Category: Equipment

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Article: High Tech Time Management Tools

tecyhnology.jpgI often complain that there is too-little research into time management techniques, and that academics have failed to give humankind a workable set of principles, definitions and rules of thumb to work with in this area.The result is software that simply misses the mark.A recent article in BusinessWeek entitled High-Tech Time Management Tools seems to promise something that would help, but only hints at some work that is happening in different places that may or may not be useful. The article says:

Achieve, which Horvitz hasn’t demonstrated outside the company, takes initial input from a user, who might tell the software he needs eight hours to accomplish a set of reviews for his group, wants to finish as close to the specified deadline as possible, but doesn’t want to spend more than two hours a day on the task. The system locks up time on the user’s calendar so others can’t book it. When the work is at hand, the software warns the user his communications are about to be shut down so he can focus. If he’s not ready to start, Achieve looks for new time to book for the project. Eventually, Horvitz says the system could be the basis for a Microsoft “platform for time management” that other companies could use to develop software products that understand concepts of hard and soft deadlines, have access to users’ calendars, and understand what windows workers left open the last time they were working on a project so they can quickly resume when they pick up the work again.

It strikes me that  the focus on others booking time in a user’s calendar is missing a critical point — most people who use Outlook operate as what we call White Belts here in 2Time.  In other words, they use the calendar to schedule meetings and activities with other people only, the way a doctor would use his/her appointment book.

They have not developed the habit of scheduling their own activities into their calendar.

Perhaps Microsoft should start by designing its software to help users improve the way they schedule themselves, before they care too much about scheduling other people’s time.

I believe that there must simple ways to help users to use their Outlook calendar more effectively. I often think that one of the main problems that people who do research and develop software for time management have is that they spend a great deal of time solving the problems that other people have, before solving their own.  In other words, there is no way to get the necessary insight into personal productivity without going through a process of self-improvement.
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Outlook’s Shortcomings – Part 1

In prior posts on the blog, I have made the point that Microsoft Outlook’s design is one that is not meant for time management purposes, but instead appears to have been made by engineers who simply added feature after feature after feature.

Recently, a reader of the blog posted the following request in a comment in an earlier post:

Can you clarify your point about Outlook’s process being “clumsy” and like an “afterthought”? I’m curious about areas where it could be improved, as I’m sure the Outlook PMs would be as well. How would you suggest this procedure be made easier/simpler/more efficient? Any thoughts or feedback to help better understand this would be appreciated.

I compare Outlook to the design of Gmail, the Palm and the Apple iPhone (although I am not an expert in any.)

IMHO, they all suffer from the same approach — design a cool email program and then add on other interesting stuff such as appointment calendars, to-do lists, reminders, contacts and the like.

What if Outlook and all the others were designed as time management systems that were built around the fundamentals, rather than a collection of features that must be beaten into the shape that a user must suffer with in order to get it to do what they want?

Why is this even important?

The way Outlook, Gmail and others are designed actually shapes the way a user develops his/her habits.  The design has a powerful effect on the way they manage their time, because their time management systems are nothing more than a set of habits that they repeat.

Case in point:  Apple just announced the release of its iPod OS 3.0, which now allows a user to copy and paste a block of text from one place to another:  Next Up for the iPhone:  A Basic Left Out Before.

Now, a user can copy the contents from an email to an appointment calendar.

The only way that a piece of software could leave out this particular feature entirely is one that either isn’t focused on assisting the user with time management or one that doesn’t understand what a user needs as they move through the fundamentals.

I’d bet that it’s the former.  After all, music, video and camera functionality are much more sexy features than those related to time management.

Not that Outlook is much different.   Until I used an add-on which cost me almost $100 a few years ago, I couldn’t do something as simple as drag an email into my calendar to make an instant appointment.

It’s clear to me that the design of software shapes a user’s habits, and a design that makes dumb things easy, and easy things hard, is one that will get in the way of the natural flow of activity from one fundamental to another.

For example, it’s easy to make To-Do Lists in Outlook, even thought they often grow to be infinitely large, only to be abandoned by their creators.  Also, Outlook offers no statistics on how well someone is managing their time management system.  In other words, it offers absolutely no form of numeric assessment, even as it’s becoming clear among most users that there is something dangerous about having an inbox containing 3000 unread items and 5000 “read” items. ( A simple warning bell would be invaluable.)

