Do You Want To Write Documents and Emails Fast?

There are numerous articles on the web bursting with hints and tips for increasing personal productivity. But here’s one piece of advice you won’t likely read too often: learn to touch type.

In case you don’t already know, touch typing is that lovely art of typing without looking at the keys. It should involve using every finger of both hands (as opposed to the two-fingers-per-hand “hunt and peck” method) and it relies on muscle memory to guide the user to the correct key.

Why bother learning to touch type? Simple: even a moderately competent touch typist can key in 60 words a minute or more. Hunt and peck typists get nowhere near that. And when you think about it, most of us spend hours a week writing documents, emails, reports and more.

So, it makes sense to learn a skill that could give you back some of those hours for more productive tasks – like arranging hostile takeovers of struggling firms, learning how to do base jumping, or simply doing the shopping.

“Who’s got time to learn to touch type?” you cry. Actually, you have. What stands in most people’s way isn’t that it’s time consuming to learn, but that we have a morbid fear of hitting the wrong key.

Well, give up that concern and get ready to make mistakes. Lots of mistakes!

Here’s the thing… You already know where all the keys are. You’ve been pounding away on them for years. Sure, when you first start touch typing, it’ll feel strange and you’ll make mistakes all over the place. But the speed at which you start hitting the right keys – without even looking – will astound you.

Here’s how to do it. Set aside five minutes to practice touch typing. And instead of looking down at the keyboard as you type, force yourself – and you will have to force yourself – to look only at the screen. Then start typing. Anything will do.

Every fiber of your being will resist this. The urge to look at the keyboard will be overwhelming. You’ll hate being unsure where the right key is. You’ll hate looking at the wrongly spelled words that appears on the screen. But stick with it. Search for the right key only from muscle memory and, eventually, you will find it. Once you do, its location on the keyboard will be seared into your muscle memory as never before.

Congratulations! You’re on your way to becoming a touch typist.

Force yourself to use every finger on each hand to type letters, and your thumb to hit the space key (or a finger if that feels more natural). This will also feel strange at first, but it’s the key – if you’ll pardon the pun – to typing really fast because it means each finger only has to move a very small distance to hit the desired key.

Every day, spend five minutes doing this exercise. You will rapidly get faster and more accurate. Your mistakes will decrease and your confidence will lift. And it’ll happen quickly because, when you really get down to it, you do know where the keys are.

Mainly what this exercise is doing is forcing you to dig into that knowledge which, until now, has been largely hidden from your view. It’s a classic case of “not knowing what you know”.

Within a month, you’ll be touch typing quickly and confidently and accurately. And here’s the kicker: touch typists also tend to be more accurate. That may seem counter-intuitive but it’s true. Within a year, you’ll be typing at 60 words a minute, easy. And you’ll be having a ball. Touch typing, believe it or not, is fun.

It’s a no-brainer, really. If you want to save time, lift your productivity and have the pleasure of knowing you’ve mastered a skill you thought was beyond you – now’s your chance.

In today’s information age, many people find themselves overwhelmed with the amount of reading they need to do in order to stay on top of developments in their fields. In many cases, learning how to speed read can be useful. It can also benefit your personal time management. A few simple reading tricks can make it easy to take in a lot of information quickly. The key is knowing how to pick out the important information and ignore the rest. You can easily adopt these practices to improve your reading speed without taking a speed-reading course.

If you work in a field where you have to read constantly in order to stay on top of a lot of incoming information, you can easily feel that you are becoming bogged down and overwhelmed. It can be very hard to keep up with everything you need to know. One important part of learning how to speed read is to zero in on the important stuff and leave the rest alone.

The key is to realize that you can’t possibly read everything. You will have to make some choices about what you will read thoroughly and what you will discard after a brief glance. Allow yourself to pick and choose what you read.

How to Speed Read: 5 Tips that Actually Work

1. Let the Headlines Guide You to the Important Stuff

Pay attention to headlines that are displayed in bold print. Whether you are reading articles online or in magazines, editors often make your job easier by highlighting some of the key points. They use tricks such as putting headlines and important quotes in big print, and drawing circles and arrows to guide you to essential information. You will soon notice this when training how to speed read.

2. Read Just One Sentence from Each Paragraph

Read just the first sentence of every paragraph when you need to skim through a long article or book. Remember that you learned in school that the first sentence of a paragraph states the main theme that will be covered in the rest of the paragraph. In many cases, the supporting material in the paragraph contains a lot of fluff that doesn’t really add much to your knowledge. You will often find that you learn enough by reading the first sentence that you don’t really need to go into depth to understand the topic well.

