In Your Corner Coaching & Consulting Services

TimeBridge is a snappy tool to schedule meetings, removing the eternal back-and-forth that adds clog to your e-mail inbox or voicemail queue. In a snap, you can propose multiple times for a meeting, invite participants, and even include a free conference call number if necessary. If you like, it will confirm the best time automatically. It integrates with Outlook or Google calendars, so while you’re proposing times, you will be able to see your own availability plus any participants who have chosen to share their free/busy information with you.

So far, I’ve found no down side whatsoever. I’m very happy I found this. So is PC World where you will find this rave review.

The short answer is “yes.” Even those Kings of Intensity, the International Game Developers Association recognize this in their very good article “Why Crunch Mode Doesn’t Work”. Although written for software developers, there’s lots of information applicable to the rest of us about productivity rates, sleep deprivation, etc.

Here’s an interesting statistic:

In our study, FDC [artillery Fire Direction Center — ER] teams from the 82nd Airborne division were tested during simulated continuous combat operations lasting 36 hours. Throughout the 36 hours, their ability to accurately derive range, bearing, elevation, and charge was unimpaired. However, after circa 24 hours they … no longer knew where they were relative to friendly and enemy units. They no longer knew what they were firing at. Early in the simulation, when we called for simulated fire on a hospital, etc., the team would check the situation map, appreciate the nature of the target, and refuse the request. Later on in the simulation … they would fire without hesitation regardless of the nature of the target.

Next time I’m in the hospital, I’m asking that resident how much sleep he’s had lately.

Everyone is talking about goals. How do you know what goals to identify. Francisco Dao writes in Inc. magazine:

The most frightening trend seems to be goal setting by the process of wishful thinking. Setting the right goals is a tricky matter. If you aim too low, then the goals become trivial, but if you make them so high that they seem unattainable, your employees will likely think you’re delusional.

Read the whole article here.

The answer, as usual, is “It depends.” For some of us, we are always on the move, always jumping to the next thing, perhaps overly influenced by the compelling nature of our obligations or interests. In that case, it can be good to interrupt the flow with some time to assess whether we’re actually on track toward goals worth meeting.

Others of us have less of an action-orientation. We gather information, think things through, strategize and plan with great skill, but choosing among options and moving into decisive action can be more of a challenge.

I often fall into the second category. I enjoy exploring possibilities and tweaking plans, looking for the best option. When it’s time to move from analysis to action, I can find it hard to make the transition. At that moment, momentum can be a valuable gift. I’ve learned that when I experience energy and enthusiasm towards something that needs to be done, it’s best to consciously lean into it and let it carry me along.

Here’s an example: At the time I started graduate school, I had three children around middle-school age. The increased complexity of my life, with classes, homework and project teams added to school carpooling, soccer games and Boy Scouts, seriously challenged my ability to manage my time reliably. I decided I needed to find the right tool on the first try - I didn’t have the luxury of cobbling something together that “might” work, or I could end up forgetting to pick up my son at dusk in the middle of Ypsilanti.

So, one day, I made a pilgrimage to the not-so-local Franklin Quest store. I kited myself out with a leather binder, a year’s worth of attractive daily planning pages, and all the trimmings I thought I would need. I also signed up then and there for “Franklin Planner training” for the next day. Within half a week, I had imported all the important information about my life into the planner and was ready to use it in a robust way, a development for which I thanked God regularly throughout the rest of my educational career.

I used my enthusiasm for “cool tools” and the energy of momentum to accomplish in several days what might have taken months if I’d adopted an incremental approach.

So know yourself. What kind of person are you? What motivates you to take a right action? If momentum serves you, stir it up and use it.

One of life’s big challenges is focusing your energy without letting anything important fall through the cracks. Here are some helpful tips to help you stay out of the sand traps of life:

Write things down.

Unless you’re among the 2% or so of people who can carry every detail in their heads without fail, develop a simple system to capture the date of your next committee meeting, the mechanic’s estimate for your engine rebuild, or nifty tool your brother-in-law can’t live without. Take a look at our Tips and Tools page for some handy ways to keep track of details.

Turn off the radio.

