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3 occasions when the pen is still mightier than the gadget

Jessica Stillman — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:05:53 +0000

On WebWorkerDaily there is no shortage of pieces highlighting the latest collaboration and productivity tools to help you get more done wherever you work, from idea management systems to newfangled communications channels. But just because so many cool new gadgets and apps are available doesn’t mean the old standbys are completely obsolete.

Pen and paper may be hovering somewhere between retro and extinct these days, but Kevin Purdy, for one, feels that there is still a place for ballpoints and notepads in our lives. Writing on Fast Company, Purdy highlights tasks he believes are better suited to exercising your (probably rapidly deteriorating) handwriting:

Lightning-strike ideas. “Carrying a notebook with you at all times is cheap and easy,” writes Purdy, and, according to Marina Martin, a business efficiency consultant quoted in the article, “even the most fluid, thoughtful electronics introduce too much friction into the process of thinking, writing down, then thinking further out.” Pen and paper is better for recall as well. “By committing your thought to paper, you’re also doing more to lock it into place,” writes Purdy. “Virginia Berninger, professor of educational psychology at the University of Washington, has the brain scans to prove it.”
Better to-do lists. “The role of paper is ‘changing from information recording and archiving, to a more temporary role of containing transient information,’ says Jenny Englert, senior cognitive engineer at Xerox,” writes Purdy, who continues, “In other words, paper still makes for a great to-do list.”
Jobs and events that seem overwhelming. “One thing that reliably helped very smart students with major test anxiety was writing about their anxieties to ‘off-load’ them. And that was very specifically noted as ‘writing,’” says Purdy, citing the work of psychologist Sian Beilock, an expert on choking under pressure.

Purdy’s article is lengthy and well worth a read, going into much more detail about why these situations are best handled with old-fashioned tools, but a rough outline of his argument is a great spark to get gadget lovers thinking about what situations, if any, still call for a pen.

Personally, my to-do lists have long ago gone electronic and I’m perfectly happy with that, but I agree that handwriting still channels emotions better, whether as a diary-like anxiety-control exercise or in that supremely old school gesture, the personal note or letter.

When, if ever, do you still reach for a pen?

At Net:Work 2011 this week we will discuss how the way we work is being transformed by breakthrough tools. The event will be held in San Francisco on Thursday, Dec. 8.

Image courtesy of Flickr user ElvertBarnes

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How to Learn From Unfulfilled Goals

Celine Roque — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 18:41:53 +0000

Web working, whether you’re a freelancer or a corporate employee, tends to be performance-based. We are judged by our output, which includes the daily and the weekly goals we meet.

Sometimes, however, we don’t meet all of the goals we set. I’m guilty of this. Every month there’s at least one goal I don’t accomplish. In fact, if I miss just one goal, I count myself lucky. These mistakes were the hard way for me to learn about goal-setting. But is there any other way to learn?

I believe there is. You can learn from how I’ve handled my own mistakes. Perhaps you can learn something that will keep you working on those New Year’s resolutions and goals you’ve set, and deal with the ones you were unable to meet.

Focus on your success. It’s easy to sink into disappointment, or even depression, if you don’t accomplish your goals. The more important your goal was, the more disappointed you’ll feel. But sometimes, if you look at the list of things you’ve accomplished, you’ll discover that you’ve achieved some things that weren’t in your list of daily, weekly, or monthly goals.

For example, you might not have met the deadline of the application for the freelance gig of your dreams, but you did finish an outline for a book idea you suddenly had. You might have been slow in one of your big projects, but you were able to finish ten minor projects earlier than expected. Don’t let your mistakes occupy your mind so much that you prevent yourself from finding long-term solutions for them.

