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The 4-Hour Workweek

June 8, 2009 By

Check e-mail once a week? Give your cell number to only a few people? Work less than 10 hours a week? That’s insanity…or a really good plan. Timothy Ferriss, bestselling author of “The 4-Hour Workweek”, not only goes against the business norm and breaks most business rules every written, he’s making a fortune doing it.51fsazava3l_sl500_aa240_1

Timothy’s book gives you ways to save time, outsource administrative help (he prefers overseas sources) and give people who work for you more authority to make day-to-day decisions. In the section, Time Wasters: Become an Ignoramus, he describes how e-mail time wasters are the easiest to eliminate and deflect. He feels that e-mail is “the greatest single interruption in the modern world” and offers a few suggestions.

  • Turn off the audible alert if you have one on Outlook or a similar program and turn off automatic send/receive, which delivers e-mail to your inbox as soon as someone sends them.
  • Check e-mail twice per day, once at 12:00 noon or just prior to lunch, and again at 4:00 P.M.  (Because) 12:00 P.M. and 4:00 P.M. are times that ensure you will have the most responses from previously sent e-mail.
  • Never check e-mail first thing in the morning. Instead, complete your most important task before 11:00 A.M. to avoid using lunch or reading e-mail as a postponement excuse.
    Work less…make more…makes sense.
Filed Under: Time mgmt./Productivity Tagged With: , , ,

5 Ways to Make Meetings More Efficient

May 20, 2009 By

logo_226x83_greyI’m a closet techie nerd—I like technology almost as much as I like chocolate—so Popular Science really does it for me. In a recent issue, Pop Sci (it’s hip to be square) shared “5 things you can do to make meetings more efficient.” Some of the tips are aimed at corporate employees so all of you corporate employees who are working naked, this one’s for you. But fellow entrepreneurs, pay attention…we can use some of these tricks too.

  • Hold them online. The Web-conference software dimdim runs into your browser. It lets you present PowerPoint slides, share your desktop and shine a laser pointer on a virtual whiteboard. It also has voice and video capabilities.
  • Find a time. Turn planning a meeting over to diarised. Give the application a list of names and meeting times that work for you. It e-mails attendees and comes up with the best time for a meeting based on responses from everyone, then it follows up with a confirmed date.
  • Say you’re late. Use Oops I’m Late cell phone software to compare your clock, calendar, your phone’s GPS coordinates and the meeting place to figure out if you’re going to be there on time. If you’re going to be late, the site sends everyone who is attending the meeting an automated apology along with your new ETA.
  • Keep them short. Meeting Miser adds up the salaries of attendees to convert each minute into a dollar figure. That tends to keep meetings from dragging on too long.
  • Bail out. When you want to escape a meeting early, plan ahead and use getmooh (as in “get me out of here”) to get you out of the meeting. Before the meeting starts, figure out what time you want to leave and the service will send you what appears to be an important phone call.
Filed Under: Time mgmt./Productivity Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Home Office Challenge: Do It Now

May 4, 2009 By

The other day when I needed to work on a project but couldn’t get motivated, I remembered a speech I heard about the “Assoonas.” You know…as soon as I buy a different house I’ll have the perfect home office. As soon as I buy a new computer I’ll have more clients. You get the idea. Sometimes it’s easier to put things off than to handle them right away. Get off your “buts” (I’ve attended way too many motivational seminars!) and follow these tips to help you jump-start your next project.

Sometimes a subtle reminder can get you started.

Sometimes a subtle reminder can get you started.

  • Use a to-do list, whether paper-based, computerized or in your handheld, to record everything you need to do. Making a list is easy. Remembering to look at your list is the hard part. If you feel yourself getting sidetracked, go back to your list.
  • Give each task on your list a priority, by listing the more important tasks at the top. Or place a number 1 next to the tasks you need to complete that day, a number 2 next to less important tasks and so on.
  • If after reviewing your list you feel you’re having trouble getting started, work on a quick number 3 or another easy task. After you complete a simple task, you’ll be ready to tackle bigger ones.
  • Reward yourself when you complete different parts of a project. A reward may be as simple as taking a walk, going out to lunch, or shopping online for ten minutes.
Filed Under: Home office organizing, Time mgmt./Productivity Tagged With: , , ,

The balancing act

March 28, 2009 By

When my older son’s grade school held career day, he told his class all about his dad’s career. When he described me, he said that I didn’t do anything. At first I was hurt, then I realized he answered that way because he rarely saw me work. The only time I worked was when he and his brother were asleep, with a sitter, or at school. Now that my sons are older and don’t need me as much—they get better grades when I don’t help them with math—my challenge is to stop working so much.

Balancing home and office life can be challenging.

Balancing home and office life can be challenging.

I’ve recommended strategies for balancing home and office life to my clients for years, and now I’m taking my own advice:

  • Make regular dates with your family. Schedule a weekday afternoon or an evening to spend with your family, or designate a weekend night as movie night. My neighbor used to hold “Smith family movie night” on Friday nights, complete with popcorn and candy. The trick was to find a movie everyone wanted to see and that was appropriate. If you want to make sure you’re renting age-appropriate movies, check out Clean Flicks.
  • Schedule mini-vacations. When my family and I went on spring break a few weeks ago, I stayed in touch with my clients but still had plenty of time to spend with my family. If it’s too hard to get away from work for longer than a week, take a three-day or a four-day vacation with your family. It will be easier to catch up with work when you get back.
  • Find an exercise partner (a friend or family member) and walk or run together, go biking, or work out together at the gym. When you partner with someone else you’re more likely to exercise regularly, stay in shape and enjoy a nice break from work.
  • Be willing to pay for free time. If you can find someone to take care of things you don’t like doing and they’d do a better job than you anyway, hire them immediately. If you compared how long it would take you to do something vs. the amount of time you could spend with your family, you’d see that it’s worth paying for free time.
Filed Under: Balancing home/office Life, Home office organizing Tagged With: , ,
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