My solution? Use iSpeak It to convert the analysis text into an MP3 and listen to it during my run…

He wants to know what your geeky time-savers are, too, so hit up his blog and give your reply or leave a comment here and let us know. Or both! Especially if you can, you know, find a geeky way to do both quickly.

photo credit: Jodiepedia

It can be awfully tempting to use your weekend to catch up on what didn’t get done this week, or what perenially never gets done. I know: I do it all the time.

But downtime gives us perspective, lets us recover physically and mentally, and allows us to perform better. So here’s a thought: as you go about your Friday, look for simple ways to tie up loose ends a bit tighter than usual so that you can use your weekend to recharge. Maybe it’s as simple as tidying your desk before you leave. I promise you, you’ll come back fresher on Monday for it.

Have a great Friday, and a very relaxing weekend.

photo credit: Sarah G…

Routine can be a helpful mechanism for getting repeating tasks done on a regular basis, but it can also trick you into blind cooperation with the past. Do all of your repeating tasks still matter? Are there others you’re doing only sporadically that could be scheduled for better reliability and efficiency? Should you be delegating some of those tasks, if you can?

Why not use a few moments this morning to review your to do list, your calendar, and your mental checklist of habits for anything that might need some freshening up. I just read through mine and noticed that I don’t have a time scheduled regularly to review our client list and projects and make sure we’re not overlooking anything we should be doing. I’m going to go schedule that now.

In other words, perhaps: don’t let the everyday craziness get in the way of a stable routine, but on the other hand, don’t let routine get in the way of your creativity.

Happy Monday!

photo credit: Iván Santiesteban

You know that adrenaline rush and the pure focus that comes with the last few hours in the office before a vacation, when suddenly you know exactly what the most important next steps are and you don’t waste time on the piddly stuff? You know how you always wonder, why can’t I be like this when I’m not rushing out the door?

Well, at least I do. And I bet some of you do too. Now a study suggests that it may be exactly because we’re getting away that we do a better job at planning, organizing, and communicating. Or, as the WSJ.com article about the study says:

Working together to make sure each consultant got some time off forced teams to communicate better, share more personal information and forge closer relationships. They also had to do a better job at planning ahead and streamlining work, which in some cases resulted in improved client service, based on interviews with clients.

It’s not totally shocking, is it? There’s a good deal of common sense in the idea (and it’s definitely an area we’ve talked about before) but somehow still many of us don’t allow ourselves the time off we’d need to ensure that we actually experience this benefit.

It’s Thursday morning. What can you do between now and Friday afternoon to ensure that you can relax and enjoy your weekend? Ready? Set? Go.

photo credit: Iain Farrell

There it was. Rather, there they were. Usually every day.

I’m talking about meeting requests. They don’t flood my inbox, but they’re there. And they don’t go away unless I do something about them.

The trouble with meeting requests is that you can rarely gauge how much trouble they’re worth. You could say no to just the right contact who could have landed you on Oprah (if you know how to do this, I’d like to meet with you, actually). Or, you could say yes to meeting with someone who just wanted to sell you pet insurance. How can one navigate the muddy meeting waters?

Monica O’Brien, who writes at Twentyset, says this:

I get messages almost daily from people who read my blog and want to meet with me by phone or in-person. As a rule, though, I won’t meet with anyone unless they have interacted with me several times, or they give me a good reason (not just “let’s chat”). I realize this may make me seem snobby or elite, which isn’t my intention.

My intention is to avoid time sucks. I would love to be everyone’s friend, but it isn’t a reality for me at this time. I have work, school, a house, and a family that all need my attention too.

Go read the rest of her article. It’s really about finding the right mentor – and not just about scheduling meetings. But, she does bring to light pertinent realities when it comes to making sure you take the right meetings and ditch the bad ones.

Whether you’re meeting someone new or deciding if it’s worth running over to the other department to meet with someone, how do you decide which meetings to take? We’d love to hear how you avoid time sucks and really capitalize on face-to-face encounters.

photo credit: Dennis Wright

Peter Bregman has a really insightful piece called To Get More Done, Slow Down in HarvardBusiness.org:

This life is a marathon, not a sprint. Most of us don’t go to work for 20 minutes a day, run as fast as we can, and then rest until the next race. We go to work early in the morning, run as fast as we can for 8, 10, 12 hours a day, then come home and run hard again with personal obligations and sometimes more work, before getting some sleep and doing it all over again.

