Manager Tools - Managing Your Boss January 31, 2006
Mark and Mike over at Manager-Tools have done it again with their podcasts last week and this.
In “Managing Your Boss - Part 1” and “Managing Your Boss - Part 2“, they’ve run through the five aspects of their process/methodology for establishing a good/better relationship with your boss, and understanding where they’re coming from. As I was listening, as with my earlier piece on their Development Challenge, I was taking notes, and these are represented in the images and link that follow. As I was working through the pieces, I was already thinking that I’d offer something up on my site, from the reverse of their perspective - for the folks that have, do or will work for me, so that they have an idea of some of the things I might want considered. Sure enough, sharing these concepts with your team is one of the summary points identifed in the podcast.
If you’re reading this piece on or close to it’s publication date, rather than looking at an archive page, there’s a competition piece in the podcast itself - go check out the second podcast, and have a shot.
As before, I’ve used Mindjet’s MindManager - if you don’t have it, you’re welcome to the jpeg images below; click on them for the full images. I’ve put two images this time, just to show that you can be quite selective in what you look at on the map at any given time.
If you do have MindManager, or the viewer available from their website, you’re welcome to the full map in the link below.
Download the Manager Tools - Managing Your Boss MindMap here.
(Disclaimer/Acknowledgement - all content on the MindMap is from the Manager Tools podcast, and is the work of Mark Horstman and Mike Auzenne; all copyright is theirs and acknowleged. The content on this page merely represents my notes of their presentation).
links for 2006-01-31
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“Free calls to any regular landline in [lots of countries]” is enough to make me want to investigate this further.
New Blog: Web 2.0 Technologies January 30, 2006
Andre sent me a note asking me to check out his new blog, Web 2.0 Technologies, focussing on Javascript & AJAX. Happy to do so… Plenty of code snippets and such on the current front page, in and around the AJAX world; obviously of interest if you’re a coder (I’m not!). If it’s the sort of thing you might be interested in - drop on by and say hello to him.
links for 2006-01-30
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(tags: home+theater)
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Onkyo’s DV-SP1000(tags: home+theater dvd)
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(tags: @tocheck)
On Daily Link Postings January 29, 2006
Link harvest options » Slacker Manager
Bren, at Slacker Manager, posts about auto-posting del.icio.us links to his blog:
Every once in a while I turn on the feature in del.icio.us that squirts my recent bookmarks over here to the blog. I like the feature, but I prefer posts on the blog to have some context, and I’m too lazy to go back in, change the title and say more stuff about the links. So as much as I like the automatic nature of the del.icio.us posts, I don’t think I’ll do them much anymore.
There’s a bit more to it, where he points out his links are still available in a sidebar, or via RSS feed.
All good, and I understand his point. The links postings are somewhat unformatted, and can make the blog page a little cluttered, but I like having them:
- I don’t write multiple posts a day, or even a post-a-day. The primary purpose of this site is to provide a repository for my notes and such, somewhere I can readily refer back to when I need or want to. It’s the nature of these things that other people are reading it, however - something in the order of a couple of hundred a day via RSS, and six to seven hundred unique visitors a day to the site generally. So I want what I write to be meaningful - more than just re-blogging stuff (and yes, I realise this post comes close to that in it’s intro!). However, I think there’s value in showing activity on the site each day, or roughly each day. And if someone happens to find something interesting as a result of what I’ve tagged on any given day, that’s a bonus.
- That said, consider the del.icio.us postings to be my little bit of selfishness. They’re mine. (Sure, go ahead, picture me in a Gollum posture…). I subscribe to my own RSS feed, so the links postings are brought down into my copy of Outlook. That’s then indexed with the MSN Desktop tool. If del.icio.us is down - it’s happened - I’ve still got ready access to all my historical links; at most, only the last twenty-four hours of links are in jeopardy.
- He does have a point about context though; I’m sloppy about writing “commentary” into the del.icio.us entries; I’ll try and be better about that, but see my point above, regarding selfishness in this regard
So, for the forseable future, there’ll be a posting here every day with “what I tagged” the previous day - assuming I tagged anything; I do like that del.icio.us is smart enough not to generate a post if no new tags were put through on any particular day.
links for 2006-01-28 January 28, 2006
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Quotation Sources
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Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do…(tags: time+management)
Implementing Getting Things Done, while using a Blackberry - Part Five January 26, 2006
It’s time to conclude (rather belatedly!) this series of posts of mine on GTD with the Blackberry.
