Author: Francis Wade

Posted on

In Emergencies – Forget Email

istock_000002386483xsmall.jpgI am working on a project in which almost everyone around me carries a Blackberry.  My observation as one of the few non-Blackberry users is that many have developed habits that thwart their productivity.

One sad habit that has developed is that Blackberry users have trained people around them to elevate email to a level of urgency that it simply was not designed to achieve.

What does that mean?

Pretend that you are the user and I need to send you an important message.

Because I know you have a Blackberry, and check it continuously, I’d prefer to send the information via email because I know that you are likely to read it. In other words, you have trained me to take the path of less resistance in my communication with you, and to avoid the built-in risk of making a confronting phone call.

For example, all over the world, I am sure, there are people being advised by their bosses that they are being “let go” via an email to their Blackberrys.  if i were your boss, I would also give you feedback on the latest meeting in which I got upset at your remarks via email, before telling you that I am taking your pet project away.  I might even announce the reorganization that places you in charge of the wasteland of “special projects” via an early morning message to your ‘berry, knowing that you’ll get it while you are in the car on the way from work.

I send the message, you get it and (presumably) read it a few seconds later, regardless of where you are.  Communication complete.

Or is it?

The truth is, critical communication should never be handled via email.  None of the examples given above should involve electronic messaging, unless they are limited to simple requests to “meet at 3pm in the office.”  The very nature of critical communication is that it evokes an instant reaction that must be dealt with quickly by both parties.

Email communication is simply no substitute for live communication.  We all know people who have sent mildly critical emails that were interpreted as outright attacks by the recipient.  Those mistakes have been happening for years.

We now have people who feed the addiction that other have to their Blackberrys by sending them important emails, knowing that they’ll read them between messages from their cousins, theViagra people and Nigerian heiresses promising millions of dollars. They also know that they’ll be read at 6 in the morning and at 11:30 at night, right before the teeth get brushed.

Blackberry users need to be firm, and insist that they be contacted via phone or in person for all messages that are neither positive nor neutral. They also need to train their colleagues that urgent messages sent by email will be stale by the time they are read, so it’s a better idea to call immediately.  They can start the “training” by letting people know that they check their email/Blackberry on a schedule, and that for them, there is no such thing as “urgent email.”

The save time for themselves and others by adopting good technology, but more importantly, sophisticated habits.

Posted on

Writing a Time Management 2.0 Book

2009 seems to be the right year for me to take the 2Time principles out into the larger world, in the form of a book.

I have two ideas in mind for the book. The first is in the form of a how-to, written as an abstract set of concepts with lots of examples.  The other idea is to write the book as a fable, in which a single person meets up on some kind of guru who teaches him/her how to use the principles in order to bring more peace of mind to his/her life.

As I am writing this I can see a third option, in which the first book is in the form of a fable, and takes a user though Principles 1-7, and the second is an abstract book that takes them through Principles 8-11.

If you have an opinion on which way I should go, please let me know, and be my partner through this process that will hopefully produce a publishable product by early 2010.  I’d love to see an example of a book that I could follow that others have found useful.

Posted on

Speechus Interruptus

giuliani-speech.jpgDuring a speech to the National Rifle Association during the Presidential campaign of 2008, Rudy Guiliani stopped to answer a cell phone call.

Obviously, from the tone of the conversation he had with his wife, it was much less important than the speech he was giving. Like many professionals, however, he has developed the bad habit of stopping what he is doing to do something else that just might be more important.

This flies in the face of the principle of focusing on the task at hand so deeply that one enters the Flow state. You can see from the video that he mind takes a moment to return to the task at hand, and if his wife had just told him that there was “an emergency at home,”  for example, he would have shot himself in the foot by taking the call and possibly ruining the speech.

Click here to be taken to the video of Rudy Giuliani interrupting his speech to the NRA to take the call.

Posted on

Richard Branson’s Capturing

bransonastromos_468x321.jpgWhile many of us are insisting that “we’ll remember” and therefore don’t need to write things down, it appears that Richard Branson has made quite a few comments on the power of carrying a portable notebook at all times:

Quote 1

On how to get ideas for new products: “Always have a notebook in your pocket. People at parties and events can have great ideas, and you won’t remember them the next day.”

Quote 2

 On the February afternoon when Branson is explaining all this by phone he happens to be sailing into Antigua, his cell connection coming and going as he rounds some headland or other and then picks his way through yachts in Nelson’s Dockyard, which the seasoned Caribbean sailor will recognize as one of the partyingest of the Leeward Islands ports. Branson had Virgin colleagues aboard, and later that night would be sharing a spirited evening out with 15 or 20 of them, his notebook as ever alongside. “I keep a notebook in my pocket all the time,” he says, “and I really do listen to what people say, even when we’re out in a club at 3 a.m. and someone’s passing on an idea in a drunken slur. Good ideas come from people everywhere, not in the boardroom.

Quote 3

Carry a notepad at all times

“Of these five things, and it may sound ridiculous, but my most important is to always carry a little note book in your back pocket. I think the number one thing that I take with me when I’m traveling is the notebook.

“Make sure you can use it for ideas, for contacts for suggestions for problems and get out and address the issues. Your life will be that much better organized for carrying it.

“I could never have built the Virgin Group into the size it is without those few bits of paper. I think if you’re going to run a really personal airline, its those little details that matter and therefore the notebook is an essential part of my traveling day.”