3. Take What You Need and Leave the Rest

Ignore sections of articles, reports, and books if you are sure they don’t pertain to you.

4. Don’t Try to Read Every Single Word

Instead of trying to pay attention to every single word you encounter, let your eyes sweep across the text. Train yourself to take in more words at a glance. Look at complete phrases instead of individual words. If you think you’ve missed a word, just keep going.

How to Speed Read – Tip 5: Don’t look back

Don’t backtrack when you read. Train yourself to keep moving forward. Keep your eyes moving down the page. If you can overcome the habit of going back to re-read a missed word or sentence, you can shave hours off your reading time if you have to read a lot of material.

Summary: Speed Reading

By following even one of these tips on how to speed read you will be able to get through your reading more quickly. If you combine these tips, you will get through a lot more of your reading material much more quickly than in the past.

Many of Us Have Experienced Writer’s Block, at Least Sometime

You are staring at an empty document on your computer screen. The cursor is blinking. You decide to distract yourself for a moment, so you check your e-mail. A few seconds later, you return your gaze to the document with the blinking line that is waiting for you to start producing words.  This may go on for what seems like eternity. You have writer’s block.

Nearly everyone who writes experiences writer’s block at some time. Even seasoned writing professionals can have moments where words simply will not come out. Unfortunately, looming deadlines are not very sympathetic towards mental blocks. You have to break through it. There are three common causes of writer’s block. Read on to learn what they are and what you can do about them.

The Usual Suspects

You are not allowing writing to be a process. Sometimes it can be easy to forget that writing is a process. Although a good final draft appears seamless, often it is actually the product of multiple stages, including brainstorming, researching, organizing, planning, composing, revising, and reworking. Very few writers have the skill to sit down in front of a keyboard and effortlessly craft a solid piece of writing.

However, those who suffer from writer’s block sometimes expect to be able to write that easily. So, when they find themselves incapable of tackling the writing process in one fell swoop, they lock up. Get around this problem by breaking each part of the writing project into manageable chunks. Instead of taking it on all at once, approach each stage separately. You are more likely to avoid writer’s block if you take each writing task one step at time.

You are a perfectionist. Many writers of guilty of possessing perfectionist tendencies. They want each word to be immaculately appropriate, and each sentence elegantly crafted. If you try to write with these standards mentally running in the background, it can be impossible to get through even a paragraph, much less a page.

There is nothing wrong with having high standards. Demanding excellence from yourself can be a profound source of motivation to improve your craft. However, once your standards get so high that you are debilitated from exercising your craft at all, you are being too much of a perfectionist. It is harming more than it is helping.

You are stressed. Stress can trigger all kinds of mental blocks, especially if you have been experiencing it for a long period of time. It can happen because you are preoccupied with other concerns. There is also the chance that high stress levels are interfering with your sleep, which can seriously compromise both your mental and physical health. When you compound external stress with the stress that can come from embarking on a writing assignment, you can feel even more stressed.

If you suspect that stress is taking its toll on your writing, make some lifestyle changes. Get more rest, exercise regularly if you do not already, eat well, and seek outside help if your stress levels require professional attention. Writer’s block could be a symptom of a much larger issue.

Writer’s Block: Summary

There is not a definitive reason why people experience writer’s block. The causes of any mental block can be intricate. There are some common issues, though, that affect many people when they sit down to write. If you try to tackle those three common causes of writer’s block, you have a good chance of emerging a more productive writer.

Introduction

Offering time management training to your organization is a way of to facilitate efficiency and productivity. It can be done on individual or group level, and in different ways. There are a few decisions to make before you choose the specific time management training that would benefit your organization the most.

In this article, I will use the term time management training in order to refer to all kinds of training relating to individual time management and personal productivity areas.

I will start by discussing what kind of organization would benefit the most this kind of training, proceed with what good time management training should contain, and finally cover different possibilities to find proper training.

What Kind of Organizations Benefit from Time Management Training?

Before you can have an effective and efficient organization you need to have structure and skills in your organization on many levels. In a simplified model, we can identify four levels, as per the diagram below.

On an organizational level time management training is like pouring oil on the wheels of your organization. It can make everything move smoother. However, if there exists obstacles for achieving great results with your organization, you will not benefit so much from applying it.

On an individual-level time management training can still help self-motivated individuals who want to develop themselves to perform even better. It will also help them to feel more in control of their time and goals.

So before making a high level commitment to a specific program, you should make sure that your organization has the professional skills to produce great results in your business field. Secondly, you should make sure that your organization has proper strategy elements in place, and that your managers are able to guide your company towards your strategy vision. Thirdly, you should make sure that your employees know how to use the core tools of your business. This often means being able to fluently run reports on different levels and functions and sister available shortcuts in the ERP solution you are using.

