Tag: productivity

The power of the agenda setter

In every organizational conversation, there's some process for setting the agenda of what the conversation will be about, and how it will be conducted.  Usually there's a subset of the organization's members who set that agenda - sometimes just a single person - shaping the issues and decisions that the organization takes on.

In a non-profit organization board meeting, it might be the Executive Committee or the board chair.

In a small business, it might be the business's owners or managers.

In a city council meeting, it might be the President of the council or the group's political majority.

In a community of faith, it might be church elders.

Sometimes we forget the power that the agenda setters can have.  We focus on the outcomes of the conversations that we do have, but we forget or overlook that some conversations aren't conducted in the first place.

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Do you have enough time in the day?

Support StructureRecently I've heard some people make the all-too-common assertion that they don't have enough time in the day to get done all of the things they want or need to get done.  I was reminded of an exercise I went through about a year ago, during a period when I was making similar statements, sometimes out loud, sometimes just to myself.  I wanted to do the math to see how the hours really did add up - did I have enough time in the day to do what I wanted to do, or was I actually overbooked and trying to make 1 + 1 = 3?

It's a pretty simple exercise in the end.  Make a table of all of the things you spend time on in a week, and compare that to the total hours available.  If you're over, then you have to change something.  If you're at or under the available time, then you still might need to change something to be happy, e.g. increasing the amount of time available for fun, sleep, or just relaxing.  Or you may find that you spend time exactly the way you want to!

Here's what my chart looked like, in no particular order:
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Cutting the Grass

Leaning InOne of my recurring summer jobs, in addition to filling and unfilling the tubes of the Internets, is to adjust the height of the small vertically-oriented plant life that densely covers the land surrounding my house.

Many people refer to this act as "cutting the grass."

Over the last few years I've tried quite a wide variety of approaches to and implements for "cutting the grass," and I'd like to share them with you now, because imparting unsolicited and only moderately useful information to a halfway-interested audience is what blogging is all about, no?

  1. Not mowing the grass at all.
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Beyond one hour chunks of time

Sushi SelectionOne of the downsides of working in a field where so much is beholden to the almighty billable hour is that my brain has started to re-wire itself to engage the day in terms of one-hour chunks.  This model is reinforced by other phenomena in life - calendaring software like iCal and Google Calendar make it easy to parcel out the day in discrete bits of time, beeps, alarms and bells go off on the hour mark in many workplace and educational settings, and then there's the cultural convention that "all meetings take about an hour" unless otherwise noted.  We're increasingly a people whose quality of life and measure of productivity has everything to do with the 24-hour clock.

I generally don't mind this standard when I'm in "work mode," but I've noticed a very undesirable side effect on the rest of my life: I've been slowly losing the ability to spend open-ended social time with people, without my brain trying to fit it in to some predetermined scheduling blocks. The end result is that I think I'm less open to the wonderful, serendipitous experiences and discoveries that one can make in the comfortable and unregulated presence of friends and loved ones.

I've written before about the cues we give and get for when a conversation is going to go deeper, and when it's probably not.  To answer my own question about what kinds of states of being allows you to go deeper in conversation, I've been actively working on spending more open-ended time with people I care about and want to get to know better.  I have a few thoughts about how it's going, and what approaches are working:

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6 tips for good email message subject lines

Writing good subject lines in your email messages is important. As email continues to serve as a primary communication tool for many people, and as our inboxes are filled up with ridiculous amounts of stuff that we may or may not need to actually act on, we will all benefit from writing good subject lines that save time and improve productivity.

My suggested tips for success: Continue reading "6 tips for good email message subject lines" →

My Envelope Organizational System

I have tried and dismissed a number of personal organizational systems over time, but none of them has lasted as long or served me as well as my current system: my life and all of its to-do lists are managed on the back of used envelopes.

Before I tell you more about how it works, let me first assure you that I've tried the alternatives: Continue reading "My Envelope Organizational System" →

Looking for a special appliance timer

IMG_2016.JPGI'm looking for one of those lamp/appliance timers I could plug my computer into that will do the following during times when I really need to focus:

  • Block incoming e-mail that isn't related to the specific projects I need to make progress on, but allow others through
  • Block outgoing web requests that are more than one degree removed from the original topic matter I was working on, but allow others through
  • Only allow streaming of net radio stations without lyrics or other spoken words
  • Deliver a brief electrical shocks to the base of my spine every time I attempt to circumvent the above.

I asked about this at the local consumer lighting store, and they didn't have one. Searches on Amazon have been fruitless so far. Surely Linksys or Belkin make something like this? Anyone?

(This is a repost of a comment I made on macosxhints.com a few months ago, as a part of a discussion on blocking Internet access to avoid distractions.)