Team Taskmaster

Gizmodo had a post today about Powermat, a wireless charger for up to three electronic devices. I heard the buzz on this product while it was in development and was interested to see what kind of press its debut has been getting.

Gizmodo’s take? “Wireless charging is still in its infancy, but the idea is great: you have a lil’ mat or platform onto which you can toss your gadgets and let them charge. No tangled wires and fumbling around.”

Rachel Metz of the Associated Press likes the Powermat, too: “There’s something thrilling about cutting (most of) the cords.”

Sounds good, and I’m all about simplifying and streamlining and boosting efficiency. But I’m not drinking the Kool-Aid quite yet.

First of all, it’s pricey: $100 for the mat and an additional $30 to $40 for the special case for each device you’ll be charging. Do I really want to shell out $220 when I can just plug in for free?

Second, would I prefer to travel with a big mat (and its attendant cord, which of course needs to be plugged into an outlet) rather than bring my device chargers — some of which are pretty low-profile USB connectors?

A big ad blitz for Powermat (estimated at $10 to $15 million) kicked off this week, so I’m sure you’ll start seeing it everywhere. And it’ll be retailing at Target and Best Buy in a month or so. In the meantime, check out this admittedly clever commercial for the product.

What productivity suite do you use in your workplace? Most likely, it’s Microsoft Office, the undisputed heavyweight champ in that space. But a new contender may soon be nipping at Office’s heels.

The challenger is Google Docs, the Web-based word processor/spreadsheet/presentation application from Google. A new survey by market-research firm IDC finds that 20 percent of respondents said Google Docs is “widely used” in their workplaces.

Yes, it was a small survey (262 people) and it didn’t prove that people are using Google Docs instead of Office, rather than as an adjunct. But it does point out that Google Docs is gaining momentum, since an earlier IDC study (2007) found that just 5 percent of respondents characterized it as widely used.

Google’s official blog says over 1.75 millions businesses, schools, and organizations use Google Docs, with an additional 3,000 signing up each day.

That might speak volumes for its increasing popularity, but folks with loads of experience in the tech industry, like my former colleague Preston Gralla, note that client-based suites are still more trustworthy than Web-based ones, at least for the moment (remember Google’s infamous outage?).

Cloud-based computing is not necessarily ready for prime time in the workplace, concurs PC World’s Ian Paul: “It’s not all rainbows and light when you dance in the clouds, because eventually a storm rolls in.” Paul points out that while online storage is incredibly convenient, even a behemoth like Google isn’t immune to problems and glitches that can cause you and your business time and money — or even lost data.

What do you think?

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Can cutting 10 minutes out of a meeting make  your whole day run better?

There’s no doubt, says David Silverman at Harvard. He proposes that we start thinking about a standard 50-minute meeting, rather than the traditional one-hour block.

Why? Think about how a day packed with meetings often plays out:

“How often do you find that by 11am you’re running late and that by 3pm, you’ve either been forced to dump a meeting to reset your day or are 100 emails behind because you’ve gone straight from one appointment to another all day long? Either way, you’re leaving someone (or many people) in the lurch. Either way, it’s a stressful and unsatisfying existence.”

How to manage this better?  Think like a student. Back when you were in school, classes were scheduled so you actually had time to get from one class to another. This was crucial in my experience: At the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, I often had to rush more than a mile across campus to get from my journalism classes to my chem or bio courses.

There’s another field that famously has 50-minute hours, notes Steven Levy at No Secret, and that’s psychiatry and its offshoots. Writes Levy,

“According to psychotherapist Jassy Timberlake, the 50-minute hour ‘allows time to jot down any notes that we need to remember, check messages and return any urgent calls and clear our heads before the next client comes in to the office’.”

Wouldn’t it be nice to do that between your own hectic meetings too? Think about how much more productive you could be if you could synthesize the discussions from your first confab before jumping into another.

So let’s take action. Start your meetings on time, and end them 10 minutes early. And let me know how that works out for you.

(image by Stryker W@sp via Flickr, CC 2.0)

Is e-mail driving you mad? Much as we love the ease and effectiveness of electronic communications, your inbox can often be overwhelming.

As a Web worker, I’m especially prone to feeling buried by my e-mail. But I’ve come up with 9 ways to keep my inbox at bay. Try them and see if they work for you.

