Tag: Productivity

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...
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“Last week, I promised to discuss another source of advantage in decay. We’re going to zoom out instead, in response to a flurry of announcements from Apple, Google, and would-be competitors – to have a richer discussion in the weeks going forward.

It’s funny how flatfooted – how almost inept – everyone else in media, marketing, consumer electronics, mobile, a long and dangerously growing list of industries, seems compared to Apple and Google.

What gives? Why is that everyone that Google and Apple decide to take to the cleaners, well, gets taken to the cleaners?” Click here to read more…

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I recently came across this post from my Internet buddy Brandon Henak and I’ve been thinking about it all week. It was about using Plaxo for unified contact management and it went like this…

“The people in your network and the relationships you develop with them are some of your most valuable assets as a young professional. You look to them first for advice, job opportunities or just to discuss the latest events in your life. How you keep track of all the contact information you have collected in your personal and professional life is crucial to your success.

Contacts Everywhere!

In the poll we took earlier today we saw an interesting breakdown of contact management solutions, from relying on a cell phone to store contact information to using Microsoft Outlook, Facebook and other online sites. Each one of the solutions have their advantages and disadvantages. I have tried every one of the solutions listed with various degrees of success but, what if you could use each of them where they work the best, Outlook at the office, Mac Address Book at home and Plaxo online, without having to manually update each? I recently found a way to centralize and standardize all my contact and calendar information across all the services I use, automatically!

Sync them up!

Enter Plaxo 3.0 beta with Sync Points. After setting up an account, all I had to do was click on the “Add Sync Point” link for each of the programs I wanted to use (in my case Google, Mac Address Book, Outlook, and AIM) and it walks you through the process of putting in your login information for Google and downloading small add-ins for Outlook and Mac Address Book. Now, all of my sources sync together and I can sync all my contacts to my phone through Address Book. Any addition anywhere flows across the systems and is easily accessible.”

This was particularly interesting to me because I’m a Plaxo subscriber, but I’ve experienced a lot of problems with contact management. So what’s the problem?

A little background info…

I’ve been in marketing, sales, and technology for 25 years now and I have collect over 5,000 vcards and thousands more business cards that aren’t documented. I use 7 computers spanning three platforms and I want to access my contacts on all of them.

The answer?

The answer for me, like Brandon, starts with Plaxo for the following reasons:

  1. It’s platform and browser independent.
  2. It offers ‘sync points’ for the tools I use or have access to; Outlook, Thunderbird, a Treo 700wx running Windows Mobile 5. [Many more are available…]
  3. Members can choose to link to give one another the latest contact information as soon as it changes.
  4. The duplicate merger/remover is among the best I’ve used.
  5. There is a growing social network component which is a cross between Facebook and LinkedIn.

So if Plaxo is the answer, what’s MY problem? In a nutshell, using Plaxo was causing, not eliminating duplicates. Or, better said, using Plaxo with ActiveSync was causing duplicates. When I made the decision to stop using two synchronization tools simultaneously, my problems went away and I got closer to the promised land that Brandon was describing…

More background. I’m currently in the process of moving to Linux; I don’t want to pay ransom to Microsoft anymore and although I’m a former Apple account executive, I don’t want to pay for Apple’s industrial design when I can have the benefits of a Linux based operating system on inexpensive Intel hardware. The answer for me is Linux.

For now, however, my solution set consists of Plaxo, Microsoft Outlook 2003 [I only said I didn’t want to pay anymore – I’ll still use what I have], Gmail, Google Calendar and a Treo 700wx. I see myself moving off Outlook to Thunderbird/Lightning [Mozilla’s answer to contact and calendar management – Mozilla is only going to get better at this!] and off the Treo onto either a Blackberry or the Google Android platform. Thankfully [?], Sprint is forcing me to keep my current phone until September when the outlook on Google’s approach to cellphones should be known…

A big part of solving my problem was also to realize [thanks to David Allen] that some contacts are context sensitive, namely, that I don’t need to be able to call all 5,000 people from my cellphone – some I only need to be able to access when I’m sitting at a computer. I was actually synchronizing contacts for which I didn’t have a telephone number to my phone! Why? Because I was going to send them an email from the phone? Unlikely. In reality, I have found that after careful analysis, I actually need to synchronize less than 200 contacts between my phone and my computer and if I really were honest with myself, there are probably less than a hundred people that I call on a regular basis. So, I copied all my contacts to a folder called ‘Master’ in Outlook and deleted all contacts that I either hadn’t called or didn’t anticipate calling this quarter [there’s a copy of the deleted contacts in Master, remember?] As a result, I’m only synchronizing what I have to now. This is a HUGE savings of time and energy and silly as it may seem, actually represents a massive epiphany for me. Call me Captain Obvious?

