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Posts Tagged ‘Productivity’

Are You Reading Too Much?

20 Oct

I ran across and interesting quote by Albert Einstein the other day.

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
~ Albert Einstein

This isn’t exactly the best known quote by Einstein and I doubt many teachers quote this to their students. Reading is generally a good thing, but if it starts becoming a substitute for thinking on your own it can hold you back from reaching your potential.

This quote touches on a problem that holds many people back from actually accomplishing things. It is easy to spend so much time researching that you never actually execute.  That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read, do research and try to learn from others, but at some point you have to decide that you’ve gathered enough data and the time has come to do something. That may be starting your own business, writing a book or even repainting your living room.  You have a very finite lifespan. Some people spend their life preparing for what they want to do without ever actually doing what they want to do.

Sometimes the most helpful situations are the ones that force you to go ahead and do something by removing the option to try to collect more information.

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Are You Reading Too Much?

20 Oct

I ran across and interesting quote by Albert Einstein the other day.

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
~ Albert Einstein

This isn’t exactly the best known quote by Einstein and I doubt many teachers quote this to their students. Reading is generally a good thing, but if it starts becoming a substitute for thinking on your own it can hold you back from reaching your potential.

This quote touches on a problem that holds many people back from actually accomplishing things. It is easy to spend so much time researching that you never actually execute.  That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read, do research and try to learn from others, but at some point you have to decide that you’ve gathered enough data and the time has come to do something. That may be starting your own business, writing a book or even repainting your living room.  You have a very finite lifespan. Some people spend their life preparing for what they want to do without ever actually doing what they want to do.

Sometimes the most helpful situations are the ones that force you to go ahead and do something by removing the option to try to collect more information.

Business minded? Subscribe to Mark Shead’s business consulting blog.

This article was useful when looking for:
  • reading too much (73)
  • too much reading (29)
  • read too much (18)
  • i read too much (12)
  • how much reading is too much (8)
  • can you read too much (6)
  • how much is too much reading (1)
  • too much reading time (1)

---
Related Articles at Productivity501:


 
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21 Productive Things Designers Can Do with Down Time

28 Apr

Bored at Work

Designers, freelancers in particular, go through various cycles and there inevitably will be some times when you’re between client projects and you don’t have a whole lot to work on. During these situations there are a lot of options that could still make effective use of your time. Rather than feeling like you have to resort to crowdsourcing consider all of the options that are available.

This post is intended to show you a sample of things that you could focus on when you do not have enough client work to keep you busy. Read through the list and find a few that interest you the most. Keep these in mind for when the slow times come and you’ll always have something you can do to keep moving in the right direction.

1. Code Your Own Framework or Starter Template

Many designers use CSS frameworks (such as the 960 Grid System) as a starting point for their projects. WordPress theme frameworks are also commonly used by WordPress designers and developers. Although there are a lot of frameworks to choose from, it’s likely that you might like to change or tweak some things to meet your own needs. Consider using some of your down time to work on developing your own framework that could be used on many of your projects in the future. It could make your work quicker and easier going forward.

2. Design Templates for Sale

With the increasing popularity of marketplaces like ThemeForest and MojoThemes, making money by selling templates is a realistic possibility. If you’re only using your down time for creating templates, as opposed to making it a major part of your business, selling at a marketplace is probably a better idea than creating your own theme shop since it won’t require as much work from you. By having a few templates or themes that appeal to buyers you can start earning some on-going income to supplement your revenue from client work.

3. Design Stock Graphics for Sale

In addition to designing and selling templates, you also have the option to create stock graphics for sale. Stock photography sites like iStockphoto and Fotolia will allow you to sell vector artwork and other graphics. Marketplaces like GraphicRiver are also an option. Like selling templates or themes, selling stock graphics can help you to build up some supplemental income, which is always a good use of your spare time.

4. Design for Membership Sites or Blogs

You can also make money with stock graphics even if you don’t want to sell at stock sites. There are an increasing number of membership sites (like our Vandelay Premier) and design blogs that buy work from freelance designers. The items will then be given to their members or blog readers, which can also give you some added exposure, assuming you are credited.

