The "Work Smarter" Chronicles

Crush Your Inbox! – How To Use Email Templates Painlessly

Nov 22, 2006
1 comment

I’ve decided to call this email management series “Crush Your Inbox!” since it fits the spirit of what I’m trying to teach you to accomplish. So let’s get crushing.

Rework is the opposite of leverage. And yet it likely domnates your email if you ever send out messages that are similar to each other. How many times have you had to give multiple people the same (or 90% similar) response? If you’re going to be savvy, the answer had better be “never again.” To beat your inbox into heady submission requires the generous use of templates. Write them once, save them, use them over and over again.

Templates are like the hired goons in the “Crush Your Inbox” universe. They don’t think for themselves, they’re easily replaceable, but they’re effective nonetheless at keeping you focused on creating new results rather than rehashing old ones.
continue reading
Crush Your Inbox! – How To Manage Email So It Doesn’t Waste Your Time

Nov 21, 2006
6 comments

Answer this question honestly: Does dealing with email free up time for you, reduce your stress levels, and help you get to your goals faster? Or does it eat up your time, pile on the overwhelm and slow down your progress?

For most people, it’s definitely the latter. How can you tell which camp you’re in? Well, if you’ve got a three- or four-digit backlog of messages in your Inbox, I think you pretty much know the answer. For the average person (and especially for entrepreneurs), email can quickly become a quagmire of unprocessed messages. And bloated inboxes full of things you keep “meaning to get to” do nothing to help you become more productive. Are you ready to crush that problem?
continue reading
Why High-Tech Solutions Don’t Help With Time Management

Nov 15, 2006
0 comments

When people decide to “get better at time management,” one of the first things they do is buy themselves one or more expensive, high-tech items to make the job easier. Maybe it’s a Palm device or a Blackberry. Maybe it’s a smartphone or a swanky, leather-bound planner. Or maybe it’s some piece of incredible software that promised to manage it all for you.

It doesn’t matter what it is. What does matter is that a lot of these high-tech solutions aren’t going to work. Not because the solution itself doesn’t work, but because if you haven’t established the underlying habit you’ll need to make use of it, you’re hosed! And that habit, specifically, is the discipline of using that tool daily. You’ve probably experienced this already if you’ve got a time management tool you bought but never used. Or some books you’ve bought but never read. Or a gym membership you haven’t used.
continue reading
How to Tell What You Should Work On First

Nov 13, 2006
2 comments

For a lot of people, knowing what to do is the easy part – it’s the figuring out what to do first that’s the harder issue. When you’ve compiled a hefty list of actions you need to take to push forward all of your goals, it can often be a paralyzing event (as we discussed earlier).

So what do you do when you are faced with a big list of items, and you haven’t sorted out the priorities in a way that clearly lays out what you should work on? Or worse, what do you do when the list is intimidating you with so many “equally important / equally urgent” priorities, that you just don’t know what to work on first? The answer is simple …
continue reading
How To Set Goals That Don’t Paralyze You

Nov 9, 2006
5 comments

Why does goal-setting often paralyze smart people from taking action?

It’s one of the cruel paradoxes of time management: The act of setting “big picture” goals that are clear and specific should help you focus on what matters most, but in reality it often leaves people paralyzed when it comes to taking massive action towards their goals. In fact, the clearer some people get on their values and priorities, the more paralyzed they can become. So why does this happen?
continue reading
How To Get Serious About Time Management in One Hour

Nov 1, 2006
0 comments

Do you know what it means to get serious about managing your time? I ask this because one of the most challenging stumbling blocks I see people having with time management is simply that they don’t decide up front that they are going to handle the creation of a personal time management system as a serious project. They try to make it an “add-on” or something they work on “when they get a chance.”

Unfortunately, building a skill doesn’t work that way. While it’s true that there are a number of easy things you can do to get an immediate edge over your busy workload, these things still have to be applied consistently and with focus. They can’t merely be something that’s “nice to do” – instead, they have to be something you will do.
continue reading
Would You Trade A Dime For A Dollar?

Sep 20, 2006
4 comments

When somebody’s running a successful business, I try to listen to to the advice they give to help my own ventures.

But when somebody is so financially successful that there is only one person on the planet with more money than him … well, then I really listen.

Warren Buffet, the second richest person on the planet, once said, “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” This is the ultimate statement on leverage. It proposes that how much something costs is irrelevant. How much you get in return, well … that’s everything. But it’s not how we tend to think…
continue reading
Never Tolerate Excuses

Jun 14, 2006
3 comments

I’ve set my home page to show me a sign that has five words in tall bold black letters: NEVER TOLERATE EXCUSES FROM YOURSELF. I load it up and look at it several times a day (at least.) It’s an angry looking sign, and it should be – because once you allow yourself to get in the habit of tolerating excuses, it’s all over.

I’m not talking about the excuses other people give us. You can’t control their behavior, so don’t even worry about it. I’m talking about you and me, and the excuses we give ourselves for why we aren’t taking the actions we know we should be. We even have a special name for these excuses, so we’ll feel better about making them: we call them “reasons.”

Let me give you a few examples of common “reasons” we use when faced with challenging situations:
continue reading
Multiple Streams of Productivity

Jun 8, 2006
1 comment

I briefly mentioned “multiple streams of productivity” in an earlier post, and I’ve received a few emails from people asking to know more about it, so that’s what today’s post is all about.

What is productivity anyway?
You can define productivity in a lot of ways, most of which boil down to “getting things done.” But the “things” you’re getting done could be anything – and activity is not the same thing as accomplishment.

For the purposes of simplicity in explaining Multiple Streams of Productivity, we’ll define productivity as “making rapid progress on your goals.” I say rapid because it’s just the basic mindset of productivity – you want to get to where you’re going in a relatively fast (if not the fastest) manner.

You can make rapid progress on your goals in four ways. Let’s take a look at each of them and some examples of each.
continue reading
How Big Is Your Question?

Jun 6, 2006
1 comment

In life, it’s not about what you deserve, what you desire, or even what you hope for. When it comes to the results you generate, and the goals you accomplish, it’s all about what you expect.

Expectation is Everything
I’ve talked about the importance of expectation in a lot of posts so far, and it’s for a good reason – I want to drill it into you as much as possible, because it’s that important. Whatever your level of expectation is, that’s what will fuel your motivation, and in turn drive your action.

If you attack your goals with the expectation that you will eventually win out, you will. It’s that simple, because that level of expectation pushes you to keep working until you find the right combination to unlock your goal.
continue reading