The underlying idea here is getting closer to a world where it doesn’t matter what computer or platform you’re using – your information is accessible from anywhere! Plaxo can get you a good part of the way there…

By the way, if you’re not using Google Desktop, start! It can unify all the computers you’re using and allow you to search your Gmail and your computers in the same way you search the internet now…

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Stay on top of your industry, that is. If you’re a business professional in any category and you’re not using Google Reader or some lesser tool to monitor newsfeeds, I’m very concerned about your future. Whoa. What did you say, Todd? I said, I’m very concerned about your future!

You see, unless you’re working on a production line somewhere making widgets for an hourly wage [not that there’s anything wrong with that — I’ve done it myself] your growth and advancement in business and in life [see this if you don’t believe me] depends on your ongoing professional development and that depends in large part upon your ability to aggregate, manage, and leverage relevant information…

Continue reading “How DO You Do It?” →

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Kudos to the folks at Datamation who put this list together…

“Tired of your boring screensavers? Need a game that allows you to survive the boring hours before quitting time? Wish your PC looked more like the terminals in the Matrix?

Or maybe you’re more business-minded: do you need an open-source solution for ERP? Project management? Bookkeeping? CRM?

If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, keep reading. These 75 noteworthy projects – each deserving of your love and affection – will help you do everything from creating desktop widgets to avoiding repetitive-stress injuries to visualizing distant, exotic landscapes. Or at least dreaming of life beyond your cubicle… “ 75 Popular Open Source Desktop Downloads

There are other lists for specific applications here…

It is possible to have a rich computing experience without paying through the nose for Apple Hardware or Microsoft software. You betcha! It all begins with Ubuntu! Use the contact form if you want to know more…

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“Google Apps is free for schools. It allows students and teachers to create documents
(Word, Excel, PowerPoint), share calendars, chat and more for free on-line. It is an excellent tool to provide elearning.

‘Frantic troubleshooting by an overworked staff versus someone else fixing problems smoothly. A sliver of server space per person versus a five-gigabyte chunk. Half a million dollars versus free. That’s what colleges are faced with as they decide whether to continue running their own e-mail services or outsource them to a professional service like Google Apps Education Edition’ Chronicle of Higher Education, 1/11/2008″ Click the title to read more…

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Darren Rowse of ProBlogger has been reading my mail. Or attending my seminars. Or both. Seriously, he does a great job in this video of explaining some of the tactics that I use to drive traffic to my blog…

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Image representing LinkedIn as depicted in Cru...
Image via CrunchBase

“Every businessperson leads a busy life. There are marketing meetings to attend, RFPs to reply to, and client projects to finish. With so much work demanding so much attention, many of us never make the time to keep our business relationships alive, and wish we did: ‘What does he do again?’ ‘Does she still work there?’ ‘Didn’t I know someone at that company?’

Rather than regretting not staying connected, pick some of the twelve ideas below and use them to start conversations with people you’ve met before and want to speak with again.”

You might want to also check out the RainToday series on LinkedIn 101.

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Top 20 Free Applications to Increase Your Productivity

“The Internet is loaded with free software, making it hard to know which one’s you really need. This article will act as your guide to the top 20 free applications (Web and Windows) for increased productivity.” Click here to read more…

Don’t forget to check Google Pack and Ninite to grab some of this software!

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Email Overload: Download a Free Copy of David Allen’s Email Rules

Getting Things Done
Image via Wikipedia

Having problems managing email?

David Allen, author of Getting Things Done and inspiration for a lot of posts ’round these parts, gives away a free four-page PDF at his website that covers his basic principals for keeping email organized. Getting specific without going too in-depth, he explains the ‘two minute rule,’ why action-able emails should be kept separate from others, and why creating your own system—such as Gina’s [Trapani’s] modified ‘Trusted Trio‘. Great reading for GTD neophytes, and a good brush-up for the rest of us.”

