If you’ve listened to even a little of my training you know I harp about the evils perils of attempting to multitask. You can’t actually do two things at once you can only switch quickly between them, "switchtasking" it’s been called.

I won’t repeat myself here, but I will refer you to an excellent discussion about the subject that took place on the Marketing Online Live podcast a few weeks ago.  This episode has nothing to do with online marketing so if you have no interest in this subject fear not.  This one is all about the most effective use of your time.  It’s only about 12 minutes long so take a few minutes and give a listen.

The program is hosted by Internet marketing guru Paul Colligan and Alex Mandossian who is a leader in the tele-seminar field.  Mandossian is also a productivity expert in his own right with a web site called beproductive.com.  As a deep thinker in the subject he is a big proponent of focusing your limited time and attention on the truly important things, one at a time.

Photo by:lutykuh

New membership site development service – WishList Master.

Since we began to offer our online Outlook program I’ve received a number of inquires about how we made it happen.  It seems many of our readers have produced content like  training, articles, coaching or consulting services that  lend themselves to online deliver Here’s a quick explanation how our system is put together.

Workload Master is a very special kind of blog called a membership site. This simply means that someone must be a registered member (or subscriber) to access the premium material.  Our site is powered by WordPress, the most popular content management system on the planet.  Our member’s area (master Your Workload with Outlook) is managed by a very special WordPress plugin called WishList Member.

I’ve had so many people ask  how to develop a site like ours that last year I formed a brand new company called Wishlist Master (how original is that).  WishList Master provides consulting and development of membership sites for trainers, consultants, publishers and other content providers.  The sites we create are based upon the WordPress platform using WishList Member.

If you have any interest in exploring this exploding Internet niche, please don’t hesitate to contact me.  I love to talk about this stuff.

I also receive a lot of questions about our videos.  Almost all of them were recorded with a piece of software called Camtasia.  It is the most popular and versatile screen recording application for the PC.

I thought it was going to take about two weeks to create the online training program.  After all, I had been teaching the program for years.  Well it took over 6 months of working day and night to launch the site.  Since then I’ve learned a lot, which is why we formed WishList Master.  Our objective is to help clients avoid the learning curve so that they can bring their membership sites to market in a fraction of the time that it took me.  It’s working.

When you begin to think of your time as an asset (like money) you begin to think differently about how you are using it. Try to apply common money terminology to determine if we are making the best use of yours.

First a major distinction. You can always get more money (or any other resource for that matter). But you can never get any more time. You get what you get and that’s it.

Invest…Spend….Waste

We tend to use the term “spend” when we think about how we use our time. But that’s not quite true.

For example, you can “invest” your time by finding ways to do things faster or eliminating unnecessary steps. The result isn’t more time, but you do have more available for other things.

Here’s a quote from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged that sums it up nicely: “…every hour I save is an hour added to my life. It used to take me five hours to fill that tank. It now takes three. The two I saved are mine-as pricelessly mine as if I moved my grave two further hours away for every five I’ve got.”

You can also invest time to create income. For example using your time to learn a new skill can result in an increase in your income.

And most important, you invest time when you use it to strengthen relationships.  Forget the phrase “I’m spending time with my family”  and look at it as an investment instead.

Next time we’ll look at spending and wasting time.

Top photo by thinkpanama

Just before the holidays I used Survey Monkey to conduct a time management survey among people who work form home. Since then many of the participants asked to see the results, so please accept my apologies for the delay. However it took this long to get enough responses.

My objective going into this was to determine the market potential for a home-based specific time management course. For that reason can’t share the results of those questions at this time. However the most interesting results came from questions I’m happy to share.

Total responses: 92 (It took me a lot of tweets, e-mails, LinkedIn posts and everything else I could think of to get this many).

Here are the questions:

What are the two major sources of frustration and stress that keep you from being as productive as you would like to be?

Distractions and Interruptions 56%
Loneliness 17%
Telephone calls 15%
Waiting for others 9%
Everything else 3%

This is the last time I ask an open question like this. It took a while and some judgment calls to boil it down to this.

Frankly I was surprised by this. You’d think that someone who works alone would be less distracted, but the numbers speak for themselves. I must point out that many respondents indicated that children and other family members and pets are major sources of interruptions.

On average how many hours do you work in your home office per week?

0-10 5.6%
11-20 22.2%
21-30 33.3%
31-40 11.1%
41-50 22.2%
51-60 5.6%
60+ 0

Again I was a bit surprised. I expected a much higher percent in the 31-40 and 41-50 range. But that’s why we do surveys. Had I phrased the question differently, like “how many hours do work each week (taking into account time with customers and travel)”, the numbers could (and probably would) have been very different.

What tools do you currently use to manage your time? Choose all that apply?

Software (Outlook, Lotus Notes etc.) 82%
Paper-based planner 35%
Smartphone 65%
Web based service 29%
PDA 18%
None 0% (this was encouraging)

It probably would have been best to limit this question to one choice, like “what is your most used tool?” But I asked it this way to learn the to help craft a curriculum. And for that purpose it was quite helpful.

The high percentage using software and smartphones was probably skewed because the survey requests were delivered online; hence targeting an audience predisposed to using technology.

Which best describes you?

Business Owner with Staff 1%
Self Employed – Solo 82%
Employee 7%

Which best describes your business/profession?

