Category Archives: Personal Productivity

Insight: Software Alone Won’t Do It

Marketing, Personal Productivity

Consider this:

In my experience, it’s not the lack of software that causes frustration for small business owners, rather the frustration stems from the over-abundance of software and features available.

That’s Bill Brelsford over at Small Business Marketing Tips & Strategies in his post last week, Software Alone Won’t Cure Your Marketing Blues. Bill looks at a list of marketing frustrations cited by small business in a survey published at Inside CRM.

  1. Too difficult to follow up with cold, warm and lukewarm leads consistently and efficiently 
  2. Can’t properly track and manage prospects and customers 
  3. Need to integrate online and offline marketing efforts 
  4. Poor email deliverability 
  5. Too much manual grunt work in the sales and marketing process, no automation 
  6. Can’t track sales activity 
  7. Lack of centralization, too many different programs and systems 
  8. Too costly to maintain servers and IT staff 
  9. Too difficult to manually manage multichannel campaigns 
  10. One-dimensional marketing

Reviewing that list, Bill points out that process and strategy should come first, before the software. Items 1,2 and 6 on that list are issues of procedure, and discipline, not tools.

They can easily be handled with a Big Chief Tablet, a #2 pencil, and a consistently executed process.

Then there are the items that a software vendor would add to the list, and finally, Bill concludes:

I don’t want to sound like I’m anti-software, far from it. I have just found that a great source of frustration comes from purchasing marketing automation tools before there is a marketing plan or processes to automate. As I mentioned in this previous post, I think the right approach is to have a process first, and then pick the right tools to help you automate that processes.

Well said. And I think that same logic applies to other tools in business, not just marketing automation.

What’s Wrong with This List of Painful Professions

Business Stories, Personal Productivity

Pop quiz: what do these 10 various occupations have in common with each other?

  1. Police
  2. Firefighter
  3. Long-distance truck driver
  4. Pilot
  5. Musician
  6. Blogging
  7. Motorcycle racing
  8. Construction worker
  9. Nurses aide
  10. Dancing

I see some of them as the five-year-old’s dream — police, firefighter, pilot, dancer. Some as the 15-year-old’s dream — musician, motorcycle racing. And then there’s blogging. 

According to 10 Painful Professions on abcnews.com today, what they have in common is chronic pain.

Police, firefighter, truck driver or pilot, dancer of course, and motorcycle racer, absolutely. But wait a minute. Blogging? Does that say blogging? Who writes this stuff? Just last month the New York Times said blogging can kill, and now it’s blogging on a list of the top 10 most painful jobs.

Here’s the expert quote:

Sean Conroy, director of pain management services at Beaumont Hospitals, said bloggers are the extreme version of any administrative work that requires using a computer because bloggers spend more time locked in one place.

"Many people who read computer screens lean forward and tilt their head up, causing back, neck and jaw strain," Conroy said. "Typically we don’t think of bloggers and jaw pain."

See, you always have to have an expert quote for one of these. And then there’s the up-close-and-personal example:

Kim Stagliano, managing editor of the blog Age of Autism, describes the blog world like a game of cat and mouse. Everything is faster on the Internet — and bloggers feel the need to catch up.

"I always feel like I’m behind," Stagliano said. "I always think, ‘Is this story old now, did I grab it fast enough … OK, now what’s next.’"

Stagliano handles all the physical work required to keep the blog active. She monitors the interactive components of the site, answers comments and now enhances the blog’s appearance.

"I’m constantly clicking, going through stories, writing, posting content, clicking," Stagliano said. "Some days I’m on from 6 a.m. until 9 p.m."

That too, is required; somebody who can be the example.

Here’s a true confession. Dear reader: don’t worry, I’m doing fine, thanks. Blogging is much better for my health than running the whole company was. I’m not "constantly clicking" from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. myself — (should I be?) — but I appreciate the thought. Makes me feel brave. Damn the carpal tunnel, full speed ahead.

Whew, having said all that, tongue back out of cheek, here is a very interesting quote from that same story:

"The instance of chronic pain goes up with job dissatisfaction, a feeling of helplessness about your job," Freedman said.

That’s Mitchell Freedman, director of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. All kidding aside, I’ll bet that’s true. 

Good Advice, Bad Advice

Business Mistakes, Journalism, Personal Productivity

Good advice? In the first few weeks of my first real job, I was heading out to cover a student demonstration in Mexico City when my then boss, the bureau manager of UPI in Mexico City, told me: “Come back with the story, or not at all. If you don’t get the story, don’t tell me the reason why not.”

Bad advice? That’s harder, isn’t it? Don’t you have to be somewhat vindictive to remember bad advice?

