Image by John Ragai used under Creative Commons License
I wrote an article called an end to multitasking in 2011 (Link). It explains why multitasking is actually bad for productivity. So you should stop multitasking.
Business
David Allen : How To Hack Your To-Do List
BusinessDavid Allen is the master of masters when it comes to simple and efficient productivity hacks. His Getting Things done is the no questions asked ultimate reference to handling your day to day work overload properly and elegantly.
Epipheo interviewed him about how to manage your to do list... It's also a 2 minute primer on GTD.
Worth watching.
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7 tips to make email more acceptable
Business
Image by Rene Schwietzke used under Creative Commons License
The only thing that saps productivity out of an organization more than meetings (Link) is email. Has email ever helped you become more productive? Email has outlived its usefulness and has become the ugly drunk uncle no one wants to acknowledge or deal with.
Assuming you have to live with email in the workplace, here are 7 tips to help make it a little more bearable:
- Start with the end in mind - Before writing your email, ask yourself what it is you want as an outcome to this email and decide if email is the right mechanism. If it is, make sure you write the desired outcome right at the start (e.g. Please approve, Please comment, etc).
- KISS - My modified definition of Kiss here is Keep it short stupid. I don't have time to read your 12 page essay masquerading as an email. Keep all emails shorter than 10 lines. Anything more and your recipient will likely file it under "Never Read".
- Never Reply All - Unless there is a very specific reason why everyone in an email thread should receive your words of wisdom, be judicious about who you reply to. Most people do a Reply All to protect their own ass. That's a horrible reason stop it now.
- One Channel for each message - If you decided that email is an appropriate channel for your message in step 1 then please don't use other channels to pass the same message at the same time (printing a copy and sending it to me, talking to me about it in the hallway, etc). You chose it as a channel now stick with it.
- Email doesn't convey tone - Remember that email doesn't convey the tone of a message. Ask yourself if the message could be misconstrued without the appropriate tone. If it can be misinterpreted then ditch email and use the telephone, videoconference or a good old fashion face to face. Countless issued have been created (tempest in a teapot) because the recipient over-reacted because he/she could infer the real tone of a message.
- Time is your enemy - In my world, email is a nice to have and I read incoming messages about twice per day.. .and I am at least a week late with my emails. This means that anything that is urgent or time sensitive shouldn't be sent via email. Email is asynchronous.
- Archive IT - Set a time after which all email get's archived (even if you haven't read it). I use a 1 - 1.5 week period then bam, everything get's archived.
My core message is that I hate email. It is an ugly creation that punishes me every day. Remember that next time you punish your coworkers with it.
5 secrets for more efficient meetings
Business
Image by Nguyen Hung Vu used under Creative Commons License
Everyone loves meetings... Right? Of course you do. Nothing is more enjoyable than meeting 6 other people to go through a 120 slide powerpoint presentation in a far flung conference room. Fun ... Fun ... Fun ...
Joking aside, meetings are a necessary evil in the business world so productivity junkies are always testing new strategies to make them more effective. After 20+ years of searching, the core tenets for efficient meetings can be boiled down to a measly 5 bullets and have the main title of "Be Prepared".
Without further ado, I present the 5 magical tenets of efficient meetings:
- Book in advance - Unless you have an urgent issue which magically pops up, try to book all of your meetings a couple of days in advance. During my friday weekly review (Link), I make sure all of my meeting invitations are sent out for the following week.
- Create an agenda - Every meeting should have a clearly defined agenda with clear expectations from each participant
- Make material available - Make sure any material you will use during the meeting is distributed ahead of time and that participants understand how to process it before the meeting.
- Define the expected outcome - The agenda should include the expected outcome from the meeting. This goal should be repeated at the start of the meeting to ensure everyone is working towards the same goal.
- Book a meeting room - This may sound very basic as a rule but you wouldn't believe the number of times a meeting room isn't booked or you show up to the room and someone else is using it or the meeting room is too small or ill equipped for meeting.
“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.”
Google is Canada's most influential brand
Business
Ipsos Reid has released their "Top 10 most influential brands in Canada" list (link) . The survey was conducted in December and polled 5008 Canadians. Ipsos Reid used their mathematics magic to massage the results which they claim are +/- 1.6%, 19 times out of 20.
The top 10 most influential brands in Canada are:
- Microsoft
- Apple
- Visa
- Tim Hortons
- YouTube
- President's Choice *NEW in 2013*
- Walmart
- MasterCard *NEW in 2013
3 companies that didn't make the top 10 list but that had considerable improvement in their positioning this year (compared to last year) are:
- McDonalds (35th place to 23)
- Netflix (72nd place to 32)
- Hudson's Bay (84th place to 52)
What's interesting about this list is that voters were "regular canadians" and some of the measured metrics are Trustworthiness, Presence, Corporate citizenship, etc.
Surprised or not, none of the canadian carriers seem to show up on the list (Rogers, Bell, Telus, Fido, Koodo, Chatr, etc).