I am a "clean inbox" adherent. This has done wonders for me. But it has also become addictive and created a new email-driven attention deficit disorder. A few of the following tips have helped:
1. In general, the bcc: field is in my opinion the most underutilized email feature. When asking for feedback on a product, process or feature, ask more than one person at a time using the bcc: field. If you don't, you get immediately 3x the email volume.
On a side note, should you want to kill a product, process or feature, ask many people and put it in the to: field. In this latter case, also mark it urgent and tell them feedback is a day late. (Just kidding... kinda'.)
2. Sort all of your "not sent directly to you" emails to a different folder and read it once a day.
3. Make liberal use of "Out of office" notification. "Out of office" sets expectations on wait time and lets you focus on your work. It thus immediately reduces your email load. And if someone really wants to chat, they can pick up the phone.
I have multitasked to my Outlook inbox at least three times in writing this post, so I can't tell you that the above will work. But I can at least suggest it. May you avoid my fate!
Showing posts with label productivity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label productivity. Show all posts
Monday, June 8, 2009
Sunday, May 31, 2009
10 Quick Tips to Make Business Travel Easier
I travel a fair bit in my job (73k miles according to TripIt), so I thought a few of the following tips might be helpful for those of you just starting to get into the same routine for my Monday productivity article:
1. Forward your agenda to TripIt. I love TripIt. It is particularly good, I've found, when you're traveling overseas and your very competent travel assistant has to book tickets through an external agency. But I also love how easy it makes to share travel plans. I have my Tripit calendar added to my wife's Google Calendar so that she knows where I am at any point in time. This helps her get a hold of me in the event that something were to happen while I was away (particularly, when I'm overseas).
2. Go to your itinerary on TripIt 24 hours before to print off your e-ticket. Use their "Get seating advice" to find the best seat on the plane. This will cut your airport wait down AND potentially make you more comfortable. Make sure you have your frequent flyer number on the e-ticket.
3. Keep a standard voicemail out-of-office notification script written out in an email, Evernote or a file on your computer that's easy to get to. The day before you leave, record your message. I use this script:
Hi, you've reached Jamie at x. I will be away for the next x days on business, returning the morning of x. If you have any urgent matters, please contact x at x regarding x issues or x at x regarding x issues. Otherwise, leave your name and number after the tone and I will get back to you when I return. Thank you.
I use Google Voice and keep a message with a return for each day of the week, which works superbly well. This basically takes my out-of-office notification time down to zero.
4. Book your cab with RideCharge. RideCharge will automatically notify you as your cab gets closer. It will allow you to pay your fare via your mobile phone which for some reason saves me at least 3 minutes on validation with most of my local cab companies. Finally, it provides you with an e-Receipt for expenses. (If TripIt got together with RideCharge for automatic cab booking options, they would be super-powerful... just my quick plug.) The extra $1.50 in fare for e-payment is to me a savings given time loss reductions from expense processing and validation.
5. Wear slip-on shoes. Shoe laces are for the TSA-inept. Don't know what I mean? Travel on a Friday in the summer and watch the running shoe crowd hold up the line for 15 minutes.
6. Put your keys and coins in your briefcase / computer bag as soon as you get in the cab. This will reduce time in the security line.
7. Keep a separate envelope for travel receipts. My company uses Concur for expense submission. I know that it gets some bad press, but I have to tell you that it beats the heck out of everything I've used before. So long as you register all of your frequent flyer, hotel and rental car club memberships, MOST of your expenses can be automatically handled by Concur. For those of you not so lucky to use Concur, the separate travel receipt envelope becomes even more essential. I have also tried Shoeboxed to reduce expense processing time and used their envelope to carry my receipts. In this case, I put all the receipts in my Shoeboxed envelope and drop it in my mailbox as soon as I arrive back at my house. Unfortunately, though I love the service, I am on a fiscal diet right now. Either way, put your receipts in your envelope as soon as you get them.
8. Pre-program your Blackberry (use Notes in Outlook) or other smart phone with all of your frequent flyer, hotel and rental car membership numbers. Leave your cards at home. Unless you have some sort of attachment to having a Costanza wallet, that is.
9. Keep a list in Evernote of "Things to do when in..." Use City, State and Country as tags. Then start hoarding restaurant, hotel and sightseeing tips. I actually find that airline magazines have some great restaurant tips, for example. And whenever I'm in a town and out with one of my reps, I'll develop a list of local digs. Unfortunately, this travel tip requires a little bit of time investment, but has good long-term payoff. By the way, I put good airport restaurants in my Evernote list to. (Try Cantina Laredo in DFW Terminal D, for example.)