If you’re not confident that you have those elements in place, then you might consider training in the fields above first, before committing to any large-scale training.

Time management training might still be a good option, but maybe only to the star performers of your company, or other people you think will benefit from the training.

What to Expect from It?

Here are some areas that proper training in time management should cover:

Goal Setting

Good time management training should contain a section on setting meaningful goals. For corporate life managers, this means the ability to convey department level goals into their own personal goals. The ability to transform strategic objectives into relevant individual goals is a key success factor in any organization.

Managing Projects and Tasks

After you have defined your goals, real life begins. This often means starting a number of meaningful projects. The projects are then executed in a series of tasks that need to be managed and completed.  Prioritizing is an important skill relating to this area that should be covered. When the projects have been completed, the goals should be reached.

Dealing with Procrastination

A commonly occurring syndrome for even the most professional individuals is procrastination. Good time management training should therefore address this issue, giving tips on how to overcome it. Dealing effectively with procrastination keeps things moving.

Workspace

“A place for everything and everything in its place” is a common concept in industrial processes. Most offices don’t live to an equal standard. Instead, it is common to find office tables covered with brochures, notebooks, and other mysterious paper piles. This kind of this organization inhibits productivity. Good time management training, therefore, also covers the basics of creating an organized and tidy workstation.

Managing Email

It is not uncommon to encounter e-mail inboxes with over 1000 items. A good training program should teach how not to become overwhelmed by e-mail, and how to keep e-mails organized. There are several options available for managing e-mail. This is an area where one-on-one or small-group sessions can come handy, as they give better possibilities to a trainer to suggest methods that suit specific individuals best.

Effective Meetings

An interesting aspect of time management is the art of conducting meetings effectively. Some time management courses also cover this aspect.

Possible Other Skills

There are a few other areas to that can be covered by time management training. Many trainers have additional street-smart ways to gain extra time and increase productivity. For those who already have the basics of time management covered subs advise can be the most interesting takeaways from the training.

Where to Find Training?

The most famous actors are David Allen and Company (here link to their time management training), and FranklinCovey Co. If you are familiar to time management you will recognize David Allen from his GTD methodology, which he has created. Stephen Covey, on the other hand, is best known for his “The 7 Habits of Effective People” book and lectures. Both companies train globally and have hundreds of coaches.

I have personally received a short GTD training during my career. The supplied training materials were excellent, and the structure followed the material generally found in all GTD texts. Even if I was already familiar with the topics discussed, I could see how enthusiastic my colleagues became.

However, I would not put so much emphasis on the name of the company supplying you with the training. Most likely, you will find corporate coaching companies supplying this kind of training somewhere close to you. Before choosing your supplier, you should ask them to show their material and explain their main training areas. The areas should match the ones I discussed above. Especially before committing to a large training program you should also ask to see the trainer himself. It is very important that you have confidence in the coach you choose. You should also discuss a follow-up strategy, which should aim at ensuring that the habits, which are taught in the training, actually stick in your organization. A one-day training after which the coach just leaves and never follows-up on your group is useless, in my mind.

Summary

Offering time management training to your organization can increase productivity in your company. A good training program should cover at least setting goals, managing projects and tasks, dealing with procrastination, managing e-mail, arranging your workspace, and a few other things.

Training within time management is becoming increasingly well known, and you should be able to find a coach close to you with some basic searching and evaluation.

Do It for Your Time Management

This first alternative time management advice is so ordinary that some might think it is naive: Sleep More!

“What is this?” you may ask. Well, yes, the advice is simple. But this does not make it trivial. In real, hectic life, it is very easy to neglect the importance of sleep. Maybe that is why it is so commonplace. According to numerous studies, the amount of chronically fatigued people in society is increasing. We are sleeping less and less. Busy professionals, young management consultants, and corporate warriors can easily end up with too little sleep during hectic projects. And yes, the same goes for families with small children.

Severe Loss of Productivity

I know for sure, that for me, neglecting sleep is the number one productivity killer. For an optimally productive day at work, I need about seven hours of quality sleep.  For some people the amount is less, for some more, but for me, it is seven. I also know that it is incredibly easy for me to end up with less sleep than what I need. The reason for this is very simple: there exists a lot of interesting things to do, and the amount of time is limited… I want to perform well at work, which often leads to extra hours at the office, despite skills in time management. At the same time, I have earlier also tried to fit in doing sports, hanging out with friends/girlfriend, watching television, and doing something with the computer (like adjusting this blog)… all during the same evening. This might have worked for a day or two, but it has also inevitably has led to severely less sleep, which eventually has taken its toll… and suddenly the end result has been an evenings of apathy, in order to balance it of.