The problem with these software systems starts from the point of conception.

A  brilliant article in a recent Harvard Business Review entitled Reinventing Your Business Model makes the point that the iPhone, Tata motor car and the Gillette Razor redefined the markets in which they operated, and did so by asking the following question: “What important job is the user trying to do?”

Outlook and its contemporaries — Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo et al — answered the question in the late 1990’s with: “Dealing with email effectively.”

I believe that asking that question today, in 2009, for the first time, would ultimately lead to a different design, and that today’s salient answer might be something like: “Managing my time to experience peace of mind.”

I think there’s room for a company to design a software system around this answer as a starting point, using the fundamentals of time management.  It would include email management, but that would not be its centerpiece.

Perhaps there will be a product for time management that is invented that plays the disruptive role of an Apple iPod, but I’m a bit doubtful that it will come from Microsoft.  After all, it has a major investment in Outlook, and the article makes it clear that it’s hard for established companies to turn their trusted and faithful business models on their heads.
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Blackberry Slavery Article

I wrote a post as a guest-writer the Stepcase LifeHack website entitled “Blackberry Slavery” that was published today.In the article, I describe how PDA’s armed with real-time email are allowing companies to take advantage of employees’ fears of losing their jobs.All this, while HR department move much too move slowly to  protect employee down-time, and ultimately the productivity of thier most valuable resource: human beings.The article can entitled “Blackberry Slavery” can be accessed here.  

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Improving Time Management Over the Years

led_digital_watch_red_70s_type_display.jpgI just read an interesting article from the New York Times exploring the reasons why free-throw shooting in basketball has not improved over the years.

Apparently, the success-rate of free-throws in the NBA and college basketball has remained unchanged at approximately 69% since the mid 1960’s.  The authors of the piece make the case that not enough has changed over the years to cause the overall average to shift, and in particular they point out some areas in which little or nothing has changed.

Here is an excerpt:

Ray Stefani, a professor emeritus at California State University, Long Beach, is an expert in the statistical analysis of sports. Widespread improvement over time in any sport, he said, depends on a combination of four factors: physiology (the size and fitness of athletes, perhaps aided by performance-enhancing drugs), technology or innovation (things like the advent of rowing machines to train rowers, and the Fosbury Flop in high jumping), coaching (changes in strategy) and equipment (like the clap skate in speedskating or fiberglass poles in pole vaulting).

This made me wonder — what are the equivalent factors in the area of time management that would have to change in order for the average professional’s productivity to improve?

Here are some candidates for factors that have impacted personal productivity in the past 50 years:

Technology — the ability to transport the modern tools of communication and organization has unchained professionals from their desks, and that is a benefit.  However, the poor use of gadgets has helped to make some users more inefficient than they were before

Practice — the little codification that has occurred in books such as Getting Things Done and on the 2Time Management blog has brought some level of standardization to a haphazard field with no established standards, and little proper research

Coaching —  while there remains little or no standardized training for time management, many pick up a book or do an online course to learn how to improve their time management skills

Measurement — in the case of basketball and many other sports, it is easy to determine how effective a player is relative to his/her peers.  Not so time management, which unfortunately for most, remains in the dark ages when it comes to having simple, empirical measures of success that can be used to compare one user to another, or even to record simple changes that a user makes in their time management system.

Of these factors, I believe that a real breakthrough will come when a fool-proof method is derived for measuring personal productivity.

Here in the 2Time approach, I advocate the use of a personal test — “what does this do to my peace of mind?”  However,  this test is hardly empirical.

Until the day comes when a solid method of measurement is created,  it will be impossible to improve time management from year to year with any reliability.

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PDA’s and Productivity (part 1)

The release of the “Pre,” the latest smartphone manufactured by Palm, made me wonder once again about the design of these devices.

Recently, I read an article in the Harvard Business Review on the topic of breakthrough technologies, and it made me think in more detail about the job a smartphone/PDA is meant to help users perform.

In the old days when the PDA replaced the paper organizers such as the DayRunner and Filofax, the answer was obvious.  PDA’s were all about productivity.  They were meant to assist users in their job of being organized.

