Searchability is key for me.  That is one thing i learned from Gmail.  It wsa liberating to simply abandon the compulsion to keep and organize old emails.  By letting go and adopting a problem-solving mentality, I realized I could rely on my own mind to offer key words to search for relevant emails as I needed to find them.

Now delicious (and digg to a lesser extent) enable the same shift from organizing for organization's sake to tagging and dropping (tag it and drop it till you need it).  I can organize myself and my time instead of organizing my files, bookmarks, handles, etc.

This summer I want to keep streamlining.  I still need and use paper copies of important articles.  Just as I look through my delicious bookmarks or blog for ideas,  I want to go to a file folder and review the articles there.

So how can we get rid of the paper.

1)  Get rid of anything that you can get electronically.  Personally these consist of brokerage statements, bank statements, credit card statements, etc..  Professionally these consist of pay stubs, eMails, green bar reports, etc.

2)  What you have to keep look for an imaging solution.

3)  Start imaging everything

4)  Start imaging old paper

For the home you can go as simple as using the scanning software with your printer or as sophisticated as products such as neat receipts and other software.

For the office first you will probably need a higher capacity scanner than your printer.  As for the software, some software allows you to grab printouts before they go to paper and index them.  The key to the profesisonal software is indexing.  You want to be able to search contextually (using keywords).  You also want to be able to comment on the the images if necessary and redact i.e. whiteout key parts of the images you don't want other to see.

Besides getting things moved to electronic copies, imaging also has the ability to set up workflow between co-workers.  (Imagine anything that needs to be routed around for approval.)

We deal a lot with customer on imaging and what all it is used for is quite amazing.  Many hire temporary help to scan and image old paper online.  Others use conversion services to move from microfilm to electronic images.

So next time you get paper, paper everywhere think about making it electronic.

Most of us spend most of our lives wondering about life's purpose. We mimic what are friends do, we get to do things our parents tell us to do and worse, we get to do what we find in the immediate and the familiar, little knowing why we do what we do with our lives.

In Lakshya, it took Karan (played by Hritik Roshan) 24 years and 18000 feet to find purpose. Karan did not know what to do with life. At best, he could only wonder why he was directionless. The others around him knew his problem. There was something missing in his life - a real objective - something to live and probably die for. Romi (played by Preity zinta) knew that if only Karan could find his purpose he would get to the top. Unfortunately, Karan did not know this and so he did not try to find life's purpose.

Do we know our purpose in life? The quicker we know our purpose, the easy is the experience. How do we find our purpose? Do we look within or without? Do we look inside or above? Is life's purpose assigned or chosen? I guess we all find our purpose - at our moment of truth. Life's purpose is not in what we do (or say). It is inextricably linked with our values. It gives meaning and significance to our values.

It helps us understand why we live (and maybe die). Have you found your life's purpose? When your purpose becomes a guiding ideal you begin to really live - inspite of what you have or don't have, inspite of where you are and inspite of who is with you (and not with you)

Lakshya helps us address the question of purpose. If you have watched it and missed the point, grab a DVD and watch it. It took 24 years and 18000 feet for Karan to find purpose. It may well take 2hrs of watching to help us think about this important issue. Well, if you don't know where you are going then any road is OK!

Here in this article I will go over 5 reasons to celebrate your daily progress.

The first one reason on why you should celebrate your daily progress would be for overall personal satisfaction, the satisfaction of knowing that you can set targets, focus and accomplish. This will prove to help you in life in many more ways then just one. Being able to set targets focus, and accomplish will help in your career and becoming financially independent, starting your own business, your personal and social life and guess what this all comes into play and ties together as one. Think about it!

Second, the most important reason on my list to celebrate and reward yourself for your daily progress would be because you are making the step, making the first step to personal development aid and helping yourself grow as a person. Many times people will work and work and work themselves to death! Some people get so frustrated with work or creative ideas they have they begin to loose focus in their activity at hand. Lets say you were working on the next big advertising campaign for the up in coming new department store and you were given a major responsibility and 2 weeks to do it , lets also say you worked hard 4,5,6 days on end with no breaks no task management system no daily progress rewards. You would begin to feel overwhelmed, stressed, tired and the end result may not come out to par quality. On the other hand with a proper hourly task management system and daily trackers and reward system for your daily progress, the end result will be a much better turn out I am certain.

Third reason to celebrate daily progress would be, spending more time with friends and family.
Many times when you have no system to track and celebrate your accomplished progress and will lead to you coming home unfocused, stressed and making no time for family and other personal matters possibly creating a hostile home environment.

Moving on to reason number 4.

Overall better work ethic. Setting up a system that allows you to reward yourself with a small token will lead to a better work ethic, allow you to strive to meet daily numbers and high expectations knowing there is good to come.

Last but far from least.
Setting up a daily reward system can lead to a better work consistency.
Do you know what consistency means in the business world?

Time
Energy
Money
And what do these three things equal out too …. POWER! You will gain overall power in your workplace, your life, your business, your social status. Allowing yourself to celebrate your daily progress can prove to help you in the most ways possible. I’m rewarding myself, are your rewarding yourself?

So far so good.

