I have some dreams I’d like to pursue, and all of them depend on more mobility and fewer time on business minutiae. I’m already fairly mobile but there are some issues I’d have to address to be completely mobile. I pose them here as I imagine others will have similar hurdles…

When I say that I’m fairly mobile, I mean that:

• Our work product and project management are all accessible and managed via the internet
• Very rarely do my employees and I need to work in the same facility–office, home, or cafe all work fine (and we all have laptops)

However, there are still things that require physical presence, increased comfort levels with various remote technologies, or changes to our existing processes. In addition, there are things that I personally need to stop doing myself and find a reliable way to outsource. Here’s the list… Continue reading…

Rob Pegoraro wrote in today’s Post how Facebook is now becoming not only the home for personal interactions but business ones. He also raised an excellent point about how Facebook could theoretically allow us to divide which parts of our profile are exposed to our various contacts. While I think that might be one solution, it doesn’t truly address the issue, which is the ways in which our contacts from various settings are come together as we share more and varied information online.

While widespread social networking hadn’t gained steam when I was in school (P2P file-sharing was the big thing), after college I quickly jumped on the Friendster (now sinking) boat. And through inertia I eventually found myself on LinkedIn, Facebook, and (shiver) MySpace. It was easy when LinkedIn was the only business site, Facebook had nice privacy controls, and MySpace was the ugly step-child that you had to deal with because he worked the door. Now the lines have blurred.

For my friends that are reading this, you may find this a wake-up call. After all, it’s going to be a little while before the non-techies of the business-world really start using FaceBook–but it’s quite likely to happen. That means that all the photos, tags, notes, and bizarre status messages may be information you’ll have to second-guess before posting. Continue reading…

This entry is an exercise in applying the 80-20 Rule, or the Pareto Principle. In the 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss explains that the day he spent applying this principle to his life he “literally changed [his] life forever” (pg 70). I’m wondering if Tim’s life was just more messed up than mine because I’m not finding the dramatic insight I’d like. Or maybe I’m going about it all wrong. Fellow 4HWW’ers: if you’re reading this I’d appreciate any insight you can offer into a better way to go about this. How have you applied this to your lives? What sort of “sources” have you considered?

The initial two questions that Tim proposed:

1. Which 20% of sources are causing 80% of my problems and unhappiness?
2. Which 20% of sources are resulting in 80% of my desired outcomes and happiness?

Here are some of the things that I came up with as leading to unhappiness and/or problems (from my work life):

• When business is slow
• When I’m disorganized
• When I’m distracted and unproductive

But those are all more states of being than particular sources. Continue reading…

If you’re unsure whether you should let someone know, you probably should:

• If someone requests something of you (that takes more than a few minutes), confirm it. Let them know when to expect its completion or what will happen next
• If you’re working hard on a project for someone and run into snags, let them know your situation
• If you can’t meet a deadline, speak up

Everyone’s busy, and we all have too many emails. But working with people shouldn’t be a mysterious process–if people are waiting for you, let them know what’s up. If you think that things are taking longer than you expected, chances are that those depending on you are wondering what’s going on, too.

I’m no rocket scientist here, and you may think that this is patently obvious. But why is it that clients get frustrated, projects delayed, and heck, relationships of all sorts fail–it’s from a lack of communication. Not just quality of communication, but its quantity–people often just don’t think an update is necessary. But when it comes to business, it is almost always helpful. Let me offer you a common situation and explain how communication would have helped.

Situation: on a development project, there were things that hadn’t been accounted for (maybe it was the client’s fault, maybe the developer’s, etc.) and the project would thus take a contractor many days of a few hours’ work instead of one day of a few hours’ work

Some reasons for communication: Continue reading…

I like to have fun at work. I may not have gray hair yet, but I don’t plan on accelerating the process by working with difficult or (gasp!) boring clients. No, really, most of the work we do is actually quite enjoyable–especially because of the wonderful clients we have–and I don’t want to sacrifice that quality of life for another paycheck. So, after a painful conversation with client that was being altogether too serious, I started thinking about what my clients need to know about the way I work.

I tend to be playful (or sarcastic), but I follow through with what I say I’m going to do. I also don’t keep quiet when I’m not happy with an approach. When a company first starts working with us they may feel we’re overstepping…but they soon learn that my team and I know our stuff . Anyhow, this inspired me to come up with a sort of manifesto to consulting.

My approach to consulting:

1. If I say I’m going to do something, I will.
2. If I believe there’s a better solution than the one I’m tasked with, I’m going to mention the better solution before proceeding.
3. I’m going to have fun.

I mean all of those things to their logical conclusions. Continue reading…

This post is part 2 of a series that began here. In the last article I discussed two Outlook techniques for assigning tasks to emails. Below I’ll discuss (some of) the approach I use for generally organizing my day as relates to Outlook.

My approach to personal information management comes from a few sources:

1. From Getting Things Done (GTD) I learned that you need to trust your productivity system to keep you in check, so that you don’t have to second-guess things (did I write back? don’t I have an appointment soon? etc.)
2. In The Four Hour Workweek (4HWW), Tim provided additional motivation that the world isn’t going to end if you delay responding to inputs, and that you should do everything in your power to batch your responsibilities (or better yet, outsource them, but that’s not for this post)
3. I like holding onto things long after I probably should, so I need some sort of super fast filing & retrieval system (while still keeping out of site the things that are no longer relevant)
4. I will not check many places to keep track of things, so I need everything organized in as few screens/programs as possible

Let’s start with the setup: In the morning my Microsoft Outlook is set to Work Offline; when I am online, all email notifications are disabled.

