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Hilarious!
Popularity: 81% [?]
Archive for 2008
Never Check Email
I know, that's just silly. How about this instead: don't check email in the morning? I watched a great video featuring Julie Morgenstern, the author of, coincidentally enough, Never Check E-Mail In the Morning: And Other Unexpected Strategies for Making Your Work Life Work:
This idea of not checking email in the morning plays off of the idea of working on one's Most Important Task before all else, and/or doing the most difficult challenging thing first (as in to Eat That Frog). One thing I liked in the interview was Julie discussing the traits of poor workers:
- Inaccessibility: This is the boss that is never around, but it can also be the employee who always puts others off, or who can never have an impromptu meeting or call.
- Not Walking the Talk: We think that saying "yes" to everything may makes us agreeable and nice, but in fact, if saying yes to everything causes us not to be able to come through on some items, we are doing significant damage to our credibility.
- Multitasking: I've written on this before. However, multitasking also includes responding to email, or surfing the Internet while on a call, or responding to the Blackberry during a meeting.
- Clutter: This is not about what is looks like, but really about whether it is functional. If you can find what you need immediately, you don't have "clutter". If you cannot find things, consider reading Getting Things Done.
I have not read Julie's book yet, but it is definitely on my list of books to check out.
Popularity: 51% [?]
Email Disclaimers
What I would like to see is a standard set for appending legal disclaimers to emails. In this way email client software could hide all this silly text. The email software could, for example, add a link with something like "This email contains disclaimers. Click here to read". Or even simpler, could we just not put a simple link to the disclaimer instead of adding it to each and every email? I heard that the ability to "hyperlink" has become available on the web.
I just read a thread of email where the content was over 80% of the form:
This e-mail (and attachment(s)) is confidential, proprietary, may be subject to copyright and legal privilege and no related rights are waived. If you are not the intended recipient or its agent, any review, dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail or any of its content is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. All messages may be monitored as permitted by applicable law and regulations and our policies to protect our business. E-mails are not secure and you are deemed to have accepted any risk if you communicate with us by e-mail. If received in error, please notify us immediately and delete the e-mail (and any attachments) from any computer or any storage medium without printing a copy.
This is not efficient. When a lot of people are replying to these messages, it becomes too easy to miss the actual content when navigating around this "fine print". And that's the problem, in plain text email, there is no real substitute for actual fine print. By the way, while we are at it we could do the same for the email "signatures".
Popularity: 43% [?]
So Long Sandy, Thanks For The Memories
I just got the news yesterday that Rael Dornfest is closing down iwantsandy. I have written glowingly about Sandy in the past. It seems that Rael has accepted a position with Twitter, and that's truly great. I am happy for him. The problem for me (because hey, why shouldn't this be about me) is that I have come to rely on Sandy! I was setting up reminders into 2010 using that system and now it appears I will lose all that. I wonder why Twitter, which apparently bought the intellectual property for iwantsandy, would not just keep the current system running while they figure out what they want to do with this technology?
Plan B
I have opened an account up over at Remember The Milk (RTM). My plan is for this service to replace my beloved Sandy. I had tailored Sandy around the system described in Getting Things Done (GTD), so I have had to figure out how to do the same in RTM. Here are a few links that describe using RTM for GTD and have helped to get me started:
- Corrie Haffly on using RTM for GTD
- Polish guy on same
- Efficient Task Management
Life goes on...
Popularity: 33% [?]
AwayFind
As some of you may know by now, Jared over at Technotheory has released his AwayFind service. Inspired by Tim Ferriss' 4-Hour Workweek, this service allows urgent messages to get through to you without you having to constantly monitor your email. I can see this as a must-have service for sales professionals.
There is a free plan, and if you sign up before tomorrow you also get a free ebook "Guide to NOT Checking Email" as an added bonus! There also appears to be big savings on the paid plans if you sign up for those by tomorrow.
This is a great service: wonderfully simple in concept, immensely useful in practice. Be sure to check it out.
Popularity: 27% [?]