Click here to get your copy! If you’re a Gmail user [and I hope you are] there’s more information here on how to use Gina’s system with Gmail or Google Apps mail.

Me personally? I use Gmail and Google Apps mail in conjunction with Remember The Milk [RTM]– the powerful task manager with the equally funny name. RTM gives me special tools to use within Gmail that allows me to convert an email to a task. In all fairness, Google now includes this feature in their task management system, however, it was not available when I built my approach to task management…

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Opportunity of a lifetime!

“So, there’s plenty of bad economic news floating around. From the price of oil to Wall Street to bailouts to the death of traditional advertising.

Which is great news for anyone hoping to grow or to make an impact.

Change (and the fortunes that go with it) is almost always made during the down part of the cycle. It might not be fun, but it’s exciting. (Where do you think Google came from?) The opportunity is to find substantial opportunities (in any field) that deliver real value and have a future. Those jobs/investments/companies/ideas are undervalued right now, but not for long.” Click here to go to the source…

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Does your organization have ADD?

“Attention is the currency of the world. It makes the economy hum. It is required to make important decisions.

Those that don’t have it want it. Those that have it want more. Some work to preserve the attention they already have.

Attention can be purchased and traded. It can be converted to other currencies like our time and virtual badges from online check-ins.

Yet, attention is a depleted resource for many associations. Ignored association members unite daily sharing complaints and concerns about the association’s lack of attention to them. Sometimes their complaints spill over onto the web. Frustration is posted in Facebook. Negative tweets are sent. Blog posts are written. Yet most associations are unaware of their customer dissatisfaction.

Just as attention deficit disorder (ADD) is diagnosed in individuals and Ritalin prescribed, associations can suffer from organizational ADD.” Source: Eight Symptoms Of Organizational ADD

If you suspect that your organization has ADD, you might want to go to the source and read the 8 symptoms…

It may be possible, however, that the 8 symptoms stem from the inability of your associates to simply pay attention. I have been reading “Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age”

“In this richly detailed and passionately argued book, Jackson (What’s Happening to Home?) warns that modern society’s inability to focus heralds an impending Dark Age—an era historically characterized by the decline of a civilization amid abundance and technological advancement. Jackson posits that our near-religious allegiance to a constant state of motion and addiction to multitasking are eroding our capacity for deep, sustained, perceptive attention—the building block of intimacy, wisdom and cultural progress and stunting society’s ability to comprehend what’s relevant and permanent.” Source: Amazon.com: Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age (9781591027485): Maggie Jackson, Bill McKibben: Books: Reviews, Prices & more

I have a fundamental belief as well that many organizations are simply so inept at the basics of business today [email, sales, marketing] that they settle for dysfunction as the new norm. What say you?

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Why You Should Learn By Doing

Learn to Skate
Image by wuperruper via Flickr

Do you enjoy learning new things? I certainly do.In particular, I enjoy about learning new ways to better myself and my relationships with others. When I first started on this quest I couldn’t get enough. I read about it all the time on blogs, online magazines and in books. There came a point where everything I read was just a slightly different version of the same thing. I was stuck.

I felt as though I had run out of things to read and ideas to try, yet I didn’t feel any better. I didn’t feel as though I was a better person or that my relationships with others had improved at all. There was something missing. It was the doing.

It wasn’t until I actually started applying what I had learned in the personal development realm to my own life that it started to make a difference. All the lessons, all the truths were suddenly having an impact. There was a huge difference in simply knowing it vs. actually doing it.

If you read all the books, blogs and articles on ice skating you would likely think it’s pretty easy, and it is … in theory. But strap on some skates and step on the ice for the very first time and my bets are that you’d be sitting on the ice a whole lot more than you’d be gracefully gliding around on it. It boils down to the old saying that practice makes perfect.

via dumblittleman.com

Here’s another reason I’ve found for ‘learning new things by doing’ — it makes me more sensitive to the learners in my life by reminding me how hard it can be to try anything new. What about you?

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Google Apps. Again.


