Martin Spriggs

“Oh for the simpler times and the simpler ways.” Have you ever said that? I know that if I haven’t said it, I’ve thought it. I know in the past I’ve heard my parents and grandparents say it. It really is a complex thought. What is it about the past that makes us think things were simpler? Speaking only for myself I know that before email, instant messaging, voice mail, video conferencing and the like, the only communication tools I had were writing letters and an occasional phone call — if it wasn’t long distance because “that was expensive.” What that also mean for those who lived in “simpler” times was that you had fewer “inputs.” Fewer things coming into your life at a moments notice that would cause you to have to make a decision. Today we have hundreds of inputs coming in to our lives everyday. Phone, email, voice mail, etc. In the old days you’d have maybe a letter or two a day, maybe a phone call and perhaps somebody stopping by the front door.

I am not saying that it was simpler before because we were less busy. There has always been plenty to do. What I am saying is that we spend more of our time than ever before processing many more inputs than we ever had to before…and unfortunately most of us aren’t well equipped to handle the increased load. Chances are you inbox is full, you have unreturned voice mails — or you are waiting on others to return your call or email — and you have long since given up trying to deal with all those inputs. Now a lot of that “stuff” as Solomon would call it, is meaningless. But, whether you know it or not, it still is a cause of stress. Our brains want to do everything, at the same time, and when we can’t it’s hard for us to be comfortable with that.

For me however I’ve found some assistance through technological tools that help me deal with those inputs. Those that follow my blog know that I try to use the productivity methodology called GTD or “Getting Things Done.” One of the tenants of that approach is to get everything off your brain and into a trusted system. I use Microsoft Outlook for a lot of that. But another tool that I find I spend a lot of time in is Evernote. I like it because it allows me to “extend my brain.” This brain extender allows me to save every thought, piece of content, etc. that I believe I might need to retrieve at some point in the future. It could be a blog post, meeting notes, restaurant review, voice memo to myself, task list item, an email from somebody, an idea, an official document, and the list goes on.

Evernote has been around for some time, but recently there was an excellent article in Inc. magazine describing its journey to the top of the productivity system heap. It’s worth a read: http://www.inc.com/magazine/201112/evernote-2011-company-of-the-year.html. There are three things I like best about Evernote:

1. It is simple to use. Just open a new note and start typing. Or email something to it. Or cut and paste something. Or click the record button (either on the desktop app or mobile phone app) and say something. It can store pictures, documents, etc. usually with just the click of a button. It is just plain simple to use.
2. It indexing everything making it very easy to find anything you’ve stored. Upload a PDF and it will scan it and allow you to search for any word in the doc. Even more impressive is it’s ability to scan text in a picture. So take a picture of a receipt, upload it and you’ll be able to search for text in the image. It really works.
3. It’s all in the cloud AND on your computer/phone. Evernote can be configured to work locally (i.e. without Internet) and in the cloud and everything stays in sync. So no matter what your setup — mobile phone, iPad, Mac, PC, or other — chances are you will have access to all your stuff whether you have Internet or not at the time.

Evernote has a free version that is fully functional (except for the ability to scan PDFs for indexing). Although if you begin to use it store all your stuff, as I do, you will want to go for the Premium version which runs an affordable $45/year. Here is the info on what Premium gives you: http://www.evernote.com/about/premium/.

Today, if I need to find something or remember something I turn to Evernote and it will likely be there. That helps extend my brain and can assure it “hey, I’ve got that covered.”

One thing that often enslaves computer users is email. Back in the old AOL days it wasn’t so bad. You had to crank up your computer, dial up AOL servers via your telephone line connected to the computer, and then wait for that sweet notification “You’ve Got Mail.” Back in those days we didn’t always have mail…or at least I didn’t. Now we’d respond with a “so what else is new?” quip. It is overwhelming isn’t it?

The problem however is not the volume of email we get these days, but the frequency with which we check it! How often do you check email? Be honest. If you check too often to even count, then you are focus of this article. Let’s go back in time to B.E. (before email). Let’s just suppose that the mailman would come by your house and deliver each piece of mail individually. Now imagine yourself walking out to your mailbox with the same frequency you now check your email. While I think we’d all be a lot thinner, not the most productive practice.