10. If you really become an avid traveler, get a Zuca Pro Complete Set with Black Insert Bag, Black Travel Cover and Pro Silver Frame
. I love this thing more than I can say. It is like having a portable dresser. It requires that you spend some time learning how to properly pack your clothes. It also gets weird looks sometimes (a few weeks ago, I got pulled off the plane because they thought it was dangerous.. yes, seriously). But it makes you wickedly organized and fast when you're at your destination.
By the way, I also use Remember the Milk. To make all of the above much easier, I have put a list of the above tasks, along with my packing list, into an email that I send to my Remember the Milk import email address when I need to go traveling. I use a separate list in RTM to send it to (I call mine "Quick Lists") to enable rapid entry of due dates. I delete irrelevant tasks before sending and the way I formatted it also allows the due date entry to be fast using "Multiple edit". In case you're interested, I put it as a text file in docstoc her:
Travel Routine
Hope that helps and happy traveling!
1. Forward your agenda to TripIt. I love TripIt. It is particularly good, I've found, when you're traveling overseas and your very competent travel assistant has to book tickets through an external agency. But I also love how easy it makes to share travel plans. I have my Tripit calendar added to my wife's Google Calendar so that she knows where I am at any point in time. This helps her get a hold of me in the event that something were to happen while I was away (particularly, when I'm overseas).
2. Go to your itinerary on TripIt 24 hours before to print off your e-ticket. Use their "Get seating advice" to find the best seat on the plane. This will cut your airport wait down AND potentially make you more comfortable. Make sure you have your frequent flyer number on the e-ticket.
3. Keep a standard voicemail out-of-office notification script written out in an email, Evernote or a file on your computer that's easy to get to. The day before you leave, record your message. I use this script:
Hi, you've reached Jamie at x. I will be away for the next x days on business, returning the morning of x. If you have any urgent matters, please contact x at x regarding x issues or x at x regarding x issues. Otherwise, leave your name and number after the tone and I will get back to you when I return. Thank you.
I use Google Voice and keep a message with a return for each day of the week, which works superbly well. This basically takes my out-of-office notification time down to zero.
4. Book your cab with RideCharge. RideCharge will automatically notify you as your cab gets closer. It will allow you to pay your fare via your mobile phone which for some reason saves me at least 3 minutes on validation with most of my local cab companies. Finally, it provides you with an e-Receipt for expenses. (If TripIt got together with RideCharge for automatic cab booking options, they would be super-powerful... just my quick plug.) The extra $1.50 in fare for e-payment is to me a savings given time loss reductions from expense processing and validation.
5. Wear slip-on shoes. Shoe laces are for the TSA-inept. Don't know what I mean? Travel on a Friday in the summer and watch the running shoe crowd hold up the line for 15 minutes.
6. Put your keys and coins in your briefcase / computer bag as soon as you get in the cab. This will reduce time in the security line.
7. Keep a separate envelope for travel receipts. My company uses Concur for expense submission. I know that it gets some bad press, but I have to tell you that it beats the heck out of everything I've used before. So long as you register all of your frequent flyer, hotel and rental car club memberships, MOST of your expenses can be automatically handled by Concur. For those of you not so lucky to use Concur, the separate travel receipt envelope becomes even more essential. I have also tried Shoeboxed to reduce expense processing time and used their envelope to carry my receipts. In this case, I put all the receipts in my Shoeboxed envelope and drop it in my mailbox as soon as I arrive back at my house. Unfortunately, though I love the service, I am on a fiscal diet right now. Either way, put your receipts in your envelope as soon as you get them.
8. Pre-program your Blackberry (use Notes in Outlook) or other smart phone with all of your frequent flyer, hotel and rental car membership numbers. Leave your cards at home. Unless you have some sort of attachment to having a Costanza wallet, that is.
9. Keep a list in Evernote of "Things to do when in..." Use City, State and Country as tags. Then start hoarding restaurant, hotel and sightseeing tips. I actually find that airline magazines have some great restaurant tips, for example. And whenever I'm in a town and out with one of my reps, I'll develop a list of local digs. Unfortunately, this travel tip requires a little bit of time investment, but has good long-term payoff. By the way, I put good airport restaurants in my Evernote list to. (Try Cantina Laredo in DFW Terminal D, for example.)