Today, however, as more functionality is added to the PDA it seems that the original mission has been lost, and that designers are no longer thinking about their users’ intention to be more organized. Instead, they are looking to combine as many electronic devices into one, with the goal of maximimizing convenience.

However, convenience is not the same as productive.

Picture two professionals seated beside each other in the typical airport lounge (I happen to be seated in the departure lounge  of VC Bird Airport in Antigua.)

One has brought along his cell phone, camera, PDA, laptop, watch, digital voice recorder and mp3 player.  He uses them in a somewhat clumsy manner.

The other pulls out her iPhone, Blackberry or Pre, and performs the same functions with a single unit.Clearly she is using a more convenient arrangement.  But is she more productive, and is she able to manage her time with greater skill?

That’s not clear at all.

As I see it, the use of more complicated gadgets could either make things harder or easier, depending on the the design.

I have some thoughts about what a device should do to enable a user to improve the management of their time.

1) Ease of Capturing

A good PDA should help users to Capture effectively, and give users a choice of methods for doing so.

Like many users, I use a small pad to capture most of my incoming time demands.  It sounds like the easiest option in the world to pursue, but I wanted to find a way to combine the pad and PDA into a single package so that I could carry it around easily.

I found a PDA wallet that could take a pad as an insert, but the real problem came when I tried to find a replacement pad.  They were impossible to find.

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Recently,  I have resorted to purchasing a small pad that I cut down to size using a pair of scissors.  I looked for a replacement PDA wallet that would allow me to use an off-the-shelf pad. It appears to me that they are no longer even made!

I am sure that users of smartphones have the same problem — no easy way to combine a paper pad with their unit.

I know that the manfuacturers would argue that you can use some kind of keyboard or  stylus to capture time demands, but as many users know, that method is slow, clumsy and prone to errors.  They would prefer to use a simple paper pad.

In terms of time management, users would gain more from a vastly improved device for capturing, than they would a camera or mp3 player.

(This is article will be continued)

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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.

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Blackberry Slaves

Are companies forcing their employees to become slaves to their email devices?

At some point in the future it’s not too hard to imagine that employees will be expected to not only have a cell phone in their possession at all time, but also the ability to send and receive email.  After all, the iPhone and Blackberry are taking over hosts of companies as we speak.

Executives like the idea of sending email back and forth with their employees at 11:00 pm if the need arises, making sure that the urgent business needs of the company are being met.  In these challenging economic times, it’s one of those things that is required to gain the extra edge over the competition.

It starts simply enough, I imagine.  A company buys internet-enabled PDA’s for its executives who become addicted to their use.  After a while, they provide units  for their subordinates, the better to keep in touch with a convenient email.  Employees welcome the devices with their powerful capabilities.

Some might resist them at first, but it’s easy to predict that anyone who is serious about their corporate career can’t afford to be left out of the loop on critical conversations that are happening in the odd hours outside of 9-5.

In the face of peer pressure, it’s not hard to imagine a time when every single employee (and certainly those is management) will be expected to have a device in their possession.  It’s likely to become as ubiquitous as the personal computer.

What’s disturbing is not that we’ll all have the convenience of 24 hour email access at our fingertips, but the likelihood that the poor time management habits displayed by today’s Blackberry users will become widespread.

Today’s users have used the device to unwittingly cement into place some habits that destroy their own productivity and that of those around them.  As the percentage of employees in a company increase, there is likely to be a couple of developments — the first is a user’s “bill of rights” and the second is a new set of habits that must be taught to users in order to prevent the device from ruining their efficiency.

A user’s “bill of rights” might take form of a set of policies in companies that discourage the use of the device to some pre-agreed standards of engagement.  At the moment, peer pressure is turning holidays, weekends and vacations into further opportunities to check email just before going to bed and right after waking up in the morning.

This is not just a matter of setting arbitrary rules.  Even a bill user’s bill or rights would have to be implemented for a reason — the behaviors undermine top  performance when they are  allowed to proliferate.  This and other facts related to personal productivity would need to be taught to employees at all levels, rather than simply legislated without justification.

The second development would be solid training in Time Management 2.0, in which users are guided in the development of their own time management systems.  They could use the opportunity to build a system of new habits that incorporates their internet device, and  doesn’t simply rely on old habits that don’t work with the new technology.

Current-day device users who have never taken this step are well  known for their poor time management habits.

