Labor Day weekend is almost over and it’s back to work for the last few months of the year – I won’t even tell you how many days left until the holidays. Costco has Christmas decorations up and I’m already getting emails from the Dana Point Turkey Trot asking me to reserve my place for Thanksgiving morning.

This is the part of the year when things really start to move fast for all of us. Summer is officially over, many of us have family members who are going back to school (or we’re going back to school ourselves), we’re starting to think about holiday plans, and yes, we’re trying to figure out how we’re going to complete all of our professional goals before the end of the year.

Here’s the problem: many of us get overwhelmed and we don’t even think about coming up for air until January 1st. Plus, there is just more and more stuff coming our way each day that we need to do something with (emails, requests, meetings, projects, etc.) Here are five practices that I use to help control all that stuff:

1) Embrace Inbox Zero
As I write these words, both of my work and personal email inboxes are completely empty. I follow a system called Inbox Zero, made popular by 43folders.com

You can Google Inbox Zero for more info, but the basic premise is to do one of four things when you are reviewing e-mail messages:

• Do it (if less than two minutes)
• Defer it (schedule for another time if longer than two minutes)
• Archive it for future reference (if you’ll need it again someday)
• Delete it (if there is no current/future action needed by you)

Using this method, I’m able to keep my inbox clean and almost always empty by the end of the day. As a result, email doesn’t stack up untouched for days and weeks.

2) Maintain a Central Notes System
Almost all of us take regular notes during conversations, telecons, and meetings. The problem is that many of these notes end up in all kinds of different places. The key is to have one system that holds all your notes so you can reference them quickly and easily.

For me, I take a blank pad of paper to every meeting and put the other party’s name at the top of the page with the date. At the end of the day, I type the key points of my notes into either Highrise or Evernote, depending on the context (Highrise if it’s a conversation with a current/future client, Evernote for everything else). If I’m at a computer or mobile device while taking notes, I use Evernote. Both of them sync the notes to all my computers and mobile devices.

I’d like to go completely digital someday, but I’m not yet at the point where I’ve seen a good enough software solution to take notes on my iPad during a client meeting. Hopefully we’ll see a decent solution for this soon.

3) Use One Calendar
Too many people run their lives off multiple calendars in different places and, as a result, miss important events or cannot accurately plan their time. While I realize this isn’t always possible in every environment, I find it very useful to utilize the same calendar for work, home, and personal events. I use BusyCal on my Mac so that I can see all my information in one place.

If you are using multiple calendars, consider consolidating to no more than two calendars (if it’s not practical to have work and personal calendars combined). If possible, consolidate this down to one calendar so you have a single roadmap to run your day. Stop spending time mentally keeping track of multiple calendars. At work, talk to IT about getting your work calendar talking to your mobile devices. In your personal life, use Google Calendar or MobileMe to link calendars between computers and mobile devices. Use systems when you can overlay calendars if need be to see it all in one place.

4) Schedule a Planning Hour
For years, I’ve spent 30-45 minutes on Sunday evenings planning out all the important things that need to get done in the coming week. I look at my goals, project plans, and task lists, and plan out the week. I also am sure my weekly plans align with my long-term goals.

I block time during the week for important tasks. For example, if I have a set of important client calls I need to make early in the week, I’ll block a 1-2 hour spot for it on Monday or Tuesday and be sure focus on just that work. I also limit how much people can interrupt me during that time. I’ll turn my phone and e-mail off for that hour or two so I can focus (they’ll leave a message if it’s important). If someone interrupts me, I’ll say, “I’m in the middle of an important task. Can I get back to you at 4 o’clock?” Of course, I’m sure to follow up when I promise.

The plan always changes by the end of the first day of the week, but having a strong starting point keeps me in control of my scheduling decisions and allows me to make time for important tasks. One tip: always leave at least 20-30% of your day unscheduled for the inevitable unplanned stuff that comes up (perhaps more if a big part of your work is responding to the daily needs of others). Trying to control every second is almost as bad for your stress level as not scheduling at all.

5) Keep Tasks Deadline Oriented
The fine folks over at Getting Things Done have mostly gotten me into the habit of only putting something on a task list for today if it really needs to get done today. I’ve been the master at breaking this rule in the past. Nothing is more demotivating than starting a day with 50-60 things on a “wish list” when you know there is no possible way to tackle even a small portion of it.

Be realistic and only put the things on the task list that must get done today. Use project lists for other tasks that don’t specifically need to happen today. Putting this habit into practice has brought me a lot of peace and a much greater sense of accomplishment at the end of each day. Plus, I don’t have to push the “postpone” button on every task at the end of every day – also very demotivating.

I’m confident these five practices will help you run your day by the clock and your life with a vision.

I was remembering the other day about my first couple of years working professionally. It was in the early ’90s. Email was just being introduced into the workplace. I received around ten emails a day, only about half of them requiring an answer. Most of the time, if a co-worker had a question, they would walk down the hall to ask it.