Consulting 47%
Sales 23%
Service Business 24%
Online Business 6%

(The question also included options for legal and financial but each received zero responses)

So these are the totally unscientific results. I hope your find them useful. There were quite valuable to me.

If you have any thoughts or ideas about how to create better surveys I am all ears.

Things have been a little quite here in WorkloadMaster land over the holidays. I took a trip to Texas to visit family which caused me to take a break from posting. But I’ve been busy behind the scenes.

Between the holidays I had an opportunity to interview Chuck Frey, publisher of InnovationTools.com.

Visit The On Target Podcast web site for the interview and show notes.

Not long ago I posted a short video about using a mind map to help visualize project outcomes. It was one of the most popular posts on the blog that month.

I found the software and lots of good information on The Mind Mapping Software Blog, published by Chuck Frey. Because I received so many questions about mind mapping I decided to to ask Chuck to do an interview in On Target. I was thrilled that he was available.

Chuck’s main web site is InnovationTools.com which focuses on innovation, creativity and brainstorming. He’s been at it for about eight years and has created a wealth of information about these subjects. If you have an interest in this area, you can easily spend a few hours here. If you don’t read anything else on the site, be sure to read Chuck’s post about river people vs. goal people. It demonstrates his writing chops (he’s a journalist by training) and is something to think about for the new year.

Chuck’s are first rate which shows from the volume of traffic he receives and inclusion on the prestigious directory Alltop.  Most impressive is that he created and managed both sites while working a full-time job. Now that’s a busy guy. So I took time during the interview to ask him about what tools and techniques he uses to manage his time. To learn more, listen to the interview or at least read the show notes a The On Target Podcast.

Photo by Sarah Grice

Merry Christmas!

I promised to take this week off, but I just found this article from Scientific American about multitasking and had to share it. Plus I needed an excuse to try out this new app that gives me the ability to post from my Blackberry.

Here’s the link: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=multitasking-mind.

See you after the holiday.

- Bob

Westchase Golf Club

I’m not talking about computer networking here.  I mean the kind where you meet people face to face.   Those local networking  functions where you’re herded into a room to  drift around listening to everyone rehearse their “elevator speech.”  I don’t know about you, but I find this painful.

If you need to meet new local people for your business and you like golf, Florida based entrepreneur, John Kypriotakis has the answer.  He has created a new program in the Tampa area called LinksNet.

(Listen to my interview with John Kypriotakis about LinksNet and his approach to time management on the On Target Podcast)

OK, so why am I writing this in a blog about time management and efficiency? As much as I hate the  concept of “multi-tasking”, this really fits the bill.  LinksNet gives you the ability to perform a very important function for your business (meeting potential customers, partners etc.) while doing something relaxing (most of the time).

I can’t think anything that wastes  time and energy more than misinformation and maliciousness.  Just ask anyone in Washington. Here  is a little story I received by e-mail several years ago that gives us a practical way to filter the information we receive.

The Test of the Three Strainers

Bill Ted and Socrates

In ancient Greece, Socrates was highly reputed for his wisdom. One day someone came to the great philosopher and said to him “Do you know what I just heard about your friend?”

“One minute answered Socrates. Before you tell me, I would like you to pass a test, the three strainer test.”
“The three strainers?”

“Surely so,” said Socrates. “Before telling all kinds of things on others, it is good to take time to filter what we would like to say. That is what I call the test of the three strainers. The first strainer is the one of truth. Did you check if what you wish to tell is true?”

“No I only heard about it.”

“Very good. Then you do not know, if it is the truth.”

“Now let us try another way of straining by using a second strainer, the one of goodness. What you want to inform me about is something good?”

“Oh no! Just the opposite.”

“Then,” Socrates went on, “you want to tell me bad things about him and you are not sure that they are true.”

“Maybe you can still pass the test, because there is a last strainer, the one of usefulness. Is it useful that you inform me about what my friend could have done?”

“No, not really.”

“Then,” Socrates concluded, “if what you have to tell me is neither true, not good, or useful, why do you want to tell me about it?”

Enjoy your holiday weekend!

-Bob

It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without a post about gratitude. I saw a speaker the other day who said that scientific studies about happiness revealed that the the key is gratitude. I think she’s right. If we focus our energy on the good things in our lives then we use less on the not so good.

Enough with that. Here’s a video of Conan with comedian Louis CK. It’s very funny and a little crude, but he makes a good point about gratitude.

So now kick back, relax and enjoy your holiday.

– Bob

Hey there masochists early adopters it’s official, the beta version of Microsoft Office 2010 is now available for download. All 684MB of it! Just start it up and go have lunch.

I’m not quite ready to give it a spin, but I have to sooner or later to start preparing for  the latest version of Master Your Workload with Outlook.  The words Beta and Microsoft in one sentence make me just a little concerned. Maybe I’ve been watching too many Apple commercials.

Microsoft recommends that you uninstall your previous versions of Office and not use it on a primary machine. Let’s see, which one should I use? Oh yes the free download is for Windows XP SP3 and later. Meaning if you didn’t upgrade to Service Pack 3, then don’t bother.

Personally I’m about to take the Windows 7 plunge I won’t be testing the new Office flavor until after the dust settles. I attended a Microsoft sponsored in-depth Windows 7 demo yesterday and was favorably impressed. The Koolaid was tasty too.

Here’s the link:  Office 2010 Beta Download

If you try it please tell us about your experience.

- Bob