Image via Wikipedia

Matt Silverman of Mashable does a much better job of explaining what I’ve been trying to tell you for years…

“Google Apps for business has a number of benefits over traditional business IT and desktop software. Using the full suite essentially places all of your data and entire workflow in the cloud, meaning you can access it all anywhere, any time, from any Internet connection.

At $50 per year per user, the fully integrated apps system is certainly cost-effective, and even adding the free versions of Gmail (Gmail), Calendar (Calendar Tweet), and Google Docs (Google Docs) into your workflow can keep your employees coordinated.

For more casual users, or even those who might not be acquainted with Google Apps, here’s a guide to how the software can benefit your small business.” Source: The Small Business Guide to Google Apps

Please go the source for his excellent overview…

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Top 10 passwords you should never use

For most people who experience a password hacker in real life, they find out too late that using a strong password is important.  Like the kid who think he is invincible and jumps off the roof because he doesn’t believe in gravity, having your website, Facebook account, or your system’s server hacked into is a lot like the ground smacking you in the face.  Gravity does exist and so do bad people who would love to gain access to your life and wreck havoc.

According to a report, most users still haven’t answered the call by security experts to implement more robust passwords. In fact, in a list of the most easy to hack passwords, simply typing ‘123456’ took a truly forgettable top prize.

Security firm Imperva recently released its list of the passwords most likely to be hacked based on 32 million instances of successful hacking. Imperva named their report “Consumer Password Worst Practices,” and some of the entries near the top are truly simple and could lead to theft or identity fraud.

Top 10 Worst Passwords
The following is a list of the most predictable passwords, and should not be used under any circumstances (Source: pcworld.com):

123456
12345
123456789
Password
iloveyou
princess
rockyou
1234567
12345678
abc123

Hopefully you don’t see your current password on the list, but if you do or don’t, it doesn’t really matter.  Most people have a simple enough password that it could be hacked by someone who knows what they are doing.  Even if you have a better than average password, you may be like the millions who a. never use it or b. use it for every account they own.  After all, who wants to remember all those passwords!

We’ve all received those Phishing emails from people trying to gain access to your various accounts, right?  Facebook, MySpace, Banks, and Twitter.  Well, if you fall for one of those emails and they figure out one password, they then check to see if you’re using the same password on the other sites too.

If you are using social media, most of your other accounts are visible to everyone so they can connect with you and that makes you vulnerable to getting hacked.

How to Strengthen Your Passwords
Other key findings in the report: it seems that almost 1 in 3 users choose passwords comprised of six or fewer characters; more than half use passwords based on only alpha-numeric characters; and almost 50 per cent used variations on their name, popular slang terms, or simple strings of consecutive characters from the average QWERTY keyboard — such as ‘asdfg’.

Imperva has made several obvious recommendations, suggesting most users adopt passwords with at least eight characters and to mix those characters between upper and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols. Passwords should be simple enough that they won’t be too easily forgotten, but the idea is to make cracking the code virtually impossible for either an unknown or known hacker.

About this article: Dennis Faas is the CEO and Chief editor of Infopackets.com: a daily, digital publication dedicated to MS Windows, computing, technology trends and solutions to real life computing issues: all written in simple English. Subscription to Infopackets Windows Newsletter is free. Visit us today! http://www.infopackets.com

So, how do you create a password that is easy to remember, unique for each account, and extremely difficult to hack?  I want to give you the answer! Leave a comment on this post and let me know what you think.  I’ll post the answer to the question soon.

Kirk Anderson
Guest Contributor

Kirk is owner of Interactive Business Solutions, a Business and Marketing Development Consulting company in Northwestern Wisconsin.  He works with small and medium size businesses to to implement technology solutions that help a business become more productive and profitable.  Interactive123.com

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You Are Not Productive

If you are like most people I work with you wish you had 36 hours in every day.  What if I told you that in order to raise your productivity all you needed was a three ring binder, some paper, some tabbed dividers, and a few hours of time?

You’d say I was nuts right?  I would have said that if you had asked me that question last year at around this time.  Since then I have fully implemented the GTD system by David Allen.  It’s been working really well for me – especially now that I have the luxury of a solid eight hours of sleep at night.

If you’ve tried to implement GTD in the past and failed then this article may help you get back on track.  In this article we’re going to do a 60 second drive-by of the GTD system (or you can cheat and buy the official GTD planner). 