[...] Not an athlete in the world could sustain that schedule without rest. Most athletes have off-seasons.

So if we’re running a daily marathon, it might help to learn something from people who train for marathons.

[...] Here’s what I learned: if you want to run a marathon successfully without getting injured, spend four days a week doing short runs, one day a week running long and hard, and two days a week not running at all.[...]

And when we do take the time to rest, we discover all sorts of things that help us perform better when we’re working. Inevitably my best ideas come to me when I get away from my computer and go for a walk or run or simply engage in a casual conversation with a friend.

I quoted a lot because I love the way the common sense of it builds, one piece upon the last. It’s not a unique observation, nor particularly novel, and it ain’t rocket science. But it does bear repeating and reinforcing.

What I think is interesting about this idea of slowing down is that it’s not so much that you get more done, as the title of his piece suggests, it’s that you accomplish more. Subtle difference, that, but I think a powerful one: when you take your time getting your work done, you tend to do the most meaningful stuff naturally because you don’t have time for all the trivia.

At least that’s what I find. It’s easy to get caught up in a crazy-hectic, run-around frenzy trying to keep up with my email inbox, my phone calls and voicemails, my to do list, my face-to-face meetings, my IM client, and more often these days, the work-related stuff that comes in via my Twitter direct messages and Facebook messages. When I quiet those inputs and choose my focus, I tend to gravitate towards the weightiest task; the one that’s going to have the biggest reward. Whether that’s a proposal that’s due or a presentation I need to give, my instincts know what to do when the volume of the chaos is turned down and the pace slows down with it.

photo credit: Old Sarge

From the Wikipedia entry on Labor Day:

The holiday originated in Canada out of labor disputes (”Nine-Hour Movement”) first in Hamilton, then in Toronto, Canada in the 1870s, which resulted in a Trade Union Act which legalized and protected union activity in 1872 in Canada. The parades held in support of the Nine-Hour Movement and the printers’ strike led to an annual celebration in Canada. In 1882, American labor leader Peter J. McGuire witnessed one of these labor festivals in Toronto. Inspired from Canadian events in Toronto, he returned to New York and organized the first American “labor day” on September 5 of the same year.

People have fought for workers’ rights for many years now so that people who worked in factories and farms and stores and everywhere else wouldn’t have to work overly long days.

Isn’t it a little funny, then, how many of us in offices go right on working overly long days?

If today is a holiday for you, as it is for most of our readers, use this day as you choose. You can even choose to work a bit, to get a leg up on your workload and your competition.

But do remember to take some time for yourself, too. And remember that work is about supporting ourselves and providing for our passions. It’s wonderful when our work happens to be our passion, but it can make it hard to escape and get some much-needed time away and perspective. This is a day perfectly suited for that time and perspective.

Happy Labor Day! Enjoy it. We’ll see you back at work tomorrow.

photo credit: MeaganJean

The weekend is here at last! Time to take it easy, put your feet up, maybe do some yard work, and hang out with friends. Or is it?

For many busy professionals (perhaps you!), the weekends are often overtaken with catch-up tasks from the previous week, and in perhaps fewer cases, planning for the week ahead.

We all know we need a break, but the specter of possible layoffs, the increased workload from laid-off coworkers, and the crazy-fast-paced workplaces many of us are in means more and more to do, and a great deal of anxiety about how to get it done.

May we make a suggestion? It isn’t rocket science or anything, but sometimes we need the truth pointed out to us before we can recognize it. You will probably encounter distractions, you won’t get it all done, and you will probably close out the weekend feeling disappointed that you didn’t get to relax more. Instead, why not take the Weekend Idealist approach to Getting Relaxation Done:

1. Decide the two work-related things (no more than that!) that you could do in under an hour this weekend that would make you feel more caught up and allow you to feel less anxious.
2. Pick the best time to do them: if your focus is better in the mornings, get them over with right away.
3. Get them done! Don’t let them turn into an ordeal. Just power through them and knock them out.
   
