Email frustration

I've been working with electronic messaging (email, etc.) in one form or another for over 30 years. Back in 1992, I (successfully) sold a server-software product that promised to help people deal with the "flood" of 40 emails a day! Much of my executive coaching business has revolved around helping professionals manage their email (many receive up to 400 a day).

I've had a front-row seat to the rise of email along the whole way. For many people, it's grown into a monstrous beast. A couple years ago, McKinsey & Company found that workers spend up to 28% of their day writing and reading emails. Inboxes fill up over lunch breaks. We're all guilty of being to quick to send to others whose email is just as out-of-control as ours.

I think that's at least half of the issue: who's creating the problem. I also think we can definitely find ways to address this together.

Continue Reading "Email is not the problem. Lack of agreement on how to use it is." »

Email late night.jpg

This article points out a very important truth that seems to be slowly gaining recognition in the business world: resting is an important part of producing.

HBR uses the topic of late-night emails to dive into the issue of how we work when our work is always accessible. I remember professionals of my father's generation grumbling that work could reach them at home by phone -- and the issue has grown exponentially since then.

The real problem is not the means of communication, but how a lack of agreement on how to use them and when. As Maura Thomas insightfully points out in this article, after-hours emails (not to mention texts, calls, faxes, Facebook messages, etc.) can easily create a culture where everyone feels they're expected to be connected at all times.

More often than not, this is driven by leaders who feel that they have to do more to keep the company moving forward -- but by doing so in a way that involves their subordinates, they tend to create pressure to keep up.

Here's  a key quote on this mentality:

The (often unconscious) belief that more work equals more success is difficult to overcome, but the truth is that this is neither beneficial nor sustainable.

The bottom line is that being "always on" never leaves you time "off," and that hurts everybody.

Click here for the article from HBR.

Best,

Eric

@EricMack
@eProductivity
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Image credits:
"Up All Night" by MisterGuy11 [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via DeviantArt.


The other day, I came across a blog post from a long-time Notes/Domino application developer. A "decent number of users" at his workplace are about to be migrated from Outlook to Notes 9.

Why would this ever happen, since so many people seem to like Outlook better than Notes? Does the migration even matter?

Honestly, I don't think these switches matter nearly as much as many people think they do (Microsoft's drum-beating notwithstanding). Here's why: many companies have migrated to Outlook after their employees have screamed to kill Notes (or, more often, after they were bought by an Outlook company), and you know what happened?

Continue Reading "Moving from Outlook to Lotus Notes (or vice versa)? It might not actually matter, and here's why" »

Why you don’t have time to save time

Thursday, March 12th, 2015
It's because you're working like it's still the Industrial Age, not like it's 2015.



In other words, you're using an outdated definition of what it means to be productive:

Productivity

Noun
[obsolete]
1. The process of producing more output with less input: "working harder."

[modern]
2. The art of accomplishing more with less time and less energy, achieved by learning new ways of doing things.

Which one would you rather use?

Continue Reading "Why you don't have time to save time" »

[Today's post comes from Nathan Paul of the eProductivity Team]

After learning David Allen's Getting Things Done  from Eric Mack for a year, I had a problem: on any given day, I had way more things marked as "due" than I could possibly get done. I dealt with it by taking all my incomplete items at the end of each day and changing the due date to the next day -- you can imagine how well that worked out.

To do list.png
...times 20, but better-defined

This continued until I realized something: I was putting due dates on a lot of things that weren't really due that day. This not only overloaded my to-do list, but gave me the extra mental stress of filtering my tasks, asking "Is this really due today?"

Here's how I solved this: by distinguishing between "due" and "like to do."

Continue Reading "GTD: How to prevent an overload of "due today"" »

The Workspace is a view that shows all of your IBM Notes apps and databases -- Mail, Notebook, Contacts, and much more -- like so:

Image:The most useful view in IBM Lotus Notes that you’re not using

I've been astonished to find that many Notes users don't have access to the Workspace by default. Most of my life life in Notes is lived out of this view, and I can't imagine working without it.

Continue Reading "The most useful view in IBM Lotus Notes that you're not using" »

I've coached a lot of Lotus Notes users, and hardly any of them even knew that Notes has bookmarks! Maybe because it's hidden under a really weird name, as you'll see below.

1. Turn on bookmarks


To do this, open the "View" menu and select "Dock the Open List." I know that doesn't make any sense, but I just deliver the mail.

Turn on IBM Lotus Notes Bookmarks

2. Create new bookmarks


In addition to the default bookmarks, you can create your own. To do that, just click the tab you want to bookmark, hold down the mouse button, and drag the tab onto the bookmarks bar:

Create IBM Lotus Notes Bookmarks

And there's your new bookmark!

Create new IBM Lotus Notes Bookmarks


3. Turn on large icons


Let's face it, we're not getting younger, so using larger bookmark icons can really help. Just right-click the bookmarks bar and select "Use Large Icons."

Bookmarks 3.jpg

'Til next time!

Eric

P.S. Want to discuss this, offer other great Lotus Notes tips, or ask for more? Connect with eProductivity on Facebook and Twitter!