1. Don’t check (or answer) your e-mail first thing in the morning. Spend the first hour at your desk checking your to-do list, working on any urgent tasks, and mapping out your workday. Otherwise, you’ll get sucked into the e-mail quicksand and your productivity will suffer.
2. Batch your e-mail time. Instead of checking e-mail every few minutes throughout the day, set aside 15 minutes every hour to read and respond to e-mail. The first shift of the day should be for the code-red e-mails and could take 30 minutes. Thereafter, cut yourself off after 15 minutes and get back to actual work.
3. Triage your inbox. When you check your mail, flag the most important items, then tackle them one by one. Leave the other e-mail for your next check.
4. Turn off your alerts, both auditory and visual.
5. When you open an e-mail, act on it immediately: reply, file it, or delete it. If next steps are required, add them to your task list; don’t let the message linger in your inbox as a reminder.
6. Don’t move items from a folder back to your inbox (or just leave items sitting there) as a pseudo to-do list. Write the actions on your task list instead.
7. Use your rules. I automatically route my newsletters and alerts into their own folders, so they don’t clutter my inbox. I can read them at my leisure later, and they don’t contribute to visual overload.
8. Create a contingency plan. If you’re like me, it’s hard to ignore e-mail for 45 minutes (or more) at a time. What if something really urgent has come up? My solution is to let people know if they need an immediate response, they need to call me.
9. Try to end the day with an empty inbox.

Do you have any other tricks for mastering your inbox? Share them in the comments section.

Team Taskmaster has just celebrated its one-year anniversary (I started authoring this blog in late April 2008), and the milestone got me thinking about the topics I’ve covered, as well as those I haven’t.

I originally envisioned this column as a place to talk about how to be more productive, how to motivate and engage your staff, and how to foster collaboration. However, I’ve found that some of my strategy and leadership posts have also gotten a warm reception.

In addition, my rants on corporate jargon, layoff euphemisms, and corporate freebies struck a nerve, as did posts about jobhunting strategies and time management.

Our world has changed in the last year, and I’m wondering whether the same should be true of Team Taskmaster. So I’m putting the question to you, my readers: What topics would you most like to read about on Team Taskmaster? What’s most relevant to you?

Please fill in the polls below with your first and second choice for subject matter, and feel free to add additional suggestions, comments, and criticisms in the comments section. Thanks!

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(image by SpiritMama via Flickr, CC 2.0)

You guys are probably sensing a theme right now. Yes, I’m focusing on lateness this week — first discussing whether the occasional less-than-punctual arrival is a big deal, then listing some fabulous real-world excuses for tardiness.

On a more serious note today, let’s talk about chronic lateness and how to tackle it. An estimated 15 to 20 percent of us are usually running late.

For many of them, being unable to get somewhere punctually isn’t just a function of poor time management. Often, there are deeper issues going on.

Sometimes habitual lateness is due to personality. It can also be because you have trouble realistically assessing how much you can do in a given time — or because you perceive time differently than other people, based either on cultural differences, innate wiring, or even a disorder such as ADHD.

But whatever the reason, being chronically late can play havoc on your social life, your career, and even your self-esteem. Luckily, there are some effective steps you can take to seize control of your inner, dysfunctional clock.

• Try doing things ahead of time and pay attention to how liberating it can feel.
• Plan to be 15 minutes early for engagements — then you’ll probably be on the dot. If you’re early, spend that time with a book or some to-do items.
• Make a daily plan, with a written schedule of your activities with start and end time estimates. This helps you see what you really have time for. Punctuality expert Diana DeLonzor said most people underestimate how long it takes to do something by about 30 percent.
• Set up a system of rewards and penalties. If you’re late to meet a friend, agree that coffee is on you. Or, if you’ve made lots of progress, reward yourself.
• Create mantras, such as, “It won’t get any easier in five minutes,” instead of hitting the snooze alarm for the fifth time.

Any other tips you have for the habitually late? Pass them on to other Team Taskmaster readers in the comments section.

(image by Aldaron via Flickr, CC 2.0)

Steven Smith put up a nice post today on the SOBCon site about building an effective team. I have to wonder about the timing — whether he intended it to go live in conjunction with the inauguration, or if it was just a happy coincidence — but it’s apropos both today and any other time you’re looking to surround yourself with a successful squad.