4. Permit yourself the blissful freedom to do whatever you want with the rest of your weekend.

See? It’s so easy, you’ll wonder why you haven’t been doing it this way all along.

We hope you’ll be able to find balance this weekend. We’re all for productivity and achievement, but everyone needs to unwind now and then.

Got a process for balancing your productive time with your relaxing time on the weekends? Share it in the comments.

And have a great weekend!

photo credit: Michal Osmenda

If you’re like us, work requires you to take a trip every now and then. Or, if you’re like us, you find yourself needing to do a bit of work, even while on vacation to exotic locales.

So, in an effort to help you maximize your time, stay productive and stay balanced at 30,000 feet in the air, here are our 10 tips for in-air (or in-airport) productivity.

In the airport

1. Find a quiet spot. While it’s impossible to escape the announcements and cellphone conversations that ravage your peace and quiet, you can minimize it by sitting at a gate without a flight scheduled soon. Add some headphones and don’t face the walking areas of the concourse and you might just limit distraction enough to get the job done.
2. Have your carry-on bags packed with a high level of organization and a low level of stuff. This not only makes it easier to speed through the bag screening, but you won’t waste any time searching through a wasteland of paperwork to find what you’re looking for. Light is better for your back, too, and you won’t have to worry about finding a spot overhead for a giant bag.
3. When you’re packing your carry-on, dedicate one small section or pocket for the things that normally reside in your pants pockets. As you’re in line for the metal detectors, empty everything in your pockets into that section. As soon as you’re through, back in the pants it all goes. Being able to do this on the fly saves lots of time and aggravation.
4. Resist the urge to chow down. Airport food is famously unhealthy and expensive. Not only will you have to make up for those extra calories and cash, but any time you spend waiting in line is a waste, too. If you simply have to have something, then go with coffee, fruit, or something pre-made. You’ll save cash, calories, and minutes.
5. Hit the bathroom on the way to get your luggage. Everyone’s in such a hurry to get from the jetway to the baggage carousel, but all you’re going to do there is wait some more. A better use of your time and the facilities? Make a quick dash for the loo en route to your bags.

In the air

1. Save your magazines for pre-flight and pre-10,000 feet. Since you can’t listen to your iPod or boot up your laptop yet (and since you don’t want to listen to pre-flight announcements), this is a perfect time to catch up on the latest Fast Company or Wired. So, if you have a trip coming in the next two weeks, resist the urge to read magazines at home so you’ll better use your time in your seat.
2. Signal to your seatmate that you mean business. If you’re going to be working during the flight, your initial introduction to the folks on your row of seats should be straightforward. Just say hello, then immediately buckle your seat belt and open a book, legal pad, laptop, etc. This – unlike a newspaper – projects that you’re going to be working on the flight. You won’t make any friends this way, but you’ll gain valuable minutes.
3. Have the laptop ready to go. Make sure it’s fully charged and on standby so when you hear that magic ding while passing through 10,000 feet, you’ll be able to crack it open and get started. Feel free to also have documents or presentations already open. Sure, we’re only talking about minutes, but minutes matter.
4. Drink water; save the snacks. You don’t want a bunch of food crowding that already tiny seat-back tray. Drink a cup of water to stay fresh and go ahead and accept the free peanuts. Just save them for when it’s time to put the laptop away or when you’re waiting to get off the plane.
5. Not using a laptop in flight? Then make a plan for what you’re reading or writing. Strategy matters just as much when it comes to analog work as it does digital work. So, if you’re reading reports first, have them ready to rock at takeoff. Or, if you’re penning a speech, make sure pad and paper are at the ready so you can use every precious moment of flight.

By maximizing your time at the airport and in flight, you’ll save time when you get to where you’re going, allowing you to relax and explore your destination.

(Note: A special thanks to my world-traveling friend Ben. He’s been to more countries than most people and knows what he’s talking about when it comes to travel. He’s thinking of blogging. I hope this post is the tipping point, showing him that he could knock it out of the park.)

Tell us: What do you do to stay productive while flying or getting ready to fly?