usage assumes one click at any given time. On other hand (hand!!) keyboard allows ten fingers to hit it almost simultaneously. Notice the performance gain you can achieve? This one falls under Concurrency category of Performance Frame I’ve adopted for personal performance engineering.

I use Outlook 2007 (OL 2007) for email processing. Stop reading now in case OL 2007 is not your email client. Some shortcuts are relevant to older Outlook version though.

Creating email items in Outlook 2007

I am using two types of email items – “New Message” and “Post in This Folder”. “New Message” is just an email and “Post in This Folder” serves me to create personal tasks and capture notes. I do not use Tasks and Notes features in OL 2007 . I am on tools diet (Phase 1 – Seiri). It pays off for me over time.

• “New Message”. Ctrl + N or Ctrl + Shift + M.
• “Post in This Folder”. Ctrl + Shift + S.
• Send/Post the item. Ctrl + Enter.

Customize Quick Access Toolbar

Quick Access Toolbar is of great help and it allows setting shortcuts for most common actions. My most common actions on email items are editing email, revising content of the Post, and setting a category for email item. Follow up this demo to familiarize yourself on how to customize the Quick Access Toolbar : Demo: Place your favorite commands on the Quick Access Toolbar. Here is my quick access toolbar:

• Received Emails.
  • Edit Message – Alt + 1.
  • Categorize – Alt + 2.

• Posted Posts.
  • Revise Contents – Alt + 1.
  • Categorize – Alt + 2.

All time favorite shortcuts

• Reply. Ctrl + R.
• Reply all. Ctrl + Shift + R.
• Forward. Ctrl + F.
• Move (#1 favorite of mine). Ctrl + Shift + V.
• Delete (useful when the item is open). Ctrl + D.

Self test

Try creating (Ctrl+N, Ctrl+Shift+S), sending (Ctrl+Enter), moving (Ctrl+Shift+V), replying (Ctrl+R), forwarding (Ctrl+F), editing/revising (Alt+1), and categorizing (Alt+2) your email items using keyboard only. I know at first it is weird. Give it some time. You’ll be thanking me later. You will be thanking when it moved into your basal ganglia (credits go to J.D. Meier).

What am I missing to eliminate the mouse completely?

Are you information worker? Are you sitting in front of the computer ton of time? Do you sometimes lose the sense of time?… Then how do you control yourself to avoid this?

You need your personal time dashboard, your time cockpit.

by sekido

I am using Windows Vista Sidebar to set my time control dashboard. It is always on top thus constantly visible and showing in real time what’s going on. There are four fundamental question I need to get an answer at any give time:

• What’s the next action item?
• When do I switch gears between work and life?
• When does the pay check comes in?
• Is it time to buy or to sell?

What’s next action item? I am using Outlook Upcoming Appointments gadget to display what I have in my Outlook Calendar. The Outlook Calendar consists of the meetings I was invited and I also manage my personal tasks in Outlook Calendar too. When do I switch gears between work and life? Or in other words “What time is it?”. This is most trivial and I use Vista’s built-in Clock gadget. When does the pay check come in? This is a bit broader time question, but important too. I use Vista’s built-in Calendar gadget that perfectly gives me the answer. Is it time to buy or to sell? This question is relevant to those who are invested in stocks. I use this view to see trends in the IT market. Stock changes might indicate an interesting developments, such as this. BTW, here are few useful tips from Vered who’s in the know.

Where are you? -  Here. What time is it? -  Now. What are you? – This moment. – Peaceful Warrior

What’s your time controlling method?

Caching, well known technique in software engineering, can be successfully applied in day-to-day duties to cope with stressful situations fast and peacefully.

Wikipedia on Caching:

…a cache is a temporary storage area where frequently accessed data can be stored for rapid access…

… Cache have proven to be extremely effective in many areas of computing…

J.D. Meier on Caching threats (as a result of improper use or lack of caching):

… Increased memory consumption, resulting in reduced performance…

Scenarios

What falls under "frequently accessed data" category? Daily to-do tasks and related information, thoughts, meeting summaries, follow-ups, blog drafts. When coping with all these ineffectively I feel stressed and as a result my productivity is way far from peak performance.

Following is simple design and implementation of my personal caching practices to improve my responsiveness and thus my performance.

Design

There are few requirements to successful cache implementation:

• Must be easy and fast to access.
• Holds only recent, not stale, information.
• Must be disposed or filed when no more needed.

Implementation

I use Outlook 2007 to manage my cache, the items I use frequently.

Tasks. My inbox is my primarily cache of incoming tasks. I never use Outlook’s Task’s functionality since it violates requirement of simple and fast access. Task can be incoming mail or self post (Ctrl + Shift + S). When the task is created in My Inbox I tag it with one of my life projects – the categories. When the task is completed it is filed and disposed from the cache.

