Productivity Archives - Page 3 of 4

Get a Dedicated, Free, High Quality Conference Line

Premium services often end up being cheaper. This doesn’t meant that all premium services are expensive. Systems are being disrupted at such a rapid pace you can often find incredible services – like a free virtual fax machine – completely free. One of these services is UberConference. Even if you run a one man shop (like I do!) you should signup for UberConference and use it exclusively for calls. Here’s why: Hangouts is not reliable for phone calls. They have a great dial out feature, but I’ve been on a couple calls where the call connection kept dropping out. It was embarrassing and made me lool sloppy. Calling someone’s cell, or having them call you, often creates a coordination problem…

Why the Right Premium Services are Always Cheaper

By nature, I’m frugal. I love getting a great deal, and getting the most of out of my purchases. When I was fifteen I got a new MacBook Pro for free by working those “get a free MacBook pro” ponzi schemes online: my obsession with a great deal started early. I’ve learned that it’s often worth paying for premium services when your time is at stake. Not only your current time, but time that a premium service could possibly save in the future. Opportunity cost is a real thing: it’s important to consider what you can’t do or time that could be possibly spent on fixing a future problem with the service or product. Here are a couple of failures from recent memory: Low Cost HSAs…

How to Save Hundreds on Your Next MacBook Purchase

When it comes to something which requires a lot of my time on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis, I purchase the best tools for the job. I’m a designer & software engineer: my computer is the most important tool in my craft and I make sure I have the best. However, the best doesn’t mean the most expensive: to me, it means the most utility for the dollar. I’ve always bought every mac I’ve owned used. A couple of people have asked me recently how to find the best price on a replacement MacBook. Here is the process I’ve used to save hundreds of dollars when I’m getting a new computer. Determine what you need. Most likely, unless you work in tech, 11″ or 13″ MacBook Air will work just fine. Hard drive space is not important…

How to Tackle an Overwhelming List of Tasks

This last week I didn’t keep up with my task list. Some work with a client required all of my attention and the notification badges on my email, todo list, and Slack messages kept growing. When Saturday rolled around I was buried. After dumping everything in my mind and organizing tasks into logical contexts I realized that there was no way I was going to get through everything. The glowing red double digit notification badges didn’t give me any hope or encouragement either. I’m not in the clear, but here’s what helped me gain momentum and dig my way out of the hole: Split tasks up – even if they are small. It’s helpful to break up tasks, even if they should take less than 30min, and schedule the pieces sequentially through the week…

Working on Your Life vs In Your Life

I’m reading the E-Myth Revisited. One of the key concepts is the idea of working on your business instead of in your business. In other words, working on streamlining the process that you or your employees use to create the product or execute the service rather than actually performing the service or creating the product. Without improving the system you can’t scale the outcome. You’ll be a slave to an undefined process that you can’t delegate. The same principal applies to my personal life. I need to work on improving the systems an processes that I use to run my life. Working on my life, not just living it. Here are a couple examples: Where am I wasting time? What tasks or processes are time consuming but necessary?..

Results Follow Clarity

Clarity is hard. It takes effort to defined what you are looking for, why you are looking for it, and what you are going to do to get it. Clarity creates results. It creates momentum. Opportunities appear with knowledge of exactly what you are looking for. Without precise goals you can’t adjust your time and energy to seek out opportunities that align with that vision. Without a framework to interpret opportunities or situations from it’s hard to say no. It’s hard to choose between opportunities when all the opportunities are better-than-great. Driving results requires saying no. It requires cutting out the good to make room for the great. And, sometimes, it means cutting out the nearly-great for the extremely-great…

How to Get Clarity When Your Mind is Scattered or Distracted

When I have a week that is concentrated on a single project I often feel as though I loose focus. My mind can forget other projects or important tasks that were not contained within the context of the project I was working on. If I don’t catch myself, there is the opportunity for things to fall through the cracks. I forget to respond to important emails, to close the loop on an important task, or push the ball forward on an important project. Here’s a practice I use to recalibrate myself: Organize all the paper with ideas or tasks in a single stack. Get a blank legal pad. When my mind seems scattered a blank piece of paper brings clarity…

How I Learned to Never Forget Anything

Remembering things is hard. The constant firehouse of information – especially if you’re a entrepreneur everything-is-a-potential-new-product-or-idea type – is overwhelming. Here’s the secret to never forgetting anything: write it down. I’m not kidding, it’s that easy. Just follow these couple rules: Write it down right away. When you have the thought, or an action item is assigned to you, write it down right away. Don’t wait even a minute or two. In the moment, as the idea or action item is coming to mind, write it down. Don’t use paper. Some people would disagree with me here, but I believe this is crucial. Paper gets lost. Paper isn’t with you all of the time. You can’t edit paper. Paper isn’t backed up…

Closing the Loop vs Completing the Project

Completing the project is crossing the entire thing off the list, eliminating the chunk of work completely. It’s moving a project from development to maintenance. Closing the loop is different. It’s eliminating the dependency that someone else has on you – or at least updating them on the state. Every project has dependencies, and if you are pushing for excellence your role is most likely key to the projects success. Leaving others hanging is the worst thing you can do. It’s when someone’s dependency on you becomes a blocker to the project or a drain on the projects momentum. And it’s one my biggest faults. I’m a recovering perfectionist. I love when things are complete and I can deliver them to a teammate or client…

Why I Break Up Task Lists

I’ve been using Todoist for a couple months now. It’s a great implementation of the Getting Things Done system. I highly recommend both. However, using a robust task manager doesn’t eliminate the trappings of a yellow legal pad: pages of tasks and ideas without context or prioritization. The lists can still get out of control. As a type-A personality, I love creating tasks and crossing them off a list: the temptation to constantly grow my task list doesn’t go away with a robust task management system. It only gets worse. Less Than Ten You can only do so much in a day. I’m optimistic. I enjoy looking at the day and imagining all that I can accomplish. But, I can only do 10 tasks a day. I’ve tracked, tested, and analyzed this…

Category: Productivity