5. Create Freebies

Aside from selling, you can also create graphics and resources to be given away at your blog or at another blog. Freebies are always appreciated by readers, and the highest quality freebies are also great for attracting links, tweets and shares on Facebook. There are any number of types of freebies that you could work on, including textures, Photoshop brushes, vectors, icons, design elements, etc.

6. Work on Your Blog

If you have a blog on your site, chances are that it doesn’t get a lot of your attention when you are busy with client projects. The time you have between projects can provide an opportunity to update your blog and reach more readers. Blogs can be excellent sources for helping new clients find you, they can attract links to your site, and they can allow you to have another avenue to network with others in the industry.

7. Write for Other Blogs

In addition to writing for your own blog, you can also use your time to write for other design blogs. There are lots of blogs out there that pay for articles, and even more that are willing to post free guest submissions. Freelance blogging can be an excellent supplement to your income from client work, and any type of work on other blogs can help with exposure, name recognition, and link building. Writing for popular blogs will also push you to do your best work and you’ll probably learn new things in the process. From my experience, one of the most beneficial things about writing for other blogs is the opportunity to network with influential blog owners and editors.

8. Write for a Magazine

Writing for blogs is not the only writing opportunity that is available. There are many design magazines that accept articles from designers like yourself. Being published in a magazine can also be a nice addition to your resume and may bring added credibility.

9. Read a Book

Most of us would love to be able to dedicate more time to learning and improving in certain areas. There are tons of quality books that designers and developers could benefit from reading. It’s difficult to find the time to read when you have a lot going on, so why not use your down time to pick up some new skills by reading a book. If you’re not sure what you want to read, take a look at 10 Free Online Books for Web Designers and 44 Brilliant Books for Web Designers/Developers.

10. Follow Tutorials

There are thousands of quality tutorials available online that can help you to learn new skills or techniques. It could be a Photoshop tutorial, Illustrator tutorial, coding tutorial, or anything else that can help you to learn something that will help in your work. This is also something that tends to be neglected when you’re busy, so time between projects is perfect for going through tutorials.

11. Learn About Photography

Photography can be an ideal creative activity for designers. Many designers enjoy photography, and learning more about it can even help in your design work. Not to mention that having some quality photos can be useful your design work. Many designers like to photograph textures that they’ll use in their work. You may want to read a book about photography or just simply get out and practice.

12. Follow Up with Past Clients

If you’re in a situation where you currently don’t have any work, why not get in touch with your past clients to see if there is anything that you can do for them? This can be an easy way to pick up a new project as many of your clients will need some tweaks on their website, business card design, help with marketing, or any number of other things that you can offer. Even if the client doesn’t have any immediate needs it helps to stay in touch with them, and when they do have a need for your services you’ll be on their mind.

13. Be Proactive with Networking

Having a solid professional network is essential to success as a web designer, especially for freelancers. Why not use some of your available time to reach out to other designers, developers, marketers, or anyone else that you would like to network with? Your networking efforts could include face-to-face networking, sending an email, connecting on Twitter or Facebook, leaving blog comments, etc. See 5 Principles of Effective Networking for more tips.

14. Work on Your Portfolio Site

Your design portfolio website is a critical asset to your business, but it probably doesn’t get much of your attention when you are busy. You can take this time to add new items to the portfolio, post new testimonials, make tweaks to the design, or completely re-design the site.

15. Setup a Portfolio on Behance, deviantART, etc.

In addition to showcasing your work on your own portfolio site, there are a number of community-oriented sites that allow you to showcase your creations. Some of the popular options include Behance, deviantART, Carbonmade, Flickr, Coroflot, and design:related. These sites can be useful for networking with other designers and for gaining exposure to potential clients.

16. Volunteer for a Non-Profit Organization

If you want to put your skills to work for a good cause while you don’t have other projects to work on, consider volunteering your services to a non-profit organization. I would recommend that you work with an organization that you are personally involved with or that a family member or friend is involved with. There are certainly some situations where an organization that is getting free work won’t put as much emphasis on the process as they would if they were paying for it, which can make things difficult for you. This can be made a little easier if it is an organization that you’re involved with, and it also helps if you’re passionate about the organization and their work.

17. Experiment with a New Content Management System

Most designers use content management systems or e-commerce platforms on a high percentage of their projects. There are tons of systems out there to choose from, but typically designers tend to stick to the ones that they are familiar with, and in some cases this may not be the best fit for a particular project. Using your down time to experiment with a new CMS or e-commerce platform can help you to identify solutions that may be a goof fit for future projects.