Find out what went wrong. The inability to accomplish a goal means that something went wrong. The mistake might be found in the process you set, the time available to you, or the other people you’re working with. Here are some of the common mistakes I’ve made when setting goals:

Vague phrasing. “Become a better writer” or “Learn more about social media” is not a goal. Your goals must be concrete and specific enough that it’ll be easy for you to identify whether you’ve accomplished it or not. Instead, set something like “Write at least three blog posts that don’t get modified by the editor” or “Finish reading the free social media ebook I downloaded”.
Lack of time. It’s also possible that you underestimated the time it would take to accomplish your goal. I’ve learned to double or triple my expected time of completion for some projects, because I know that I’ll be underestimating it if I don’t.
Lack of communication. If you’re working with a team on a specific goal, examine why you weren’t able to deliver the results you wanted. Was the schedule of deliverables clear from the beginning? Is there a proper venue for group discussions?
Too ambitious. The problem with ambitious goals is that they tend to be large in scope. Break down the project into smaller milestones and next actions. Schedule these appropriately. You might take 30 minutes or more to do this for large projects, but you’ll be saving time in the long run.
Too simple. The opposite of ambitious goals are the ones that seem too simple – they’ll take only two to five minutes of your time. Sounds easy, right? But sometimes, the fact that they’re too simple makes them easy to avoid. “Oh that’s easy, I can do that later.” Until later becomes tomorrow, then next week, then next month. David Allen has a solution for this known as “the two-minute rule”. If there’s an item on your to-do list that takes less than two minutes to do, then just do it the second you think of it.

Know why you want to set this goal in the first place. Did you just set this goal because it’s on a list you made six months ago and it’s embarrassing to erase it? Or did you set it because you think it’s a goal you should have, but not necessarily a goal you want? By knowing why you set certain goals, especially personal ones, you can find the initial motivation you had and use it as your continuing inspiration.

Let’s face it – even if I wrote all of this down and you spent fifteen precious minutes reading it, goal setting will still be a trial-and-error experience for everyone. But with a little warning and by learning through another person’s mistakes, we’ll be more aware of what we’re doing the next time we sit down and write our goals.

Do you always accomplish the goals on your list? If not, how do you deal with missed goals? If you always manage to accomplish your goals, what contributes to your success?

Image by ilker from sxc.hu

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Will Google Launch a Task Manager?

Judi Sohn — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:39:21 +0000

When I saw the headline on TechCrunch, “Google Launching ToDo List Product?” my heart skipped a happy beat. Finally! But no. It’s likely that TechCrunch only exposed a Google employee who hit the wrong button and accidentally posted a private blog entry or email containing his personal weekend task list. False alarm.

Google attempts to compete almost point-for-point against major Microsoft Office features on nearly every note except for task and project management. What are they waiting for? It’s wonderful that we have so many on and offline ways of managing personal and group tasks whether they are directly tied to projects or not. Yet we’re still sorely missing tight integration between email, documents and tasks for those of us who use Google tools in our businesses. The inability to assign and track simple tasks and lists through Google Apps is a glaring omission that may very well be the reason some small businesses and groups are hesitant to give up their Outlook-based workflows with its handy task pane.

Clearly, we’re ready for Google to make some sort of announcement in this area, aren’t we? Should Google take the GrandCentral/Jot route and acquire a company like Remember the Milk, which already does an outstanding job of integrating tasks with Gmail, or should they develop something from scratch once and for all?

How do you think Google should respond to those of us who are clammoring for to-do/task management baked into their products?

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Freeware of the moment- Process Lasso

James Kendrick — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:33:55 +0000

Anyone who has been using mobile devices for very long knows too well the hit and miss scenario caused by multi-tasking. You have too much running in the background and the CPU grinds up to 100% and it’s hard to do much of anything. Today’s Freeware of the Moment is a utility that aims to end that problem once and for all. Process Lasso sets some rules and runs (with very little resources) in the background and prevents bad things from happening when too much gets going at once. It watches your CPU resources and when they get tapped out it steps the priority down for processes until the system is running at an even keel. I have heard many people praise this program but none so well as Steven Hughes of BostonPocket PC who has published a very thorough review of Process Lasso. Check out the review and then give Process Lasso a try and see how well your older system runs with today’s programs. Note that Process Lasso runs under Windows 2000, XP and Vista and there are both 32 bit and 64 bit versions available. Be sure and get the right one and you’ll be hauling buns in short order. Don’t be intimitdated, while Process Lasso has all sorts of technical settings to give you total control over your running environment the defaults will pretty much sort your system out with ease.

