- What sort of things do you document/journal?
- Do you use pen & paper or a computer?
- Why do you use what you use?
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Taking Notes
Last night I read this post by Tim Ferriss about taking notes. I like the idea of writing and documenting everything. Tim makes a good case for using paper instead of a computer. I'm still wrestling with this one.
Monday, April 21, 2008
How to Fly Without ID and Skip Lines
This is interesting... not sure I'd actually want to try it though.
"
How to Fly Without ID and Skip Lines: "
Lose the wallet to enter the fast lane? Strange but true. (Photo: Dam)
In the world of orange alerts and terrorism, how do you fly without ID? Is it even'possible?
I learned last week that—not only is it possible—it’s'faster.
My wallet was stolen at ETech in San Diego 3 hours before my flight was scheduled to leave for Austin, TX. Panic set in, as I had to be on a panel the following afternoon, but I learned of a few'work-arounds.
Here’s what I did, first from the'hotel:
1. I took the clever Brady Forrest’s advice and printed out a little-known (outside of techies) letter from the TSA, written to Senator John Warner, that outlines protocol for flying without ID. If the airport check-in staff or security stop you, this letter and requesting a supervisor is often enough to get you'onboard.
2. I used my flight number and name to print out my boarding passes from the hotel kiosk. I wouldn’t be able to use them ultimately, but it would be helpful to prove'identify.
3. I borrowed $100 from two friends for taxis, etc., and promised to immediately reimburse them through PayPal, which I could use as currency in place of my stolen credit cards and'cash.
At the'airport:
1. Told them very casually ‘Oh, by the way, I’m flying without ID today because my wallet was stolen.’ They gave their condolences and marked my boarding pass for additional screening with ‘SSS’ in bright red block letters. I checked one bag and never had to show the TSA'letter.
2. Because you are now a bigger security risk, they put you in your own line! The key is to put as much in checked luggage as possible, as they will swab everything in your carry-on for explosive residue and do a quick pat'down.
3. After clearing security in record time, I called the San Diego harbor police using 1-800-GOOG-411 on my cell to file a police report with an officer at the airport, which took about 10'minutes.
The officer then called up my CA driver’s license number and put it on a temporary ID card that I could use to drive (and also get served alcohol when used in combination with an old student picture ID from Berlin). Filing the police report is also important for filing claims with banks, credit cards, etc. to be reimbursed for any fraudulent'charges.
I had the student ID in a second wallet where I put cards, memberships, etc. that I use infrequently, so I don’t clog up my ultra-slim wallet. This back-up wallet is stored in my'backpack.
4. Used wi-fi at the terminal to cancel my cards and get replacements overnighted to a friend’s place in'Austin.
The End Result — Faster without'ID!
I cleared security in 5 minutes, where it took others AHEAD of me in line with ID 15-20'minutes.
I was upset that that my FlyClear biometric card had been stolen, expecting to be delayed, but perhaps the cheaper solution and equally effective time saver is to ‘lose’ your license, or simply keep it in the wallet and tell them you’re traveling without'ID.
I’ll be testing this on my return trip as'well.
Just another reminder to question what you ‘have to’ do. Oftentimes the forbidden opposite is the best'solution.
Friday, April 18, 2008
I Need a User Manual for My Life!
I have thought along these lines for some time now. I'm working on collecting all of my knowledge into my GMail account so it's always at my finger tips.
How I log into, create and manage posts, manage ads and affiliates, and promote all the websites I run or am otherwise involved with
A network diagram of some sort showing all my contacts and their specific relation to me and my work.
Various checklists for things like packing for a business trip and readying the car for winter.
What else? Any other process that I might have to repeat, especially if it’s on a semi-regular or less frequent basis.
"
I Need a User Manual for My Life!: "
I was doing something routine a couple of days ago — paying some first of the month bills online — and I got stuck. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember the name of one of the people I send payments to. All the information is saved in my bank account’s settings, but I have to enter the name of the recipient, exactly as it appears in my records, to bring everything else up.
That’s when it hit me:
I need a user manual for my life!
I have a password manager, personal information manger, Treo, online todo list, reminder system, Moleskine notebook — but nowhere had I written down the step-by-step instructions for making this payment. Nor, I realized, did I have a record of most of the tasks I do routinely. Instead, I remember the first step (visit a website, call someone, open a program. etc.) and rely on the cues presented. If I can’t remember how to do something, I work at it until I figure it out.
How much time do you think I’ve wasted trying to remember simple stuff, like the steps it takes to process photos I’ve taken to print them out, or how to pay my quarterly tax payments, or how to accept new contributors to the Lifehack.org pool and get them up to speed?
