Source: https://blog.miproconsulting.com/tag/productivity/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 20:25:25+00:00

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Posted July 18, 2014 by Jeff V.
Posted April 9, 2014 by Jeff V.
As for how powerful these apps are, consider this. I loaded up my 575 page Windows 8.1 Field Guide Word document, and while it took a while to download originally (it’s stored in OneDrive for Business as part of my Office 365 Small Business Premium subscription), the performance reading and editing the document was impressive. In fact, it was… amazing. This is the real deal.
As important, the fidelity of the document was perfect: Everything was formatted correctly, including images. I could actually write a book on this thing if I wanted to. (Relax, I don’t.) Microsoft claims that documents look as good on the iPad as they do on the PC. And I gotta say. They really do.
With the release of Office for iPad, the divide between laptop and tablet just got reduced to a negligible crack. These are truly outstanding apps, and you can do real work on them with no caveats. As far as I can tell, Office for iPad is to Office as Photoshop Elements is to Photoshop. Sure, you don’t get 100% feature coverage, but for the 70% of the stuff most people do every day with office documents, it’s there, it’s graphically beautiful, and it works flawlessly.
Posted May 13, 2013 by Jeff V.
Here’s the thing: More often than not, our fear doesn’t help us avoid the feelings; it simply subjects us to them for an agonizingly long time. We feel the suffering of procrastination, or the frustration of a stuck relationship. I know partnerships that drag along painfully for years because no one is willing to speak about the elephant in the room. Taking risks, and falling, is not something to avoid. It’s something to cultivate. But how?
If I’ve struggled with one major productivity demon, it’s procrastination. Some days I just dive in and muscle through my insane tasklist with reckless abandon; other days I find myself putting off petty, stupid things, tasks others would just simply do. Over the past two years, I’ve been much better about this, but I often wonder about the psychology that lies behind the fog of procrastination. Bregman’s view that we ‘fear the feelings’ that failure and rejection cause as the source of procrastination is a good one.
If this sounds like you, allow me to recommend Julian Smith’s e-book The Flinch and Steven Pressfield’s Do The Work and The War of Art. Those three books right there are life changing, and The Flinch is a free download on Amazon. I cannot recommend them enough.
But first, read Bregman’s whole post over at Harvard Business Review. It’s worth your time.
I have spent the last 25 years of my career either managing implementations or working with customers to ensure a successful implementation. During that time, my most prominent theory for the use of consultants is that ‘trial and error is not an implementation methodology’. It’s true.
Many companies consider the use of consultants for various projects like an ERP implementation or an upgrade. Why bother? The simple answer is that you are buying the security that comes with experience. Imagine having the wisdom of your parents when you were 21? Or having the crystal ball to know all you needed to know to avoid your biggest mistakes? What would you pay for that?
The world is full of trial and error folks who just want to figure it out on their own. I know because I am one of them. The list of software in which I consider myself “self-taught” is longer than I care to admit. The cost of that education may be even higher.
I bring this up because I read an interesting article about FRUSTRATION. That’s the emotion you feel at your lack of success. Sometimes it’s a project at work. Sometimes it’s a personal project. Sometimes you’re frustrated with yourself and at other times it’s with others around you. No matter what, there is a sense of failure. This article however, points out that there may be value in frustration. Take a second to read it.
In consulting, we talk often about knowledge transfer and the ability to help our customers reach self-sufficiency before disengaging on a project. It reminds me of the axiom “give a man a fish and he eats for a day but teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime”. Based on the above article, frustration may not be a negative, but a sign of the learning process. As consultants, our nature is to want to help people, but this article reminds us that some frustration can be beneficial. The key is recognizing when frustration crosses into a sense of futility. When it does, that is when you truly appreciate your consultants and the wealth of experience they can bring to your project to save you from the perils of trial and error. Those same sentiments apply to my plumber, my HVAC technician, and my auto mechanic.
But those stories, while quite funny, will have to wait for another day. If you haven’t already, read the article. I found it very worthwhile, and I’m betting you will too.
Posted August 10, 2012 by Jeff V.
For years — insert dramatic music here! — I’ve been trying to find the right task management solution. I’ve tried quite a few: Google Tasks, Omnifocus, Things, Taskpaper, Clear, Wunderlist and even this new analog thing called pen and paper. Nothing stuck. I find a lot of these systems – some of which are modeled after David Allen’s GTD, or Getting Things Done system – too heavy for everyday use, even after you get past the learning curve. I know some folks love them (Merlin Mann loves Omnifocus and has dozens of great tips on how to use it), but ultimately these tools wind up getting in my way.
