Archive - Jul 2007

If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. -- Peter Drucker? [1], [2]

As a follow-up to Afraid to click? How to efficiently process your RSS feeds I decided to time a few of my RSS processing and organizing [3] sessions. I've included the results below, with average time spent/post in bold. (Note: See the above article for the simplified workflow I use.)

Here are the results:

Test 1

#    : 139 posts
avg  : 33 minutes / 139 posts -> 14 seconds/post

Test 2

#    : 81 posts
avg  : 26 minutes / 81 posts -> 19 seconds/post

Test 3

#    : 242 posts
avg  : 43 minutes / 242 posts -> 11 seconds/post

I've been collecting mind hacks, by which I mean surprising little tricks or abilities of our minds that are based on psychological insights.

I'm a grateful Gmail user (my main email address forwards to my Gmail account), and I've been a satisfied user for the past few years. While I don't use Gmail to implement my Getting Things Done system [1], I've noticed four things that, if corrected, could increase productivity for all users. See what you think!

• Make it easy to edit subjects
• Allow search without seeing the inbox
• Simplify adding contacts
• Allow manual or longer retrieval delay

Make it easy to edit subjects

I often see questions about details in implementing Getting Things Done from a number of sources, including calls and emails from clients and readers, and participants of on-line forums. Here's a collection of some recent answers, which I hope you find useful. (You might also enjoy this list of my GTD-related posts, especially Some common GTD questions, with answers.)

• Indexing filing systems
• When to remove something from Someday/Maybe
• Keeping file folder tabs aligned
• Move email-based subscriptions to RSS

I was reading the classic article "Beware the Busy Manager" by Bruch and Ghoshal (Harvard Business Review, Feb 1, 2002 [1]), which shares some surprising results from research into what makes effective managers. I strongly recommend reading the entire article, but for this post I'll focus on an interesting tidbit I found about the number of projects successful managers had. In talking about the two key dimensions (focus and energy - there's a nice summary here) they found that:

Because they have a clear understanding of what they want to accomplish, they carefully weigh their options before selecting a course of action.