Displaying All Posts from February, 2010

Four Strategies for Increasing Email Productivity

If you want to know what people value most, look at which email subject lines get the fastest replies from them. You’ll find that issues you consider priorities aren’t valued equally by others, and vice versa, which makes one-size-fits-all policies like “check email twice a day” or “turn off email notifications” awkward to implement company-wide.

Regardless of the medium, one person’s communication is another person’s distraction. So how do you get anything done in a culture where expectations for email turnaround are frustratingly vague? How do you deal with your own email overload? Click Here to Read Article …

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Memo:Random #22

N.C. Winters 15th February Memo: Random 3 Comments

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Learn to Climb the Corporate Ladder by Climbing a Mountain

Cubicle Curtis 12th February Career 4 Comments

When we’re done, we always hit this great brew pub for burgers and beer. If you cut the burger in half you still need need two hands. It’s the perfect complement to their amber ale.

Why did we do it? Weren’t you listening when I described the burger?

Oh, the mountain. Why did we climb it in winter? During a storm you wouldn’t drive in? There are a lot of reasons. There’s the scenery, the conflict of man vs. nature and a really good beer. But I see the “Yeah, right” in your eyes. So I’m going to explain it this way. Click Here to Read Article …

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Memo:Random #21

N.C. Winters 11th February Memo: Random 2 Comments

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Meetings 101: Always Bring Something to the Table

Mike Vardy 10th February Management Leave a Comment

During family dinners in my household, we’d all bring an item from the kitchen to the table. None was exempt from this ritual. No matter who cooked dinner that night, everyone ended up contributing to the meal because of what they brought to the table. What they brought was incidental–the fact they brought something was what was important.

The same applies in a work environment–especially in meetings. We all have different things we bring to the table. What we bring often depends on the role we have in the organization or the area of expertise we apply every day to our work. None of these are really any different than setting a dinner table – every part of the meal is important.

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The 80/20 Rule Revisited

Andre Kibbe 9th February Goals 5 Comments

The 80/20 Rule can save massive amounts of time and energy when properly understood and applied. As with many observations described as rules, failing to understanding the operating principles underlying the 80/20 Rule leads can lead to some pretty academic debates about its veracity, which ultimately leads inaction.

Repopularized in Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek, the 80/20 Rule is a shorthand term for a series of observations made by an Italian political economist in the 19th Century, Vilfredo Pareto (hence the other name for the 80/20 Rule, the “Pareto Principle”). He noted that 20% of Italy’s population owned 80% of its wealth. He saw this reciprocal distribution play out in other domains: 20% of all of the pea pods sown in the ground produced 80% of the peas, for instance. But just how universal is the 80/20 Rule, and can you apply it in your work and life? Click Here to Read Article …

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Declutter Your Desk with a General Reference Filing System

Andre Kibbe 5th February Office Life 14 Comments

First, a confession. I don’t do what I’m about to recommend, at least not anymore. My current job involves zero paperwork, but in my previous, paper-based job, I was able to manage a mountain of paperwork while maintaining a pristinely clean desk. If you’re willing to put in a few hours to set up the general reference filing system I describe, you’ll not only find it easy to keep your desk free of clutter, but you get to the point where seeing extraneous paperwork build up on your desk will feel as unsettling as not showering. Think of clutter management as information hygiene.

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Work Unplugged: Going Off The Grid

Mike Vardy 4th February Office Life 2 Comments

“Inaction speaks louder than words.” – Mike Vardy

I’ve always wanted to quote myself. Call it self-adulation or self-indulgence if you will, but there’s a truth behind it: not making progress on something often can’t be saved by reasoning or excuses. You need to see things through to the end.

Let’s face it…we are getting inundated with email, RSS feeds and other types of information on a daily basis – it seems never ending. Because it is. The web has opened up a floodgate of pertinent and trivial news stories that come at us from all angles, memorandums and tasks arriving in our email inbox at breakneck speed and an endless stream of voice mails begging for us to respond to thanks to that blinking red light on our telephones. I’m feeling overwhelmed just writing about it.

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