Step One – Building the Planner
The first step is to build the planner.  What I want you to do first is take those tabbed dividers and label them like so:

  1. Inbox
  2. Calendar
  3. Action Lists
  4. Agendas
  5. Projects/Goals
  6. Project Planning
  7. Reference
  8. Contacts

Once those are done put them in the binder.  The next step is to head over to diyplanner.com and grab the official template pack.  It’s ok to get the Classic sized pack because Adobe can scale them up to fit the letter paper we will be using.  Print out the appropriate templates that you like and add them to the binder.

Next it’s time to brain dump…

Step Two – Collection
This is the best, and hardest, part of the process.  In this step we are going to take some blank paper and write down every action item we can think of.  The whole point of GTD is that you carry nothing in your head.  If you are having a hard time remembering all the items you committed to than the list of incomplete triggers should help you out.

Step Three – Process Your “Amorphous Pile”
Now that your head is empty it’s time to sort and organize that amorphous pile of commitments into a system that allows you to do exactly what you need to do exactly when you need to do it.  If you are not familiar with contexts I’ve included a sample list that should suit 98% of the people who read this article.

In your “Action Lists” section label a page for each of these labels:

  • @Computer
  • @Home
  • @Office
  • @Errands
  • @Phone
  • Someday/Maybe
  • Waiting For

Now go through your pile and take each item one at a time.  Decide what context you will perform that action in and determine if there is anything that is preventing you from doing the action at this time.  If there is, then this action is not a “next action” and should be part of a larger project.  If not, then add it to the context list.

Step Four – Update Your Calendar
Phew… the last step.  During the processing of your pile you should have come across some items that had to be done on a specific day and time.  These items do not go into your next action lists but instead on your calendar.  Move those items to your calendar now.

Working the System
Now that you have a good system for organizing and planning the work we need to know how to work it.  What I do is first thing every morning is look at my calendar and take note of the items there.  Then I hit the next actions list and process them one at a time starting with my biggest context – @Computer. 

If I am sitting in a conference room and I have 5-10 minutes before the next meeting I grab out the @Phone list and my cell phone and start ripping through the calls.  Finally when I get home for the day I look over the @Home and @Errands list and see what I can knock out on those lists.

Do you have any practices that have helped make your more productive?  If so, I want to hear about them in the comments!

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Moms and smartphones…

They’re not just for CEO’s anymore…

“Smartphones may have started as productivity tools for top executives, but they’re quickly finding their way into the hands and purses of “power moms,” a.k.a. the CEO of the household.

As smartphones become easier to use and in many ways more useful, more women, including busy moms, are buying them to leverage all kinds of digital applications to stay organized and to connect with their families, friends, and social networks, such as Facebook or Twitter. They’re also using these Internet-enabled devices to get things done like paying the bills, ordering groceries, downloading coupons, and hunting for ideas for the next family vacation.

And like their corporate counterparts, these women are hooked.” Source: Modern power moms flock to smartphones | Wireless – CNET News

Go to the source to read the rest of the article…

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Personal Digital Coaching

English: American entrepreneur, author and pub... …could be just the help you’re looking for! Over 18 months ago, Seth Godin wrote this on his blog:

“Here are three things that are true: 1. Digital technology, especially computers and cell phones, can dramatically increase productivity. 2. More and more users of digital technology are small firms or individuals. 3. The vast majority of users of digital technology are totally lame in getting the most out of the investment of their time and money. “Oh, I didn’t know I could do that.” “You mean I don’t have to manually type my address book in by hand?” “There are graphs in Excel?” “Gmail is free?” Here’s what I haven’t found: people who charge $100 an hour to hear what you do and how you do it and then show you how to do it better. People who organize data and put it in the right place. People who overhaul the way small groups use technology so they can use it dramatically better. People who use copilot to take over a PC and actually rearrange it so that it works better.More examples: Teach people to back up. Show them how to check their email on the road. Help them understand how to use online networking when it’s appropriate (and warn them when it’s not). Show a restaurant how to use OpenTable to keep the place full, or to use a blog (with an RSS feed) to easily communicate with loyal customers. Teach a company to keep tabs on itself with Technorati.” Source: Seth’s Blog: A shortage of digital coaches

If you do a Google Search on the topic, note who is at the top of the list — your humble digital coach Todd Lohenry @ e1evation, llc! Once I securely log on to your computer [after you grant permission] using the technology described, I can help you with just about anything! See a quick demo here… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJlASMkot34 Oh, and btw? I only charge $50 per hour… [btw, note the date on the post! The cost is now $99 per hour!]