Today I read something in one of my favorite Lotus Notes blogs, by IBM'er Ed Brill (www.edbrill.com), that got me thinking - is eMail becoming "old school."  As one of IBM's Notes evangelists, Ed was responding to an article in Sunday's New York Times by another fellow IBM'er, entitled "I Freed Myself from eMail's Grip."  This Times article went on to describe how the author was using "collaboration" tools to get things done and minimizing the use of his personal productivity tools (eMail).

I spent a good part of the day today reflecting how one lives without eMail or even minimizes it.  I then realized maybe we have now gone so far to the left using eMail as our main source of communications, that we have forgotten about all the other ways we connect with people.  Prior to eMail the good old telephone is how we communicated.  Prior to social networking sites we had chat rooms.  Now with social networking sites, and collaboration tools like instant messaging we have more choices and newer ways to communicate.

We recently held a seminar for clients and prospects on social networking.  The idea was to educate them on what is out there and how it is being used.  The interaction between attendees was amazing.  My favorite story came from one of our University clients.  The individual attending had been tasked with how to best use blogs, wikis and other social networking tools to communicate between faculty and students at the University.  He went on to describe how an incoming freshman inquired about what tools the college used to communicate.  When she was told eMail, instant messaging, wikis and other collaboration tools were used she stated - "eMail is how old people communicate."

I have worked with quite a few companies in the last year replacing eMail systems and setting up retention strategies for eMail. Buying not only hardware and software, but services for these projects.

So I ask you is eMail "old school" or is it one of several tools to communicate?

Let’s go right ahead and break this down very simple.

Number one. - Are you letting situations at work distract you or do you loose interest in a topic easily?
If you do you are hurting and setting yourself back tremendously.
Many times people will drift off task and assigned work projects. Why? Why is this? This can be sometimes from people loosing focus on end target, now when talking about this subject I like to use the term target as opposed to goal. Why? Because what is a goal? A goal is any thing could be a dream and to the average human brain a goal or “dream” is something to wish to have but in the back of their minds tell themselves its only dream. (Example) “I wish I could be independent and live a life of financial independence”. But really when someone evaluates this thought in their mind they become discouraged or to them seem like only a dream and it could never happen to them. Let me tell you being a human being are great we get the chance and opportunity to do what we please and create our future and only we process this power.

Moving on, chart and track your success. This can play a major role in in anyone’s productivity levels and give them a reason to keep on striving.
Reward yourself! Once you have tracked and logged your targets and once you accomplish them reward yourself. This is also important in re-training the mind for success. Everyone in life is conditioned to a certain believe and everyone can be re-conditioned to believe in the power of productivity, focus and personal and financial success.

3. Never give up! This is with any thing you believe in, whether it is to start a new career to bettering yourself through personal development.
Stays focused eliminate distractions, chart and track and never give up. With these three tips and mental tools into place you will raise your productivity to beyond imaginable.

I do a lot of things differently in an effort to enjoy my life. Sometimes I forget just how abnormal some of them are. This past week I co-instructed the IRA Association of America professional member enrollment course in Denver, CO. During a lunch conversation, one of our new members asked me what my secret is to accomplishing so much so rapidly. I half jokingly explained that I don't watch TV. I guess this type of statement is more unbelievable than I had thought because a couple of hours later he still couldn't believe it: "You really don't watch any TV at all?"

"I don't own a TV," I explained. "I occasionally watch DVDs on my projector."

I don't watch TV for two reasons:

Mental & Physical Health - I believe that everything that goes into my body or mind becomes part of me. Turning on the TV means that I can choose to watch what's available from a menu, but only if I also watch other things which I have no control over - commercials. Our thoughts create our reality. Having others' thoughts shoved into my brain means letting other people create my reality.

Time - I want to enjoy my life. Every second is a decision. When I pit TV against snowboarding, snow skiing, wakeboarding, water skiing, bicycling, car racing, motorcycling, playing musical instruments, and traveling to new places... TV always loses. To afford some of these activities, I've had to work very hard in a field that I am very passionate about: investing. In that process, I've come to enjoy working, reading, writing, teaching, and learning. So any time I have the decision before me to watch TV or do any of these activities, I also choose against TV.

Years ago, as I first made the leap into entrepreneurship, my mentor forbade me to watch TV. He was a 30 year old self-made millionaire who I had agreed to follow without question.

Examining the effects of a specific behavior is only possible by contrasting it to its inverse behavior. In other words... I don't think you could possibly understand the effect of watching TV unless you quit watching TV to have something to compare to.

The Challenge

Stop watching TV for 30 days.

Seriously. You wouldn't be reading my blog if you weren't out to accomplish something. What are you capable of accomplishing if you can't do something as simple as not watch TV for a month? It may be hard, but it's simple. If somebody in your household turns on a TV, go in the other room. Completely stay away from TV 100% for 30 days.

But what about the news?!

Anything life altering will be passed on to you from all your friends, family, and co-workers who watch TV every single day. I think you'll find during this 30 days that nothing life altering will be reported anyways. The result? Instead of focusing on other people's lives for several hours after work, you can pay more attention to your life.

Exceptions

This isn't a TV reduction experiment. Don't cut everything except your favorite 1 or 2 shows; cut everything.

This is an extremely simple task, and it will help you realize your willpower. For me, this was a first step in exercising my willpower into a muscle capable of accomplishing much more.