First up, some bits and pieces in relation to comments and/or emails that I received:
Category Synchronization
If you do an upgrade of your Blackberry to a version 4.x, as opposed to purchasing one, then you also need to make sure that you also upgrade your desktop manager to version 4.x as well. Then, you’ll need to manually set the Task synchronization up, as follows:
- Do a cable-sync of your Blackberry, and then go into the Desktop Manager application.
- Go into “Intellisync”
- Hit “Configure PIM”
- Select “Tasks”
- Using the “Configure” button, select “Advanced Settings”
- Hit “Field Mapping”
- When prompted with a box titled “Intellisync”, advising you of the mapping details, hit “OK”
- Drag “Categories” in the Right-Hand column up/down to align with “Categories” in the Left-Hand Column, and click or hit the spacebar to make sure the mapping is in place.
- “OK” everything out until you’re back at the Desktop Manager screen.
- That’s it. You can do one more cable-sync at this point just to “make sure”, but you should now have the categories mapping correctly.
The above is predicated on you also running a BES 4.0 with wireless sync - but if you’re not, it’s still the correct sequence of events, except you must run that cable-sync at the end to get the changes in place.
Variations on the Method
“Xoff”, in the comments, reminds us of the two-minute rule, and suggests processing email “on the fly” from the Blackberry, filing email directly from the Blackberry (if you’re running a BES, you have access to your entire mailbox folder tree from the Blackberry for the purposes of filing, even if you don’t synchronize the folder that you’re moving the message to).
Well, I agree with this, for the most part – I just find that I personally process too much email at a time on the Blackberry to do this. I’ll certainly delete mail as I go if it’s clearly not needed; but I find that I can bulk-file email far quicker from the desktop as a part of my Morning Review. Diff’rent strokes, again, folks. Depending on your own situation, this is certainly a valid approach.
Xoff goes on to suggest that if he’s delegating, or creating an action for himself, he does so by sending the message on, and BCCing it to himself, changing the subject line if necessary. I’m in two minds about this – on the one hand, it can work, and I know a fair few folks who use the “BCC to self” approach; it doesn’t fit with my personal style, however – possibly because I’m using the Netcentrics addin. His advice about creating rules to add flags to messages from himself is definitely spot on, however. I recommend you read the whole comment (copied below for convenience, and for those reading this in the Complete Document format), and consider it as a part of your system. For my part - I’m going to take the advice about rules/flags and not-synchronizing emails from yourself to stop synchronizing the “in a hurry” messages that I referred to earlier in the series.
3. xoff - January 7, 2006
Gary, Great post! I got my BB three weeks ago and have been tweaking it to work with GTD and the add-in. It is amazing how similar our methods are. I think the key here is that until there is a GTD add-in for BBs (Netcentrics please!!!) we have to focus on the BB as more of a collection tool and less of a processing tool.Having said that, I have found a way to process the email in a GTD manner from the BB that I think it is worth sharing. One of the most valuable tools of GTD is processing email the first time you see it, i.e. “what is the next action”. With BBs it is very common to see an email in the BB and then actually process it on the desktop later. In essence, reading the email twice, and thinking of the next action twice.
What I do is to process the email the minute I read it in the BB. If I can apply the two minute rule and it can be processed in that context, process it right there. If not and I have to process the email later I determine the next action:
- If the email requires filing for reference, I do it right there on the BB. I have folders in my server mailbox for all my projects. Because of mailbox size limitations in the server I can’t keep all the emails in the server, but the folders in the mailbox (except inbox) has archive settings of one day, thus Outlook automatically moves these emails to my personal folders, in the corresponding folder using the archive feature.
- If the next action is delegating ie. forwarding the email to someone for action, I forward the email from the BB and BCC myself so that later on my desktop I can assign it the @Waiting For action and integrate the email into my Waiting For list for follow up.
- If it’s an action that requires more than 2 minutes or in another context, I forward the email to myself and change the subject line to the action that needs to be performed and other relevant information like deadline or context. For example, if the email from John requires me to review some documents before responding to John, I would change the email subject to “Review files for project for John @Office”. The other added benefit to using this method, rather than creating a task in the BB is that with this approach you have a copy of the original email thus when reviewing your files you have John’s email. After processing the email in BB I delete the original email from John, or file it (more on that below).
To integrate these emails into my GTD methodology, I have created rules in my Outlook to process emails from me and assign flags to identify them easily in my inbox. If the email is from me with me BCC, it adds a “WF flag”; if it is from me only to me the it adds a “Action Flag”. Thus my inbox in the morning review (similar to yours) I would have the emails that require processing with my GTD Add-in, but the actions are pretty clear. Outlook 2003 simplifies this with a preprogrammed search folder called “For Follow-up”.
