It’s 6pm on a Friday evening. You have only one wish – to leave the office and head home. Unfortunately, the blackberry went off on your way down to the car. Your boss needs a presentation ready for 8am Monday morning. Looks like another long weekend of work ahead. My friends, James Cameron had it right – the machines have already won. Now it’s time to rebel. Time to make our lives a priority. Here are 3 tips for ruling your technology – and not the other way around.
1) Turn off all email notifications – everywhere
I can’t tell you how many family dinners have been ruined by my bb. The incessant need to reach for the device when I feel the new mail vibration. Just… Must…. Look. Even in it’s absence, my colleagues and I would discuss the feeling of phantom buzzing. This just ins’t normal. Turn off the lcd light notifications, the vibration, the sound notification – in fact, just turn the phone to “phone only” profile. Don’t stop with your wireless device – I also turn off the notification in Outlook. Nothing is more distracting that working and hearing the little ding ding of a new message. Focus – your email isn’t going anywhere. If you REALLY need to, screen your emails with rules. When my boss emails, it gets a special flag and moves into my “to do” list.
2) Remote Backups
I swear, Western Digital and Seagate are in a ploy to mold me into submission. They’re complete domination over my information and making a grown man completely helplessness. Take back control from your computer. Follow the 3-2-1 backup plan. 3 back ups, 2 different types of media, 1 offsite. Don’t be left feeling helpless – like the ad executives in the Doctor Media video discussing social media.
3) Rely on Humans
Google this, wiki that. Forget it. There is just too much information to sift through. You need aggregators – people that you trust that can filter out the garbage and let the good info rise to the top. Let’s use an example. The old rss feeders – if you went on vacation, they’d fill up to the brim. You’d either feel overwhelmed and mark them all as read missing lots of great stories, or you’d waste a significant amount of time trying to catch up. With trusted sources in your social circle, if it’s important or if it’s a quality article, they’ll share it with you. Congrats – you’ve just turned the machine into a source of information again – and not telling you what to think.
What are your tips to take control over your devices? No comments eh? Bet you and your new ipad / evo / macbook keep you warm at night.
If you work in a team, document revisions can be cumbersome. In some teams, members may be contributing to the same deliverable – often working on their own versions of documents or workbooks at the same time. Personally, this is a bane of my existence.
I thought Google Wave would bring the answer – but up until now, the dream of a self-hosted server with the ability to simultaneously edit documents has been a dream.
How do you do it? What are your tricks?
Do more with less. Isn’t that a theme lately. You may have the workload of 6 people, but the company will not increase your team from 3 people. How do you do it? How will you make it? Is there any hope?
Get out the pen and paper – it’s battle planning time.
1) Plan Your Deliverables
It may sound like over-kill, but a project plan for your regular deliverables helps. It assists in thinking through the monthly process and allows the team to visualize how their goals are achievable. As a leader and manager, you can set up check points to ensure quality of the finished product. You can also set up smaller milestones so that if there is an issue, you can raise the flag early to your customers.
2) Coordinate Activities
Your people may have down time that you don’t even realize. There may be bottlenecks in the process that you’ve built. The best solution is to get everyone involved into a room, explain the constraints, draw a line in the sand when things need to get done and have everyone participate in the goal setting exercise. They’ll know what they need to get the job done and they’ll rally around their leader if they see you’re in trouble (assuming you have helped to motivate them in the past)
3) Share the Burden
Maybe it’s physically impossible to meet your deliverables – maybe there are too many expectations on your team. I’d recommend living by the following saying “under-promise, over deliver”. If you can’t meet the expectations, someone is going to be disappointed. If that’s the case, make sure that your team is being honest with their assessment of workload, and ask your boss what to prioritize. If there are available resources within the larger team, maybe they can help out. If not, there is a need to raise the flag and realign expectations for the deliverables with the end customer.
For everything blackberry, crackberry fulfills my needs. Everything from interesting apps, to functional accessories, leaked OS, and an engaging forum, CB have a lock on the RIM products.
If you’re a bb addict, I highly recommend heading over the crackberry.com – they’ll keep you posted on the latest news.
Ever find yourself trying to lead a group of staff to no avail? Have you found yourself at a loss uninsipired or lacking direction yourself. Look to these 5 techniques to help re-invigorate your team.
With numerous posts daily, Lifehacker provides me with a daily dose of getting things done. The Gawker-owned website was founded by Gina Trippani, programmer at heart and passionate for efficient living. The site is a good blend of GTD, techno-babble and How To articles.