Magazines & Newspapers

To make the most of this test, eliminate magazines and newspapers as well. Before you start complaining about how absurd this is, you'll need reasons. You can't develop those until you experience both sides, and that is only possible by taking this challenge.

A 3 Step Program

1. For 30 days eliminate TV watching and newspaper/magazine reading from your life.
2. Come back here, and share your experience in the comments.
3. [I'll fill this in 30 days from now.]

Do you suffer from email overload?

I do (occasionally).

How do I manage email overload? I look to OHIO.

Only-Handle-It-Once.

My inbox is not cluttered with messages. In fact, I rarely have more than 30 emails in my inbox. I do this by responding to urgent emails, deleting irrelevant emails, using flags in Outlook to schedule later to-dos, filing FYIs, avoiding the "thanks" or reply-all messages, and asking friends and family to refrain from sending me junk.

Just recently, I was dealing with an over-enthusiastic emailing colleague at work. I created a filter in Outlook, routed her emails to a special folder and reviewed the folder once per week. Sanity quickly returned.

How do you manage your inbox?

Take a look at this interesting post on Beth's blog.

5 Useful Blackberry Tips and Tricks to Boost Your Productivity

If you have a Blackberry, chances are you picked it up, and started emailing right away. Did you know, there are several time-saving features built in, and several tricks you can do to make your Blackberry even more useful? Here are 5 of my favorites…

10 Tips for Getting Organized with To Do Lists

Getting organized — and staying organized — can help you get things done, feel more fulfilled, and clear your mind for more creative thought! A cornerstone of every organization “system” are to do lists.

10 Tips to Improve Your Voicemails

Voicemail is one of the most frequently used communication tools within an organization. And, it seems that the more senior the person you are communicating with is within your organization, the more likely they will favor voicemail over email. Here are 10 tried-and-true tips to improve your voicemails.

Top 5 Characteristics of Effective Work Relationships

Effortlessly working with your peers is one of the things that is so hard for many to attain, yet so easy to take for granted. In this post, I’ll discuss my top 5 characteristics for effective relationships at work.

Get Control of Your Email - Email Management: Part I, Part II, and Part III

Email. We all have it. We rely on it, and sometimes, we can’t get away from it. Overflowing Inboxes cause us stress. Trying to find an email causes stress. Wondering if you replied to all of the emails you need to causes stress. Today, that stress goes away!

6 Blackberry Tips for Reading Emails

Did you know you can use the keyboard to read Blackberry email? Here are my favorite keyboard shortcuts, especially useful when only one hand is free.

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For months now I've been talking about joining a gym and getting myself into shape.  Well my cousin invited me to go with her to 24 Hour Fitness and while I [semi]seriously considered the offer, I never did what I had to do in order to get on board and join.  Then a couple weeks after my cousins invite, a friend of mine informed me that I could add myself to his plan.  Shortly following his offer I got so busy (coughlazycough) that I never went down to the gym with him in order to sign up. 

So, yesterday (6/10/08), after months of saying and not doing,  I was sitting at my church making out a to-do list on which I included the task: "sign up @ 24/H fitness" when suddenly the phone rings (important sidenote: my mother and I are the church's secretary and since I answer the phone like this: "Rialto Christian Center this is Tiffany" the person on the other end already knows who they're speaking to).  The man on the other end tells me that he was from 24 Hour Fitness and that he was calling for me.  Naturally I was very confused since I hadn't contacted 24 at all.  Well after thoroughly questioning him as to whether or not he had the right person I found out that unbeknownst to me, my Co-Pastor had added me as one of the 5 people who are able to receive a VIP pass for 24 free days of gym usage.  Apparently the pass permits me an opportunity to give someone else a 7 day pass but after I explained to the man, Kendall, that I would be torn between taking my brother or my sister he "did me a solid" and gave me two 7 day passes.  YAY!

So tomorrow, after I call him and confirm (and after my sister gets out of school), the three of us will be heading to the gym.  For 23 consecutive days following following I will be crunching, lifting, running and whatever else-ing my way to a more fit physique.  I wanted to go ahead and start my fasting "diet" as well but I'm not sure if I should couple exercise with not eating.  I'll just have to watch what I eat and more importantly how much I eat.  This, ladies and gents, I shall call my 24 Day Challenge.  I'm going to give myself 24 days to lose at least 5 pounds. 

Wish me luck ya'll.

More often than not I have a few different programs operating. The easiest way to cycle through all of your open programs is by using the ALT + Tab short-cut. If you hold the ALT down with your thumb and then press Tab with a free finger on your left had. If you keep holding the ALT key you can see what programs that are open. Press Tab again and you can select your last open program. Once you have highlighted the program that you want to open then release the ALT key. If you go passed your item you can press and hold down Shift and then Tab to go in reverse. Its easy and helps you to change between programs very quickly and I use it as an alternative to minimising and maximising programs or windows.

Have you ever wanted to access you Desktop when you have a number of open windows but not wanted to minimise them all? Well simply press Windows Key + D and it appears. Do it again and all the windows reappear.

If you want to close a window press ALT + F4 and you can also use this to shut down your computer.

Renaming filers is easy, all you need to do it select the file and press F2.

If you select a file you can copy it to a another location by holding the CTRL key of create a shortcut by holding CTRL + SHIFT.