Since your emails to yourself, in my mind, create clutter in the BB mailbox, I have created rules in the BB Desktop Manager that prevent the redirection of emails from me to me. Thus these “GTD” emails do not show up in my BB inbox.
Good luck integrating this into your method.
Xoff
MindMaps
I posted previously that I would share the MindMap(s) that I used to write this series with as one of the final pieces; at the end of the process, however, I find that the actual, published version of the work is substantially different enough from the MindMaps that they’re effectively drafts, and not worth uploading.
That said, if more than a couple of people comment on this post asking for the MindMap, I’ll spend the time updating it, and upload it as a “really, really final part of this series”.
Other Sources of Information
I went to Google today, and here’s how many results I got for some search phrases:
GTD 1,860,000
“Getting Things Done” 2,240,000
“Getting Things Done” Blackberry 30,400
GTD Blackberry 35,000
I could go on, but the point I’m making with those figures is that, as we all know, there’s a LOT of information out on the internet.
Presented below, then, are a handful of sites that I personally find useful as a part of my regular reading list in relation to GTD specifically, and Time Management generally. They’re not in any particular order, and if you think I’ve missed something critical out, do please comment and let me know. You may also want to check out the sidebar at www.garyslinger.com which lists each blog and site that I currently subscribe to via RSS; the list is deliberately randomised, for my own use.
http://www.davidco.com/blogs/david/
While it’s true that this list isn’t in any particular order, it does make sense to start with David Allen’s own blog, now, doesn’t it?
http://www.davidco.com/forum/
The discussion forum at the David Allen Company.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Getting_Things_Done/
Discussion forum within the Yahoo! Groups environment. There’s a couple of others, “GTD_Palm”, and “AnalogGTD” that may be of interest as well, depending on how involved in it all you want to get.
http://slackermanager.com/
“Slacker Manager – Paving the path of least resistance, so you don’t have to trip and fall” – don’t let the title fool you, this is a great resource on management, technology and a host of other things.
http://www.ismckenzie.com/
“Ian’s Messy Desk”
http://www.punkey.com/gtd/
“What’s the next action – A weblog about Getting Things Done”
http://safarisoftware.typepad.com/
“ToDoOrElse.com”
Document Download
Finally, as promised, you can download this whole series as a single file (zipped PDF, ~237Kb).
And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, concludes this particular series. Thanks for reading. All comments and suchlike welcome.
Blackberry - the latest on the RIM/NTP Lawsuit January 25, 2006
Summary of the last couple of days news on the latest in the RIM/NTP lawsuit
High court rejects BlackBerry case - Jan. 23, 2006
CNN Money. This is the basic report that the US Supreme Court has turned down a request to review the case, and kicked it all back to the District Court level. NTP is scheduled to file a request for an injunction on February 1st.
Supreme Court rejects BlackBerry patent appeal - Wireless World - MSNBC.com
What, me worry? A BlackBerry fan frets - Wireless World - MSNBC.com
Columnist expresses his concerns. Also “The smart thing for the U.S. courts to do would be to delay the decision on whether RIM has infringed upon NTP’s patents until the other branch of the U.S. government rules on whether those patents are valid in the first place.”. Absolutely - when the USPTO is consistently rejecting patents, one after another, in this case, for the District Court to rule in favor of the holders of those patents - well, that’s just nuts. But I am, as they say, not a lawyer.
NTP suggests 30 days before BlackBerry cutoff | Tech News on ZDNet
Think these folks have ever read a cellphone contract? 30 days really doesn’t cut it as a realistic timeframe for identifying an alternate supplier - for an individual, let alone for a corporate consumer.
Patently-O: Patent Law Blog: NTP v. RIM: BlackBerry Injunction Proceedings
Great site. This particular link has RIM’s list of reasons why the August 2005 ruling from the Federal Appeals Court should not result in an injunction.
BlackBerry Cool » Supreme Court rejects RIM’s case
Nothing new on this page, but Blackberry Cool is one of my favorite places to get news about the Blackberry in general.
WSJ.com - BlackBerry Gambles Patent Office Will Be On Its Side in Court
Wall Street Journal’s piece on the ongoing drama, just a few days before the rejection came in.
Manager Tools - Development Challenge 2006 January 21, 2006
As indicated in the previous post, I’ve been doing some catching up in my management reading, and in this case, listening.
