Browsing Tag

lifehack

How to not get behind when on the road and be more efficient

Business travel represents one of the most challenging things for most folks when it comes to time management. Whether it’s a conference, an off site or customer visit, being on the road can pile up work and that’s just not good. I’ve just finished one the biggest travel years yet and 2008 has risk of being even more travel and effective time management is becoming far more important than ever.

Don’t get me wrong – the security lines, delayed flights and airports lines are fun and all, but work continues to accrue when in transit and it is effectively a continuous reality. I don’t have a list of tips per se only areas for consideration:

  • Work doesn’t Stop – This is a common pitfall, some folks think that being on the road alleviates, or at least postpones the daily administivia – wrong! Your customers still need service. Carve out time to email, return calls and touch base with key workplace constituents.
  • You Can Take a Meeting – This is the most interesting one to me. I find than many folks don’t take meetings on the road. Why not? 8 out 10 conference tracks are useless, 30 minutes out of an all day meeting can be refreshing and being on mute most of the time is ok. So why is it you decline most requests? Diversify and balance your day when possible.
  • Be the Timezones – If you are typically an East Coast worker and you go west you have at least 2 hours of free time in the morning to stay on top of things. If you go from the west coast to the east coast you can wrap up yesterday’s west coast work by 10AM ET. The challenging ones are the 5+ hour time changes, it almost seems that the work never ends – so pick a time to end and manage to it.
February 2, 2008 by
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2 Cool Twitter tools to simplify your Twitter-verse

have you ever just wanted a snapshot at what’s going on in your twitter-verse? Not my, phrase – the marketing team at Gridjit, not just known for centering on such a simple name, but also for thier key differentiation message:

Gridjit Features:

  • Visualize your conversations in a clean layout
  • Drill through other people’s view on the Twitter-verse by clicking on their profile names and the people they “@” tag
  • Regular updates with more goodies to come!

I use it only for the quick view. ThinCloud has a great iPhone web application for Twitter, much nicer posting.

HINT TO BLOGGERS

Nothing good can ever come from a cron job during a maintenance window. Complex autoposting anyone? Not a good idea.

January 21, 2008 by
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The Lazy Bloggers way to efficiently managing content

I know we are all enamored with widgets, social networks and alike, but it can become just a bunch of WORK! So I spent the weekend overhauling my tools, blog and networks to make it just a little easier. So to save YOU time, I’ve put together some insights I received from the let’s say – at least the last 7 days of work.

Tools

The right tools for the right job, not just relevant to carpenters, appears to be good for bloggers as well. I’ve been watching folks use tools on twitter, like [tag]twitterific[/tag], I’ve been playing with my bookmarking sites and just seeing how it might best be coordinated. My previous content management strategy very much had a herding cats feel to it. Here are some of the tools which I’ve centered on based on input from other folks:

  • Shareaholic – a single firefox plug-in which manages all of my go forward social networks. No more crazy toolbars or additional buttons – a single drop down! Needless to say, Firefox is a must have tool.
  • Feedburner – Yes, I know everyone knows about [tag]Feedburner[/tag], but did you know the Pro tools are FREE now? Each tab now has new cool stuff you can use, not just for optimizing your feed, but also your site. There are a whole bunch a goodies in there for you – Feedburner, not just for RSS – a single interface to Optimize, Publicize and Monetize (I’m not monetizing, but I guess I could go for the $.04/mo I might get) and Troubleshootize.
  • FeedFlare – I know, it’s part of feedburner, but it’s so cool because it replaced my previous WordPress plug-in for bookmarking and I think my site is faster, just because of this.

Your Friends and Your Networks – Your TIME

Managing networks, bookmarks and actively participating is a bunch of work. So I QUIT! Sorta anyhow – I’ve centered on only a handful Facebook, del.icio.us, Digg and StumbleUpon (I only kept stumble since it’s a lightweight commitment). Last but not least – Twitter, I’m not sure why I like this so much, it is just fun – I think because it is [tag]iPhone[/tag] friendly and not that much of a commitment – getting the theme here? Social Media-Life Balance

Intelligent Design

Since I’m fundamentally a lazy cat, I really needed to step back and think about how I wanted my online experience to evolve. So I found myself just getting way into the constructs of understanding relationships, what smart folks do online, (this requires a bunch of reading) and what I really want to do with my spare time and why. So I mapped out goals, systems, tools and traffic patterns to understand where I should focus on delivering reasonably meaningful content to the marketplace and I realized I had an accidental architecture. I had bits of mediocre content flying all over this Arpanet.

So what did I do? I decided to literally diagram where I am, where my readers are spatially on the web compared to where I am and weighted “objects” on benefit, effort and a totally subjective cool factor. Yes, I think everything can be put into model. Once I did that I figured out my haphazard hairball or spaghetti online existence just wasn’t what I wanted. So where did I start? My blog and worked out from the brand nucleus.

  • Usability: Your stuff has to easily navigated to be read! That’s right, I didn’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about what goes where and why is something is on my blog until now. Guess what – there’s less clutter and in just the short time I’ve been re-designed, I’ve had more subscribers than any other single day! Clean is good.
  • Consistency: This is as much about content, as it is about the frequency, so I automated a few things with behind the scenes posting automation/replication. I still need to clean things up a little, but Twitterfeed and the WordPress plug-in Postalicious will be making my life just a little easier and establishing a reliable flow of content, I would like to read. I think I still have a little recursive content, but I’ll have that fixed by Wednesday.
  • Necessity – Only use things that add value. If a widget doesn’t derive benefits which you can PROVE in your analytics, then its got to go. You know what there’s an interesting side benefit- less widgets = faster site.

This is what I have for now, I’ll keep thinking about it and if you have ideas or recommendations let me and my readers know.

January 12, 2008 by
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Kudos to Xobni!

I had the most pleasant discussion with matt brezina, a founder of Xobni or as listed on thier website a person who’s “excitement level is high. He’s our co-founder, mascot, and deal maker, all in one.” He did seem a little over caffeinated, but hey it’s apparently understood in throughout the Xobnni business and played well on the call.

So due to my post on Marketing 3.0 where I referenced the importance of product and cited my uninstall on Xobni, we exchanged notes and chatted.

These folks at [tag]Xobni[/tag] are passionate about search and email! I explained some items which did work and didn’t work, but Matt was straightforward on thier strategy and goals with the product. With the core infrastructure in place a build out of more capabilities exist on thier roadmap. It really seems the next version or so will require a re-install.

Matt also explained their target market and the general benefits – so I’m optimistic on the new capabilities…. So as I said in the other piece, give it a try. Matt’s candor, passion and willingness to SOLICIT and FOLLOW UP on feedback shows a service oriented approach to technology which is more or less lacking in many organization.

Thanks for the call Matt – I so hope your thing explodes into a crazy business for y’all. I also hope you can allow it to help me manage all of my extended networks, personal and business from a single and currently embedded interface for an application which consumes our typical business life – [tag]email[/tag].

November 1, 2007 by
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