A Google search for shortcuts provides an almost endless resource. Here is the official Windows shortcuts.

One thing to watch out for while using short cuts is that some short cuts will take precedent over others but within each program you should be able to customise your shortcut settings.

What are your favourite shortcut lifehacks?

I think that time is the most important asset that anyone can posses so time so the way in which you it will determine your success. Enter lifehacks. Originally used by computer programmers to sort their way through a torrent of information and to organise their data today it relates to "anything that solves an everyday problem in a clever or non-obvious way." (Wikipedia)

One of the best sights that I have discovered is www.lifehack.org which is a blog dedicated to Getting Things Done (a productivity methodology by David Allen) and Lifehacks. I recommend that you have a look around their site and read a few articles. Most lifehacks are easy to undertake and usually provides a solution to those situations when you think "there must be a better way of doing this!"

As I learn more life hacks I will post them on my blog in the Lifehack category. Go forth and increase your efficiency and productivity, I have!

How would you like to live a life with the freedom to think without worrying over everyday problems? Would you enjoy the integrity to uphold your status, believes, etc by saying no without feeling stress. Would you like to enjoy a clear goal, which you set based on your understood wants. You know by now how to reach for those goals. Would you like to boost energy that helps you to focus on you and what your future holds? Do you see a balance in your life that helps you to clearly see your needs? Do you focus your attention on those needs? Do you have your rights in perspective, giving you the freedom to make your own decisions based on your choices? Do you see an exciting future that is well planned to bring you to self-improvement?

See Personal Productivity.

You can achieve each part named in this article by taking a few steps to improve your personal life. You have many options in life that gives you the chance to make good decisions. The decisions you make make your life either miserable or brightening. It is up to you to make the necessary changes that bring you rewards.

When you consider your personal lifestyle, you should take in consideration that this involved you human overall existence as well as your everyday moves. You have personal decisions and choices that contribute to your own individuality. You have options to coach, or find coaches that lead you to success, or you have counsel that will guide you to a successful way of living.

Life is based on survival, which includes nutrition, exercise, and living without addictions. You also need shelter to uphold survival. Personal improvement also consists of job. It is your personal decision as to what job you want to seek, yet if you work at a place of employment that does not back your survival needs, and does not make you happy, you are not improving your personal life. For this reasons you, want to evaluate your job.

Does your job make you feel happy? Do you produce enough cash flow to stay afloat? Does your job provide you the survival kit you need to live happily? If you answered no, what can you do to find a job that gives you advantages? You want to look at the whole pie. If you lack skills to obtain a job that fits your survival, can you return to school to gain skills to help you grow?

To improve your personal life you will also need to consider self-awareness. Do you see yourself in many lights, or standing in one position? Use your self-awareness tool to pull up resources that assist you with improving your life. For instance, if you are stuck at a job that barely assists you with survival, brainstorm to find new skills or ideas that help you to make better choices.

Get organized.

What about self-actualization, do you have the ability to act on your own behalf, or do you rely on others to carry your load?

If you answered yes, then you need to work on acting on your own behalf. It takes you to make the necessary changes that lead you to improving your personal life. Do you have self-fulfillment? Do you see yourself as a satisfied person? Do you feel that something is missing in your life? If you said no, then you need to evaluate your self, using self-awareness tools to find out what empty void inside you is holding you back. If you discover the void, take steps to find fulfillment.

Time management.

It is especially "dangerous" to "ON" the computer before your sleep or in the late evening. It arouses your "hunger"/ curiosity for knowledge and new information, and continues to keep your brain engine working at least for an hour or two after you have switched off your computer. It is certainly not uncommon to stay up to 4 in the morning or even 6 in the morning, searching and surfing the net.

While that part of the experience may be satisfying, but the next day is usually not.

Suppose you stayed up late hoping to equip yourself to be more productive the next day, you may end up being less productive. Whatever is on your to-do list actually gets harder to "tick off", as you find yourself still stuck with the first on the list. To make things worse, you feel lousy because your skin looks a shade darker, and you think you look a little more tired and maybe even older. In other words, you feel less attractive and "battery level" is really only half-charged.

In computer lingo, the "half-charged battery syndrome" is equivalent to a computer shutdown momentarily. "It's as though it is both asleep and awake and they are switching between each other very rapidly," quoting the very words of David Dinges of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, whose study appeared in the Journal of Neuroscience. You can learn a little more about his experiment with this article.

Looks like getting a good sleep requires discipline as well - a realized lesson...never keep my computer "ON" after 11pm.

Learn more on enhancing your good night sleep

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I also noticed that I really miss sitting down in front of the TV with some snacks. It's the quickest and easiest way to relax a bit between all the tasks I do. By setting the time of not eating at 20.30h I basically deprived myself of all this. At some days I even had some crisps early in the day, just to not strike the day off as a failure. Wrong outcome. So I decided that I'll stick to this habit but I'm allowed to make one exception in the weekend. Not during weekdays (except Friday) and only one time a week. That's probably easier to keep.

Now for the new habit: I want to do more physical movement but I'm going to write down a more measurable goal. One that I can easier say I've reached or not. More in a later post.

SpinVox is changing the game for busy people..

I don't know about you but I tend to treat my mobile (USA:cellphone) phone as my personal contact device, in that I use it to manage both my inbound and outbound communications and plug that into my daily work/life workflow.