Contrast that to today’s work… I work both as a professor and as a business owner. During the school year, I receive about 100 emails a day from students or related to the business of the university where I work. As a business owner, it can fluctuate, but my non-university email can get another 100 or so when we have a lot of classes or projects going on with our clients.

Regardless of how we started, most of us today have to fill the role of what Peter Drucker coined as “the knowledge worker.” Industrialized nations today have shifted the majority of their workforces from using our bodies to build things, to using our brains to produce something of value to another. This is not necessarily a good thing in every aspect, as illustrated so well by the book Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, by Matthew Crawford.

The pace of work today is rapid. We’re confronted with all these forces, pulling on our time and attention. How then do we manage it all? How can we prioritize what’s important and not become overwhelmed?

Time management authors and course providers have been capitalizing on these questions for decades now. One such guru who is providing great tools and ways of working at our peak performance is David Allen, author of Getting Things Done.

Getting Things Done

If this is the first time you’ve heard the phrase ‘getting things done,’ Trent Hamm of the Christian Science Monitor’s The Simple Dollar, clearly articulates what this system is and how to apply the various principles in your work in a series of posts, listed below.

1. A New Practice for a New Reality
2. The Five Stages of Mastering Workflow
3. The Five Phases of Project Planning
4. Setting Up the Time, Space, and Tools
5. Corraling Your Stuff
6. Getting “In” to Empty
7. Setting Up the Right Buckets
8. Keeping Your System Functional
9. Making the Best Action Choices
10. Getting Projects Under Control
11. The Power of the Collection Habit
12. The Power of the Next-Action Decision
13. The Power of Outcome Focusing
14. Five Key Things to Remember

I use a combination of David Allen’s GTD system, along with some of the classic approaches described in the Franklin Covey system, such as considering our various roles and prioritizing tasks around our roles. If you want a great training system to walk you through getting started with GTD, check out their GTD system product.

In this post, I’ll tell you about some of the tools I use in my own GTD system. One of the things David Allen emphasizes is that each of us needs to make the principles work within our own preferences and styles. Since I enjoy making use of technology to streamline my workflow, you’ll note a number of applications along the way that can assist you as you seek to live a knowledge worker’s life.

The Basics

While some of us have complex systems we use to accomplish our goals, you can start by ensuring you have the basics for your way of organizing.

A planner

Your planner can be a physical planner (Franklin Covey still tops my list of planners, though I’ve stopped ever carrying something physical around with me). You also can have something electronic that you use, though make sure it is something that can be with you at all times (such as via your smartphone).

Your planner / planning system should have both a calendar for time-based appointments and tasks, as well as a robust to do list. I use www.rememberthemilk.com for my to dos and Outlook 2010 for my calendaring system.

A note-taking tool

Again, you can either carry note-taking tools around with you, or use an electronic one (assuming again you’ll have access to it via your smart phone). I use a combination of my LiveScribe Pulse Smart Pen (see video below), along with a great online notebook system called www.Evernote.com.

Levenger has a fabulous Circa notebook system that I use which allows you to add and remove pages with ease, due to their unique punching system. The $58 for a Circa desk punch seemed expensive when I first saw it, but I can tell you now that I don’t regret my purchase in the slightest as I’m able to make notebooks/pages from any paper now (including the paper I use to record using myLiveScribe pen that I print from our laser printer).

Once you have the hole punch, you can create all different sizes of notebooks out of whatever printed material you want. Lifehacker has some terrific printable notebooks and planners that are highlighted on their site.  Best part is – - they’re free.

Workflow Processing and Organizing Tools

I highly recommend that you read Getting Things Done, if you haven’t already. It will help you see that it isn’t about using the right planner or having the correct smart phone. Rather, Getting Things Done is about a set of key principles and systems that help you live and manage by them.

Once you’ve finished the book, I recommend ordering a set of system guides from The David Allen Company. These guides are great for keeping close-at-hand in your workspace and include practical guides and checklists as follows:

• Mastering workflow
• Incompletion trigger list
• Workflow processing and organization diagram
• Weekly review
• Natural planning model
• Project planning trigger list
• Horizons of focus

I reach for my system guides more often than I reach for an envelope or a stamp. Probably the best one is on how to process and organize workflow. Allen outlines how to take “life’s random inputs” (such as email, phone calls, ideas, incoming mail, and requests) and process and organize them all.

Below is a graphic of the tools I use for the various systems prescribed by Allen. After that, I briefly describe each tool and how it integrates with my own GTD system.

gtd-tools

The first question asked in the GTD workflow system is regarding whether or not the item is actionable. If the answer is yes, Allen prescribes having systems for projects, deferring tasks, and delegating them.

When my projects involve more than just one or two people, my go to system is called Many Moon. It is an easy-to-use online project management system. You can add projects, milestones, tasks, and keep track of who has committed to what by when. It also integrates with Google Docs, making it easy for a team of people to comment on a document or spreadsheet that is related to the project from within Many Moon, keeping more of your information in one place.