Mark Horstman and Mike Auzenne run a podcast each week at www.manager-tools.com, covering various management development topics, such as delivering feedback, recruitment, performance reviews, and management communications.
About two weeks ago (I said I was catching up!), they released a podcast with a slightly different type of content - a set of potential challenges for managers to undertake over the next year. As I was listening to it, I was making notes, and I took those notes as a mindmap, as I am wont to do. Looking at it afterwards, I decided that I wanted to keep it for reference (as opposed to the practice of taking notes to help keep my attention focussed), so I spent ten minutes with MindManager, and the results of that are below.
If you click the image below, you’ll get a high-res picture of the map. But you’ll be selling yourself short.
If you actually have MindManager, or their free viewer, you can download the actual map from the link below. When you do that, you’ll see that, apart from being able to zoom around and filter the map, I’ve also put in hyperlinks to relevant parts of their website, books they recommend in the podcast, and so forth.
(To those that know about it - yes, I’m aware of the method to embed the map and viewer into the webpage. That causes issues with the site template that I’m currently using, however).
Download the Manager Tools Development Challenge MindMap here.
(Disclaimer/Acknowledgement - all content on the MindMap is from the Manager Tools podcast, and is the work of Mark Horstman and Mike Auzenne; all copyright is theirs and acknowleged. The content on this page merely represents my notes of their presentation).
Still Figuring Out The Balance
Nine days since my last “real” post… Figuring out the balance between writing for here, and doing “real” work, and, I must confess, enjoying the “social aspects” of life - well, that’s a balance that I haven’t quite figured out yet.
In any event, I’m sat here writing again, and I’ve got a couple of things lined up — those of you that left comments asking for copies of the ITIL map, I have a version that’s better than what I previously alluded to, ready to send out. I’ll be taking care of that shortly. Finishing off that set of maps, and publishing them, will be part of what I work on in the next few days. First, of course, I have to write the final, “tie it all together” piece about Getting Things Done with a Blackberry. That’s coming…
I’ve also got two of the podcasts from the Manager Tools website “mapped out” on paper, and partially in Mindjet MindManager; I’ll be uploading those, and commenting on the topic and site, as well.
Guess I’d better get typing!
links for 2006-01-21
links for 2006-01-17 January 17, 2006
links for 2006-01-13 January 13, 2006
Implementing Getting Things Done, while using a Blackberry - Part Four January 12, 2006
Parts One, Two and Three deal with the Collection and Processing stages of GTD. One last piece in relation to Processing, and then we’ll move on.
The Weekly Review – with Added Blackberry Goodness
So, the weekly review in and of itself, shouldn’t need any real explanation here. I have mine scheduled for 2pm, for an hour, every Friday. My theory is that if I’ve missed anything, I’ve still got an hour or two of the working week to deal with it, and in the worst case where I’ve missed something that needs to be ready on Monday – well, I’ll be working through the weekend that week!
The “extra bits” that I’ve found helpful to add into this process, with respect to keeping things running smoothly with the Blackberry:
- Review and Purge unnecessary Categories. In either the Address Book application, or the Tasks application, hit the menu button and take Filter. Take a look at the categories you have there – sometimes extra ones slip in. They may be categories that you only needed for a little while earlier that week, or misspellings, but in any case – hit the menu button again and take “Delete”. Remember that Categories are shared across the applications, so while you may not need a “Restaurant” category in the Tasks, you probably shouldn’t delete it if you’ve been using that as a category over in the Address Book.
- Back your Blackberry up. Chances are, you’re synchronizing to a desktop application such as Microsoft Outlook, and that’s good. But not all aspects of the Blackberry get backed up that way – the most notable example being the “Password Keeper” application that was introduced for the v4.0 devices. You need to do this from the desktop client – with your Blackberry connected via the cable, go into “Backup and Restore”, hit “Backup” and select a filename and storage location. Hit “Save” and the Blackberry will take care of itself for you. I’m not going to write about the Restore process here, because every situation will be different, and depending what you need to restore dictates how you restore. But you don’t get that option if you haven’t taken the backup in the first place…
- Blackberry been slowing down? From the home screen, go into Options, and then Status. Have a look at the “File Free” and “File Total” lines – right now, as I write this, I have “11466800 bytes free” and “29229056 bytes total”. Looks like about 40%, so I’ll skip this part this week. When I get to around 60%, and assuming that I’m not on the road, I use the desktop client again, cable-synchronized, and again into “Backup and Restore”. Hit “Advanced”, and a list of databases within the Blackberry come up on the right-hand side. I select “Messages” and “Attachment Data” at a very minimum, although I often select “MMS Messages”, “Purged Messages” and “SMS Messages” if they’ve been stacking up (you can see the number of entries to the right of the database name). When you’ve selected one or more databases, hit the “Clear” button and follow the “are you sure?” prompts. That will wipe those entries from the Blackberry, freeing up the memory space, and the response time of the Blackberry. It’s important to realize that you’re deleting the messages from the Blackberry, and not from your desktop. The only downside to this approach is if you’re used to accessing messages on the Blackberry that you processed through it x days ago. You won’t be able to after this step. There are other management options you can use, such as within the “Messages” application, setting “Keep Messages” within the options to something like 30 days. I personally don’t do that, I’d rather have the personal control, but, as the saying goes, “your mileage may vary”. Do use some form of message purging process, however, because your Blackberry will fill up and start performing badly as a result (it’ll start automatically deleting older messages to make room for newer ones, per message, i.e. dynamically).