Because I travel about a lot for business (and in my spare time also) I give everyone my mobile number, rather than a fixed line as its far more likely to reach me and I don't have to track numerous voicemail/UM numbers, I also gain a unified call log and history on a single device so I can refer back over time to find numbers I would have otherwise lost.

I have a fax to email service for the same reason for the odd occasion I need to receive a fax... I can get it anywhere and file it electronically.

However the fact that people have my mobile number does not (for me at least) set the expectation that I will be at their beck and call, or answer on demand - I make use of caller ID to screen my calls, I'll make no secret of that; I manage my workflow during the day and quite often other people's sense of "urgent" is different from my own [unless you are actually my boss of course - when your calls will usually be answered directly], and at the end of the day I need to balance the needs (...of the many) people who want me to do something for them, and my ability to actually do so and carry on with my day to day workload.

So for example people that ring from lines with withheld numbers will almost always be allowed to go to voicemail, unless I am expecting such a call; I know most people have no control over corporate switchboards but I've never understood the logic of withholding caller-ID, especially from a large organisation as you can make the number almost anything, even a central or local office switchboard number if you don't want to expose people's regional DDI's. it also works to their advantage as I'll be better prepared to speak to them if I know what they want to know - clever as I am I don't always know everything off the top of my head!

This often means I have a fair number of voicemail's building up to listen to, and unfortunately more often than not the spare time I have to listen to the messages is whilst on a train or car when I don't have a pen handy to jot down that number - or am more likely to leave the number written on the copy of the metro on the train.

Now, this is where I've found Spinvox really useful in the last couple of weeks; it's essentially a paid-for service that you use to replace your normal o2/Vodafone/etc. voicemail service. you change your divert on busy/unavailable settings to point at an assigned geographical number (in my case in 0208 one, so it's inclusive in any bundled minutes your tariff includes rather than a national rate 0870, 0845 etc.).

It offers the normal voicemail features where you can call a special number (again geographical, rather than national-rate etc.) to listen to the actual messages and set your greeting message etc.

But the advantage of SpinVox is it's ability to convert the speech into text, which can be delivered to you either as an SMS text message or an email (my preference).

I was a bit skeptical at first, but I was very, very impressed after using the 7 day free trial. so much so that at one point I doubted that there was any technology behind it at all and that they were employing a large battery of English speaking monkeys to listen in and type it all up... their website assures me that this isn't the case and they use a tiered architecture of several speech-text engines depending on the content as some are better at number recognition etc. (can't find the original link to that article so will keep digging)

It also does an excellent job of transcribing phone numbers and extracts the caller-ID from the caller if it's available so no hunting around for that elusive pen!

If there is a word in the message Spinvox can't transcribe or has made a guess at it marks it with a "____" or (?) and if you want to hear the subtle intonation of the person who left the message, each message includes a quick code so you just dial the Spinvox retreival number and key in *03 for example and it will replay the message - a godsend compared to the usual next, next, next drudge with most voicemail systems.

For example - here is a real message left for me.. (names and numbers changed to protect the innocent, but if you really can do my extension cheaper than they can - please do call :)).

You received a new voicemail from +4420812312312:

----------

"Hi there Vinf my name is Bob. I'm calling from a company called XYZ Construction. We received your details via our website regarding your extension. I was wondering if you could give me a call back when you get the message. My telephone no. is 0800123123, in order to discuss the project further. Thank you, bye."

- spoken through SpinVox

----------

Message received at May 8, 2008 1:25:55 PM

If you wish to listen to this message, call your voicemail on +44207xxxxxxx and press *08

For assistance, see www.spinvox.com or email service@spinvox.com

Thank you,

SpinVox

So, back to the point; email delivery of the text content of voicemail messages into my Outlook Inbox allows me to flag, follow-up, set reminders, file, delete etc. and integrate them into my normal daily workflow so I ensure I can manage any resulting actions.

Previously I've found where I have had a large number of unheard voicemail messages (due to holiday or long meetings) it takes longer than I'd like to listen to them all; as they often overlap or are irrelevant due to the elapsed time and let's be honest people (myself included) tend to ramble when they are leaving information in brain-freewheeling mode on an answer machine, or just say it's X - call me back, which isn't all that helpful.

So dealing with such a pile of messages, especially when compared to the quick gratification of dealing with normal emails - where you can scan, easily re-read and file, mark for follow-up etc. means dealing with voicemail often fell to the bottom of my priority pile. This, in turn means I risk missing that one important message or take longer to respond to people (yeah I'm a fickle sort of guy - make my life easier and I'll get back to you quicker... I'm sure I'm not the only one)

In meetings, it's also ideal - because they're delivered as SMS or email they also turn up on my Blackberry so I can glance at them during the meeting and make a value/balance decision on wether I should step outside to respond. Doing this in 1:1 meetings might be a bit rude as someone is dedicating their time for your use. But for larger meetings or conferences where you are not always involved or contributing to everything it's a discrete way of making a judgement call on what requires your current attention.

Overall I'm very impressed, sometimes I've seen it take up to 10mins to deliver a converted message (maybe there really are monkeys involved :)), and it's a bit annoying that the caller (on my o2 network anyway) gets a "your call is being diverted, please hold.." message rather than just cutting to Spinvox as it does with o2's own voicemail service - but I guess that's a network feature rather than Spinvox and it's not a huge deal.