Finger Blasters
There once was a group of executives from a highly successful technology company on retreat. You all know this kind of off-site meeting - usually organized by the human resources or marketing types - they often include adventure/survival type games as team building exercises. On this particular retreat, one task put to the executives was particularly challenging. In the middle of a wooded area stood a 15 foot wall. The challenge was to devise a method to get the whole group over the wall using only themselves and materials they could find in the woods nearby. They immediately set to work by brainstorming ideas. These were evaluated one at a time, and after evaluating all of them, the most promising idea was selected based on the thoughtful analysis of the team. They then developed a plan to implement the idea, assigning roles and responsibilities. Once everyone knew what they had to do individually, they executed their plan, and everyone got over the wall. They worked marvelously as a team, and their well thought out plan worked as anticipated. A smashing success, and a good time had by all.
Unfortunately, while they were successful, they were not the most successful at this challenge. It so happened that earlier that week a group of grade school kids (also on a retreat) had also gotten themselves over the wall, but in less time! Their method: someone would yell out an idea. They would try it, and when it did not work, someone would shout out another idea. They would then try that, and so on until finally one of the ideas actually worked and everyone got over the wall.
Ironically, I heard this story at a corporate retreat! In my case, it was many years ago, but I am quite sure many of you may have been told a similar story. It speaks to the dichotomy between massive trial and error and the typical analyze, forecast, plan and execute approach we usually use at work. I was reminded of this story recently when reading Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. In this book, Taleb argues that many (if not most) real world phenomena have more in common with black swans than bell curve distributions. If we have never seen a black swan, we assume all swans are white. We forecast and plan based on this assumption and it all goes to hell when one single black swan shows up. For example, it's hard to think anyone could have forecast the emergence and popularity of the iPod. It's a black swan - not predictable, but world changing. How do we create our own black swans? Since we cannot plan it we are left with massive trial and error.
This was reinforced for me last week when Garr Reynolds' excellent blog Presentation Zen highlighted Tim Brown's presentation on Play at TED where he discusses the virtues of quantity (of ideas) and massive experimentation (what he calls "play"):
How many great products came about because someone was "playing around" with something, or some idea? Probably the majority of them. As Taleb points out, if we could forecast the next great thing, we would be doing that next great thing now!
Popularity: 18% [?]
The Only 2 Causes Of Stress
There are only two fundamental causes of stress. Every other precursor to stress and anxiety can be traced back to these two elementary agents:
- Overestimating probabilities: a tendency to put greater odds than what is realistic on something bad happening.
- Overestimating consequences: projecting graver consequences than is actually warranted if something bad does indeed happen.
When you are feeling anxiety or stress over a situation, it helps to think in terms of these two fundamental causes. For example, let's say you are stressed about getting to the airport on time because you have an important out of town meeting. The root of your stress may lie in a belief that you may be late for your flight, and therefore not make it to the meeting at the appointed time. Now, there may be a chance you will be late, especially if you are truly running late. However, chances are you have factored in the importance of the meeting when you set your alarm in the morning, and in allowing for adequate preparation and travel time. In the past you have mostly always been on time. If you have been late arriving at the airport before, it was a rare occurrence, usually because of an unforeseen circumstance (like a major snow storm). Usually you are on time, and thinking realistically, the most probably outcome is that you will most likely be on time again.
Of course, what if it is the case of that rare instance when you are truly late arriving at the airport. Or worse, you are on time, but the flight is canceled and you have to catch a later flight? In this case, the bad thing will happen, but are the consequences of being late truly the end of the world? Could you not reschedule the meeting for later that day or for the following week? Have the other attendees no doubt experienced the same issues with travel, such that their empathy would allow you to reschedule the meeting? Would the special circumstances not allow you to request special consideration from your audience, therefore making your visit stick in their minds? How bad, really, could the consequences be?
My understanding is that people who continuously experience disproportionate levels of stress or suffer anxiety disorders typically make a consistent habit of overestimating probabilities and/or overestimating consequences. A common component of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), used to treat high anxiety individuals, is to exercise "realistic thinking" where one works through the issues to understand the true, more realistic probabilities of something bad happening, and a more realistic view of the potential consequences in the unlikely event something bad does is fact happen.