- At this stage, you shouldn’t have any business cards lying around, or notes in your Inbox to yourself, etc., that need to be moved over into the Blackberry and/or the rest of your trusted system, but hey, it’s a weekly review. Just double-check to be sure.
All being well, that’s the Collection and Processing stages of the Methodology taken care of. In the comments, and in direct mail, I’ve had some suggestions to “tweak” how I’m doing things. I’m going to come back to those in another post, and talk through them.
Organizing
I’m including this section here, as I said I’d map the Blackberry to the full model in the book, but basically, in GTD terms – you’ve already handled the Organizing part of the process if and when you did your Collection with the Blackberry; that is, you decided whether to place an item directly into it’s correct place within the system, or make a note elsewhere, or send yourself an email reminder, as appropriate.
Reviewing
Reviewing and Doing have a habit of blending together when you’re “out and about” and using a tool like the Blackberry, but there are a couple of things that probably need to be thought about and done:
- In a section called “What to Look At, When”, David Allen’s first item is “Look at Your Calendar First”. Assuming you’re synchronizing the calendar back to the office system, it should be the last thing you look at before heading to bed (“What time is my first appointment tomorrow? Do I have to do anything before I leave for work?” and depending on your circumstances, the first thing you look at in the morning – has anyone in a different time zone sent a meeting request through to you for that day? How does that affect the rest of your plans? (I realize this is a very corporate view of the world. If it doesn’t apply, just ignore it. If it does apply… Well, you know what I’m talking about!).
- Tasks. Calendar. They’re all there. As you’re going about your business, you can readily call up any of your Next Action lists, or your email (and let’s face it, there’s a reason it’s called the Crackberry by some!), and do whatever’s appropriate for the situation you’re in. Ten minutes in the coffee shop before your next appointment? Blackberry out, home screen, “T” for Tasks, hit the menu button and choose “Filter”, and pick something appropriate – “@Calls”, perhaps?
For reference, Reviewing is where David Allen puts the Weekly Review process in his book. It’s my preference when thinking specifically of working with a split system – Outlook and the Blackberry – to put the Morning Review and the Weekly Review into the Processing section. Personal preferences vary, and all that.
Doing
Doing gets its own section… Hmm… Wonder what we’ve been “doing” so far? I agree with separating out Processing and Doing from a “purist” standpoint, and discussing the whole methodology, but as I alluded to above, these stages tend to get blurred – compressed – when you’re working in the mobile context.
It’s worth remembering the “Four-Criteria Model for Choosing Actions in the Moment”, from the book; you’ve got:
- Context
- Time available
- Energy available
- Priority
And a handy-dandy list of everything in your Blackberry, to readily choose from!
That about does it for this piece. I’ve got another couple of posts on this all lined up:
- The MindMaps that I used to outline and produce this document (as much for my own reference as anything else);
- An all-in-one downloadable of the work;
- Suggestions on other sites that may be relevant and useful in relation to this; and
- Comments on the suggested changes referenced in comments and emails.
Thanks to everyone that has left comments, either here on the site, via email, or via their own websites. Questions and suggestions are still welcome, via whatever method you’re most comfortable with.
Fixated? Me???
CBS News | Catch The Buzz On The Blogs | January 12, 2006 12:33:54
Melissa McNamara seems to think so…
Gary Slinger, a blogger rather fixated on organization, has tried to implement the book’s advice using a Blackberry. He writes, “Collection – getting commitments, obligations and ideas into the trusted system, where they can later be processed – is a key element of the Blackberry’s usefulness to me.”
It’s certainly a major part of my work and life right now.
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