The billing is interesting, and to be honest I think a little bit unclear, as you are basically signed up once your 7 day trial is finished and I've not really had any visibility of how they bill other than a message on the last day of the trial saying my account had been charged £5, call customer services otherwise. I can only assume it's doing this via reverse-SMS billing - for me, this is handy rather than having to manage another subscription and set of card details, however I could see that bothering some people.

Note: I have a "company phone" and don't always see the bills, so I'll probably be expecting a call from accounts at the end of the month to query it!

Another use which I hadn't thought of is for deaf and people with hearing problems, this is ideal as they often make heavy use of text and email to exchange information as they are often unable to call people directly as not everyone has a minicom type setup, I see they are offering text to speech services

They also have a variety of blog/social network interfaces on the way; I don't think these would be much use for me, but you never know... it takes a while to type these things up, but I'm pretty sure it's clearer if I'm forced to think about what I'm writing than if I were allowed to ramble at a translator :)

In summary it's an excellent service, and one that I would be happy to pay for myself (even if the billing process is a little unclear, to me and the other user's I've polled anyway) I wonder how long before this technology is adopted by the carriers themselves... it's got to be the next step, everyone I know hates normal voicemail. most current Unified Messaging systems I've seen don't offer this type of functionality, they're still geared towards dealing with audio content.

Lastly, one feature that could be quite useful is a web based system for listening to the actual voicemail messages from a PC, rather than dialling into the Spinvox system - although I wonder if I really would use this, it's so accurate in converting the audio!

Steve Richards blog on work/life balance has a good post on dealing with email overload, that could be extended to take on management of voicemail if you combined it with SpinVox as I mention above - it all ends up in one place which allows you to manage it... rather than drown in it.

I'm not the only one finding it useful, some further reading from other SpinVox Users...

http://www.atmasphere.net/wp/archives/2008/05/14/with-spinvox-im-reading-your-voicemail

http://darlamack.blogs.com/darlamack/2008/05/how-did-i-live.html

http://www.womworld.com/nokia/3305/spinvox-a-lifeline-for-busy-users/

http://davestronach.wordpress.com/2008/05/02/spinvox-voicemail-to-text/

Project Management Books

The Project 50 (Reinventing Work): Fifty Ways to Transform Every "Task" into a Project That Matters!, Tom Peters

Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application, 37signals

The Leadership Challenge: How to Keep Getting Extraordinary Things Done in Organizations, James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner

Leading with the Heart: Coach K’s Successful Strategies for Basketball, Business, and Life, Mike Krzyzewski

Business Strategy Books

Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company, Andrew S. Grove

Your Marketing Sucks, Mark Stevens

Good to Great - Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don't, Jim Collins

Microsoft Secrets: How the World's Most Powerful Software Company Creates Technology, Shapes Markets, and Manages People, Michael A. Cusumano and Richard W. Selby

Body and Soul: Profits With Principles-The Amazing Success Story of Anita Roddick and the Body Shop, Anita Roddick

Personal Productivity Books

The Brand You 50: Fifty Ways to Transform Yourself from an 'Employee' into a Brand That Shouts Distinction, Commitment, and Passion!, Tom Peters

The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss

All I Really Need to Know in Business I Learned at Microsoft: Inside Strategies to Help You Succeed, Julie Bick

Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day, Gina Trapani

The Art of Connecting - How to Overcome Differences, Build Rapport, and Communicate Effectively with Anyone, Claire Raines, Lara Ewing

Usually this last action would make me give up all together, but this time I decided that I might as well get back on the wagon and try again. By looking at my tracking calendar I found that the number of successes still outnumber the failures. Something I wouldn't have known when I hadn't tracked my progress.

I also realised, with the end of the 30 days in sight (marked by a line around the 30 days), I haven't decided when it qualify as a success. I simply started and hoped for the best. Sure, there are numerous strategies to count: total number of successes vs failures, total number of consecutive successes,  success rate in the last two weeks compared to the first two weeks. I haven't really decided about it.

For now the stats:

Failures: 5

Partial success: 5

Success: 16

Days into the habit: 26

Total weight loss: 0.8kg

I use a single laptop for my day-day use, it has all the stuff i need, I run Vista and Office 2007, for our corporate mail we use Exchange like everyone else and I use Outlook Cached Mode to work online/offline..

My own personal email is also an Exchange mailbox - provided by fasthosts (why - well, because..ok?) the problem with this is that I can't have a single copy of Outlook connected to more than one Exchange server at the same time or run multiple instances of Outlook (I've tried all the hacks and Thinstall etc.), and to be honest even if I could it would probably violate the security policies of all the involved organisations as it would be quite simple for an Outlook-aware worm to try to propagate itself across multiple organisations or harvest confidential details.

The problem is further compounded by the fact that I often work on long-term customer projects and have to have a mailbox on their Exchange system as well... which leads to multiple diary sync nightmare, maybe I'll blog about that some other time).

So at present I have 4 Exchange mailboxes that I need to keep track of, auto-forwarding mail between them is a no-no, I used to be an Exchange admin and I've lost many bank holidays due to corporate->Hotmail NDR mail loops!