18. Do Analytics Work

Your portfolio site may be one of your leading sources of new business, and if it’s not, it has the potential to become one. Most of us don’t take the time to analyze where our visitors are coming from, how they are interacting with the site, and what can be done to make the site more effective. Why not use some of your down time to do some in-depth analytics work on your portfolio site?

19. Design a Business Card

You may want to use your available time between projects to design your business card or other marketing materials. A well-designed business card can help to make an impact with people that you meet, and may lead to more work.

20. Get Outside

Sometimes it’s nice to simply get out of the office and away from the computer. Getting outside and being around nature can provide inspiration and can also refresh you so that you’re ready to go when a new project comes along. Depending on how much time you have available you may even want to travel and see new places.

21. Enjoy the Time Off

Not everything that you can do with your down time needs to focus directly on work. Sometimes it is best to simply appreciate the slow times by relaxing, because when new projects come along you’ll certainly need to focus and dedicate yourself to the work. A short time off can help to recharge so you’ll come back with more energy and enthusiasm about your work.

What’s Your Experience?

What do you like to do with your down time? Have you found something that works really well for you? Please feel free to share in the comments.

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10 ways spam taught us to focus our attention

02 Apr

DIGITAL WILL BE GIVING A PRODUCT PRESENTATION OF THE NEWEST MEMBERS OF THE DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY; THE DECSYSTEM-2020, 2020T, 2060, AND 2060T. THE DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY OF COMPUTERS HAS EVOLVED FROM THE TENEX OPERATING SYSTEM AND THE DECSYSTEM-10 COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE. BOTH THE DECSYSTEM-2060T AND 2020T OFFER FULL ARPANET SUPPORT UNDER THE TOPS-20 OPERATING SYSTEM. THE DECSYSTEM-2060 IS AN UPWARD EXTENSION OF THE CURRENT DECSYSTEM 2040 AND 2050 FAMILY. THE DECSYSTEM-2020 IS A NEW LOW END MEMBER OF THE DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY AND FULLY SOFTWARE COMPATIBLE WITH ALL OF THE OTHER DECSYSTEM-20 MODELS.

You’ve just read the very first spam message. Sent by Carl Gartley on behalf of Gary Thuerk, this message went to several hundred ARPANET members on May 3, 1978. The message violated the until-then standard practice of e-mailing people individually (ah, those were the days!) and annoyed a whole lot of ARPANET users. It also sold some computers. And thus, the era of spam marketing was born.

It’s customary to curse the name of Thuerk, though Thuerk himself uses fatherespam as his LinkedIn profile URL, and prominently cites his role in creating spam as a professional credential. (Guess he decided to embrace it sometime after this interview.) But I think that Gary Thuerk is owed more than a sarcastic thank you.

After all, spam — now estimated at more than 75% of e-mail traffic — has been one of the major drivers of online innovation. To cope with “Pandora’s Inbox”, we’ve had to develop attention and information-management systems that prove crucial for surviving today’s communications-rich environment.

Spam is the vaccine for your attention span. It’s the toxin that has stimulated our immunity system’s defenses. Thanks to spam, we’ve had to find technical, social and personal ways of keeping our eyes on the 22% of e-mail that isn’t pure junk, and to avoid the 78% that is.

Those tools and tactics turn out to serve us very well in the era of social media. Now that people generate content and communications in ways that go well beyond e-mail, we need to focus in ways that go far beyond a spam filter. We can thank Gary Thuerk and the spammers of the universe for helping us develop the following ways to focus our attention:

