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Here, Michael Hyatt posts a helpful hint to make sure the tasks you’ve delegated via email don't fall through the cracks. In a nutshell, you BCC these items to yourself and run a mail rule to shunt your reminder into the correct folder.
Now, whenever you want to track an assignment that you are delegating via e-mail, just enter your “waitingfor” e-mail address in the BCC field. (Since most e-mail software packages sport an auto-fill feature, you can generally do this with a few keystrokes.) Now, send your e-mail. If everything is set up correctly, your e-mail will go out from your main account and you will receive back an e-mail from your new “waitingfor” account. Your email rule will automatically file it in your “Waiting For” folder.
Read full article: Working Smart: Automated Email Follow-up
Some best-of-breed FireFox extentions for web developers:
The Mozilla Firefox browser is probably the greatest webbrowser in the world on it’s own. But ever since it’s extension feature matured around the release of Firefox 1.0 it has been an absolute killer application! For web developers it has become the ultimate tool to inspect, debug and test and for users it has become the greatest platform for making a browser that suit their specific needs.
Read the list: Extending Firefox for Web Developers
A great article on filling downtime. Think about occasions when:
Read article: Harnessing your interstitial time
Turns out the Hipster PDA paper system has an old precedent:
There is nothing new under the sun!
This article give a great overview of Getting Things Done using Thunderbird and other email clients:
I've assigned my labels as follows: Delete, Archive, Action Required, Wait, Defer. Since Thunderbird assigns these as keyboard shortcuts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), I can go through my inbox and quickly triage items with an appropriate label. The color coding makes it easy to pick out stuff that needs attention.
You can do similar things with Apple's 'Mail Tags' or using 'Categories' in Entourage or Outlook.
Read more: Using Thunderbird to Get Things Done
A very nice article for all those telecommuters out there. My favorite tips:
- Stick to a schedule. Treat your days like a “regular” work day. Many people have found that a 9-5 or 10-6 schedule really helps keep them on track and productive.
- Separate your “work” area from your “living” area.
- Get out and about as often as you can. Take a walk, go outside, meet people for lunch—that kind of thing.
- Get dressed everyday. Don’t wear pajamas all day. It’ll make you feel less work-like.
- Take breaks. Get away from the computer and don’t work through lunch.
Read full article: How To Be Productive Working From Home
Having trouble with employee productivity? Read this article:
It's frustrating, isn't it? You define tasks that you need your subordinate(s) to do, provide them the resources they need, and send them on their way to get it done. You wait. You notice it's not getting done. You wait some more. It still isn't getting done. You call in your subordinates and inquire about the task. You get an ambiguous answer. You send the employees back out to perform the task. You wait even more. It still doesn't get done. What's going on here? According to Ferdinand Fournies, author of Why Employees Don't Do What They're Supposed To Do and What To Do About It, there are 16 specific reasons why.
Full Text: 16 Reasons Managers Can't Get Employees to Perform
Saying “No!” can be hard. Ramona Creel at OnlineOrganizing.com published a list of 20 different ways you can say no. A couple of favorites:
Read the complete list at onlineorganizing.com
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