So, up until now I've had to run one full Outlook client and multiple OWA clients in a browser, which is ok as long as I'm connected to the Internet, but no good if I'm on a train unless I want to close and restart Outlook with multiple profiles, which is a pain especially when you are collaborating on a project between multiple organisations. To be honest as good as OWA 2003 is it's no substitute for a full outlook client. (still waiting for Fasthosts to go to Exchange 2007, oh and enable EAS!).

So, anyway a solution - VMWare Unity, this is a feature like Parallels for the Mac which lets you "float" an application window out of a guest VM to the host desktop meaning you can use the applications without working within a single VM'd desktop window.

VMWare Fusion also has the same feature, but Workstation 6.5 is the 1st time its been available on the PC platform.

To use Unity you need to have upgraded the virtual machine to 6.5 "hardware" by right clicking on the VM in the sidebar pane (below) and install the latest VM Tools - it also only seems to support XP at present, or at least it didn't work on the Server 2003 VM I had.

Boot the VM... and install the latest VM tools.

VM Workstation Screen - note VM is set to "Unity mode"

My Vista desktop (yes, I have the start bar at the right hand side - widescreen laptop!) with the popup menu for the VM, showing all the start menu for applications installed within in it.

the following screen shot is Calculator running from inside the XP VM but in a single window on the Vista desktop - note the red border and the icon, denoting that its presented via Unity.

It even shows up on the start bar with the correct icon; although this doesn't seem to work until its been run a couple of times; I assume it needs to cache an icon or something.

it also seems to respect the window snapshots you get whilst Win-Tab between applications, even for pop-up windows

Technically I can use this to run n x Windows XP/Outlook 2003 VM's presenting Outlook through to my Vista desktop and comply with all organisations security policies, as each VM and its respective copy of Outlook runs in isolation from each other with the relevant company-specific AV client (or at worst, the same level as if I were using a machine connected to a public network in that they all share a vm network) - I don't enable shared folders between the VMs.

It's still a beta feature at the moment, and there seem to be a few bugs particularly when resizing windows sometimes it doesn't work properly and double clicking to expand to full screen overlays the start-bar on my vista machine.

And it does seem to get confused sometimes and not allow keyboard input, so you have to flick back to non-unity mode and then back to continue, and sometimes a reboot of the guest VM but it is an early build so I would guess this will be resolved.

As an added bonus VM Workstation seems to allow the Vista host OS to go into sleep mode even whilst VMs are running, this is something I've not had much luck with in the past - it would generally refuse to sleep when I closed the lid (but thats not a scientific comparison... it may have just been bad luck!)

So, the pay-off - 2 copies of Outlook (2003 and 2007) seemingly running on the same desktop, alt-tab works ok and you have access to all the functionality of both without having to switch between or run multiple OWA sessions and from a security perspective it's not really any different from having 2 physical PCs in front of you (slight memory overhead, but my laptop has 4Gb RAM, so not a huge issue).

Opening attachments is obviously going to be a bit of an issue, as you'll technically need an individually licenced instance of Office 2003 in each VM as they can't (yet) exchange data between them... and that would compromise the security principal.

Today, that all ends!

If you leverage my 3 online reminder services below, you will remember more than you do today.

1. Never forget another birthday (or other event) using Backpack Reminders

I've written about the power of using Backpack, the online organization tool, to manage your to do lists. Did you know Backpack is also an online reminder service that will help you remember dates?

Here's how you do it:

• Simply enter what you want to remember into Backpack
• Associate a date/time with it
• Tell Backpack to email you or send a txt message to your cellphone.

That's it! Imagine this: the morning of your friend Ben's birthday, you get a txt message on your cellphone that says "Ben's Birthday is Today" so you can give him a call. Pretty cool, huh?

2. Never forget another idea and boost your memory using Jott

Jott is a fantastic, free tool that seriously enhances what you can remember and accomplish. Here's how Jott works:

• You use your cell phone to call Jott, and the service asks you "Who you want to Jott?"
• 98% of the time, I say "myself"
• Then, I simply leave myself a Jott.

What the heck is a Jott? Well, it's a voicemail that gets translated (via the Jott system) into an email and sent to me.

So, when I'm driving in the car, walking the dog, etc. and have a great idea, I just Jott myself. Bam! Idea is "saved" in my email, and I don't have to think about it anymore. Later, when I check my email, I will see my voicemail as email text and I can act on it then.

Jott is also useful for sending an email to a person, or group of people by simply leaving a voice mail using your cell phone. Check out the Jott website for more examples on how to use their service.

3. Never forget another website using del.icio.us

Del.icio.us is a "social bookmarking website," which is fancy tech-speak for: it remembers websites for you, and you can let other people see what you save in it. Del.icio.us is especially helpful because:

• It's web-based, so as long as you have a web browser, you can save bookmarks to it
• It has an "Add-on" for the web browser Mozilla Firefox, so you can create and classify your bookmarks from within Firefox.
• It uses "tags" (labels you create) to classify your bookmarks so you can easily find them later

Give del.icio.us a try. Once you have your bookmarks centralized there, you'll easily be able to find websites whenever, and wherever, you need them!

