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November 28, 2005

Do we Live to Work or Work to Live?

I was having dinner with friends over Thanksgiving and the question came up, do we work to live or live to work? My parents taught me as a kid that if you can work, you should work. I took 6 months off once and my parents thought I was nuts. I was mentally exhausted after my run at a software company and wanted to chill out for a while. No matter what I did to assure them that we were fine financially, they couldn't understand WHY I would do this. But I came out of that time off more refreshed and a clearer perspective about what was important to me.

At the end of one of my seminars recently, a participant yelled out "Thanks for loving your job--it shows!" I truly believe this work makes a positive difference in peoples' lives. I love that it teaches me about completion, so that I don't overcreate or overcommit. And, I also have my job crafted in a way that is in balance for me. I don't work more days than I want in a given month (I'm fortunate to have a choice.) So in a way, I live to do this work because I love it AND I also work just enough to live the kind of life that I want.

Posted by Kelly at 09:54 AM | Comments (4)

November 21, 2005

The GTD Experience

If there is time at the end of my seminars, I like to go around the room and hear from participants about what they got from the experience. It's so nice for me to hear what they share. A few comments stood out to me last week from my group in Birmingham, Alabama:

- Going to use my head less to manage my to do's
- Going to make less agreements
- Learned a lot about managing email better
- Learned so much about Outlook tasks
- Loved getting my head clear with the Mindsweep
- Natural Planning Model really simplifies project planning

Travel-wise, this was a particularly challenging trip. Like my buddy Jason, my connecting flight to Birmingham was cancelled. At midnight, my amazing co-worker Anne found me a hotel in Chicago to sleep for a few hours before catching a new flight the next morning. I got to Alabama mid-morning, found my suitcase and motored on to the seminar. Overall, my travel goes pretty smoothly, so this kind of cancellation is rare for me. It did help to have some of the basics with me since my suitcase was locked down in the bowels of O'Hare. And thankfully, the client was very understanding!

Posted by Kelly at 10:41 AM

November 10, 2005

To save or not to save

Not sure whether or not to save something in your paper or digital files? Here are a couple of key questions to ask:

- How hard would it be to get the information again if I needed to?

- When's the last time I looked at this? You'll have your own measure for this, and there are always exceptions, but if I haven't even looked at something in over a year there's a good chance I don't need it anymore.

Take advantage of some of the quieter time in the office around the holidays to tackle some of those Reference files that need purging. If you've got any files starting to prairie dog out of your drawers because they are overstuffed, or you aren't quite sure what's in there anymore, it's time to get in there to see what can get tossed. If doing it all in one sitting seems daunting or unrealistic, I'd suggest starting with a couple of letters at a time (A-C, D-F etc.)

Posted by Kelly at 06:11 PM | Comments (1)

November 06, 2005

Email Quotas - Friend or Foe?

More and more companies I have been working with seem to have IT policies about email quotas and limits that range from the extreme, automatically sweeping and deleting the Inbox every 2 weeks, to size limits on the mail file with gentle reminders asking the user to clean out some folders.

On one hand, I can see email quotas being extremely effective in helping users to stay on track with processing if employees are given best practices on how to do that, like with GTD, but at what point do these kind of rules become anti-productive? For example, one client shared with me that their company is deleting anything older than 12 months left in Lotus Notes email. They lost key project history from previous years because they didn't save to CD or print hard copy. They now need to recreate the project from scratch. But even saving to CD and hard disk isn't an option for some because of liability reasons (e.g. the Enron debacle). And printing is just going to transfer the problem to overloaded paper files if people don't have a good reference filing system.

Are you affected by email quotas and limits, and if so, how are you dealing with it? Has it helped your productivity or hindered it?

Posted by Kelly at 10:39 AM | Comments (3)

November 03, 2005

Shower Gear

Some of my best ideas come when I least expect them--like the shower. I was going to get some waterproof crayons or markers to leave in the shower, for those times when ideas pop in my head that I don't want to lose. Then I saw that this month's issue of Business 2.0 had the same idea but with a totally cool suggestion for good ideas in the shower: the DiveSlate. For $10, you can have a clean and a clear head with a waterproof tablet and pen made for scuba divers.

Posted by Kelly at 09:32 AM | Comments (1)