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Maintaining “Inbox Zero” with Google Apps

Image representing Google Apps as depicted in ...
Image via CrunchBase

This is the article I wish I had written about how Google Apps, Remember the Milk and Firefox work together to make you more productive in email…

“If I have more than 30 unread messages at any one time, I break into a cold sweat. So as a result, until recently I couldn’t imagine maintaining my maniacal level of control over my inboxes without a desktop email client’s notifications, rules & plug-ins.”

Inbox Zero is an important discipline in this day and age that few have mastered — click here to read more…

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Are You Jotting Yet?

This free tool is amazing, especially if you’re a busy person who spends a lot of time in the car with your cell phone…

“At its most basic level, webapp Jott is a voice to text transcription service: you call Jott, leave a message, and Jott transcribes it and emails you or your contacts the text. That alone can capture the big idea that pops into your head on the drive to the office, but Jott can do a whole lot more than send you email. With Jott’s built-in links and tools that capitalize on its email-sending abilities, it can give nearly any personal organization system a go-anywhere, add-anything boost. Today we’ve got a quick primer on how to turn your phone into a ubiquitous capture tool that zaps info into all your favorite organization apps by voice.” Feature: Get Things Done Over the Phone with Jott

David Allen of ‘Getting Things Done’ fame says that your mind is a terrible place to store things — Jott can help get things out of your mind and into a system where you can deal with them, but that’s just the start. Read the whole article…

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5 Sentences

I post a lot about email. Why? Because for most business people the battle for control over the inbox is THE most critical fight they face each day. Most actionable items come to us in the form of email and tools like GTD and Inbox Zero help us process that information [search the blog for those topics]…

What about writing emails? There’s a move afoot called 5 Sentences. It’s not complex — you can read everything you need to know about it here. Guy Kawasaki also wrote about it in his post ‘Ten Things to Learn This School Year ‘:

“How to write a five-sentence email. Young people have an advantage over older people in this area because older people (like me) were taught to write letters that were printed on paper, signed, stuck in an envelope, and mailed. Writing a short email was a new experience for them. Young people, by contrast are used to IMing and chatting. If anything, they’re too skilled on brevity, but it’s easier to teach someone how to write a long message than a short one. Whether UR young or old, the point is that the optimal length of an email message is five sentences. All you should do is explain who you are, what you want, why you should get it, and when you need it by.”

Handling email effectively is not only knowing how to process your inbox — it’s a collaborative effort on all our parts to write better and more succinct emails!

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Salesforce.com Enticement Program: Migrate with Ease

Another sign of growing customer dissatisfaction with Salesforce.com…

“Salesboom.com™ leading vendor of Software-as-a-Service CRM Software Solutions today announced the implementation of their Salesforce.com Enticement Program which is designed for displeased Salesforce.com customers who are looking to migrate to another CRM provider. Businesses who migrate to Salesboom.com On-Demand CRM Solutions receive a $5,000 check and a guaranteed lower annual rate than that of Salesforce.com, some restrictions apply…

An increasing number of businesses driven by frustration with poor customer service and high license and integration costs are leaving Salesforce.com for Salesboom.com. As described by Rami Hamodah, the President and Co-Founder of Salesboom.com, “The relationship between Salesboom.com and Salesforce.com is a one way street. Salesforce.com customers embark on their journey along this one way street and find themselves at our door. This one way street analogy sums up our relationship with Salesforce.com, we should be thankful to them, after all they are our largest source of new clients!”

Myself, I was a huge fan of Salesforce.com for many years but have moved on to the community version of SugarCRM which has much of the functionality of Salesforce.com but is free and just fine for a smaller sales team. Salesforce.com is doing a lot of stupid things lately from their lame channel program to their ever escalating prices. Think twice before getting invoved with Salesforce.com…

Update 11/21/09: Since writing this post, have also become a huge fan of Zoho CRM!

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