links for 2008-05-30
Posted by Jered | Filed under Asides
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Temporary tattoos are not just for kids any more. Although, I do detest writing on one’s hand.
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Being one who doesn’t like to defile books, this is a great alternative.
Kaizen - The productivity ninja move
Posted by Jered | Filed under Featured, Podcast
A great concept in getting to a more productive life is the Japanese philosophy of kaizen. Kaizen’s English translation is “continuous improvement”.
The goals of kaizen include the elimination of waste (defined by [Joshua Isaac Walters] as “activities that add cost but do not add value”), just-in-time delivery, production load leveling of amount and types, standardized work, paced moving lines, right-sized equipment, etc. In this aspect it describes something very similar to the assembly line used in mass production. A closer definition of the Japanese usage of Kaizen is “to take it apart and put back together in a better way.” What is taken apart is usually a process, system, product, or service.
This is the perfect way to view the start of a personal productivity system, which may leave you wondering, what “If I’m going to get all productive, shouldn’t it be a radical departure from my previous way of doing business?”
Importantly, kaizen must operate with three principles in place: process and results (not results-only); systemic thinking (i.e. big picture, not solely the narrow view); and non-judgmental, non-blaming (because blaming is wasteful).
Kaizen is often a series of small steps, but “radical changes for the sake of goals” is perfectly okay. Make a big change to get yourself on track and then make small changes to get to the perfect system. The workers at Toyota rely on small experimental changes rather than large pre-planned command-and-control changes.
So in the discussion of personal productivity systems, remember incremental change can go a long way, especially after a large wholesale change. After all the psychic RAM can only take so many major paradigm shifts.
The Simplicity Habit: Quick Bite - Kaizen
Tags: japan, japanese, kaizen, productivity
links for 2008-05-17
Posted by Jered | Filed under Asides
Add Evernote to your productivity kit
Posted by Jered | Filed under Recommended
People talk about their productivity toolbox, but I find my productivity kit is more like a garage. Tools have a pretty unique use, but being a person who signs up for everything that comes out, I have a lot of tools that do the same thing, but each has their own unique style. Like having a garage full, two cars, a bike, maybe even a motorcycle, I can only ride in or on one at a time. That is how I feel about my productivity tools. It depends on how I feel. Most days I will use my car, but others I like to use my bicycle.
Evernote has made it past the 3 week tech trial and is now a car in my productivity garage. I am dumping a lot of information into it, via the web, desktop and email interfaces. Most of the notes I am adding are personal, but the ability tag and search are excellent. My wife and I have added questions for the doctors visits, blog post ideas, software I want to try, webpages I want to be able to keep and search.
The couple of reasons I would recommend Evernote include:
- The text search with in images is amazingly good. even cellphone camera shots are searchable, which means I can snap a photo of a business card and then search for it later
- The tagging feature lets me apply my personal taxonomy to my notes, which increases the chance that I will find what I want when I need it.
- The multiple vectors of entry are amazing! Being able to email notes and retrieve them on my iPhone (now in a fabulous iPhone interface) takes care of me on the road, while the desktop client lets me get everything the mobile does and then some. Adding check boxes and encrypting notes are slick features. The added ability to search on those check boxes, checked or otherwise, allows Evernote to be come a idea manager (checked for ideas I have blogged about).
Michael asked the question: “How may tags are too many tags?” I don’t think there can be too many tags. I don’t keep the tag sidebar expanded, I only do so when I am looking for something. The search is much more effective, and does the image search.
Pardon me while I go a fill up my Evernote car, I’ve got some more thoughts to capture.
Tags: capture, evernote, evernote.com, image search, search, taxonomy
RescueTime: Time sink or savior
Posted by Jered | Filed under Choice, Craphack
I stumbled upon Rescue Time, an app that lives on your computer and continually monitors what you do. This monitoring is sent back to a Web site where you can see how much time you spent on a given task, say, filling out that TPS report or surfing Wikipedia.
Rescue Time allows you to rate each activity you do on a scale from -2 to +2, setting how productive each task is. Surfing wikipedia is a -2 in my book, checking my email (as little as I might) is a +2. Rescue Time records only the “active” application, meaning if you have multiple applications open, it will not add time for each application open, only the one you are working on.
This productivity tallying is shown off in pretty charts and graphs allow you to see over time what you are spending wasting time on. But this comes with a price.
Having Rescue Time installed at work and at home really makes giving each Web site I visit a score difficult. The scores are needed in order to show your Efficiency and Productivity quotients. But the time it takes to classify, tag and score each Web site I visit, could be enormous.
So does Rescue Time define the term craphack?
Yes and no, if you plan on living and dying by Rescue Time, you are most certainly going to become tied up in the management, but if you use it as a background tool, checking in occasionally, noticing how much time you have spent on digg or wikipedia, it may be a refresh to get back to work.
Tags: Craphack, measure, measurement, rescue time, time, tracking
