Productivity

This is not to be confused with a previous post about the four hour work week, rather, it seems that Utah has run the numbers on the environmental cost of having government employees at work five days a week, and opted for a four day week instead…

ksl.com - Governor lays out plan for 4-day work week

Gov. Jon Huntsman announced today that Utah state workers will soon only have to work four days a week. Most agencies will switch over to four, 10-hour work days a week.
The "Working 4 Utah" initiative is being welcomed as an energy- and money-saving change for the state. Huntsman says the alternative work week will formally launch in August.
"It has never been done on the statewide level, so we would be the first state actually rolling this out," Huntsman said. "So, July we’re going to be working very closely with departments and agencies making sure we anticipate … all of the issues and challenges that’ll be associated with doing this right."
The new four-day, 10-hour schedule would apply to about 17,000 state workers — about 20 percent of the total state workforce. All those people wouldn’t have to commute on Fridays, and the offices where they work — about 1,000 buildings statewide — won’t have to be heated or cooled, and lights and computers would be turned off.

This is a great idea to reduce the carbon footprint of a whole state government. Is this the future of employment? Or will it go further to include telecommuting?

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HT to Save and Conserve.

I’m intrigued by the ability of crowds to make good decisions. Elections are a perfect example of a diverse enough crowd making a better decision (more often than not) than an individual alone. It would be ideal to harness this decision-making power for more general decisions than we typically do. Need to decide which of two or three options would be the best way to proceed… don’t just ask the experts, a better decision can be made by a diverse and independent "crowd".

What’s stopping us from doing it, (except the fear that a worse decision will be made)? For me, it is the fact that it is nearly impossible to get a sample of participants that are truly independent in their decision making thoughts and processes.

Surowiecki in "The Wisdom of Crowds" states…

The more influence a group’s members exert on each other, and the more personal contact they  have with each other, the less likely the group’s decisions will be wise ones.
The more influence we exert on each other, the more likely it is that we believe the same things and make the same mistakes. That means that it’s possible that we could become individually smarter, but collectively dumber….

Can people make collectively  intelligent decisions even when they are in constant, even erratic contact with each other?

The theory can be extended to the application in small communities, (and I’ve been guilty of this as well!).

It actually may hinder decision making on the whole, when people, usually with good intentions, put forward their biased views in newspaper articles or on blog posts. As the crowd becomes more homogenous, one would think that the decision making would improve, but by removing the diversity of opinion, the effect may be that the community "becomes individually smarter, but collectively dumber".

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If you actually care about the opinion of the common citizen, (and getting the best outcome), when it’s time to make a decision, maybe it’s best to hold back on sharing your opinion.

Here is a summary (thanks Wikipedia) of the way to harness the power of crowds in decision making…

The Wisdom of Crowds - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Diversity of opinion Each person should have private information even if it’s just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts.
Independence People’s opinions aren’t determined by the opinions of those around them.
Decentralization People are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge.
Aggregation Some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision.

If a crowd’s opinion is already jaded by a vocal minority, the opportunity to practice the power of citizenry participation has been lost. That’s good to remember next time you feel like you need to lead the sheep away from the edge of a precipice.

Decision-making is tough at the best of times, but when it comes time to determine whether community consultation is an option remember the four states above that need top be present for a good decision to be made. The theories presented in this book are pretty compelling, and the author is careful to state the research that supports when and how crowd wisdom can occur.

How have you experienced crowd wisdom or ignorance in your world?

I’ve avoided the “crackberry” wave. I love my Palm T3, wish it were online, but understand that if it were, the stack of emails that I like to process in a lump would likely trickle in all day.

Perhaps all of that is about to change. From a recent press release.

New software for the RIM BlackBerry provides a mobile interface for personal task and collaborative project management. Users can remotely add tasks via keyboard or voice call, and can browse and update tasks in personal or group projects. The software provides a pervasive experience: task data and projects can be accessed via the BlackBerry, the Mentat web interface, or Mentat-enabled 3rd party applications.