So, it is without hesitation that I say that sleeping enough (= seven hours per night) is my number one method of productivity maintenance. I have to admit that it is only about 3 to 4 months ago that I really deeply have understood the value this brings me. Luckily, the effect is so obvious that I have no troubles with keeping up this new habit. I might not anymore try to do four different things during an evening. Still, this is not a loss, because focusing on less with a brighter and more creative mind, just produces more fruitful results.

The Harvard Women’s Health Watch had an article a few years back, portraying six reasons to get enough sleep. The picture below illustrates them.

Six areas that get affected if you neglect the importance of sleep.

The picture above shows the different areas where sleeping enough will benefit you, or is just plain out necessary. Sleeping sufficiently will help you learn more efficiently, keep your weight under control, and give you the attention to operate safely in your environment. It will also help you to be less impatient and irritated. It benefits your heart, and it helps your body’s immune system to fight illness. Talking about illness, this is a thought that is really disturbing, now that it occurred to me: having an extra flu due to too little sleep. Being sick will without doubt make you lose numerous valuable hours that might take weeks or months to catch up even with the best medicine skills.

I can also relate to the safety point. I used to be in a position where I had to drive quite much with the car. During those years, I certainly experienced moments where I would have just wanted to start sleeping, while guiding a car 80 miles an hour. Those people, who drive more, know what I mean.

The Importance of Sleep: Summary

When you look at the picture above, and think about the importance of sleep for a while, the case is quite clear. Sleeping has a pretty decent return on investment.

Links:

• Harvard Health Publications: The Importance of Sleep
• emedicinehealth.com: Sleep: Understanding the Basics

How to Quickly Find Emails or Files that You Really Need, When They Appear Lost?

I am sure all of you are all familiar with the situation… You have lost an email or file, and you just can’t find it. Where the heck is it?

You’re in a need of a proper Desktop or Outlook search. The Mac has Spotlight search built right in, but how about Windows?

Unfortunately, the search function in Windows Outlook has been crippled since many versions back. It really amazes me how slow and clumsy it is, causing extra jamming and frustration in moments when you just would like to find something fast.

Trying to find files in Windows is a different story. There exists some kind of a desktop search function built in Windows, but it doesn’t come even close to the built in Spotlight feature, offered by Macs. I am not interested to look at a dog animation, when I want to have lightning-fast  search results.

So, Windows still isn’t strong in search, and there exists a gap to be filled by third party search utilities. Someday, this will most probably change, but this is the situation now. Outlook 2010 definitely shows improvement. However, it still doesn’t quite make it.

Google filled the gap for a while by offering their version of a desktop search for Windows. Unfortunately, this product has been discontinued. Secondly, and this is my opinion, I never liked the interface offered by Google.

We will now take a look at three currently available desktop/Outlook search solutions: Lokeen, X1, and Copernic.

All three applications handle the same basic functions. They will index all your e-mails and files, and make them searchable. After the indexation, you are not only restricted to searching on the base of file names or e-mail subjects. You will actually be able to search for content inside files, e-mails, and e-mail attachments. After the initial indexation process, the applications will try to update the index database on a continuous basis.

Even if the basic functions are the same, all three applications have their own flavor and touch. Here are some of the characteristics I found, during my tests.

Lokeen: Well Integrated but Has Problems

In addition to offering standalone desktop search, Lokeen also integrates into Outlook with its own toolbar. When you’re not using Outlook, you can access Lokeen from small symbol in the lower-right  corner of your Windows. Any search of files or emails will only take a few seconds. After that you are presented with a complete

list of results to the left, and the preview pane to the right. What really impressed me was the fact that it’s possible to

preview search result items only by hovering the mouse over the search results.

Unfortunately, Lokeen has some serious problems, at least when I tried it. I got several times a error messages, which somehow related to the graphical user interface, nagging about some missing .NET components. Secondly, the indexation process is apparently implemented in a way that is quite heavy for the system, as it Lokeen appeared to jam and freeze whole Windows for a few seconds every now and then.

You won’t be able to use Lokeen after the trial, which is 14 days. After that a license would cost you USD 39.80. However, in its current state, I wouldn’t recommend Lokeen to anyone.

X1: Looks Nice

X1 Desktop Search is the successor of a product once known as Yahoo desktop search. It has a very nice-looking  graphical user interface, and it is lightning fast. In its preview pane, X1 can show previews of even more complex file types, like Excel documents. The indexation seemed to run more smoothly in the background. The fact that there is no direct Outlook integration, in the form of and add-on bar, didn’t disturb me at all. I more or less hate most add-on bars anyway. X1 is still capable of searching among all your e-mails. You can even press forward or reply to emails from within the utility, which launches Outlook.