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But honestly - that's a big "if" and what I've seen so far on the net is mostly anecdotal evidence. This also seems to be the opinion of others, as reported in the Wikipedia article on polyphasic sleep (i.e. splitting sleep into smaller chunks). It seems some people report it working well (for instance here and here ), while others are unable to adapt to the schedule (there are some funny quotes collected from failed attempts collected in a critical article by Piotr Wozniak's (inventor of the Supermemo program, and recently written up by Wired). (And btw, Steve Pavlina found it amusing to read about the impossibility of polyphasic sleep while doing so successfully)

So here's what would be cool:
1. Create a list of some measures that allow us to track the relevant aspects of stuff like creativity, memory, alertness and health - that is to say, those things that might conceivably suffer from sleep if the critics are right.
2. Create a list of the types of sleep schedules that are of interest, from "classic ideal" (8-hours a night with regular sleeptime), to "common practice" (5-6 hours, with maybe an afternoon nap unsystematically thrown in a few times a week and in general highly varying sleeping times), everyman (core sleep 3 hours, with 3*20 minute naps, regular times with +/- 1 hour from ideal schedule allowed), Uberman (6*20 or 30 naps), and others that may be of interest (maybe "common practice" with "key sleep" etc. (key sleep is where you allow yourself to fall asleep while holding keys in your hand - waking up when they drop to the floor)).
3. Collect a sizeable number of people (100+) interested in trying at least some of these, and logging sleep and outcome data for all of them in a common format at a common website

This website could be a repository of actual "experiments" that would grow to a scale that made some kind of statistical analysis possible. It wouldn't be ideal scientifically (self-selection rather than randomly selected population, possibility of incomplete reports etc) - but vastly better than what we have today.

It could also have a structured link-database of reports (successful, unsuccessful, incomplete), contact links including invited researchers in psychology who could give suggestions as to how to improve the design of the measures etc. before the experiments started up, as well as analyzing them afterwards. Some psychologists or biologists may even be interested in measuring brain waves to see if the claimed malleability of human sleep patterns actually occurs (the claim is sometimes made that polyphasic sleep alters the sleep pattern so that the brain is able to go through all the stages of sleep despite sleep being chunked into 20 minute pieces).

Personally - I would like to try several of the sleep schedules (although not the uberman) - committing to each one for say, four months, and seeing how it affected me.

Next steps required: There would have to be interest in the idea, we would need a page, and a format/process for developing and improving the study design. A PBWiki?

Technorati Tags: productivity, sleep, uberman schedule, everyman schedule, polyphasic

We have a saying at Quicken Loans: "what you focus on, you find." Oprah and followers of the book The Secret - say that "like attracts like."

However you choose to say it, the power of focus is what separates those who are good from those who are great.

However, your daily life can easily compromise your ability to focus. Let's take a look at a recent day in my professional life as an example:

• 623 emails across 4 email accounts
• 23 social media requests, messages, etc.
• 13 incoming phone calls, and 9 voicemail messages
• 2 conference calls and 3 one-on-one meetings
• 1 presentation to some of my Clients
• 1 contract negotiation

How do I maintain focus when I have all of these things challenging it? Of course, I stay organized with to do lists, manage my voicemail, and keep my email management system in top shape. But, as I tell people all the time, you'll always have 100 things on your plate, but are you doing the right things?

Patrick Rhone has written about his Today Card. The Today Card is a note card he keeps with 3 simple things he would like to accomplish that day. Patrick's post inspired me to go back to a similar tradition I used to keep, specifically using a Top 3 list to help me focus.

I've re-adopted and improved on my old Top 3 list technique. It's insanely simple, and has increased my ability to focus exponentially.

Here's my secret to using a Top 3 list to achieve mental focus every day:

1. For 5 minutes right now, think about what you really need to focus on. This should be time where you focus only on important things that will move your project, career, etc. forward. Mentally ban thoughts about an email you have to respond to, a person you have to call, etc. Use this time to deliberately force yourself to mentally focus on what you need to do.

2. Write down the Top 3 things you need to focus on. I like to write this list down in my moleskine notebook, but you might prefer a sticky note, or a note card, like Patrick. Your goal is to use this Top 3 list to guide what you do tomorrow.

3. Tomorrow morning, do one thing from your Top 3 list before you open your email. I am TOTALLY SERIOUS about this. Email is a gigantic distractor and priority-changer. Do not let it prevent you from maintaining focus. By doing at least one thing on your list before opening your email, you set yourself up for a successful day.

4. At the end of the day, check your Top 3 list, cross off what you've accomplished, and write your list for tomorrow. It's CRITICAL that you write your list for tomorrow at the end of the day today. At the end of the day, you still have the day fresh in your mind. Also, by doing this, you're not spending time tomorrow morning figuring out what to do.

That's it - the secret to mental focus is the Top 3 list! If you really use this technique (including #3 and #4 above), you'll be amazed at the mental focus and clarity you have.

To quote another saying (from Dan Gilbert, Chairman and Founder of Quicken Loans), "nothing clarifies like clarity!" Good luck!

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Es können bestehende Mindmaps der Formate FreeMind und MindManager (Version 6) importiert werden:

Erfreulicherweise werden aber auch viele Formate für den Export der Daten unterstützt:

darüber hinaus ist auch das Offline Bearbeiten mit Hilfe von Google Gears möglich.