The software uses the Mentat web service, which is available for free for personal use and at a reasonable charge for users with more demanding needs or shared team projects. The BlackBerry client also supports offline operation during periods of network loss.

New Software Brings Mobile Task and Collaborative Project Management to the RIM BlackBerry

I had a quick look at Mentat, and it looks like it could be a quality product, with a few bugs to iron out along the way. (Ajax errors persist in my firefox browser). I’m not sure why it hasn’t been picked up by the productivity/lifehacking websites yet? Certainly the interface is not as smooth as Vitalist or some of the other todo and collaborative sites, but the blackberry connectivity would woo a number of users I’d think.

For the moment, I’m sticking with Vitalist.

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I’m a foreign professional in Canada. I had no problem getting job offers, the universities I studied at are accredited by Canadian professional societies, I communicate effectively and efficiently, and well to put it bluntly, culturally, I can fit in. 

An Indian-born scientist denied a job because he was overqualified is hoping a court decision to revisit his case will make it easier for other highly qualified immigrants to land suitable jobs in Canada.

On Wednesday, Federal Court Justice Yves de Montigny ordered the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal to reconsider compensation awarded to Gian Singh Sangha, 57.

Overqualified immigrant scientist wins court battle

Sometimes the on paper stuff, the qualifications and experience looks good, but in a phone interview, or in person, it is obvious that they are not the right person for the job. Perhaps that’s why many companies now employ almost solely on the basis of EQ tests. The job that I’m in requires the ability to use the English language with excellence and with consideration to Canadian culture as well. Standing up in public forums, addressing municipalities, negotiating deals, explaining designs to contractors on site, these are day to day part of the job occurrences.

It’s possible in the case mentioned above, that the organisation thought they were being careful not being racist to this professional.

Racism is not acceptable, let me say that.

But a company or organisation should not have to sacrifice productivity, efficiency or clients by hiring anyone.

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If I moved to Japan or India, I would not necessarily expect to get a job as an Engineering Project Manager, because culturally I wouldn’t be able to do things the same way I do in Australia or Canada. Saying that, I can see how an over-qualified professional could end up applying for lower paying or lower responsibility jobs, because they just aren’t ready for a more communication driven job. Language and culture are critical parts of management jobs, but how can someone get the experience without being part of the professional culture at any level?

So what do you do when an obviously over-qualified professional applies for the job? 

I’m not so good at getting things done, I know, I know, I’ve even written about the book, GTD, but sometimes, it’s actually hard to transform the knowledge that something needs doing, to working out what to do.

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Forms and procedures don’t seem to do real well with me, they are useful for setting up a project, or as a final checklist before a set of drawings goes out the door, but for everything else, really I just need a framework that I can operate in. For me, I call this my workspace, whether this is at home, in the office, on my laptop, or in my car, there are tools that I need with me to get things done.

Aside from the physical tools required, (chair, pen computer, phone, etc) there are concepts too., (which may also be physical). The inbox, the next actions list, the tickler file, and archives.

My GTD solution for next actions is currently vitalist and index cards. Ticklers are vitalist and google calendar, archives are file folders, my computer and backups, as well as gmail.

Added to this, I’m in the process of implementing activeCollab for projects, which I’m hoping will reduce my need for vitalist, which has just introduced a paid version structure. But the basis for all my lists and todos still comes back to the trusty index cards, having a stack of these lying around, and being able to clip them together and rearrange as necessary gives me a feeling of control and wellbeing never before experienced prior to GTD.

Do I have an organisational problem? Probably? Is GTD the only way to solve it? Probably not, but it works for me.

How do you organise your life?

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Technorati Tags: productivity, GTD, getting things done, gmail, vitalist, activeCollab

You do most of your writing at home, but the skeleton of blog posts commonly comes to you while you’re at work? You prefer the easy interface of Windows Live Writer over most other blog desktop software, and definitely over the idea of writing every article within the blog online interface.

So, how do you easily, and in the most GTD friendly way get the same data on both computers.

Live Writer has the option of writing a post to draft on your blog, but I’ve seen that go wrong too many times with blog desktop publishing software, somewhere in the ether, the API boots it front and centre to the homepage live for the world to see. In other words use with caution until you are satisfied.