 Quote 4

 Branson is well known for encouraging fresh ideas. He even keeps a notebook in his pocket to write them down in case he’s away from his office — which he usually is. Branson is always interested in learning new things and he encourages others to do the same.

I guess he’d be a good example to follow… maybe!

One easy New Year’s Resolution to follow would be the develop the habit of always having a capture point within easy reach.  That move alone would take a professional from being a White belt to an Orange belt, according to the 2Time system.

Posted on

Promises – A Productivity Hole

hole-normal_p1010044.jpgI am working on a project that involves multiple promises being made in every direction, and I am struck by an area of my own system for productivity that is underdeveloped.  While it’s not a time management issue, per se, it does appear to be a problem that results in wasted time.

What do you do when someone makes you a promise that you need to make sure they fulfill?

Here are some options I have seen or tried in the past, none of which I am altogether happy with.

Capturing

Once the initial promise is made, what exactly happens next?  Is it committed to memory, with a hope that things won’t get so crazy that it then gets forgotten?

Or do you send an email to the person (if you can) as a way of putting the promise in writing?

Is it written onto a capture point like a paper pad?

Do the above actions depend on the person who is making the promise and your prior experience?  I have used good Promise Management software to help me in this regard, but it requires proximity to a computer and the intranet.  There may be PDA-based promise management software, but I haven’t found any yet.

Emptying

Whatever enters a capture point must at some point be removed, in keeping with good time management habits.  A promise is a bit difficult to work with, however, as I can’t see a perfect place to out this particular time demand.

Option A:  After Emptying, add it to a list (Listing)

A user could maintain a list of items that have been promised by others, and track the list frequently to ensure that  no promises are being forgotten.  This action of checking the list would have to be placed in a schedule to ensure that it actually gets reviewed, also.

Option B: After Emptying, place a reminder in a schedule (Scheduling)

Place an item in the schedule that acts as a reminder to expect the item by a particular due date.  The item would also need a reminder for this to work, so that it pops up and interrupts the action at the right moment in time.

Neither of these options are elegant, in my opinion, and I’d love to learn some other alternatives.

This strikes me as a hole in my productivity system, and it’s one that I think many share, and would love to solve.

Posted on

The Three Ingredients of a Daily Plan

I read an interesting post on the topic of the kinds of things that one should look to do on a daily basis.

When I found it, I realized that it covered some of the things I wanted to write in a post, on  the topic of my own daily routine.

It’s  a simple post, but I guess that’s why it caught my attention.  I have found that skipping steps in my daily routine often leads to trouble, and results in commitments falling through the cracks.

At the start of the post, the author, Marcia Francois, makes the  point that each person needs to develop their own routine, and that even a well-established daily plan should be revisited from time to time.

This is some top-quality Time Management 2.0 advice.

Here is the link to the article – the 3 ingredients of a good daily plan.

Posted on

A Small, New Habit

istock_000001077068small.jpgI made a small change in one of my habits that I don’t recommend.

It’s not that it’s a bad change — far from it — it’s NOT the case that I, all of a sudden, decided to do without my favorite capture point.

The story is a simple one.  I started a project that has a tremendous number of time demands.

At the start of each day, I realized that I was starting in too much of a hurry, and needed to spend some more time Emptying, before doing things like checking voicemail and email.

I implemented the following practice:

Step 1 – check to see which items are incomplete from the prior day.  Put the in a reliable place.

Step 2 –  look at today’s schedule and configure it to my liking

Step 3 – empty my paper pad that serves as my primary capture  point

Step 4 – download email and  listen to voicemail, while moving as many items as possible away from these areas intended for temporary storage

Step 5 – schedule any new items into my calendar

As I said before, I don’t recommend these steps to anyone.  I also don’t say that they are useful.

I AM saying that  the process of adjusting one’s habits to the circumstances at hand is a critical one that no professional who is serious can ignore.  It lies at the heart of the Time Management 2.0 approach.

Posted on

Thinking for Yourself

istock_000002968326xsmall.jpgI recently read an article that could be applied in all sorts of areas — politics. organizational change, and even person transformation.

I just finished reading it again, and discovered a solid connectionbetween the its thesis and Time Management 2.0.

The article is a fascinating one, as it speaks to the difficulty of creating one’s own self-theory.  It goes further into the notion that a self-theory can only be discovered in practice (rather than in the abstract,) and that it can’t be gained from anyone else… not even for $299.95 (a price of a good program to learn someone else’s self-theory.)

Instead, the article speaks to the challenge of creating for oneself, free from constraints.

There is a joy that exists when one creates in this way, and the authors are right to focus on the process and the results it produces, because people who invent their own time management systems often feel the same way about the process they are undertaking, and the results they produce.

Here is an excerpt:

 Therefore, constructing your self-theory is a revolutionary pleasure. It is both a destructive and constructive pleasure, because you are creating a practical theory–one tied to action–for the destruction and reconstruction of this society. It is a theory of adventure, because it is based on what you want from life and on devising the means necessary to achieve it. It is as erotic and humorous as an authentic revolution.

That’s not a bad way to describe the joy that comes from being put back in charge of one’s own time management system for the first time. There is a revolutionary pleasure that comes from designing one’s own time management system that is a bit easier than coming up with one’s own self-theory.

The article is a pretty dense one, and I doubt that all readers of this blog will find it interesting, but if you like abstract thinking, check it out — The Revolutionary Pleasure of Thinking for Yourself.

[email_link]