Meetings. For each key person or role I have designated Outlook folder. My manager, sales guys I work, finances, HR. I collect asks and request in the folders and then when I meet them I have ready to go agenda. After the meeting each agenda’s item becomes task and shows up in my Inbox tagged with proper life project.

Blogging. Create designated Outlook folder for blogging. Collect there ideas for the next possible post. I have way to much items in the folder. To mark the item I want to use for my next blog just flag it hitting "Insert" key. In order to focus Create search folder that picks only flagged items. When I finish authoring the post I mark it with check mark – hitting "Insert" key. In short, have one folder called "BLOGGING PIPELINE" where all possible topics to blog are collected, and the other folder called "Next to BLOG" that holds only items that are in works. When the post is published it just disposed from both folders releasing the room for more current once.

To make these caches easily accessible drag these folders into "Favorites" area in Outlook

Summary

Using caching technique I improved my response times dramatically. I also never get stressed when asking myself what’s the next action when:

• Preparing agenda for the meeting with my boss or either colleague.
• Working on specific project.
• Authoring next blog post.

Traffic jams can be productive too. No kidding.

This post does not encourage doing distracting activites during driving but offers suggestions to utilize traffic jams times.

Working online and liberation is the ultimate goal to hit for any blogger. Until then we are bound to drive our cars and getting stuck in horrible traffic jams. Here are few practices to make traffic jams more productive then just listening to radio and hearing even more useless news.

Work

I make phone calls to key colleagues. Sync on status and action items. I am constantly get surprised how helpful it is. People tend to assume rather ask specific questions and sync. Short phone call clarify misunderstandings and makes everyone on the same page.

I make phone calls to my manager too – surprisingly he gets stuck in traffic jams just like me . Short updates on status with key customers seem to be helpful for him. He usually focuses me on what’s more important for him.

Same with reports – short daily sync phone calls clarify the picture and help focus on what’s important.

All done from my car with 1 Km/h speed.

Family

Me and my wife have an agreement to not call each other when at work, unless it is really urgent. That is why I answer my wife’s calls even when on the most important meeting with most important customer.

On other hand it is super nice to chat with my precious. Traffic jams to the rescue! “You gotta gotta gotta try a little tenderness!!”

Or “I just call to say I love you”.

Blogging

After I made all phone calls I am still in that traffic jam… Millions of thoughts run through my mind – they are all can be cool topic for blogging. How do I write it down while driving? I can’t. My friend, J.D. Meier, uses speech recognition devices. This is what I am going to try next.

Hey, look! Just arrived to my office!

"I’m the worst person to be stuck with in a traffic jam.” – Larry King

I do not like surprises – of any kind. The only effective way I found to avoid getting surprised is planning ahead. When not planning ahead expect surprises. Then plan to handle the surprises.

I In “The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership” John C. Maxwell outlines how to plan ahead:

Adopting and adapting this technique helped me achieve better results in each life project I care.

Results – myself

I invest my efforts in developing self control, blogging, and body. My goal’s to control my emotions, post 2 times a week to each of my 2 blogs, and loose weight to 86 kilograms. So far I keep up with the pace – I am calm, 4 blogs a week, and 86 kilograms.

Results – family

Planning ahead helps my wife and I balancing our duties. No surprises. Our kids know when they get their daddy systematically. Fully dedicated – no interruption. I have quality time with my parents to absorb their wisdom.

Results – work.

I am aware where I am at with each project. What the next action is. When to expect to be praised or criticized. No surprises.

Results – social cycles.

I manage to keep up with monthly meetings with my old friends. Having a good laugh during lunch time – is not it a great achievement these days?

“A man who does not plan long ahead will find trouble right at his door” – Confucius

Proactively planning is small investment with huge ROI. Plan ahead, even when not planning or get your back up plan handy.

These are examples where time boxing rocked my world

Myself. At some point in my life I realized I spend less time with my kids and wife, I spend less time for personal development like sports and reading. I did wanted to do it all but “I did not have time for that”. What a nonsense!! I have exactly the same time that everybody has – 24 hours. All I needed to make sure what I want to spend time for and how much. And so I did. I figured out what I want to do the most and I started allocating time proactively on weekly basis. I am consultant and my work achievements are measured by invested billing hours. Proactively allocating the time I know how good or bad my work performance is, should I expect troubles with my manager or find “Thank you for great job” email in my Inbox. Mixing my personal activities with work ones helps me building realistic work/life balance, prevents me from burnouts, creates anticipation for results vs. fire alarms. It removes stress completely.

Family. Time boxing helped me to get closer to my two daughters. I become true parent finally. I enjoy spending time with them and they enjoy it too. I know that – they just tell me so. I think the punch line is my wife’s recurrent “Honey, is everything OK with your work? I see you too much home”. My stretch goal is hearing complaints of this kind only.

