Category Archive for: ‘Productivity’
Why full inbox is bad for you?
Difficulty to prioritize
New stuff pushes the old off
Constant re-reading
It’s easy to loose them
Something is waiting to blow up
A quote about triumph
I like reading biographies and interviews where people talk about their carries and successes and struggles in achieving what they have and who they are. I came across below quote when reading and interview with Mary Jo Bang on 99 percent site.
everything, before it becomes easy, is a triumph. And some things never become easy—and in that case, simply continuing to do them is a triumph.
It’s good reminder that at he beginning everything is difficult and making even the slightest progress is success.
Email as an expectation
Let me start be explaining what’s is email on the basic level. As a primary it’s a communication tool to convey some sort of message. It might be a hello note from a friend, a bunch of photos form holidays, a business proposal, company announcement etc. Email serves this purpose great. It’s ubiquitous, simple to handle and unrestricted.
Second layer of email is to create expectation that the message will cause a reaction of the recipient. This reaction can take various form from a simple delete action to an actual response back to sender.
The unfortunate fact is that email can only pass a very limited non-verbal communication. You can’t see what the sender is feeling when he writes the message you can’t see his eyes, face, body posture etc. Emails have tone and energy but only for the one who type it, the recipient has only words in front and very few cues how to read it. That’s why same text can be read in different ways. This leads to great many misunderstandings, confusions and conflicts.
The problem lies in the fact that senders rarely communicate what is their expectation and what they want from the recipient. This is one of primary reasons we see emails with dozens of people included in cc: field. Unless it’s clearly stated that the message is for information only it mean that the sender is not sure what they do and hope that someone will react and do something.
This approach is not sustainable and not practical for few reasons.
- when receiving a lot messages a day it makes very difficult to look at every single one and decide what’s needed with out clearly stated point.
- for sender email is one to one relationship, I’ve sent you an email and I expect response. However repecipent has many such relationships and therefore it’s one against many.
- Clear expectation gives better chance for desired response. If people know what they are required to do, they are more likely to do it rather than put it for later.
Since you can’t change change other people’s behavior and how they use email but you can change your own. To put it simply lead by example.
Start of by clearly expressing what you want. Use clear and short sentences, avoid long winded explanations. Even complex problems could be explained in a simple way.
You will save other people’s time and energy. You will save yourself hassle and stressing over stuff.
Getting up early
Getting up early and doing something important is one of the best ways to have a productive and successful day. Michael Wade shares a list of some activities that people do when they get up early. Yet the more interesting part covers things that people don’t do or don’t see as a priority activity:
- Checking e-mail
- Making phone calls
- Reviewing the previous day
What’s yours morning priority?
Music in the office
Office Music — Yay or Nay? is a WorkAwesome post from couple months back. In essence it describes different views on the issue of music in the office. As you can easily imagine there are opponents and proponents of music in the office. By some it’s seen as a great distractor causing people to turn off and not responding to ringing phones or co-worker calls. Others see music as great aid in getting into a deep focus and putting attention on to a specific task. I would certainly agree with the premise, that in some jobs listening to music or radio can stimulate productivity. This can be especially effective for those working alone and or with limited contact with other people.
Personally I haven’t heard music in the office since 2005. I don’t miss it a lot. At this stage, I got used to music/radio free environment. However what I actually miss from time to time is the radio. I do enjoy listening to talk radio stations like the Irish Newstalk radio. I like to listen exchange of opinions and views, a commentary of most recent events etc. My current office setting does not allow for listening music nor radio which is good and bad. On the good side I would be too involved into listening and possibly done very litter of real job. Now on the bad side having radio on it could work as a barrier against the office notice which can be quite distracting.
Fortunately I can do as a please when I’m working from home which gives me a great opportunity to listen to favourite podcasts and some online radio.
Photo credit:L.Bernhardt