What I should have, I realized, is a single place where these processes, from the crucial to the mundane, were recorded. There are a few good reasons to have something like this:
- To save time: Like I said, I probably waste a couple extra minutes on just about every routine task I perform. While on a day-to-day basis, I probably wouldn’t need to check my 'user manual', it would be nice to have a single reference I could turn to when I got confused.
- For inspiration: Writing a task down, step by step, can help identify wasted efforts and shoddy processes. Maybe there’s a better way to do task x? Also, for tasks I’m likely to procrastinate on, I’d have a tool to keep me from letting myself get distracted until all the steps were done.
- For troubleshooting: How many times have you done something 'the way you always' do and not gotten the expected result. Having a guide to turn to would help make sure I was walking through all the necessary steps and help me see what I’d missed the first time around.
- For training: If I ever hired someone to take over part of my work, I’d already have step-by-step tutorials for them to follow.
- In case something happens to me: If I were injured or even (goodness forbid) killed, how would my family pick up the pieces? I’m the family tech guy — it would be impossible for my loved ones to figure out the assortment of online tools, software, and hardware I use to manage my business and other projects.
What would be in it?
What would I put in my user manual? Quite a few things come to mind, including:
- The tools, both online and off, I use to accept, process, and make payments.
- Banking processes — how I pay bills and receive payments
- Bookkeeping tools — How I keep track of my accounts
- How I add clients and advertisers into my system
- Google Adwords and Adsense processes — how I identify keywords, how I set up campaigns, how I add new ads to my sites
- How I produce a podcast — my local and online workflows for recording, uploading, and distributing my podcasts
- Renewing my car registration
- Reactivating my health insurance (I teach as a contract employee so I have to reactivate it every time I renew my contract)
- Putting a new syllabus or online course together
- Writing an academic paper
- And so on…
What would it look like?
Since part of the usefulness of a personal user manual would be the ability to share it with other people, especially if I were incapacitated in some way, using any fancy software tool or online application seems out of the question. The best bet would be to keep a single file in a standard word-processing format (Word .doc, .rtf) on my computer, and an up-to-date hard copy printed out in a binder.
Finding information in a paper copy might be a hassle, though — a clear table of contents seems essential, and a clear organizing schema. Pages — at least within a section — should follow templates, with the same kinds of information in the same place on each page. I’m torn between two organizational schemas, though: should it be organized by topic (e.g. paying bills, writing articles, organizing courses, etc.) or by regularity (things I do every day, things I do weekly, things I do monthly, quarterly, annually, etc.)?
Maybe both, actually — the point is to be as perfectly useful to someone else as to myself, and who knows how much direction I might be able to give or what conditions it might need to be used under?
Putting it together
I hear you out there, thinking 'That sounds like an awful lot of work!' And it does. What I’m thinking, though, is that once a template is created, adding new pages would be pretty easy. And rather than sitting down and figuring everything out, it might be more fruitful to keep the file open and document processes as you perform them in the course of your regular schedule. It might take a few extra minutes per task for a couple of days, but by the end of a week, you’d have most of the tasks you do most often fully documented. Add the monthlies at the end of the month, and add the less regular stuff as it occurs to you, or when you can set aside an hour or two to think about it.
Sound crazy? Maybe it is crazy. And yet I can’t help but think that so many of the organizations I’ve worked for — universities, foundations, museums, the military, corporations — have shelves full of such documentation, from Standard Operating Procedures for various tasks to training manuals to grant-writing templates. If you want to make sure that a certain standard is reached every time you do something, you need to figure out and document that standard.
I may never open my personal user manual once it’s finished — but it will be nice to know I could. It will be nice to know that if I’m ever hospitalized, my partner can make sure that the people that need to know, know, and that at least the minimal requirements of my business could be taken care of. It will be nice to know that tasks I do very rarely are documented somewhere, so I don’t procrastinate by putting a 'figure out how to do x' entry onto my todo list — and then procrastinate that task since I don’t remember how to find out how to find out!
What about you? What kind of information would you put into your personal user manual?
Dustin M. Wax is a contributing editor and project manager at lifehack.org. He is also the creator of The Writer's Technology Companion, a site devoted to the tools of the writing trade. When he's not writing, he teaches anthropology and women's studies in Las Vegas, NV. His personal site can be found at dwax.org.
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Following Email Etiquette
In Simplifying Your Information Intake, we looked at strategies to reduce the amount of email you need to deal with, and how to deal with what’s left much faster. Anyone who undertakes the task of clearing out their inbox for good and getting a handle on their email habits inevitably discovers that the biggest reason email is plaguing so much of their time is the amount of unnecessary or badly written email being sent their way by others.
Here at Lifehack we like to help you become more productive, but there’s something to be said for helping others become more productive - after all, if you can make the life of your coworkers, friends and family a bit easier, isn’t it more likely they’ll return the favor?