I almost hesitate to write it, but for a few times, I sensed some extra minimal delays occurring. Other than that, X1 seemed very fast and robust.

X1 offers a free trial of 14 days. After that the cost is USD 49.95 for license.

Copernic: The Perfect Outlook Search Add-In?

After having tried the two solutions above, I still wasn’t fully satisfied. Is there really no perfect solution?

Well, maybe not perfect, but Copernic comes close. Get this: Copernic doesn’t offer a free trial. Instead, it IS free (for personal use).

In all other respects and capabilities, Copernic is almost identical to X1 (even the price for professional use is the same – 49.95). The biggest difference for me was in the user experience, where I didn’t get any sense of jams/freezes or anything else like that whatsoever happening. Copernic Desktop Search was clearly the winner for me, so I went ahead and bought the professional license.

Desktop/Outlook Search: Summary

Finding files in Windows, or “lost” e-mails in Outlook, isn’t always easy. Luckily, there exists some solutions to help you. Of the three, which I tested, X1 and Copernic clearly stand out as winners when choosing an Outlook search add-in.

Introduction

I find procrastination to be a very interesting subject. Maybe because I have to struggle with it every now and then myself, and it is a habit I really hate. So, when I recently got my hands on a copy of The Procrastination Cure: 7 Steps to Stop Putting Life Off (Career Press), by Jeffery Combs, I read it with great interest.

In this review I’ll share some key take aways from it, together with my thoughts of the book overall.

But first, let’s start with this: Who is Jeffery Combs?

Jeffery’s previous production was not familiar to me. Based on my preliminary research, and my tendency to oversimplify, it seems that he is a guy walking along similar footsteps to Brian Tracy: Jeffery has a sales background, he is a personal coach, a public speaker, and he offers advice on many life areas. He has also written several books before this one.

Now, let’s have a look at this one more closely.

It All Starts with Motivation

Jeffery agrees with me that procrastination is a rather shrewd phenomenon. Like most of us, he has had his own share of procrastination, which he has learned to control. He also mentions that he gained a lot of experience of procrastinating people while working with sales coaching. While doing this, he simultaneously noticed that there is not a lot written around the subject. Hence, he wrote The Procrastination Cure.

As Jeffery has had a pragmatic initial approach, one would expect more practical advice, and not so much theory, right? Well, yes and no. I would describe Jeffery’s writing style as motivational discussion. He touches theory, but does not go very deep. Instead, he uses a lot of time discussing about how people RALLY should commit to getting rid of this habit.

He does his best to motivate the reader to take action.

The word procrastination is by the way not so intuitive – where does it come from? On page 37 I finally got the answer:

The word procrastination comes from the latin verb procrastinare, meaning ‘to put off until tomorrow’.

Hey! I have actually thought about that one. Thanks Jeffery.

The Procrastination Cure: 6 Types of Procrastinators

The main part of the books is used by discussing 6 stereotypical procrastination “personalities”. I am quite sure almost everyone, with even some empathy abilities, recognize themselves, or some close one in one or several of them.

The different types of procrastinators, according to Jeffery Combs, are:

• The Neurotic Perfectionist: Someone who is very critical about quality, and strives so much for flawlessness, that they cannot even start a task if it is not a clear winner.
• The Big Deal Chaser: A person with the “big hat/no cattle” syndrome. Big Deal Chasers have big dreams but poor planning, which makes them leave things half-way, at best.
• The Chronic Worrier: Belongs to the group of people with a very indecisive personality. These people are often afraid to even start anything, as there might be some unknown risks related to changing it. Analysis paralysis people.
• The Rebellious Procrastinator: One example of the rebellious type is someone who is so talented that he doesn’t even train. Rebellious procrastinators don’t say no outright, but they leave things undone, sometimes on purpose.
• The Drama Addict: Someone who creates self-inflicted drama out of most situations, which inhibits production and consumes extra energy via raving emotions. Drama Addicts are typical last-minute performers, as last-minute performing gives the biggest “kick” to their system.
• The Angry Giver: A type that often seeks approval from others, and therefore accumulates so much to do, that they simply cannot perform on time.

For each of the different types Jeffery offers some suggestions on how to manage their specific type of procrastination. So, for example, talking about the neurotic perfectionist, Jeffry states the following:

I have learned that good is enough. Being the best is overrated. It’s a state you can never reach because there’s always someone more talented, or someone more intelligent.

The pieces of advice offered in these sections are fairly good.

Is The Procrastination Cure REALLY a Procrastination Cure?

