How to Save Yourself From Drowning in a Sea of Productivity Tools I find the most effective productivity boosters come from changing one's habits. In these tough times, it's imperative that you use your most valuable resource wisely. You know which resource I'm talking about: it's your time. Sure, there are some software apps, PDAs, ASPs, and the like that will help you spend your life segments more efficiently. But then there are some that are huge time sinks, from which you will never be seen again as you will have drowned in trying to learn every facet of the zillions of features that will presumably make you a better person. Yeah, right. You have to wonder how much time is wasted learning all these tools, many of which turn out to be time wasters, versus the time gained by those that really do work. So: hereunder are ten practical if not cynical tips on how to reclaim your life increments in order to get on with the business of, well, business. 1. Cancel all subscriptions to email newsletters that you currently delete. Why waste time deleting them? Stop deluding yourself into thinking that someday you'll start reading them again. The influx is getting worse, not better, which means it's less and less likely you'll ever start reading something you've started deleting. At least convert daily newsletters to weekly digests. 2. Cancel half of the email newsletters you do read! Seriously. More than likely you don't need all that redundancy. Ask yourself if reading a given newsletter is more important than making money. If that newsletter somehow does help you make money or keep tabs on your competitors etc, then stay subscribed. Everything else goes. 3. When considering a piece of technology or a service ask yourself the following question: "How does this serve me?" If there's no obvious answer, skip it. 4. Use Boolean search strings at search engines. Tired of getting 300,000 results for a search query? Then ask a more succinct question of the search engine, using Boolean search strings at search sites that offer such advanced search boxes, like AltaVista and Google. 5. Know when to get the heck offline. Sometimes it's just faster to pick up the phone and ask someone for the answer. Really! :) 6. Know when to get off the phone. Have each phone agenda fixed in your mind. I have a punch list in the notes field of that person's contact sheet in Outlook. Once that list is completed and they're satisfied as well, I'm out of there. The one exception is schmooze-time for a journalist, client, or prospective client. 7. Commit to not reading about specific topics: filter out articles that you know won't help you in your work. For example, I rarely read anything on the music industry relative to online. I follow only how it effects copyright issues. But I will not read about competing technologies, formats, or prognostications as to what will or will not happen. Why? Because no one can follow everything and it is unlikely that I will be speaking, writing, or analyzing anything about the music biz relative to the Net. Online games is another category I pay little attention to. 8. Multi-Purpose Tasking: try to make each task serve more than one purpose. Example: I read newsletters for information, for possible advertisers for WDFM and for heads-up emails to send to clients and prospects. 9. Use your phone as a news medium: instead of wading through insultingly dumb commercials on radio and TV, call Tell Me Networks at 800 555-TELL. Using your voice, you can ask for stock prices, get market updates, weather, news and driving directions, all whilst you surf the web, read your email or wait for a train. 10. Don't read print publications immediately. I wait a few weeks and find I save huge amounts of time as many stories turn out to be vapor. In fact, some of the publications themselves turn out to be vapor... |
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