More good advice (this one is a quote): “I don’t know the secret to success, but the secret to failure is trying to please everybody.”

And this one, from David Kreps, who taught decision science at the time: “you have to know what knobs you have to turn.”

And Hector Saldana, my favorite client during my middle career in consulting: “90 percent of success is just showing up.” That wasn’t his originally, but he used it often. He also told me once “good management is nothing more or less than knowing when and how to say no.”

Fortune has a feature called The best advice I ever got. Twenty-five well-known people with a picture and a paragraph each. Chairmen and CEOs and celebrities and politicians. There’s a comment area for the rest of us. Here are some quotes from some of them, (unattached from the people, by the way; that seems like a less distracting way to compile advice):

  • I’ve observed many CEOs, heads of state, and others in positions of great authority. I’ve noticed that some of the most effective leaders don’t make themselves the center of attention. They are respectful. They listen. This is an appealing personal quality, but it’s also an effective leadership attribute. Their selflessness makes the people around them comfortable. People open up, speak up, contribute. They give those leaders their very best.
  • Here is something to remember for the rest of your life: Don’t spend your time on things you can’t control. Instead, spend your time thinking about what you can.
  • Always assume positive intent. Whatever anybody says or does, assume positive intent. You will be amazed at how your whole approach to a person or problem becomes very different. When you assume negative intent, you’re angry. If you take away that anger and assume positive intent, you will be amazed. Your emotional quotient goes up because you are no longer almost random in your response. You don’t get defensive. You don’t scream. You are trying to understand and listen because at your basic core you are saying, “Maybe they are saying something to me that I’m not hearing.” So “assume positive intent” has been a huge piece of advice for me.
  • If you have something good to say, say it in writing. If you have something bad to say, you should tell the person to his or her face.

As soon as I saw it I started musing about bad advice. What was the worst advice you ever got? That would also seem interesting to me. And then, lo and behold, one woman included did in fact go for the worst advice instead of the best advice. Here’s what she said:

The worst advice I ever got was, “Don’t work with your husband [Pan Shiyi]. Marriage and business don’t mix.” You can’t imagine how many people told me this. But it’s such a narrow view of relationships. In our case I think our [real estate] business success springs from our friendship.

When you have two people trying to figure out problems together, one brings out new things in the other and vice versa. Aren’t human beings meant to be inspired in this way? With us, Pan works in a very intuitive way–even though he’s the man. I believe in women’s intuition, but I am also a product of my Western training [Cambridge, Goldman Sachs]. And so we approach decisions in very different ways and play different roles. He tends to come up with big ideas–then I’m the one who goes around trying to test them. He’s brilliant at sales. I worry about construction.

If the business fails, well, that puts a strain on the marriage. But what if it succeeds? That can enhance the marriage. When it comes to business and relationships, I don’t buy this idea of diversification. It neglects comparative advantage. The best way to lower risk is to specialize: Put the things that you love into one portfolio.

What about you? Could you name the best advice you ever got? How about the best you ever listened to? The worst advice?

How to Present Like Steve Jobs

Personal Productivity

I found a really nice post on BNET today with a good list of tips, great graphics, and solid presentation. I’m impressed with BNET, it’s an excellent resource. 

Here’s a link to that article: How to Present Like Steve Jobs, and it also links to a nice video, which I’m including here (and if you have trouble with it, you can click here).

 

This is an excellent video, mixing clips of Steve Jobs with explanations of what he’s doing and why it works.

— Tim

7 Rules for Email Etiquette

Personal Productivity

When I was a boy, back in the 1950s, my mother would read to us from Emily Post. She was the etiquette lady of those times. And that was really boring (a 3- or 4-syllable boring, which might be spelled BORING) and seemed useless at the time, but I can’t say that it didn’t help me once or twice at awkward moments, later in life, to know which fork was which.

Sometimes manners matter. Particularly when they’re about making things easier for somebody else.

I’m still working on my cellphone etiquette, which I think is sorely needed these days.

And thanks to Joel Falconer for these simple rules for email etiquette. He posted them as Following Email Etiquette on Lifehack.org.

1. Use Descriptive Subject Lines

Joel points out that people scan subject lines. 

make sure it is concise, clear and scannable. Don’t use awkward phrasing or unusual words, because they take more time to re-read and understand, hence increasing the amount of time it takes your recipient to process the message.

2. Be Brief

He has an interesting insight on this one:

In 90% of cases, email that is more than a page long is too long. Unless you’re explaining complicated concepts or providing detailed instructions (because they’ve been asked for or need to be communicated for a reason), then get back to the core of your message and communicate it quickly. 