As the book draws towards the end, Jeffery discusses the recovery process in general, and some useful habits for recovering procrastinators. The 9th chapter – Seven Habits of Recovering Procrastinators – was actually my favorite one. It contained explicit practical applications.

Summary

The Procrastination Cure is a good  book about procrastination. It’s purpose is to help you get rid of your procrastination habit. It will be especially useful if you feel that your main problem is motivation.

If you are first and foremost interested in pragmatic advice – the how part – you might also want to consider The Now Habit, by Niel Fiore.

Both The Procrastination Cure and The Now Habit contain similar elements, however with their own emphasis.

Time Management Books. Please have a look at my personal collection of the best books around this subject. From each one I have got at least one really useful insight.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11.5 Review

Voice recognition has developed a lot during the last 10 years. One of the software available today is called Dragon NaturallySpeaking, by Nuance Technologies. The software is now in its 11th version. In fact, the version I am using now is 11.5. Traditionally, this kind of software has been associated with disabled people. Nowadays, the marketing seem to be shifted towards all kinds of people. Nuance is no different, and its website contains very impressive videos of how the software enables to increase productivity. I bought a copy of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, because I wanted to see if it can support me in my writing.

Here is a short video:

As you probably can guess by now, I’m currently dictating this text. I bought this software a few weeks ago, in the middle of the night. It did not take me more than 10 minutes to understand that this was a piece of software that I couldn’t just “plug” and start “playing” with, a bit before going to sleep, because it takes some time to get it working right.

It’s actually surprisingly difficult to start using this software.

I am still trying to learn it, and haven’t fully gotten the hang of it. However, I have got to admit it’s getting easier. You just have to get used to the commands, like: “comma”, “full stop”, “select [word  to select]”, “go to end of line”, “move two lines down”, “backspace”, “scratch that”, and many more. You really have to be a master in order to manage the more tricky spelling assignments, like in making the software write its own commands (instead of interpreting them as commands)…  Consequently I have to admit that in the last paragraphs I had to give up, and do some manual writing.

• There seems to be a few success factors that make using Dragon NaturallySpeaking easier. These include:
• taking the time to familiarize with the videos or the manual
• patience
• teaching the software your writing style, by showing it your previously written material (which it analyzes)
• patience
• patience
• teaching the software the words it constantly understands strongly (it has to do with your specific spelling)
• patience

I repeat patience many times above, because the software just didn’t understand that I wanted to create a bullet list.

Slowly, but surely, I must admit, I and this piece of software are getting better along. It will be interesting to see how much I will use Dragon in the future. Dictating texts forces you to be quiet if you haven’t thought about what you want to have written. If you make unclear or unfinished utterances, that is exactly what you will have on your text (don’t worry, it’s software – it has patience to wait as you think through your next sentence). Funnily, Dragon also understands you better the longer utterances you make. This is due to the fact that the software contains statistics about which words normally belong together. When you think about it, it makes sense.

It seems like a combination of dictating, using the mouse, and keying in the most difficult-to-spell parts with keyboard, is the most effective combination for me, at least for now.

Yes, I do have a few complaints. One is that installation was a bit tricky… I had been using my Windows system as the admin user, but this software doesn’t allow to be run as admin. So, I had to create a normal user profile just in order to test it. This is most likely for security reasons, as the software executes commands beyond simple dictating tasks, and running it as admin could be really harmful. Admittedly, starting to use Windows as a normal user was good for my security overall! Adding to the installation, getting the audio to work was also a bit tricky.

Secondly, using the software really requires learning, or it will kill you in frustration, as it does not do as you say. Believe me, it’s really frustrating to Dragon if you don’t know how to command it. Luckily, practice seems to make you better. I have really improved only during this dictation session. Really encouraging!

A last point worth noting is that Dragon seems to need quite a silent background in order to work properly. If other people are at home, you need to find a separate room for your dictation session. And if you’re home alone, you’ve better close that television.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking - Summary

Overall, voice dictation technology nowadays seems quite far developed. At around 100$ or less for the basic version (which I have), it is becoming quite affordable too. At least at this moment, I’m quite sure I will use Dragon for supporting my writing in the future too. For me, using software like this helps with my personal time management.

Learn more about Dragon NaturallySpeaking at the Nuance website.

Is Everything Called Strategy, Really a Strategy?

I have seen many articles that judging by the headline claims to deal with the concept of time management strategies. Most of them fail to touch the subject very deeply. Instead, they are just random ramblings about general time management, where the word strategy is used as a synonym to tips, tools, or practices. These articles do not provide real value, as they cannot even define what they discuss about.

Time Management Solutions is about providing structure to the field of personal productivity and time management, and I will now throw in my thoughts about what the three basic time management strategies are.