So, in this article we’ll look at the email etiquette that you can follow to inspire world peace and harmony and end famine. Email can make life so much easier compared to the inconvenient snail mail or the inefficient phone call, but it can also be the source of all sorts of stress. Perhaps if everyone followed these guidelines, the world really would be a happier place!
Use Descriptive Subject Lines
Well-crafted, descriptive subject lines are essential to being able to process email quickly. If you have to open each email just to figure out what it’s about, you can’t prioritize their responses as efficiently. While you might think the email you’re sending is the most important for the recipient to reply to, it may be way down the list for them - they know what they need to get done with the most urgency, so let them be the judge and state plainly what the message is about.
Ask yourself if you’d understand the purpose of the email based on the subject heading alone before settling on one, and make sure it is concise, clear and scannable. Don’t use awkward phrasing or unusual words, because they take more time to re-read and understand, hence increasing the amount of time it takes your recipient to process the message.
Brevity is Your Friend
Have you ever received one of those emails that never seems to end? The one that goes on for pages and pages, yet by the time you finish you feel like you’ve learned nothing?
Have you ever sent one?
I bet the answer is yes on both counts. We’ve all received them, and we’ve all been guilty of sending them at least once or twice before. But there’s also the serial ramblers who do this every time they hit the Compose button.
In 90% of cases, email that is more than a page long is too long. Unless you’re explaining complicated concepts or providing detailed instructions (because they’ve been asked for or need to be communicated for a reason), then get back to the core of your message and communicate it quickly.
In my experience the kind of person who sends an opus for each email is the kind of person who assumes everyone is less intelligent than themselves or feels the need to explain completely irrelevant things. For instance, if you’re a graphic artist, you don’t need to explain the techniques used to create an image for a client when you hand over the work. They don’t care; that’s why they hired you instead of figuring it out for themselves.
But Don’t Be Too Brief
Context is important; when you deal with email all the time, it’s easy to forget what you’ve sent out in the last few days. When people remove your message from their reply completely, or fail to include key details in a message, confusion ensues and more back-and-forth is required to sort it out.
When replying to messages, clip off as much of the previous email as you can while keeping key sentences quoted in your reply. Ensure you provide contextual details that may seem self-evident to you, but not to the recipient - this is especially true when you’re emailing lecturers. Your course is not the only one they teach, most of the time!
Don’t CC if You Don’t Have a Reason
Ah, the terminal case of misplaced carbon copies. Before you inflict this painfully irritating malady on someone, you’ve got to go back and have a good look and ask yourself if it’s necessary. From experience, I’d say about 90% of messages I’ve received where I’m not in the To: field but the CC: field were completely and totally useless to me.
‘Just keeping you in the loop’ is a frequent reason given for doing this, and while there are sometimes cases where this is a good idea, for the most part you shouldn’t send someone an email unless you want them to take action on it
Reply-All Isn’t Always Necessary
Someone asks their whole mailing list for advice. The whole mailing list uses reply-all to give said advice. You get the pleasant surprise of tens, hundreds, or even thousands of totally unwanted emails. Reply-all is there for a reason and can be useful, but it’s yet another feature of email that’s rarely used for any good reason at all.
Whether the boss sends you and three other guys an email asking what time the serial bus arrives (I’ve read too much Dilbert) or your 13 year old niece/daughter/cousin/sister has sent out yet another chain mail and you want to tell her off, don’t use reply-all. Don’t punish anyone more than they already have been!
Use BCC for Bulk Mail
Speaking of little girls who make liberal use of the forward button, if you absolutely must send a bulk mail to your address book, always, always use the BCC field. It’s a basic privacy measure and not only prevents your recipients from receiving endless spam as a result of your carelessness (who doesn’t already?), but shows your recipient you have respect for their privacy and some intellect.
I always feel somewhat more amicable to a mass-mailer who has bothered to use a BCC, even on an internal email.
And, of course…
Don’t Use The Forward Button
The good old forward button. Whenever you receive a once-in-a-lifetime offer to have your love interest call and ask you on a hot date, it’s the forward button that lets you send it on to fifteen people and have it come true. Sounds like something you do often? In that case, I really hate you.
If it’s not chain mail, it usually boils down to another case of ‘just keeping you in the loop’ that’s not usually necessary; don’t bother unless someone requires the specific information in the forwarded message to complete their job.
Email can be a massive waste of time. Help others cut their email time down and you’ll inevitably spend less time on it yourself.
Offering a unique perspective and insight on productivity based on his experience as a blogger, writer, musician, family man and manager, Joel Falconer has been published online and off, and brings to Lifehack's readers critical news and practical advice you can use to make life more liveable.
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