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Tip of the Week: Two Priorities/One Month

Anne Zelenka — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 22:00:54 +0000

How do you decide what you should do from your to do list? You have a free hour: should you write a blog post? Prospect for clients? Code a new feature? Instant message your boss? Take a nap?

In other words, what are your priorities? It doesn’t matter how much you get done if you’re doing the wrong stuff. Along with a to do list, you need a way of prioritizing that helps you decide what should be done.

I like the prioritization scheme that Susan L. Reid offers in her book Discovering Your Inner Samurai. She suggests you pick two top priorities and commit to them for one month:

Two priorities; one-month commitment. That’s all. Of course, if you can, you might narrow that priority down to one. Most of us, though, unless we are in an extreme situation, will have two.

Does having only two priorities mean you completely ignore other things you need to get done — work assignments, chores at home, or your taxes, for example? No. It just means when you’re scheduling your time and picking things to do you first look to tasks having to do with one of your two top priorities.

This may not work for your individual situation of course — two priorities may be far too few; a month may be too long. But it has the benefit of radically simplifying and intensifying your commitments for a duration that seems totally doable yet is long enough that it should produce some real results.

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Diddy Takes Racy Ad Direct to the Web

Chris Albrecht — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:00:33 +0000

Rap mogul Sean Combs (formerly P. Diddy) is taking the new ad for his “Unforgivable Woman” perfume straight to the Web, after MTV reportedly said it was too raunchy to air on TV.

The “movietisement,” catches Combs and model Jessica Gomez in all kinds of compromising, uhh, positions. Supposedly, the network execs wanted to edit out some of the more racy footage from the 30- and 60-second spots. Combs refused, and put a longer version of the commercial up on his MySpace page.

This could all be a ploy to draw more attention to the ad (ed note: I am a sucker). But regardless, it’s another example of artists being able to skip the traditional networks and take their messages (no matter how naughty) direct to audiences. Expect a press release in the next few days touting how many people watched the clip (kinda like when he said he got around 10,000 applicants from his YouTube search for a personal assistant. Sure you did, Puffy).

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Slow 3G Rollout in China?

Om Malik — Fri, 03 Sep 2004 17:58:10 +0000

China has been the one shining star of the mobile firmament. Many executives across the world have been counting on China’s 3G buildout as a way to prop up their sales, earnings and of course the stocks. Well it looks like the frenzy which was expected to start in January 2005, might be pushed back to July 2005, or even further. Mark Sue, the wireless analyst for RBC Capital Markets has been spending a lot of dollars on long distance calls and has learned ” the awarding of 3G licenses will now be pushed back from early 2005 to July 2005 and possibly into late 2005.”

This cannot be good news for companies like Nortel, which gets 50% of its revenues from wireless. Nortel has 3G trials in Guangzhou with China Unicom for both WCDMA and CDMA2000. Lucent that rakes in 45% of its sales from wireless is also on a sticky wicket. China accounts for an estimated 9% of Lucent’s total revenues. Lucent has a CDMA2000 trial with China Telecom in Guangzhou along with a WCDMA trial with Netcom in Shanghai. ” Ericsson, Motorola and local vendors Huawei and ZTE are currently best positioned to grab a large share of the 3G builds. While the China opportunity appears large, we note that equipment from essentially all the major vendors are installed in the Chinese carriers’ networks with the environment ripe for continued pricing competition,” Sue writes in a note to his clients.

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