Six Degrees

Obstacles getting in the way

We go about our days typically just getting things done, one item at a time. Replying to emails, responding to a call or just completing various reports. There are quite a few todo's which popup ever so frequently during the average work day. However we never spend time to plan these things through. Do you plan how your week is going to plan out? do you plan how you want to plan the day ahead? Do you want to take control of the day or be controlled?

Its an interesting situation to be  in. How much of the work day can you actually be in control of?

To a certain extent we are all masters of our own unverse. All it takes is a bit of planning to steer the ship to the right course, out of the choppy waters and away from the rocks, often with some guidance from the lighthouse and the experienced hands on deck.

I love to spend the Sunday afternoon having a lazy lunch at my favourite cafe in Admiralty. A leasurely breakie followed by clearing away a couple of mundane overdue items from work. This is the probably the most productive time during the week, where you often need to review a critical piece of work but with all the chaos surrounding you in the office, your just not able to get this done effectively.

Once I get some pending stuff out of the way, the next thing I focus on is to plan out how the week is likely pan out and have a game plan on what items i need to clear with absolute importance. These items are non-negotiable, and must be done within the specified time, in fact the earlier the better. Each week is also likely to have some form of theme - the theme would represent a big ticket item which is due that week and likely to be the focus of most of your time. If you have a big audit meeting, then the AUDIT might be the big ticket item, and you will want to make sure you have addressed all your critical todo's before that important meeting.

After you have the list of tasks which need to be completed durint the week, try and then break them down into daily activities. A lot of prep work will probably have to be done to help you satisfcatorily complete the big ticket item. Apart from this bigh THEME, there are likely to be other small thematic topics which would probably be covered or need to be executed during the week as well. It might be smart to isolate these topics and try and cover them over day or two.

.....to be continued....

Being on Top of the Project Management Game

An interesting expectation of being a Project Manager which member of the project have is that they expect the PM to know everything single thing about the project. From revenue numbers, technical details, dates, to resource availability. Part of this expectations might be true but the question is how do you keep up with this information so that you have it at the tip of your fingers in the event that its ever needed in the 2 minute elevator ride where the CEO of your company asks you this information in front of other colleagues, perhaps your boss or even some cunning PMs who would have a field day seeing you slip up.

Awareness : We all know that projects have different phases. Make sure you know the start and end dates of these phases along with top level resource allocation, scheduling and costing issues. This is a must. Remember your accountability is the same as a department heads - who needs to know what is happening in this office on a daily basis.

Preparation : I generally block out the first two hours on Monday morning to take a status update from the team members to see where everyone is. I try not to schedule a meeting first thing on Monday morning as I prefer to have a candid one-on-one chat with the team members to see where they are with their previous weeks tasks and ongoing deliverables. I often find I get more truth and honest feedback in these one-on-one sessions rather than in a group meeting. Following this I organise a team meeting during the later half of the day to focus on the key areas of discovery and delivery for the coming week. If you put in the necessary attention during this meeting you will realise that you have on front of you a roadmap of the critical tasks which need to be addressed....putting you in a perfect position of control.

Reflection : Its best to reflect on how the meeting went sometime on Monday evening itself. Think about if all the areas have been completed. Also put some effort in analysing the interaction of the various team members. Assess if the project team is in high spirits, are they getting any mind blocks? Are people getting stressed out with deadlines?

Communication : The timely execution of projects depends a lot on prompt and timely communication. I have learnt the hard way that attending meetings does not mean that the attendees proactively take away their to-do lists and follow up on them in a timely manner. Its important for you as the PM to communicate deliverables and weekly to-dos in a timely manner. Failure to do so will only get you so far. You can keep the communication simple for small sized projects. For the bigger projects its best to have a structured communication system in place where all the stakeholders are periodically kept abreast of latest developments.

PowerPoint.... peeves

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PowerPoint pet peeves
Jared Sandberg
The Wall Street Journal Asia
14 Nov 2006

YOU WOULD THINK that Mark Glackin didn’t like PowerPoint at all. Ask the advertising vice president his thoughts about Microsoft’s tool, which he’s used to spruce up his presentations for the past 12 years, and you get an impassioned, 1,200-word... read more...

Tech Tags: The Wall Street Journal Asia newspaper Career Journal

Moleskine dilemma

The dilemma I am being faced with using the moleskine is indeed a big one. There are so many sites out there which explain a whole series of hacks on how to make optimum use of these notebooks. Hence, the intention is to come up with the right system to ensure proper use of the moleskine.