Interruption Madness:  Today’s Blackberry and iPhone users are known for the ability to interrupt _anything_ to check email.  From bodily functions, to weddings, dates, funerals, legal proceedings, speeches, meetings, phone conversations, driving, cycling… apparently the only places to be safe from email-device users is when they are swimming or taking a shower!

Look for the Blackberry users in the crowd at the presidential inauguration in January, too busy to pay attention to what’s happening in front of them.

The Glazed Look of Half-Attention
The device users of today have become expert at the glazed look of half-attention.  They pretend to be listening to the what is happening in front of them, but their attention is on the device and on the message they are sending to a recipient miles away.

The Sheepish Smile
Now and again the user gets busted.   Confronted by another person who is on the receiving end of their poor manners, they wake with a jump out of their email induced stupor with either an excuse  – “I am listening!” – or an embarassed smile on their faces.  It’s only at that moment they realize that have switched off the person they were interacting with as one would change a television channel.

These are hardly the signs of greater productivity.  In today’s complex business environment what’s required is greater focus and in-depth thinking, not rather than an epidemic of casual attention, short-attention spans and and superficial dialogue.

This is where companies need to be quite careful.  Buying these devices for all staff may indeed increase the convenience of sending and receiving email, and there might be 1 or 2 emails per year that benefit from a 2:00am response.  However, a company that unwittingly multiplies today’s poor time management habits manyfold with the purchase of portable email devices will only do itself a great disservice.

The predicted loss in productivity can be prevented by giving everyone the chance to design their own time management system afresh, because the presence of the device in their lives simply requires it.

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Now, Everyone’s a Surgeon

surgeon-guy-dowling-surgeon-8.jpgThere used to be a time when only surgeons had cell phones and beepers.

Because  their jobs required quick responses that involved matters of life or death, it seemed to make sense.  After all, a couple of hours spent at the golf course could cost someone their life if they could not be contacted during a round.

We have come a long way since then.

Now, there are companies that are pressuring their employees to carry Blackberries, and to be available to answer email on a 12/18/24 hour basis.   And these companies aren’t hospitals, army barracks or police stations.

Instead, they are employers of accountants, lawyers, bankers and other business-people of all kinds.

Without any planning or foresight, companies are using the Blackberry to change the way professionals use their time.  Today, Blackberry users are answering their email, instead of doing less important things like participating in meetings, exercising, listening to their kids, giving their spouses their full attention and other such apparently unimportant activities.

These companies are causing professionals to continuously interrupt what they are doing in order to check and respond to a blind piece of email (it’s blind because they have no idea who it’s from or what it says.)  In other words, they are responding like surgeons… except, the truth is, no-one’s life is on the line.

Try telling that to someone who is pretending to listen to you while they are checking their email on their Blackberry.

The reaction is often one of irritation, anger and even hostility.   Their blind piece of email is obviously more important than the conversation that they are having with you, which is why checking it gains such immediate priority.

Their productivity (and yours)  plummets at that very moment.

But what is it, poor manners aside, that causes a Blackberry user to grab their Curve in spite of what else they might be engaged in at the moment?

It’s not confidence, or skilled execution.  Instead, the look in  a Blackberry users eyes tell it all.  The unit vibrates, rings or flashes, and they are gripped in that moment by a fear, or even a panic that “they might be missing something important.”

The panic, and its subsequent response, becomes a  habit over time, until they get to the point where they cannot stop themselves from impulsively grabbing for their PDA.  They cannot help themselves, and their behavior appears the have all the compulsion of an addiction.

But it’s not email that is the drug of choice.  Instead, it’ s the driver behind the email — the “need to know” or, the fear of not knowing.

This is what wakes them up at 3:00am “just to check,”  and to smuggle their device on vacations where they promised to leave it at home.  This is what interrupts meals, conversations, projects, exercise, cooking and even “quality time.”

It’s a habit that a professional who finds themselves addicted would need some concentrated effort to break.  one excellent  course of action would be to use 2TIme approach to build their own time management and productivity systm.

With a greater degree of awareness, the Blackberry can return to its rightful place as a productivity enabler, rather than an unconscious  dis-abler.  We can all focus on developing habits that make knowledge workers really successful, and drop the surgeon-like, faux-urgency that we have developed.

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