Perhaps it is also a good idea to start by taking a few steps back, and remind ourselves what the meaning of the word strategy is:

Strategy, a word of military origin, refers to a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal.

In game theory, a strategy refers to one of the options that a player can choose.

Referring to the above, I would not extensively discuss the benefits of using a to-do list in an article about time management strategies. For me, that is detail level discussion. Instead, when discussing strategies, we need to take a look at available time management approaches from a higher level.

The high level picture looks like this:

A picture illustrating the 3 main time management strategies

Let’s describe each strategy, one by one, and more in detail:

Strategy 1: Goal Orientation

This is an area which is touched many times at this site, but that is exactly because it is one of the most fundamental strategy. In order to achieve things, you have got to know what you want. Larger things cannot be achieved at ones, but must be divided into smaller parts.

Applying this strategy means that you think about and keep track of the things you want to achieve. This should be done in many levels – your life goals, at goals work, or targets regarding a specific project – and different time spans. After you have defined your goals, you need to focus yourself so that you don’t get distracted from your result bringing path easily. If you manage to keep doing the things that really matter for results, you will achieve your goals faster, then if you just do a little of this and that, along with how errands and emails come across your day.

The difference between being focused, and not being focused

If you manage to keep doing the things that really matter for results, you will achieve your goals faster, than if you just do a little bit of this and a little bit of that, along with how errands and emails come across your day.

Strategy 2: Procrastination Avoidance

The second main strategy is to focus on the actual execution of things. When you procrastinate, you tend to avoid starting the execution of tasks, and find all kinds of other reasons why now is not the best time to do something.

People, who don’t procrastinate, master the art of the start. Even the best ideas and goals are of no help, if you prefer mostly to lie on the couch at home. Likewise, at work, or you might distract yourself from productive tasks with excessive private surfing on the internet.

You will always get things done by just starting. And most of the time we already know the direction. That is why concentrating on overcoming procrastination is such a strong time management strategy.

Strategy 3: Support System Utilization

The support system utilization strategy is more or less a time management best practice and tips based approach. An example of a support system utilization strategy would be e.g. to familiarize yourself extensively in how you can manage all your emails and tasks effectively using Outlook, Lotus notes, or Gmail. In this case, your time management would be built around that system. Using this strategy does not mean that you don’t procrastinate; you still might do it a lot. It also does not guarantee that you are a determined goal oriented corporate solider. It would just mean, that if you should get a ton of emails, you would be effective a processing those. This will naturally save you a lot of time.

You can build your system around other things too. It can just as well be a paper calendar.

Summary

Best Approach: Be Holistic

This article took a look at the three main time management strategies, which are: goal orientation, procrastination avoidance, and support system utilization.

The area of time management strategies is a little diffuse, as there does not exist any official definition to the concept. Some just present a list of time management tips, and calls them time management strategies. Others have similiar thoughts than I have.

The three main strategies are not excluding each other. Different strategies can and should be applied in parallel, in order to achieve optimal productivity, as each strategy has slightly different angle for achieving increased productivity.

What is Your Backup Strategy?

A few months ago I played with the following idea: what would happen if I would completely loose, forget somewhere, or break my personal laptop computer? This thought play was induced by the fact that I actually thought I had lost the darn thing, for a few minutes, at that point.

How good was my current computer backup status? In addition to answering to that question, the exercise made me realize — actually internalize — a few things:

1. Loosing my laptop and its contents without backups of my most important data would severely set back my productivity for a while. I have a lot of files I do not want to lose, and I would really hate to have to re-install everything I have on this computer. But even re-installing software isn’t bad, compared to losing your most precious files.

2. I needed to add my contact details somewhere on the computer. This also struck me, a standard corporate practice, and not a bad one. There is always the chance that if I would somehow just loose my computer, that it would be found by someone nice, who wanted to help. As a corrective measure to this point, I added my email and telephone number on the front cover of my laptop, using a Dymo label machine. Someone could argue that one should not ruin the looks of a design apparel, but for me, the MacBook Pro is tool. And it does not look that bad with the labels on the cover…

3. I’d better turn on password authentication. Auto-login was enabled, so any passing by user could basically just open the machine, and start to use it quite freely. Automatic login is now Off. This can be toggled in the settings.

4. I realized that I actually have a secured backup plan, which would have saved me.  I could just have bought a new machine, and within a few hours, continue exactly where I was left off. It would have cost me, and that of course did upset me, but I would not have lost my precious documents, or even been forced to install everything again (and I can tell you I have got some music software installed that takes some while to install).

What a relief!

Can you say the same?

