Archive for the 'Individual Solutions' Category

A sorely needed cellphone feature

Posted on September 21st, 2011 · Posted in Individual Solutions

A lecture attendee reacted to my data about the scary extent of disruption caused by endlessly ringing cellphones by saying: “I keep my cellphone turned on only in case my child calls – I wish it would only ring for him!” Now, here is a feature that is painfully needed, and obviously useful: Allow the user to specify which callers the phone will ring for, and which it will not, when you put it into a “Silent” mode. Or use “vibrate” as part of the equation: Ring for calls from an emergency-prone dependent, vibrate for close family and coworkers, let.. Read more

Made my day!

Posted on May 22nd, 2011 · Posted in Individual Solutions

My lectures on Information Overload invariably elicit an applause, which is gratifying but leaves open the question: what is the real impact on attendees in the long term? With long-term organizational interventions, we can collect data; but a lecture is a one-time encounter! I was therefore pleased when I gave a lecture at a venue I revisit every few weeks, and a technician who was there to support the IT stuff came to me and said he’s heard me the previous month and had taken my advice to heart. He’d taken stock of his communication habits, gotten off lists, created.. Read more

An overlooked, sure-fire way to regain work time

Posted on January 29th, 2011 · Posted in Individual Solutions, Organizational Solutions

I was talking to a client who – like most of us – needed more hours in the day, and he complained that part of the problem was that he was required to generate long reports, and it took him hours and hours just to type them in. So I asked him, how does he type? Turns out he uses two fingers to peck at the keyboard. I asked him, why not ten? Why doesn’t he touch type? Of course he couldn’t touch type, nor was he planning to learn to; and neither do almost all the knowledge workers I.. Read more

Six steps to elicit a response to your emails

Posted on December 20th, 2010 · Posted in Individual Solutions

I’ve discussed the harmful effects of Online silence, the phenomenon where you send email and no reply arrives for days. Since this phenomenon persists, driven by the endless flood of incoming messages, here are some tactics to apply when you run into it. Be proactive. Write your emails to encourage a response – short, to the point, and with clearly marked action items. Make the subject reflect the urgency and the required response: “Can you send me the financial summary by the Tuesday staff meeting?”, not “Staff”. If the mail is fast to read and process, the response is far.. Read more

Wayda go, Ford! Stop driver distractions!

Posted on November 19th, 2010 · Posted in Individual Solutions

Driving and <anything other than driving> don’t mix well, as I recently pointed out. Unfortunately, the number of <things other than driving> that you can do in a car grows fast as new technologies turn our cars into mobile electronic appliances with ever more computing, communications and multimedia capabilities. The more screens, computers, GPS systems and cellular communications on board, the less will the driver keep his or her eyes on the road! It is encouraging, then, to read that Ford has responded to this issue and will introduce, in selected 2011 models, features specifically intended to prevent distraction. The.. Read more

The importance of Desktop Search

Posted on October 1st, 2010 · Posted in Individual Solutions

A manager recently described to me his system for handling his incoming email, which he viewed as quite inadequate. He would go through his voluminous new mail each day, then move it all to one folder. At least he wasn’t keeping it in the Inbox like the “I’ve got 6,000 messages in my Inbox” crowd; but his problem was that when he’d need to find a message again he often couldn’t. Some people solve the problem by maintaining a carefully defined folder hierarchy to archive old messages; for others, this just doesn’t match the way they work. But even if.. Read more

Five tactics to prevent your email from reaching the wrong eyes

Posted on September 3rd, 2010 · Posted in Individual Solutions

In a previous post we saw that it’s all too easy for your email to find its way to people you hadn’t meant it for. So, what can you do when sending a sensitive message, to prevent such embarrassment (or worse)? Here are some tactics to consider: You can put in the message an explicit plea for discretion, such as “For your eyes only” or “DO NOT FORWARD”. You can also put “[Private]” in the subject, though that may draw the attention of hackers and people passing by an unlocked PC in the recipient’s absence. But of course, this is.. Read more

The napping crusade

Posted on July 13th, 2010 · Posted in Individual Solutions

I had the pleasure of being interviewed for an article on Multitasking by Thea O’Connor, an Australian journalist and health promotion consultant. Of course I visited her web site and I discovered a refreshingly different campaign Thea is crusading for: the Napping Project. The idea being, that “napping is a refreshing and proven solution to tiredness in a time-poor world” – and thus, her intent is to establish the mini-siesta as a socially acceptable and valued practice in our personal and working lives. At first glance sleeping on the job sounded weird, but then I realized that unless you’re a.. Read more

Brevity is the soul of Wit… so where is the soul of Email?

Posted on July 8th, 2010 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Individual Solutions

If Brevity is the soul of Wit (as Shakespeake has Polonius tell us), how much of this soul can we expect in the age of electronic communication? Not much, probably. Brevity requires more investment than verbosity. Blaise Pascal once wrote, “I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter”. Since in today’s overloaded work culture nobody has any time for anything, the tendency is to make emails longer than necessary, to the detriment of the hapless recipient. There are three places where you see a combination of brevity and.. Read more

How to avoid email mania without annoying your customers

Posted on June 18th, 2010 · Posted in Individual Solutions

Here is a question I was asked by an attendee at one of my lectures. I was teaching the importance of not using email like Instant Messenger, of reading it only a few times a day in preset slots. The guy wanted to know how can he do this, when his customers expect him to respond instantly? Won’t they be annoyed (to use a mild term)? He would prefer to suffer than to upset his customers! He certainly had a point. In my experience if you cut your email reading just like that, cold turkey, some of your correspondents will.. Read more