Most of the doo dads that I so cherish and tools that I use regularly have been adopted as a result of Lifehacker recommendations. I highly recommend putting this blog into your daily rolodex.
I love my blackberry. I’ve got my hip case for convenient Agent 86 telecommunications access. My dock for instant notifications and executive style desk chach-ka. My extra batteries so I can be without running water for 3 days and still have enough juice to check my email. With all of my OCD love for my device, it’s still not there yet.
1) Developers are your friends
RIM, I love you. How can you compete with Apple and Android when developers don’t like your API of developer kits? I’ve been loyal for years now and still the only thing you provide me with is a fastlane to thumb arthritis.
2) Focus on the Consumer Market
BBM is great. APP world is a step in the right direction. You need to spend a bit more time thinking about the consumer experience. You’ve got a lock on the business user, but the consumers are hurting. The facebook app is grossly under-developed, bbm isn’t being leveraged as much as it could.
3) Customization kills performance.
If I add a new theme, it shouldn’t cause my device to come to a grinding halt.
4) Battery Pulls Suck
There should be no excuse to have “battery pull” as an official stop-gap for all problems with your device. The unofficial fix-all is a sign of significant memory leaks and a non-scalable model. I want everyone to love your devices as much as I do. This is making is quite difficult.
I’m sure I can keep adding to this list. In short, I really just want a device that works well. Something that offers me a consistent and extensible experience as an iphone or android. A device that’s a corner stone to all communications.
So you have too much time on your hands? Feel like learning about webservers, php, mysql and installing wordpress? Here’s a great project for you. Get ready to hyper-link (pun intended) your team.
1) Improved Communication
- shared place for team communications
- everyone get material at the same time
anyone can contribute important information to everyone else
2) Line-of-site to Important Information
- team members may have wonderful ideas
- there is a shared skill set amongst employees
- a great idea motivates another member to apply similar methods on another project
- reduces people working on redundant projects
3) Shared Calendar of Events
- outlook is a great tool but not socially minded
- a google calendar widget with team access is a great option
- anyone can contribute
- aligns deliverables
4) Reference Material
- team document repository
- always have the latest version at your finger tips
- removes hive knowledge
If this is your kick at something like this, I highly recommended a fully supported solution through a hosting provider, using an existing system like tumblr or posterous, or Wordpress on a stick
Motivation can come from many sources. Here are my top 5 locations for motivation
1) Within my Team
You know those people you spend 8 hours a day with? Those strangers you sit next to or those that report to you? These people, that you typically spend more time with than anyone else during the week can motivate you. Even if you are at the top of the food chain, the people that report to you have brilliant ideas. There was a great expression “surround yourself with people that are smarter than you”. Why do you think that saying have value? Insight comes from all layers of an organization. Just because you are top dog, doesn’t mean you have all the answers or have a strangle-hold on good ideas. Keep yourself open to the idea that others may have value as well.
2) Blogs
Blogs provide unique insight and perspective to a niche audience. Unlike arcane newspapers or magazines, there is higher interaction between a blog and it’s audience. This is promoted through forums and comments. Blogs help me hunt down specific ideas. Using tools like Google Reader, I can group a number of blogs into groups, allowing me to aggregate news and information. This grouping and notification system allows me to watch everything and nothing at the same time. Like splatter-vision, certain topics will catch my eye but I can survey the landscape at all times.
The toughest part of being motivated by blogs is finding one that speaks to you in a consistent voice on topics that are of interest to you.
3) Twitter
Follow and do it often. Engage with others. Then group into lists and keep up to date on topics of interest. Twitter is a hyper-interactive newsfeed. It allows me to get the news but engage with the anchorman. Great for following topics and drilling into a conversation when things are interesting or unclear.
4) Family / Friends
Those that know you best are the best sounding board. You can speak to them about new ideas and brainstorm with them how to solve existing problems. Whether you want to or not, these people will have a profound influence on the way you think. Their ideas will impact the way you execute your own ideas at the workplace.
5) Courses
Your mind is a sponge – and while participating in courses, you are ready to absorb everything you can. The people you meet and the material that you are being shown is of interest to you. Courses can provide new ways of thinking, new models to apply, or refresh the way you’ve done things in the past.
What inspires you? You probably have your own inspiration – athletes? musicians? scientists? Do share!