**** "The only time you can't afford to fail is the last time you try"
-Charles Kettering-

43 Folders | Building a Smarter To-Do List, Part I

Link: 43 Folders | Building a Smarter To-Do List, Part I.

I found the above article quite useful. It gives you a good grounding on GTD and is a  must read for anyone who wants to make their tasks list more effective.

Too Many Computers

I just realised that one of the ways to speed of productivity on the pc is to stop using too many machines. Ideally I should perhaps stick to using one laptop - which is given to me by work. Right now I have a work laptop, a home laptop and a home desktop. So what shouldi really do? My man calendars - to do's etc are in my work machine, my home desktop is more for multimedia - ipod, games, mp3, surfing. The home laptop is where I do my personal projects, resumes, e-commerce transactions etc.... would'nt it be lovely if I could just do everything on one machine itself? Surely, I would save a lot of time.

Hipster PDA and my Treo 650

So heres what my version of the Hipster PDA looks like. Been using it now close to a month and I must say that it does have its value. A digital PDA is good for synching data from your email client - Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, Novell Groupwise etc. While the Hipster PDA is absolutely brilliant for keeping things very simple, manageable and efficient. What I mean by this is that you can have multiple index cards on different topics, its easy to keep them all together in one folio, quick enough to browse through whatever is outstanding.

My decision is to continue to use the Treo 650 and use the Hipster PDA concurrently. Here is how I plan to use both the techniques to keep me up and running.

Hipster PDA

• Project notes.
• Cross functional To Do Lists
• Random thoughts
• Daily mental jog of tasks

Treo 650

• Data Synch with email client - addresses. meetings, To Dos etc
• Wireless email
• Scheduling of meetings
• Assigning tasks on the go to colleagues
• Document view - Word, Excel, Powerpoint

Hipster PDA

Having been following the GTD sites on the Hipster PDA, so I decided to give this an experimental go. I rushed down this evening to the neighbourhood stationary store and picked up a couple of items :

1. 100 index cards 3" x 5".
2. A strong clip - you know the types with them two foldable levers to hold heaps of paper together.
3. A little passport holder - to keep my index cards.
4. Some colourful pens - uniball Signo Gelstick 0.7 is my favourite.

Okay once I got home, I created a GTD template on Ms Word and converted it to Pdf format.

Download GTD-Template-Hipster-PDA.pdf

As you would have noticed, I did fool around a bit on my pc and colour printer to get a neat stack of cards. Okay, I got the basic idea for the card layout from ChipCuccio.US.

So I'll be using these cards for the next couple of weeks. Let's see how this goes. I wonder if its gonna make my Treo 650 redundant!

Influence Without Authority

I picked up a new book on Monday called "Influence without Authority" by Allan R. Cohen and David L. Bradford. This book was recommeded to me by one of my colleagues at work, and the its now in its second edition print and is apparently perceived to be a classic.

What has got me attracted to this book is that is addresses three main areas :

• How to lead people who do not report to you.
• How to build effective relationships and create allies.
• How to influence you boss, peers, clients and other partners.

I am currently on the second chapter and I am definately liking the content. A tip when reading this is to identify situations in your work environment and relate those to this reading material.

20 Common Sense ideas to get organized

Ian McKenzie over at Ian’s Messy Desk wrote a brief tips article on how to get better organized. There are short descriptions on those 20 tips but it does hit to the points:

• DETERMINE YOUR GOALS.
• DECLUTTER YOUR DESK.
• DON’T RELY ON YOUR MEMORY.
• CONSOLIDATE SIMILAR ACTIVITIES.
• CLEAN OUT YOUR FILES.
• USE ONE CALENDAR.
• REDUCE TELEPHONE TAG.
• SET UP FILES FOR PROJECTS.
• SET TIME LIMITS.
• MAKE TIME FOR YOURSELF.
• DELEGATE.
• DON’T OVERSTUFF FILING CABINETS.
• DEVELOP FALSE DEADLINES.
• USE TIMERS AND ALARM CLOCKS.
• MAKE GOOD USE OF SPACE.
• SET TIME LIMITS.
• ELIMINATE BRUSHFIRES.
• DETERMINE YOUR BEST TIME FOR TASKS.
• USE MASTER LISTS AND TO DO LISTS.
• SET DEADLINES.