My portable device: I have a Motorola Q that synchronizes via ActiveSync. I can literally type an address into an appointment and by the time I’m in the car that address will be sync’d to my phone so I can enter it into the GPS. Reminders and everything else in Outlook (except notes) are also in live sync. No iPhone for me (yet).

The only way I can really think of to begin this is with the beginning. Continue reading…

(For Part 2 of this series, click here)

Given that I’m supposed to be an “efficiency trainer” and my platform is Microsoft Office, I run into a lot of people complaining about how difficult and counterintuitive Microsoft Outlook is. The Outlook as we know it has gone through six versions since Windows 95, and there have been a lot of productivity-enhancements . I don’t believe that one needs to use to-do list managers, web based calendars or external RSS readers to stay on top of their life. Not to say that they’re not all valuable in their own right, but if you’re already spending a lot of time in Outlook then it can be helpful to keep things in one place.

In the first segment of this Outlook series (this article), you’ll find two ways to get your time-consuming emails into your task list (one way for Outlook 2000-2007 and one for just Outlook 2007). These should help to get your Inbox to empty and allow you to perform your tasks when you need to–without having to stare at not-yet-relevant messages. In my next post I’ll mention how this relates to my personal application of The Four Hour Workweek‘s email management ideas.

The following two techniques are based on the assumption that something you can’t respond to now would be better filed away as a task to deal with later, when you’re reminded to perform it.

Continue reading…

March, 2008: While Google may have sent you here, I’d highly recommend reading the UPDATES HERE which incorporate Apple’s news. The article below relates to the present state of the iPhone, but the link will take you to the proposed changes that will be out this summer. I intend to follow and update you on all the Microsoft compatibility with iPhone issues. You can subscribe to this blog here by RSS or email, if you’d like, or check back periodically.

The iPhone does not support ActiveSync but it does handle Outlook data synchronization and Exchange email downloads. Since I was so curious about this topic (being a Smartphone user) I figured I’d post some of my research on what the “Exchange” account setup feature does provide on the iPhone, and what’s missing from a normal ActiveSync-enabled device.

Microsoft ActiveSync sychronizes one’s email, calendar, contacts, and tasks (not notes) from their Outlook account or Exchange mailbox store to a mobile device. With an Exchange server, this happens wirelessly. When one only has a POP/IMAP account, calendar, contacts, and tasks can only synchronize when connected via a cable (or through third party wireless synchronization software that is installed on one’s desktop). ActiveSync for Exchange also provides mobile device policies that enable Exchange administrators to configure phone password policies and remotely reset a phone’s data (such as if a phone is stolen or an employee terminated).

The iPhone has a screen for entering Exchange server settings, but as of now it only communicates via IMAP4 (see page 45 of the iPhone manual). Thus the email will stay wirelessly in-sync whenever email is pulled down from the Exchange server. This does not enable wireless synchronization of contacts, calendar, or tasks (well, there is no such thing as “Tasks” on the iPhone). It presents a few other problems: Continue reading…

Google Desktop Search is soon going to be a viable alternative to Windows Desktop Search in Windows Vista. This is seriously bad news for Microsoft, and this is largely the result of Google’s new lobbying efforts.

In today’s Washington Post, there are two articles about the new Google lobbying powerhouse here in DC. While Microsoft has had a strong policy influence in this city for the last few years, they’re continuing to suffer the consequences of a poor presence in the time leading up to their major federal antitrust case. Google recently delivered a striking blow by bringing attention to the officials tracking Microsoft’s antitrust compliance the “issues” with third-party desktop search applications in Windows Vista. As a result, yesterday Microsoft agreed to “allow users to select a default desktop search provider in the same way they choose a default Internet browser or media player” and “to provide technical information to other companies so thay can make their desktop program run more smoothly on Vista” (as paraphrased from a Microsoft executive in this article). These changes will come in the Vista Service Pack slated to be released (at least for testing) near the end of the calendar year.

For the last couple years I’ve been recommending Windows Desktop Search (WDS) over Google Desktop Search (GDS) simply because of the Vista and Office 2007 compatibility advantages. WDS is built into the Start Menu, every Windows Explorer window, and every Outlook folder (see below) so it just makes sense for people to get used to WDS in XP and then stick with it in Vista. Until now GDS in Vista has been slow and had poor OS integration. And trying to running both applications would be a huge system hog. Continue reading…

This spreadsheet has been such a success that we’ve vastly improved it! Grab the new version of the Dreamline Spreadsheet here.

You can subscribe to this blog to find out when new versions come out and discover other 4-Hour Workweek hacks/lessons-learned. You can also skim through my 4-Hour Workweek articles here, as well. Enjoy the spreadsheet and best of luck living your dreams!

As I previously wrote (1 2), I’m a big fan of Timothy Ferriss’ Four Hour Workweek approach. Just a few chapters in he mentions what he calls a Dreamline, which is a chart designed to calculate how approachable and within reach your ideal lifestyle is, in terms of finances and time. On the book’s website there were online calculators for filling out the Dreamline, but I didn’t find them to be as helpful as I’d like…so I’ve come up with my own.

I emailed with Tim to get his thoughts on this, mentioning that my company frequently creates attractive and functional reports in Word & Excel, and he figured it’d be worth a try if I could improve on it. As such, all the prose in the spreadsheet I created is directly from his example and used with permission. Anyhow, here it is (with assistance from Keith, SET’s awesome designer) as a Microsoft Excel download:

Dreamline Worksheet 1.2 [old version]

[new version available here]

Continue reading…