You may ask: what if the probability of a bad outcome is great and the consequences of that outcome is very bad (for example, you are trapped in a cave with a hungry lion)? Well, in this rather unlikely scenario you should feel stressed! These are the situations where stress needs to occur and works in our favor, overriding our conscious thought to engage our fight or flight mechanism. The problem is that we all too often equate a department meeting with a lion in a cave, and they are just not the same thing. Really.
Popularity: 24% [?]
Office 2.0
One of the companies I have been casually following in the Business Process Management space is Intalio, mostly because the business is based on an open source model which I find fascinating. The CEO of Intalio is one Ismael Chang Ghalimi. I have never met Mr. Ghalimi, but I get some broadcast email from him from time to time. What intrigues me in his email is his signature which has url's to three sites:
- The Intalio corporate website.
- A Google Calendar showing free and busy times - a rather simple, yet neat idea.
- His blog.
His blog, IT|Redux is worth a read. Two articles that stood out for me:
- Monolab|Incubator: This article discusses shared office space, and the area of interest here for me is the vision of how "Office 2.0" would be implemented in such a set up, and the choices of workspaces and tools. I think there is actually a lot of good information here for freelancers, mobile workers and the 4-hour workweek crowd.
- Extreme Productivity Seminar: Mr. Ghalimi has developed an "extreme productivity system" around Dave Allen's Getting Things Done. He has apparently packaged this system into the Extreme Productivity Seminar, and his system seems to integrate Salesforce.com into GTD. He says:
As of today, I use it to manage over 200 independent projects, with more than 500 tasks related to them. In other words, it scales pretty well.
That sounds pretty impressive! Check it out.
One way to start thinking about Office 2.0 and extreme productivity is to subscribe to the Life Sutra today!
Popularity: 22% [?]
Job Interviews & NLP
This is a short and rather entertaining video from O'Reilly's Ignite event. VJ describes how Neuro-Linguistic Programming ("NLP") techniques can be used in a job interview:
While the presentation was light, and the presenter made some humorous comments, it almost seems like the audience thought the whole thing was some kind of joke! Too bad, because I think there was some good (serious) advice in this presentation.
For me, NLP is also a victim of late night infomercial syndrome. For whatever reason, what is probably a serious, credible field of study loses some of it's luster when made available to the masses in three easy payments. I have ascribed this syndrome to the likes of Don Lapre, which I have alluded to in an earlier post. In the case of NLP, the infomercial version comes in the form of Anthony Robbins. And just like Mr. Lapre, there exists a rather excellent spoof:
A demonstration of the power of suggestion: subscribe to the Life Sutra today!
Popularity: 22% [?]
Is Straight Talk Really Beneficial?
Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person's precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment.
Are you a big proponent of talking "straight"? Is criticism alright if it's "constructive"? I have always been a big proponent of both. I have colleagues from Asia where the concept of saving face is very important. I have witnessed people literally dancing around an issue to save someone a supposed embarrassment and considered how foolish it all was. I suppose in some sort of sense of being privy to superior methods, I have extolled the virtues of saying what you mean, and not talking things personally.
About a week ago, I read Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. The very first principle in chapter one: don't criticize. It was after reading this chapter that I started to question this fundamental assumption I had regarding the benefits of saying exactly what you mean, especially when what you mean includes a criticism. While we could suggest that what we want to say should not be taken personally, how can we know it won't? We could be "constructive" and criticize a person's particular action, satisfied that we did not criticize the person directly. It's a nice distinction, but how can we be sure the person you are supposedly helping is making the same one? So despite our best intentions, there is always the risk that criticism will in fact be taken personally. Now consider this: what if one's self esteem or pride is all they have? When you take away, perhaps unknowingly, the last thing a person feels they have, how do you think they will behave?
One has to wonder, is any criticism really useful? We can dress it up in all the right management speak, but isn't criticism, however constructive, just another form of Monday morning quarterbacking? If we are not getting the desired result from someone, shouldn't we be focusing on the desired outcome and trying to understand the person we want to deliver that outcome, rather than commenting on what they did in the past?
Popularity: 20% [?]
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