Few of us receive such critical missives that we need to open and read it immediately after delivery. Microsoft Outlook isn’t helping us here. By default Outlook has turned on the feature that prompts you with a little notification window in the lower right corner of your screen letting you know “you’ve got mail.” Not just that but who it’s from and a little, what I will call, teaser message. Just enough to tempt you to stop what you are doing, run to your virtual mailbox and read the mail. (Note to Outlook users: If you have this feature still enabled, run…don’t walk to your Outlook options page and turn this OFF.)

I think you can see where I’m headed with all this. A little self-discipline is in order to return you to the productive self you once were B.E. Try to set a schedule for reading your email. Perhaps four times a day. Start with more if you think you might go through withdrawal, but set a schedule. My goal is four times a day: 1) First thing in the morning, 2) Just before lunch, 3) Just after lunch, and 4) End of the work day. I have to admit I do check a time or two from home.

The point is that we have to stop “living in email.” Treat email reading like any other task. You have an objective. Mine is to empty my Inbox every time I open it. That doesn’t mean a respond to all of them, but I determine what I should be doing about them (i.e. determine what they mean and what is the next action required). So they are tucked away in a trusted system for me to return when I’m ready to deal with them. Some I just answer because they are quick and easy. Most…our course…I just delete.

Give yourself a month at this and see if you don’t get more stuff done in the process. Share your experiences and pay attention to your personal stewardship habits. God has more and better stuff for you to do than to compulsively “run to the mailbox.”

One thing that most of us have come to rely on day in and day out is our calendar. Mine is electronic, but it really doesn’t matter if you use a paper calendar either. It is probably one of those things you look at first thing in the morning to plan your day and recognize the commitments that you’ve made to yourself and to others.

What if I took that tool away from you? Most of us would be in serious trouble. I know I would be. My memory isn’t what it used to be (just ask my wife), and having to rely on just my head to keep track of my appointments would be a disaster! Those of you that have misplaced or lost your calendars know what I’m talking about. It could be rightly said that we are addicted to our calendars. We HAVE to have them to function. We feel uncomfortable if not downright queasy if we don’t have access to ours. But that’s OK. They are tools we can use to practice the good stewardship of our time. At a quick glance we can see what we need to prepare for as well as how we are spending our time that day, week, month or year.

One productivity tip I’ve been following lately is to use my calendar as a reminder system of commitments I’ve made in the PAST. Here is how it works. Each week I set aside a time when I simply review my calendar. I look ahead, yes, but sometimes more important, I look back over the past weeks worth of entries. In almost every case I come across a meeting or event that spawned an action item for me that I hadn’t remembered to write down or track in some way. It would have been gone forever, remain undone, if I hadn’t “jogged” my memory with a review of the previous week’s calendar. It may be a follow up meeting that needs to be scheduled, or something that you agreed to in the meeting. It may have been a conversation you had before or after the appointment, a birthday idea, or … well you get the idea.

So the next time you look at your calendar remember that it can help with more than just where you have to be and when. It can provide valuable information about your past activities and if they mean something for today.

We live in an age where electronic content is being created at incredible rates. Just poke around your own computer for a few minutes. You probably have documents from years ago and with each successive year you create (and store) even more. Most of the programs you have on your computer are there to help you create content. Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint are all there to produce documents. OpenOffice, Mac Pages, Keynote and Numbers too. Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, and GIMP create images. Microsoft Publisher makes newsletters. You get the picture.

Most people try to maintain some kind of order with a logical file folder structure. However, that demands that you must remember how your mind was working last year when you stored that document you now need to resurrect. If you are like me that means hunting and pecking and clicking and … ten minutes later you find it. Even if you spend 10 minutes a week hunting for stuff, that 520 minutes a year (or a full work day of unproductive and frustrating clicking).

There are a few things we can all do to improve things dramatically:

1. Use the built in search tools most modern operating systems provide. If you are using Vista or Windows 7, they both do a great job of automatically indexing your content. Just hit the Windows key and enter a keyword or two that were either in the document title or inside the document. If you’ve entered the correct keywords you should be a click away from opening your sought for stuff, no matter where you originally stuck it. Mac’s Leopard or Snow Leopard provide similar functionality. Just hit the Apple key and spacebar and you can enter your search terms. Those still on Windows XP can download third party tools like Google Desktop to do the same thing.