  1. Email filtering: Email filters, which were first created to deal with spam, have since turned into powerful tools for managing and organizing incoming email. I’m utterly dependent on Gmail filters in ways that go way beyond spam elimination. Without spam I might have to read and file my e-mails by hand (shudder).
  2. Attention filtering: Email filters have inspired analogous tools on other platforms. Twitter lists, the Facebook “hide” option and the entire idea of PATH are all about filtering out extraneous content so we can focus our attention on a more limited circle of relationships or a more limited sphere of information.
  3. Texting and messaging: Spam made us impatient about the process of plowing through our inboxes. Texting, chat and Twitter are all instant communications tools that sidestep the whole inbox nightmare by coming to us in real time. (And better yet, by being incredibly short.) Learning to communicate in very brief increments is one of the legacies of spam, and in a world that connects us to hundreds or thousands of people through a wide range of social networks, we can be grateful that some of those conversations happen briefly.
  4. Pull: Email did a fantastic job of teaching us about the limits of push: content that gets pushed to you. As a result many of us have shifted much of our attention onto pull: content that we pull to us by choosing what to visit or subscribe to. For instance, instead of subscribing to e-newsletters, we might subscribe to blog RSS feeds. While e-newsletters are still alive and well, the shift to pull is an essential tool for people trying to manage a very high volume of information.
  5. FOAF: The friend-of-a-friend principle has driven a wide range of social networks in which your interactions are structured around networks of trusted contacts. Relying on networks of trust is a way of getting past the spam problem, by opening communication channels only along lines that mirror pre-existing social relationships. Just think about LinkedIn, which explicitly limits your ability to contact people based on how closely you are connected. That whole model of using social networks to construct boundaries around who gets our attention is in some part thanks to the problem of ungated attention first demonstrated by spam.
  6. Marketing with value: Spam’s assault on e-mail delivery and opening rates first forced marketers to think about what they could actually offer to make an e-mail worth reading. That consciousness and skill set has served marketers well in the social media era, where the competition for attention is even fiercer. If some online marketing now delivers real value to its targets — think the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty or Dell’s Ideastorm — that’s because marketers have learned that providing tangible value is one way to earn people’s attention.
  7. Opt in, opt out: To address the spam problem, many countries have laws that require all bulk e-mails to include an opt-out link, and/or to be sent only by people who have explicitly opted into the mailing list. (Of course, these laws are ignored by all kinds of illegitimate operations, which is why spam volumes remain so high.) This has given us the idea that you don’t demand the attention of someone who hasn’t asked for your content, and that losing someone’s attention is a routine and acceptable part of our communications ecosystem. You can see that principle extended into technologies and practices like the ever-evolving policies on what appears in your Facebook news feed, and the ease of unfollowing people on Twitter.
  8. Ignoring communications: Spam taught us that it was OK to ignore a lot of e-mail. We still have a ways to go in overcoming our notion that all e-mail deserves a reply, but to the extent that we’re asserting some sense of agency over how we allocate our attention, it builds on the foundations established by spam. Once you learn how to ignore offers from Nigerian princes, it gets a lot easier to ignore irrelevant office-wide memos.
  9. Getting rich quick: In a world that delivers daily messages about how you can get rich quick, it’s understandable that we’d lose our patience for long, slow empire-building. Maybe it’s overreaching to blame (or credit) spam for a generation of social media sites built on the business model of, “let’s build something that we can get Yahoo! or Google to buy.” But some of the startups that found their quick return through early acquisition have included some great tools for managing our information and communications (hello, delicious and Radian6).
  10. Penis talk: If we weren’t so constantly deluged by spam ads promoting Viagra, Cialis and penis enlargement, we might think that the size and engorgement of one’s genitalia were strictly personal matters. Thanks to spam, we now know how much people like to think and talk about penises, information that has helped to drive some of the Internet’s most successful entertainment sites. Imagine if we’d wasted all that attention on lady parts instead!
 
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How to create Gmail labels that help empty your e-mail inbox

30 Dec

Before you get get rolling with your new filters, you’ll need to set up some labels. I described my collection of alternate mail processing boxes (aka quasi-inboxes) in my first blog post about inbox zero, and offer more suggestions about label setup in my blog post on how to empty your inbox with Gmail filters, where I tackle the key question: what comes first, the filters or the labels?

The answer is: labels. Begin with a basic set of labels, and expect to add more as you process your “systems needed” folders and identify more filters (and more labels) needed. I recommend creating a folder (label) to hold all these alternate inboxes, which I call “Box” (because it’s full of quasi-inboxes). Inside Box are a few top-level folders, each of which has further subfolders.