But speaking of being satisfied, even doing this, the post still comes up in the Live Writer menu as being Recently Posted, rather than drafts, so here’s my solution…

If you’ve already succumbed to the evils of Microsoft, and if you are a windows user, reading this in Internet Explorer, reader mail in Outlook, you have no excuse!, Microsoft not so long ago bought up a company called FolderShare which fills the gap between normal sync software and online storage solutions.

FolderShareTM allows you to create a private peer-to-peer network that will help you to synchronize files across multiple devices and access or share files with colleagues and friends. You no longer need to send large files via email, burn them to CDs/DVDs and mail them, or upload them to a website. FolderShare allows you to share and sync important information instantly with anyone you invite, making it the perfect solution for personal or small business use.

FolderShare - File Transfer & Remote File Access - Product Overview

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Steps to take:

Download and Install Live Writer on both machines and set up the blogs you write to in the writer software. If you don’t know about this great piece of software, read a review of Live Writer from back in 2006, note that the version has been updated since this review.

FolderShare is a free product, all you need to do is doenload the software to each computer you want folders to be synchronized on. Download the windows version and follow the instructions for setting up a new account. Thankfully you don’t need a hotmail account to activate this.

 Next you want to sync the blog posts folders. Hit the “Sync My Folders” button to set up a new sync.

Both your computers need to be on for this process to take place, so set that up, the pick the option to specify folders to sync..

Navigate through to the My Documents folder, then select the My Weblog Posts Folder by clicking on the radio button to the left of the folder names.

Click the next button at the lower right of the page and pick your other computer from the list on the left hand side of the screen, (your already configured computer should be on the right with a green tick next to it.

Navigate through to the same folder on the second computer and click next, straight away the contents of these folders will start synchronizing and depending on the size of the folder and the speed of your internet connections should be done in a couple of minutes.

Now you can enjoy writing on your blog via Windows Live Writer from any computer you set up this way. Just remember, for the sync to work both computers have to be on at the same time. This could work with an auto shutdown script or program such as this one to delay the shut down of your computers until 10pm or so.

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Or, How To Make The 4-Hour Workweek Work For You.

I listened to a podcast the other day  by Timothy Ferris, the author of the book, The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich. In it he describes how he outsources anything that he can, allowing someone else to do the administrative, research, or follow-up work, frees him up for well, what ever he wants. This is a paid post that describes one way you can outsource some of the everyday tasks of your business.

Outsourcing is a critical component in the profitability, or degree of focus that a team can apply to a problem or task, and one of the hardest things I find to keep ticking along is all the paperwork associated with benefits, payroll, and just the task of hiring and managing the paperwork of the people that have been hired. Now I don’t have a good idea of the point where it becomes more efficient to outsource these tasks, but unless you’ve got yourself a pretty dedicated and efficient admin assistant, this resource management can eat up a lot of their time and energy. In some cases, particularly in smaller firms, privacy may be an issue as well, with admin staff holding all the information regarding pay and benefit rates for other members of staff.

The average annual cost of regulation, paperwork and tax compliance for small to medium-sized companies is about $5,000 per employee . For companies with more than 500 employees, the cost is about $3,500 per employee.
–Small Business Administration

Elite Business Solutions - Staff Leasing Company

Out of this situation, entrepreneurial firms have seen an opportunity for business as professional employer organizations, providing, the management of all aspects of payroll and employee data. It’s interesting that this mode of employee management is almost unheard of outside of the United States, as the concept of employee leasing has a unique method of creating benefit for the company.

Essentially, the staff leasing company becomes the employer of record, and the original company leases the employees back from them…

Under a typical agreement, an employer contracts with a PEO and the employer and the PEO become the co-employers of the workers, with the PEO being the employer of record.

As the employer of record of the leased employees, the PEO company handles all of the employee-related tasks and expenses, such as:

• Paying and filing federal payroll taxes and reports;
• Paying and filing state payroll taxes and reports;
• Paying and reporting on workers’ comp and workers’ comp injuries;
• State unemployment tax assessment wage reporting;
• Benefit claims handling; and
• Other human resource issues.