In my experience the kind of person who sends an opus for each email is the kind of person who assumes everyone is less intelligent than themselves or feels the need to explain completely irrelevant things. For instance, if you’re a graphic artist, you don’t need to explain the techniques used to create an image for a client when you hand over the work. They don’t care; that’s why they hired you instead of figuring it out for themselves.

3. But Don’t Be Too Brief

Hmm, that seems contradictory, but …

Context is important.

When replying to messages, clip off as much of the previous email as you can while keeping key sentences quoted in your reply. Ensure you provide contextual details that may seem self-evident to you, but not to the recipient – this is especially true when you’re emailing lecturers. Your course is not the only one they teach, most of the time!

4. Don’t CC if You Don’t Have a Reason

“Just keeping you in the loop” is a frequent reason given for doing this, and while there are sometimes cases where this is a good idea, for the most part you shouldn’t send someone an email unless you want them to take action on it.

5. Reply-All Isn’t Always Necessary

No explanation needed on that one.

6. Use BCC for Bulk Mail

If you absolutely must send a bulk mail to your address book, always, always use the BCC field. It’s a basic privacy measure and not only prevents your recipients from receiving endless spam as a result of your carelessness (who doesn’t already?), but shows your recipient you have respect for their privacy and some intellect.

7. Don’t Use The Forward Button

don’t bother unless someone requires the specific information in the forwarded message to complete their job.

Joel’s conclusion: "Email can be a massive waste of time. Help others cut their email time down and you’ll inevitably spend less time on it yourself." 

Deep or Wide, But Not Both

Personal Productivity

Choices. Trying to say too much. Trying to do too much with a presentation. Tradeoffs.

In The Craft of Scientific Presentations Michael Alley touches on a similar idea. In this book he suggests that you can go deep (depth) or you can go wide (scope) but it is very difficult to do both in, say, an hour lecture or conference presentation. The key, then, is to set realistic goals, and if you decide that you need to go deep then you have to seriously consider reducing the scope. Sometimes, in life as in presentations, you just have to make a choice about what’s important, and let go of the rest (at least for the time being).

That’s from Presentation Zen: Deep or wide? You decide. As you expect from this blog, it’s put together very well.

He also has an interesting discovery near the bottom of this post:

You already know about the talks available at TED, but you may not be aware of the hundreds of presentations and speeches available for free that are part of the @Google Talks including Authors@Google, Women@Google, Candidates @Google, etc.

Stop It: Dreaming Isn’t Working

Entrepreneurship, Personal Productivity

(Note: I posted this earlier today on Small Business Trends. Tim)

I object to this new term ‘sleepworking.’ That’s what they’re calling dreaming about work. I say dreaming about work is dreaming about life, an extremely good sign sometimes, a bad sign other times, but not — never — as simple as more work.

Let’s not pollute the language with this sleepworking prattle. As if dreaming about work counts as working. It’s not just silly, it’s also counterproductive. It messes with something important.

The latest along those lines is a Staples survey of small business, released this month. The headline is "Staples Small-Business Survey Reveals People are Constantly Working, Even While They Sleep."

According to the 2nd Annual Staples National Small-Business Survey, more than half of small-business professionals said that work has actually become part of their dreams. Fifty-one percent of those surveyed said that they "sleepwork" (i.e. dream about work), and nearly 70 percent of those "sleepworkers" report they wake up and put their "work dreams" to action.

Come on, get real. Dreaming about work means you care. It might be struggle, excitement, the creative process, stress … but when what you do during the day creeps into your dreams, that’s not more work. That’s involvement.

Dreaming about work can be wonderful. How many times have you come up with solutions to problems, or new ideas, by chewing on them in your subconscious mind? Work is what we do a lot of, many hours a day, most days; wouldn’t it be awful to not dream about it? The dream means you’re relating to it, thinking about it, and, ultimately, enjoying it. It’s the challenge. It’s the creative process. This kind of involvement has kept me happy for most of my adult life. When I lose that it is time to switch jobs.

True, dreaming about work can be bad too. Stress is bad. Worry is bad, at least unproductive stressful worry. Go listen to Robert Sapolsky on Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. Remember the helicopter dream in the first scene of the movie Apocalypse Now? The helicopter noise and the throbbing engine seems inside his head while he sleeps. That’s replaying stress.  That’s bad.

Even in those cases, though, dreaming is a sign and a signal. It’s not just more work. It’s the real you fighting back at the you you’re in danger of becoming. Or something like that.

The creeping (and I might say creepy) use of this dreamworking motif is just fun if you don’t take it seriously, but it’s also evidence of how we subvert language sometimes to serve our own purpose. The authors of the Staples study clearly wanted to show how hard small business owners work. They could have done it without bringing in this sleepworking theme. Consider the data they do have:

The survey also revealed that 98 percent of U.S. small-business owners and managers are working during their time off – including nights, weekends and vacations – and nearly 54 percent expect to work even harder in 2008.