You don’t attend too many project meetings in a company before you see a gaggle of notebooks being lugged along. I prefer to use a notebook system called Evernote. It is an application they refer to as being “in the cloud.” That means that all the items you put in this notebook are stored on a computer on the internet, as opposed to your local hard drive, so the information can follow you wherever you go. Need to access your notebook on a different computer? It’s there with a desktop application that syncs with your data stored “in the cloud.” Need to see your information while on the road? It’s there using an iPhone, Blackberry, or iPad app. At an internet cafe, without a smart phone or iPad? No problem. Just log in to your account using an internet browser and all your same information is there.

Evernote is great for project-related information such as ideas, meeting notes, and you can even record your thoughts via an audio note. After a meeting where you take notes on a whiteboard, fire up the Evernote iPhone application and take a photo of the brainstorming you did. Later, you can email the photo to the attendees and also have it on your Evernote notebook for storing and future searching. Evernote is so smart, that it can search text in photographs, even hand-written text.

I also use a cloud-based system called DropBox for all the PDFs and Word Docs that I want to have available to me for a project. Evernote makes for a great storage system, but if you have documents, such as PDFs or Word files that you want to change often, as opposed to just referencing, DropBox will likely make for an alternate solution. For a little more clarification on how DropBox can work for you, let’s turn to the folks at CommonCraft:

For tasks that need to be deferred or delegated, I use another web-based service called Remember the Milk. Remember the Milk is my favorite task manager – and trust me when I say I’ve explored many of them. I can access my to do list on my iPhone (regardless of whether or not I can get a connection to the internet at that time), over the web, as well as in print (I don’t use their print features, but a friend at work likes to have a hard copy to doodle on throughout the day to help her stay focused and she loves the design of the printouts).

I can also forward emails to my Remember the Milk to do list, including some added text to indicate which folder/list I want the tasks associated with, when they are due, and how they should be tagged (tags let you categorize things in different ways; so you might have tags around where you need to be when you complete a task – such as @computer or @phone, as well as what activity they relate to – such as research, course preparation, or eLearning creation).

If a task is not actionable, many of these same tools may be used for storing items for reference, incubation, or on what Allen calls the “someday/maybe” list.

One last tool not mentioned yet that I make use of for storing websites for future reference is called Delicious. It is a bookmarking service that makes it super easy to call up websites you want to view later on. It is also a “social” service, meaning that you can share categories of links with people that may have an interest in the same subject as the bookmarks you’ve stored. For example, here are all the bookmarks I’ve saved on my Delicious account that are related to GTD.

One of the best companies around at making things easy to understand is CommonCraft and they developed this easy-to-understand vision of what Delicious can do for you:

A friend of mine recently moved to another state and has been courageous in already signing up for some HR-specific networking events. She asked for my advice and the first thing I reminded her was that most people are uncomfortable networking and that she is not alone. I do not perceive myself as an expert, though it helps when I remember that many of the people I will be meeting are just as wary as I am of this seemingly forced opportunity to connect as I am. 

Before

Before you go, it is critical to have thought hard about your personal brand and what you most intend to communicate to others. McNally & Speak (2003) write: 

“Your [personal] brand takes shape as a result of your ability to make what you do distinctive, relevant, and consistent.”  

They have a great way of helping you think about what you want to project by developing a personal brand model. 

Roles 

You begin by identifying the different roles that you play for others in your life. You can keep your roles specific to a professional capacity, though I have found that if I think of my personal and professional lives together, it helps me maintain better balance in life, particularly in keeping my most important relationships protected and prioritized. 

Standards 

This part of the exercise is where you consider how you deliver your roles. These are like your standards of service. What level of performance can others expect from you? Keep in mind that one of the best ways to build a brand is to be distinct – so think about how you are unique in what you deliver to others. 

Style 

Last, consider how you interact with others. Since a brand ultimately comes down to a relationship a company (or a person) has with a customer (or a person with whom they interact), the way we will relate to others becomes an important aspect of our personal brand. 

I suggest that before you attend that networking event, job interview, or annual planning meeting that you reflect on these three elements of your personal brand. You can consider buying Be Your Own Brand: A Breakthrough Formula for Standing Out from the Crowd to go through their exercises and to solidify your approach, or just get out  a piece of paper and begin by writing down your roles, standards and style. 

While working on my doctorate, one of our professors, Vance Caesar, had us go through this exercise. It was quite revealing and I highly recommend you spend some time articulating your brand in this way, as well.

Final preparations 

Coming soon!

Coming soon!

The most common question we receive when people see our finished eLearning courses is:

How did you do that?

We’re firm believers in using the right tool for the job, though we also recognize that people can get overwhelmed by the choices and start to think that they won’t be successful in creating their own courses.

To help you from feeling stuck, we offer the following two approaches to creating online learning:

SIMPLE TOOLS TO GET YOU STARTED

Screenr

Jing

LiveScribe Pulse Smart Pen

A ROBUST ONLINE LEARNING CREATION TOOLKIT

Here is the full list of software and applications that we use in building online learning.