If I don’t want to use my system, I can’t trust my system.
What I really needed, I came to learn, was a glorified note-taking solution that allowed me to create data however my brain wanted. I needed tags so I could bubble certain notes to the top, and a great search mechanism. Primarily, since I’m a writer, I tend to think in text, so a text-based tool would be great.
This is a first world problem, folks. I get it. If you pull up your designer chair and pour yourself a venti Starbucks, we can talk about this. I’ll bring the locally-grown fruit and you bring the grassfed meat. Deal?
So I discovered Workflowy recently. It’s basically a list app on steroids that supports tagging, which is what all the cool kids on Twitter are doing. The difference between Workflowy and, say, your average list app is that it allows each bullet with subitems to become its own document. It also allows hashtagging (#tagname, just like Twitter) and ‘at’ tagging for people, so you can filter on somebody’s name (like a task assigned to @Jeff or @Whomever). It has a blazing search function. The app works perfectly on my iPhone and iPad. Best of all, it takes 20 mintues to learn.
That’s probably a horribly (a) confusing or (b) inadequate explanation of Workflowy. Maybe you should just watch this quick video.
Small section of my master Workflowy document. Click to enlarge.
If you’re thinking, “Hey, I could do this in a Word DOC. This isn’t special. Are you new to computers or something?” — not so fast. The fact that you can nest data however many levels deep you want and have each topic become its own document is huge. This allows a nice blend of task management and note-taking that is normally the domain of two separate apps entirely. They show this in the video above.
As a guy who routinely has 30 or 40 things in flight at any given moment, having a system to get everything out of your head and on to paper is a tremendous bonus. After learning and using Workflowy, I find myself doing reviews of my entire list once or twice a day to see what I can promote to #today status (which means I’m doing that thing today). This sounds completely minor on the surface, but let me tell you: there’s a sense of accomplishment when you’re using a tool that thinks the way you do and doesn’t get in the way of the work you actually have to do.
Your task management system should’t be work. It should help you manage your real work.
If you’ve been looking for something like this, I wholeheartedly recommend you give Workflowy a shot. You can use it for free (but you’re limited as to how much data you can enter per month), or you can go pro for about $50/year (pro accounts get you these features).
If you are interested in this and have any questions, I’ll do my best to answer them. Ask away in the comments, or drop me an email.
Posted July 2, 2012 by Jeff V.
This quote is from Ira Glass, and it’s about working hard in creative endeavors so that your output can eventually match your ambitions, but this is worth hanging on your wall no matter what your business.
If more people kept fighting, even when things are far from where they’d like, everyone would be so much closer to their goals.
Ira Glass can teach us all a thing or two.
Posted April 9, 2012 by Jeff V.
The ravages multitasking inflicts upon your mental state and productivity are (finally) getting some ink. Multitasking used to be something highly-evolved corporate warriors did well. It used to be a badge of honor, like calluses on athletes. I remember the days when you’d ask an employee to manage another project on top of his already-full docket, and he’d stare at you incredulously. “It’s called multitasking man” was a common rationalization for expecting someone to do more than could reasonably be expected.
Things are changing these days. After watching good workers burn out, work quality decline, and work/life balance issues upset even our most dedicated employees, productivity gurus, psychologists and managers everywhere started questioning the wisdom of the always-connected, always-on, always-expectant lifestyle.
When I talk to folks, I call this the cost of switching gears.
Let’s say I’m in the middle of writing an article. I’m heads down, my email is off, my browser shut down, and all notifications silenced. I’m in a groove. I’m getting something done.
Then, out of nowhere, a colleague walks into my office and starts telling me about his weekend round of golf. He doesn’t pick up the vibe that I was cranking away at something important.
The mere act of pausing to listen to his stories of 50 foot putts crashed what I was doing. It forced me into another gear, abruptly.
Even if Mr. Golf is in my office for two minutes, when he leaves, I have to find the writing gear again. I have to get back to where I was. That’s not something you do at the flip of a switch, and it takes some time and mental energy. You’ve probably experienced it yourself, and if you are tasked with creative output, the gear-changing cost is even worse.
Now, add two phone calls, a chat request, and three urgent emails to Mr. Golf. Yeah baby, you’re multitasking — and getting nothing done well while burning yourself out at a ferocious rate.
It’s not Mr. Golf’s fault. It’s not Facebook’s fault. Sure, they have roles in the equation, but ultimately it’s up you you to set boundaries and enforce them so you can get quality work done.