After you check the traffic and weather, snap off the radio for the rest of your drive to work. Think about the day ahead. Call to mind the things that are important — both tasks that need to be accomplished and the kind of person you want to be during your day. Have you read or heard something lately that inspired you? Call it to mind. Do you have a particularly sticky problem on the horizon? This can be a good time to sit with it and let your mind be creative.

Know Your Style

Do you like silent seclusion in order to focus? Or do you do your best work collaboratively? Be proactive about providing yourself the kind of environment that helps you function at a high level. Is your work environment the exact opposite of what you need? Be creative. Look for ways to carve yourself a niche, or keep an eye out for other similarly collaborative folks and find a conference room with a whiteboard for brainstorming.

Know Your Strengths

According to research by the Gallup Organization, one of the elements of engaging and effective work is doing what you do best every day. But many of us don’t have a clear idea of what our strengths are. A good starting point is the Signature Strengths inventory available at AuthenticHappiness.com (free registration required).

Use Your Strengths

Once you are aware of your innate strengths (not, by the way, to be confused with training or skills), you need to employ them. Sometimes, though, it’s not clear how our strengths can be applied to the challenges we face. For instance, perhaps Rebecca, a rather shy software developer, is called upon to make connections with other key departments and persuade them to share information vital to completing an important project. How can she use her tendencies to be detail-oriented and methodical to good advantage?

A naturally reserved person is often uncomfortable in interactions that have to be improvised on the fly. So Rebecca’s strengths can be called upon in her preparation. Her analytical talent-set will come in handy to develop reasons that an ongoing collaboration might be beneficial to the other departments. Development of a clear explanation of the value of the project to the entire organization, a precise description of what is required, and anticipation of possible objections will increase the likelihood of a prompt and positive response.

1. Write yourself an e-mail.
   Rather than digging up a post-it note and then hoping you don’t lose it later, if you’re at your computer, just send yourself a quick message with the subject line “Ideas - business concepts” or whatever. Many e-mail programs can be set up to recognize and immediately file it for future reference.
2. Carry a moleskine
   This is a nifty high-quality notebook that is worth the money. It is small enough to carry everywhere, with crisp paper, a ribbon placeholder and an elastic band to keep it closed. I’m particularly fond of the small square-grid variety because it makes organizing small snippets so much easier.
3. Use Jott
   Pick up your cell phone, dictate a message, and have it turn up in e-mail several seconds later. It doesn’t get much better than that. See further discussion on theTips and Tools pages.
4. Tell your spouse
   What if you wake up in the middle of the night without your moleskine? Well, depending on how good your idea is, you might roll over, nudge your spouse awake and tell him or her all about it. Yes, they will be irritated. So irritated that they will likely remember what you say in great detail, hoping to get you back for it in the future. (This method is not recommended by In Your Corner Coaching & Consulting. Use at your own risk.)

The purpose of communication is to make information available to others in a way that makes it easy for them to receive it. Simple enough.

Why, then, do we get bombarded with PowerPoint slides that look like this?

Let’s say you hear the afternoon’s presenter say “Our first point is . . . .” Would you like to be looking at that slide?

Or would you, perhaps, prefer to have this on the screen in front of you?

We rest our case.

For more on this, see Presentation Zen’s article on the “Takahashi Method”.

“Work smarter, not harder.” We’ve all heard it.

We may have said to ourselves, “That sounds catchy.” But what does ‘working smarter’ look like?

Here are some tips for getting the most out of the time and effort you put in:

Back up the truck

Before you plunge into the next project, take a minute to step back and ask the questions that will ensure your aim isn’t off.

• What are the factors that make this the most important thing to do next? What would it take to change my mind about that?
• Are there any possible unintended effects of doing this thing this way?
• What mistake am I most likely to make in situations like this? Am I making it?

Don’t go it alone

Many work environments hold the “individual contributor” in high esteem. But the smartest individual contributors I know are aware of their strengths and weaknesses and know when to get help, advice or even set up a partnership with someone with the skills and talents they need on their team.

Use technology to your advantage

We admit, you could drown in the torrent of technological tools out there - even the free ones. But when you find the tools that fit your style, serve your purposes, and solve problems you actually have, you will want to stop people on the street to tell them what a difference they have made for you.

One of our purposes here at In Your Corner is to offer concrete means of implementing the suggestions we give. Stay tuned. More to come.