10. If you really become an avid traveler, get a Zuca Pro Complete Set with Black Insert Bag, Black Travel Cover and Pro Silver Frame
. I love this thing more than I can say. It is like having a portable dresser. It requires that you spend some time learning how to properly pack your clothes. It also gets weird looks sometimes (a few weeks ago, I got pulled off the plane because they thought it was dangerous.. yes, seriously). But it makes you wickedly organized and fast when you're at your destination.By the way, I also use Remember the Milk. To make all of the above much easier, I have put a list of the above tasks, along with my packing list, into an email that I send to my Remember the Milk import email address when I need to go traveling. I use a separate list in RTM to send it to (I call mine "Quick Lists") to enable rapid entry of due dates. I delete irrelevant tasks before sending and the way I formatted it also allows the due date entry to be fast using "Multiple edit". In case you're interested, I put it as a text file in docstoc her:
Travel Routine
Hope that helps and happy traveling!
Monday, May 25, 2009
Keyboard Shortcuts at Work
As part of my blog, I am going to write a weekly post on things I do to enhance my productivity at work. I am doing this to both start to formulate these tools into a single "work productivity" toolbox that I can provide the folks who work for me and - perhaps - to enable feedback from more savvy readers that can help to make me more productive.
One of the items that I believe has the greatest effect on my personal productivity at work is my use of keyboard shortcuts. The ability to not use the mouse and always have my hands on the keyboard probably saves me on the order of a second for every email, every task I add to my task list and every file that I open up. The cumulative time gain is substantial as I get a substantial number of emails.
The core to my use of keyboard shortcuts has been memorizing a basic set of them for my core work tools. I put this set into a Cheat Sheet which I have published on www.docstoc.com. In essence, the programs I use most often are in the sheet. This includes Windows, Outlook, Firefox (or IE as they tend to have the same shortcuts), File Explorer and several web tools (Remember the Milk, Gmail and Google Reader).
One of the other time savers that I use religiously is Launchy. Launchy will scan your documents and programs to enable you to hit [Alt]+[Space] which brings up a bar in which you can quickly type the name of a file and hit [Enter] to open it. This has a huge impact in terms of reducing the need to go through huge directory trees in order to open a file and takes little training.
I am sure I am missing a host of shortcuts in my Cheat Sheet. Because I use Outlook so much more than the other parts of the Microsoft Office suite (Excel, Word and PowerPoint), I know very few of the shortcuts for that software. I would deeply appreciate suggestions on keyboard shortcuts to learn in these applications. I am also starting to use MindManager a lot more, and have not gotten around yet to putting these shortcuts into my Cheat Sheet just yet.
I firmly believe that keyboard shortcut knowledge, along with good keyboarding skills, are becoming essential to PM work today. I have met few strong PMs who "hunt and peck". It is simply to hard to handle the volume of information and communicate back effectively without a solid knowledge of how to get around a computer.
Keyboard Shortcuts Cheat Sheet
One of the items that I believe has the greatest effect on my personal productivity at work is my use of keyboard shortcuts. The ability to not use the mouse and always have my hands on the keyboard probably saves me on the order of a second for every email, every task I add to my task list and every file that I open up. The cumulative time gain is substantial as I get a substantial number of emails.
The core to my use of keyboard shortcuts has been memorizing a basic set of them for my core work tools. I put this set into a Cheat Sheet which I have published on www.docstoc.com. In essence, the programs I use most often are in the sheet. This includes Windows, Outlook, Firefox (or IE as they tend to have the same shortcuts), File Explorer and several web tools (Remember the Milk, Gmail and Google Reader).
One of the other time savers that I use religiously is Launchy. Launchy will scan your documents and programs to enable you to hit [Alt]+[Space] which brings up a bar in which you can quickly type the name of a file and hit [Enter] to open it. This has a huge impact in terms of reducing the need to go through huge directory trees in order to open a file and takes little training.
I am sure I am missing a host of shortcuts in my Cheat Sheet. Because I use Outlook so much more than the other parts of the Microsoft Office suite (Excel, Word and PowerPoint), I know very few of the shortcuts for that software. I would deeply appreciate suggestions on keyboard shortcuts to learn in these applications. I am also starting to use MindManager a lot more, and have not gotten around yet to putting these shortcuts into my Cheat Sheet just yet.
I firmly believe that keyboard shortcut knowledge, along with good keyboarding skills, are becoming essential to PM work today. I have met few strong PMs who "hunt and peck". It is simply to hard to handle the volume of information and communicate back effectively without a solid knowledge of how to get around a computer.
Keyboard Shortcuts Cheat Sheet
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