Customers. The biggest challenge with customers I think is earning trust. Time boxing helps here a lot. Proactively blocking time for customers activities helps delivering incremental deliverables. The customers like seeing constant progress. They also like when you send an update email or make a phone call versus chasing you just to hear “ahh… ehm… I did not have time for that yet, may be next week, or month…”. There is another part – telling customer proactively “I cannot do it” up front gets you even more trust credits. I am sometimes over motivated to tell customer “Yes” just because I do not want to lose the opportunity. I regret a lot afterward since I just do not have allocated time to complete the work I’ve just committed. Time boxing approach helps me either identify available time or shuffle current time boxes to make one. Or tell the customer – “Can’t do it, sorry”.

Colleagues. Building healthy team is essential. One of the health checks one needs to make is team collaboration and sharing level. While there are plenty ways to share among the team, interpersonal communications are vital. Time boxing is of help here too. On one hand I refrain from coming to the offices – I am paid to do billable time. Being in the office does not earn my company no money, I am less beloved thus. I am beloved by my company when in the field with the customers. Frankly, this is what I love doing. What a match! On other hand I proactively block  specific time boxes to come to the offices to make personal connections with my colleagues, building my network, strengthening the connections. Why? In the moment of truth I can count on them, and they can count on me. I doubt it would be the same if the only thing we know of each other was email address.

Reports. Timely reviews are essential to make sure the work is getting done, and morale is up. Progress status can be obtained via informal talks or sporadically calling reports. This is not effective and efficient. It is stressful too. When specific time is allocated in timely basis it becomes a habit to either parties. Less time spend for preparation, for meeting itself, and then for the follow-ups. My basic agenda is: “what’s good”, “what’s bad”, “action items”, “personal asks”.

Managers. Same as with reports only up the chain. If the manager has the habit of timely focused meetings – good for you, if not – train her. Show the downside of not doing timely and focused progress meetings. Downside to either party. See Reports part in this post.

Sounds easy? It is. The trick is practicing it rigorously until it becomes a habit.

Even before you finish one project, the next one is already waiting for you, because the first one creates the conditions in which the second one will emerge. So, time for family and yourself cannot be found. You have to take the time. Regard this time just as you would a religious holiday…

… Work always creates more work. It never, ever ends. You must take rest when the seventh day arrives. Period. – Ichak Adizes

…and you must stop using excuses. Start proactively allocating time – JUST DO IT!

Warhawk Matt Scott in Nike ‘No Excuses’ Commercial

How. There are 4 simple rules to follow to keep Inbox clean with your Outlook [or any other email client - short cuts would vary]. It all depends on the Inbox items’ purpose.

• Rule #1 – Spam goes to trash. Never leave unnecessary items in your Inbox. Viagra SPAM, Dilbert cartoons, jokes. Anything that does not fall under the rest of the rules goes directly to trash.
• Rule #2 - Action mail, block time in your calendar. Action mail can be task assignment from your manager, personal ask from a colleague, personal note [I do not use tasks feature in Outlook rather I post posts directly to my Inbox using ctrl+shift+S]. Anything that requires time to invest – either to plan or execute falls into this category. Once the time blocked – delete the item from Inbox. It is useful to put the item inside the calendar to have immediate context once the time comes to execute.
• Rule #3 – Knowledge nuggets go to personal KB. I am subscribed to distribution lists for different areas – technical and personal. Sometimes I got real gold nuggets directly to my Inbox. I usually do not read it in depth rather file it into my personal KB [Knowledge Base] for future use. Move it using ctrl+shift+V shortcut in Outlook.
• Rule #4 – Route, do not block the traffic. If you are SME [subject matter expert] in some area you get quite few emails like “can you tell me who/how/what….?”. Usually such email do not require too much time to invest to reply. Un-bottleneck the traffic by replying immediately. Just hit ctrl+R to open reply message, type short relevant information and then hit ctrl+Enter to send the email. If the email is long to read – reply with short “Please focus me how can I help you.”. If they ask you for a favor – let them know you are of help but make them respect your time too. Once the email sent – just delete it.

Why. When Inbox is clean you know what you know and you know what you do not know. That means you know what to do – either execute what you know or make sure to research on what you do not know. When Inbox choked with tens, hundreds, and even thousands of emails [I’ve seen that too] – you just do not know what you do not know. And that is bad situation to be in. It means more unpleasant surprises, and more fire alarms. It is fine in case you like fire alarms. Do you?

“When one reads Bibles, one is less surprised at what the Deity knows than at what He doesn’t know” – Mark Twain

So, how many items do you have in your Inbox today? Will it be the same tomorrow?