2. Make use of metadata. Metadata (or sometimes referred to as “tags”) is information ABOUT your content. Most programs today allow you to enter information about the document you are creating. For instance, in Microsoft Word 2007 or 2010 the Save dialog box has a field called Tag. This makes searching and finding more predictable.

3. Don’t nest folders. With the tools mentioned above why spend too much time crafting a complicated filing system? Give enough order to put your mind at ease that you could really find it if you had to, but don’t over-engineer things. Keep it simple and trust your search tools and tagging system.

4. Get familiar with “advanced search,” “search filters” and “saved searches.” Your operating system and even online tools like Gmail and Google docs search offer a more granular approach to finding content. As long as you have tagged things appropriately and can think clearly about unique characteristics of the content you are trying to find, you will be in good shape. It’s worth the time to learn these compared to the hours you might waste looking for a document in a cryptically named folder five layers deep.

I hope you find these tips helpful. They have saved my bacon many times over the last couple of years.

We all want to spend our time wisely, and these days a lot of that time is spent typing. Some are clearly more productive in front of the keyboard based on the simply fact that they type fast. Others not so much. If you are interested in how fast you type there are plenty of online typing tests that will both stress you out and at the same time measure your speed. One I like is TypingTest.com. In a quick test as I researching this blog post I scored 60 words per minute (WPM). I don’t know if that’s good or not, but I’m sure I’m not on the high end.

If you are like me however, there isn’t much you can do about it. Yes, you can practice, but at my age improvement of any significance isn’t likely. So I cheat! I use a tool called PhraseExpress. What a time saver. In my line of work I type and retype very similar things over and over. Someone asks about our web hosting program. I type a reply. Someone else asks about resources to consult for setting up audio and video in their church. I type a reply. Still others want details on our ShopWELS program. I type another reply. I probably type at least one of these responses every week, if not more.

PhraseExpress sits quietly in the background waiting for you to type the magic key combinations that let it know to wake up and automatically type for you! And believe me PhraseExpress types A LOT faster than I do. So what you do is identify text, phrases, email signatures, paragraphs, etc that you type frequently, and then tell PhraseExpress to type it on command. For instance, I use two different email signature — one for business emails and one for personal. So I have asked PhraseExpress to type my business email signature when I type mb#. Similarly, mp# enters by personal signature. The key combo can be anything you like.

I can’t tell you how many keystrokes I’ve saved over the last year or so. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. PhraseExpress. It does much more like:

• Expand abbreviations as you type.
• Launch programs with text shortcuts.
• Auto-complete repetitive phrases.
• Quick access to the Windows Clipboard History.
• Correct spelling mistakes in any application.

It even has a statistics function that tells you how much time you have saved. For instance, today I saved 11 minutes by having PhraseExpress type 17 phrases or 832 characters for me! Cool. That is 11 minutes I can use elsewhere. I think that’s good stewardship.

There are many other tools out there that do similar things. Some for free others for a fee. PhraseExpress has a premium version that they charge for, but the free version seems to work very well for me. Others to consider are Texter and ActiveWords. Whichever you choose I think you will be surprised how nice it is to have somebody else do the typing for you!

Those that follow this blog know that I’m an advocate of the productivity system called Getting Things Done (GTD). You can find out more at http://www.davidco.com/what_is_gtd.php. Those that follow it know that one of the critical success factors for staying on the GTD wagon is the Weekly Review. During the Weekly Review you step back and take a look at your organization/planning system from the project level (i.e. 10,000 feet). You insure that each project has a next action and that you have captured all the projects that need to get done.

Where many people fail however is not doing the Weekly Review regularly. I recently heard a great analogy which reinforced for me its importance. We’ve all hear the phrase “ship shape”. It’s what sailors do when they aren’t battling wind and wave. They are essentially preparing things on their ship so when the unexpected or expected chaos of a storm (or anything else for that matter) comes, they are prepared. They have readied the ship to withstand whatever mother nature throws at it.

That is what a Weekly Review is. An important step in readying yourself for life and everything it might throw at you. Without it your ship is not ready for the inevitable chaos coming your way and you will constantly feel out of control and unprepared. For a good podcast by David Allen on the topic and where I first heard the illustration listen to http://www.davidco.com/podcasts/play/41.html.

Martin