So, what is my solution? Before I answer that question, let’s take a look at some basic philosophies behind backups. I am not an expert on the subject of backup, but I will share with you what I know. It took me a small while to figure this out, hopefully I can save you that time.

Different Computer Backup Solutions

Like always with computers, there exists many options on how to do things. Here are a few points and options relating to backup.

Computer Backup Term: Online or Offline

Shortly:

• Online backup: Your files are stored safely in a datacenter of the service provider you choose
• Offline backup: The backup files are stored on a separate media, like an external USB hard drive, which you provide yourself

With the evolvement of a fast internet, there has born a vast number of online file storage and backup services. If you are familiar with Dropbox, Mozy, LiveDrive, iDrive, or the likes, you know what I talk about. They are all services which back up your essential folders from your computer, into a cloud server of the providers. You get to choose which folders to backup, and most often people choose the folders containing music, pictures, and important personal files. With online backup enabed you can always transfer the files back to a new computer, or hard drive, if you get a problem.

Dropbox is one of the pioneers of this kind of a service, but there are cheaper, and equally capable services available today.

Still, my choice is SugarSync. It is mid-priced but has really cool syncing features, which somehow appealed to me. The leaders in this kind of service are SugarSync and SpiderOak. The syncing feature enables people to share the MyDocuments folder between any number of computers I choose to. So, if I e.g. would save something on my PC, into the MyDocuments folder, it will also appear in the MyDocuments folder of any other computer I choose to, where SugarSync is activated, so the files are common for all the computers. With SugarSync, I do not need to hassle with emailing files, or using USB memories! This, for me, means increased efficiency.

You can achieve an equal result with the other services too, SugarSync is just a little more advanced in this sense. But for the moment I am sticking with them.

Offline backing up of your computer is something you do yourself. Offline backup basically means that you back up files on a separate media, like an external hard drive, or on DVD’s. For Macs, the most popular choice is probably the Time Machine/TIme Capsule combo. It is a superb all-inclusive solution.

With the Windows machines I am not doing offline backup at the moment. One of them is from from work, so it is covered by our policies there. The scond only one only exists virtually, inside the Mac (Parallells desktop), so it is actually backed up by the Time Machine too.

Computer Backup Term: Full Backup or Partial Backup

Shortly:

• Full backup: You will clone all the data of your computer
• Partial backup: Only the most important files are backed up

A full backup means that your whole computer is backed up, including your operating system and program files. For Mac users, Time Machine provides the most easy full backup solution. For PC’s there exists many software available. Carbon Copy Cloner seems to be a popular choice for offline security. Acronis True Image is also highly recommended. In my brief study, I also stumbled across a fairly new service named Hybir. It claims to be an online full backup service. That is an interesting animal.

Normally online backup services are partial to their nature. A partial backup means that you only backup your most important files, like pictures, and music. And critical document files, like your CV.

Computer Backup Term: Scheduled or Continuous

Shortly:

• Scheduled: Your data is backed up with regular intervals, eg. monthly or weekly
• Continuous: Your data is more or less backed up always when you make a change, on the fly, and in the background

There is one more parameter that I want to mention quickly: if the backup is scheduled or continuous.

A scheduled back up process means that you need to define a specific time, when the process is done, often by defining a regular interval, like weekly. This can sometime be challenging in practice, if your computer is turned off when the computer would like to back up. In that case you miss your backup.

Continuous back up process on the other hand works in the background, and is less “seen” to the user. My SugarSync is practically totally invisible. The data is also more up-to-date, as it is backed up more often, more or less in real-time, or at minimum hourly.

My Solution

As I am currently at home primarily a Mac user, I have chosen as my offline full computer backup solution the Time Machine, which is a hardware and software combination provided by Apple itself. It is unparalleled in its ease of use. Its complete integration with the Mac OS makes it a safe choice. If I loose my laptop I can basically just buy a new one (Ouch!!), and restore all the info from the Time Machine to the new Mac, and continue where I left off. I have not needed to do it, but I have read many success stories on the web. If you want a little cheaper Mac solution, there exists non-Apple hard-drives, which you can use with the Time Machine software, e.g. by hard drive manufacturer Lacie.

As my online variant, and as an extra scurity layer for the critical files, I use SugarSync, as I already mentioned. If I would not be so obsessed with the Sync part of the SugarSync, I would probably opt in for the solutions by LiveDrive, which seem to contain value-for-money.

The most important thing is that you have some computer backup strategy! My recommendation would be, that you should at least have either an offline, or an online solution, and preferably both. What is your excuse, when online solutions don’t take more than 5 minutes to set up.

You need an insurance for your digital life too.

Even just copying your MyDocuments every now and then to an external hard drive is better than nothing.