He offers four steps for assembling a robust and productive unit:

1. Define the Team: Who’s on  your team? What are their respective roles? Figure it out to get the ball rolling.

2. Define Team Goals and an Action Plan: Determine the primary purpose of the team and set goals for today, this week, this month, this year — and even this decade.

3. Identify Supporting Behaviors: These are specific actions and behavioral characteristics that support team goals and a team environment. Some may include a positive attitude, persistence, commitment, and discipline. Team members with these qualities tend to be successful team players, and they also tend to have a positive effect on their compatriots.

4. Define Accountability: Outline how you and others will be held accountable. Some related actions:

• Offer positive feedback for each individual’s contributions
• Provide praise either privately or publicly, depending on the situation
• Consider the consequences for team members who aren’t meeting responsibilities
• Address unmet expectations early, before they can drive a wedge into working relationships and negatively impact the team

All in all, a concise, to-the-point primer for anyone looking to build a more effective and successful team.

If you need another nudge to get you committed to organizing your office or your life, consider this: January is Get Organized Month, sponsored by the National Association of Professional Organizers.

Why January? I assume they’re riding the coattails of the New Year’s resolutions kick, during which I’m sure many folks pledge their commitment to getting things in order as the calendar flips.

Of course, the reason NAPO is pushing Get Organized (or GO) Month is to get people to hire a professional organizer. But even if you choose not to outsource your organization dilemmas, it’s still a good reminder that a more organized environment can save you time and improve your productivity.

If you need some ideas, check out the free resources at Smead Organomics (cutesy name, but the site is good). There’s a nifty “organomics calculator” that can help you compute the true cost of disorderliness and a selection of one-minute answers to common organizing questions.

(image courtesy NAPO)

If you travel frequently for business or pleasure, you’ve probably got a well-established system for packing. Me, I’m a big fan of checklists.

My “Travel” folder on my computer includes umpteen iterations of lists — for travel in summer, travel in winter, long travel, short travel, one-bag travel, travel to Europe, and so forth.

My husband mocks my checklist habit but is invariably thrilled to discover that I’ve remembered to pack the (choose one: cell-phone charger, booklight, discount card, tickets) for our trips.

But it’s hard work, maintaining and creating these documents. So you can imagine my joy to hear about Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush, a free online service that helps you automatically generate your packing and to-do lists before travel. As the clouds parted and the angels sang, I thought, “This will be heaven on earth for list-o-phile like myself.”

Oh, if only.

I was completely primed to love this site, but I didn’t. Why? To my thinking, it’s got three big problems.

• It’s UK-based. Which is fine, more or less, except that some of the advice is relevant only to UK users. Example: “Book Channel Tunnel crossing.” Um…nope. For me, a better checkbox option might be, “Make sure FasTrak is in car to pay tolls.”
• The travel profiles are limited to Beach Holiday, Winter Sports, Foreign Driving Holiday, Camping or Caravan Holiday, Cruising, and Business Trip/Other. What about my three-day trip to wine country? Or the road trip my family will be taking? No, they’re not exactly covered in the “Business/Other” category. And my packing list for a work trip to, say, Seattle, will be very different for a business trip to Sarasota.
• You have to edit the list down by ticking boxes to arrive at a more-or-less personalized list keyed to your specific needs. I’d prefer a process that allows me to choose my options in advance — for example, “Select the city to which you’ll be traveling,” “Select the date,” “Are you driving, flying, or taking a train,” and so forth — and then spits out my results, no polishing needed.

So for now, it looks like I’m going to be sticking with my homemade checklists. So I’m off to find my “winter holiday road trip to visit multitudes of relatives and theme parks” list.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays!

(image by malias via Flickr, CC 2.0)

Stephen Smith over at Productivity in Context last week referred to another blogger’s list of useful iPhone applications to help you streamline your life and get you more organized. After checking them out, I have to say the choices are right on the money.

The Web Design Schools Guide’s list of 20 iPhone apps to increase your productivity include a few of my favorite picks:

• Jott turns your voice into text and places it into your lists on your iPhone. Task complete? Cross it off with a quick finger strike.
• SplashID is a quick reference to store all your passwords and usernames under a record type created by you.
• Mobile News Network has been on my own iPhone since day one. If you need or want to keep up with the news, look no further.

Read the full post to see them all.

(image from jott.com)