Employees may gain access to benefits such as group health, 401(k) plans, cafeteria 125 plans, life and dental insurance options.

Professional employer organization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If you area  small company, assuming the fees were reasonable, would this be a good way to provide your employees excellent group benefits and insurance options, while saving you or your administrator the hassles of keeping all the employment and payroll files and documents in order? Maybe staff leasing is your first step towards achieving the The 4-Hour Workweek?

Starting a new job is a great time to be thinking about methods and procedures for personal and corporate productivity. Over the past week as I’ve been getting over jetlag and getting my head around new software, people, places, regulations, methods, techniques and all the other bits that make up a move from one country to another or even one city to another.

I’m starting in a role with lots of new things, really, just about everything is new to me all with the backbone of Civil Engineering, Subdivision Design and Project Management as core skills. So where did I start? More after the jump…

GTD

I’m a big fan of the book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen (GTD), the methods detailed in this book are enough to make the most disorganized person clutter free. So when starting a new job GTD must come into the picture for me. Lots of Folders, marker pens, filing cabinets, collection trays and a commitment to keeping things in order.

My favorite personal collection is with the Hipster PDA, a set of 3×5 index cards held together with a clip, matched with a Fischer Space Pen for a bit of style. While on the go, this handy rearrangeable notepad serves me well, with reminders, phone numbers, and space for collection of whatever needs jotting down. But my biggest task for productivity in setting things up is with my computer.

Sticking with Outlook

This is the first job I’ve had where there has been some flexibility as to whether or not you used firefox or IE, and even to the point of whether you use Outlook or something else. Currently I do all my personal email in gmail and I love the way I can bring about inbox zero through archiving all but the immediately actionable items. For the office, I’ve decided to set up my machine with Outlook, not because it is my favorite program, rather, because of a recently developed add-in called Jello, which acts as a homepage for Outlook, (it replaces your “today page”), that is set up for GTD processing and actioning, complete with contexts and projects.

This customization, combined with the free version of SyncMyCal which syncs the next seven days of calendar appointments to my Google Calendar, (which can send SMS’s for reminders) gives me a fair degree of flexibility when working in or out of the office.

As my workload increases, I’ll keep you up to date with how the system is working and is developed. In the meantime, I’d love to hear what you do to stay organized at work, please leave a comment below.

Technorati Tags: GTD, Getting Things Done, David Allen, Hipster PDA, Outlook, Jello, SyncMyCal, Google Calendar, productivity, personal management, business, management

Do you use web apps?  Applications that run entirely online? Timesheets, forms, data entry, change requests, calendars? One of the most promising and cost effective startups is Coghead.

I’ve been proudly wearing my CogHead T-Shirt for a few months now and it looks like the beta program is opening up to a few more testers soon. The most awesome thing about this software is that you can easily create multi-user applications for business or personal use, within a highly customizable format, without writing any code. I’m not a computer code geek by any means, simple is good, particularly when it comes to making small usability changes to the forms or input fields that you create. Guy Kawaski wrote…

How to Change the World: Reality Check: Coghead

Coghead’s website is both an application authoring tool and an application delivery service. At Coghead’s website people can create an application using simple-to-learn methods (or pick a pre-built app from Coghead’s application gallery) and then invite co-workers to use the application. All anyone needs is a browser and an Internet connection. The key selling points are:

• There’s no need to purchase new hardware or software.
• Users can access applications anywhere they have Internet access. 
• Coghead applications are inherently multi-users.
• Data and application are managed centrally and off-site. 

These days lots of people complain about needing custom applications to do their jobs better, but not being able to get them because IT is busy with other things or because custom application development is just too expensive. Coghead aims to empower the people closest to the need to create and deliver business applications in hours.

Anyone can use it, and should consider it before going and paying a programmer thousands to write your special app for you. Check out the 101 or this screencast of the application in use. If you are interested in the application, sign up for the beta here.

Technorati Tags: coghead, web apps, software, productivity, internet, online, IT, applications, custon applications, no code