The results revealed organization and teamwork are the top factors why owners and managers are working so many hours. Nearly 70 percent admitted they do not have a written business plan. Almost three-quarters consider themselves organized, but only 33 percent said they complete the tasks on their "to-do" list each day. Slightly more than two-thirds said they feel constantly challenged by not having enough time to get work done and nearly 44 percent said customer fulfillment takes up the majority of their time while at work.

When asked to compare their businesses to a track and field event at the Olympics, a mere 14 percent said their business operates like a relay race, with everybody working in tandem toward the same goal, whereas 26 percent think of business operations as a 100-meter dash, always sprinting and trying to do everything quickly.

So okay, this is interesting data. Not surprising at all, but interesting. So go with that. Leave my dreams out of it.

Are You Right or Left Brain?

Personal Productivity

There was a cnet.com news item yesterday that linked to this fascinating Right Brain v Left Brain exercise. I can’t tell whether they’re serious or just (as the kids would say) "tricking me." Is she spinning left or right? Your answer indicates whether you’re using more of your right or left brain. The page also includes a good summary of which is which. Rightorleftbrain

If she spins one way (and you need to follow that link to the live animation, you won’t see it here), you’re emphasizing the right brain, which is intuitive, whole picture oriented, more willing to take risks, and so on. If she spins the other way, you’re more left-brained, meaning orderly, mathematical, logical.

My problem (true confessions here) is that for me she keeps changing directions. Does that mean that I’m switching brains all the time? That might make sense because I’ve always related to business planning, which necessarily incorporates both big-picture conceptual stuff and the details of dates and deadlines and financial projections; words and numbers together.

It also makes sense if somebody has a sense of humor and is switching the animation randomly.

But none of that makes sense unless you click the link and visit that page. When you get there, read up on the simple but powerful bullet point lists of right and left brain characteristics.

So Many Tools, So Little Time

Business Mistakes, Personal Productivity

What’s worse than no calendar, agenda, or day planner? Two of them. And three is worse than two, and four worse than three. And so on. Tools_istock_000001436436small

What’s worse than no to-do list? Two of them.

How often do you change your tools — meaning personal productivity software — instead of using what you already have? I do that way too often. It’s a bad habit, a way of avoiding the real issues of getting organized and getting things done by distracting myself with the tools instead. Recently my Outlook calendar fought with Plaxo so I moved my calendar to Google calendar. But then I got the iPhone and it synchronizes with Outlook two ways, and Google only one way. *Sigh*, so then I got a utility to synchronize the Google calendar to Outlook. But, ooof, my iPhone will talk to only one computer, and I need that to be a laptop when I travel, so I had to resynchronize with that one.

Then my company decided to replace our mail server with Zimbra, which has its own calendar, but don’t worry, it synchronizes with Outlook, but then, Oh NO!, it doesn’t work with Outlook 2007.

For several weeks now I’ve been intending to comment on this wise suggestion from Jeff Cornwall of the Entrepreneurial Mind: Link: Technology Can Make a Difference, But Focus on Its Efficiency Ratio.

"That is also how technology can work best for a small business. Wait until they get it right and wait until the wild-eyed first adopters are done bidding up the prices for the latest and greatest gadget. I was one of the last people I knew in business to get a fax machine in the 1980s. But by the time I bought one they worked really well and the prices had fallen through the floor."

Yes Jeff, I think you make a lot of sense with that one … except that I find getting the newest things is so marvelously entertaining. I’m on my third iPhone already, I confess, the first had battery problems — Apple replaced it very quickly and very free — and the second, gulp, I dropped. It still worked but the on-off button didn’t. And having Vista and Office 2007 is screwing up the switch to Zimbra for me, but then I was already confused by accounts for Google apps, Zoho, and Entrepreneur Assist, all of which do the same thing, sort of, that Microsoft Office does. So where did I leave that text I was working on?

Now I need a tool that has a system to keep track of all my tools with systems.

I think it’s a long-term character flaw. I wrote several books in the middle 1980s using an early Macintosh, an even earlier CP/M computer, and a DOS computer. I used to change word processors just to cut the monotony of the same commands. I particularly liked Perfect Writer because I could change the interface just for the hell of it, when I had nothing better to do. Of course, I never had nothing better to do, but I changed it anyhow.

And to put a management point into this piece, I’m sure I’ve seen signs of the same phenomenon in management teams and groups. Are you in a group that’s moved from Yahoo Groups to its own wiki to Sharepoint to something else? Have you gone from Microsoft Project to 37signals to something else?

-Tim