Easy to read, hard to do. You need discipline, and that means letting others in the office know that for 60-90 minutes every morning, you’re off limits unless the building is under attack by giant spiders. This means a closed door, mute notifications, and no Outlook chiming at you. You’ll be amazed at what you get done.
Another effective measure: block out time twice a week so you can just think. This doesn’t mean nap or play games on your iPhone, it means time to think and jot things down. Mindmap. Get a pen and start writing a list down. Take your biggest challenge and put it in the middle of a blank page, and write your fears, thoughts, and potential solutions to it on the same page. Again, it requires discipline, but the rewards are many.
You can keep multitasking and burning out, or you can start putting a few boundaries in place and working with more focus and calm. Your choice. But understand one last important thing: if you start taking the time to focus on one thing at a time, you can’t expect your employees to be always-connected. Your example will be a good one; let them follow it.
Posted March 23, 2012 by Jeff V.
I just finished reading Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken, which — let me say this up front — is a book I’d recommend to anyone. It’s a great piece of nonfiction, but more importantly, it got me thinking about something nobody is talking about, but should be.
One thing you realize about the WWII generation is that nothing stopped them. At that time, we had a national spirit that could not be deterred. We were unified and resilient, and we found a way to rally even when the vastly easier route was to give up. To recoil in the face of loss. Reading Unbroken, you want to stand up and applaud that entire era. Ideologically, it seems a thousand years removed from our national discourse today.
Grit can be defined a lot of ways, but I think most would say it’s something that spurs people on after they fail. Or maybe it’s the thing that allows someone to maintain focus through adversity or distraction. Maybe it’s the unflinching drive someone has for one thing in particular, which leads to a passion to do something extraordinary.
What I’m talking about here is simple grit: the ability to clench your jaw, roll up your sleeves and walk straight into the heart of discomfort or adversity and come out on the other side — unbroken.
We all know stories of people who aren’t the smartest of the bunch, who didn’t have the educational pedigree of others, who experienced more failure than success in their lives. But through sheer will and the ability to walk right into something difficult and painful — and stay there for however long it takes — these folks make their dent in the universe.
Today, everyone talks about intelligence development, IQ screening, private trainers, specialized learning/training routines. 10-year-olds have strength and conditioning coaches. 8-year-olds have hockey four or five times per week. Everything is programmatic, scripted.
What nobody talks about anymore is grit. I hear nobody telling their kids to stand tall, be strong and do what you have to do. Moreover, all too often in the workplace I see people backing down from hard conversations, not stepping up to do the right thing, avoiding some temporary discomfort as if it will kill them.
To me, grit is tied to personal responsibility and truly caring about something. If we’re to do a good job for our client on a big project, we need grit.
We need to be able to have the hard conversations.
We need to recognize our role in what we do.
We need to acknowledge that there will be long hours and tough project milestones.
We need to realize that there will be mistakes, miscalculations and oversights. People will goof-up, slip, play politics.
In the real world, far away from the Utopian pictures painted by RFP responses and slick cover-page cardstock, these things happen. And when they do, no amount of flowery prose in an executive briefing will ever make things better.
Someone who leans into the discomfort of the crisis, keeps a cool head and simply does what needs to get done. That means no quitting, no backing down, no blaming other people. It means pushing back on the world harder than it’s pushing on you.
Is this spirit alive anymore? Going back to the parenting idiom, I rarely see it. I see obsessive-compulsive use of hand sanitizer, a pathological fear of dirt and parents completely unwilling to instill some fortitude in their children. I see parents of unruly kids blaming coaches and teachers for “being too hard” on the children, and I see young adults who can’t pick themselves up after a letdown because they weren’t taught the skills.
Personally, weightlifting has taught me a lot about grit. It’s sometimes brutally hard, many days you’re whipped when you hit the gym, and standing under a 565 lb. squat lockout is a downright painful experience. I’ve been injured a dozen times, sometimes to the point of not being able to walk properly, but every time I come back.
Everyone who understands grit has their version of the story.
An entrepreneur who failed twice but kept going until he hit his stride.
The small kid who couldn’t cut it in hockey who learned that he could outwork everyone else for a roster spot.
The kid who grew up with nothing but realized most people are afraid of real work, so he swore to himself he wouldn’t be.
There are countless examples. Everyone’s heard one.
So why is it so hard to find?
If you have it, you’re lucky. If your team has it, you’re insanely lucky.
Think about this. Think about how many problems would be avoided outright or at least heavily defused if we all could learn to lean into our discomfort. Staring into adversity isn’t pleasant, but in many cases, you’ll find it blinks before you do.

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