You can create your labels directly in Gmail, but I find it easier to create folders and subfolders inside my local mail client (i.e. Mail.app, where I use the Mailbox/New Mailbox…. command). It’s easy and intuitive to create a new folder and then place additional folders inside it, whereas it can be a bit challenging to set up your nested labels in Gmail by creating a new label with a name like Box/Lists/HARO — especially if you make a mistake and type Box/List/HARO instead, thereby creating a whole OTHER folder structure named Box/List instead of Box/Lists. Google something like “how to” folders subfolders [insert name of your e-mail client] if you need help creating folders and subfolders in your e-mail system. Note that you can run into trouble if you try to create a subfolder that exceeds Gmail’s 40-character limit; if you get a message that a folder can’t be created, it’s probably because you’ve exceed the 40-character limit.

Set of folders inside Mail.app

Mail.app folders....

             <<        IMAP sync         >>            
List of Gmail labels corresponding to the Mail.app folders

...translate to Gmail labels

You should already have created a set of labels for your archive, reference and clients/projects, which is what you use to file messages you’ve already read and acted upon. The “Box” labels are specifically for housing e-mails that haven’t been processed yet, either because you’ve set up a rule that sends those messages to an alternate quasi-inbox for you to read when you have time, or because you’ve read (and possibly replied to) a message and need to bring it forward for later action. Your “Box” will end up containing a variety of sublabels (quasi-inboxes) that reflect your personal workflow, but to begin, try setting up the following starter labels and sublabels (or folders and subfolders) in Gmail or your local e-mail client:

  1. FollowUp: These are your “bring forward” files, which you’ll want to check periodically. Use these folders to stow any message you’ve responded to, where you need to get a reply to your reply and want to remember to check back if you haven’t heard. You may have additional subfolders for:
    • ActionNeeded: Remember to do something else
    • ClientName: If you have a couple of major clients and want to see all your open loops each time you check in with them.
    • Waiting: You’re just waiting to hear back about these and don’t want to forget them.
  2. Lists: These folders catch e-newsletters and other bulk e-mails, and set them aside so that you can read them if and when you have time. You can setup subfolders for types of messages, or for specific lists, like:
    • Family: For newsletters from my kids’ school, daycare and afterschool programs.
    • HARO: For the Help A Reporter Out e-blast
    • WOC: For the Web of Change e-mail list
  3. Notifications: These collect all the automatic notifications generated by different web applications, like Facebook (which may notify you every time you get a friend request or a message, depending on your settings) or Twitter (which may notify you of every DM or new follower, again depending on your settings). You may choose to turn off notification in the application itself, but you may want to keep them in Gmail if you like the idea of scanning these notifications periodically in your e-mail, or keeping them so that they pop up if you search Gmail (so that searching Gmail for your friend Priscilla’s e-mail also turns up the DM she sent you on Twitter), or you simply can’t get the notifications to turn off. I use rules to stream some of my notifications into specific subfolders like:
    • Facebook: For anything from Facebook
    • Disqus: For notifications of blog comments sent via Disqus
    • Google Docs: For notifications that I’ve been invited into a new Google Doc (handy if I know someone has shared a doc with me, but I can’t figure out which of my Google addresses they’ve invited)
  4. OrganizationName: This is a folder for all the internal correspondence within your organization, which I recommend filtering so that you don’t miss the external e-mails that may be more time-sensitive or cost more to miss (if, for example, they are sales, media or donor inquiries). Making this work via filters depends on everyone in your organization having their e-mail addresses in the same domain (or a small number of them) so that you can filter on @OrganizationName.com.
    • ToMe: Messages to me from other people in my organization, that haven’t been marked urgent. This works if you are in a small company and/or the boss, so that you can tell other folks in your organization that they have to include the word “URGENT” in the subject of their e-mail if they want it to hit your inbox. If you run your own small company, this may well be the best way of ensuring your internal e-mail doesn’t crowd out sales or investor inquiries. Be sure to check your “OrganizationName/ToMe” mailbox every day.
    • CCed: For messages that have been sent by someone in your organization and cced (rather than addressed) to you.
  5. Scheduling: These collect all messages that have a calendar invitation attached. It’s a lot easier to review these once a day and handle your scheduling requests as a batch. If you have an assistant, you might ask them to keep an eye on these scheduling requests for you.
  6. ExternalCCs: Messages that are copied to you (for your information) are by definition not urgent. This folder collects messages that have bee sent from outside your organization and cced to you.
  7. Attachments: To save any message that came with an attachment (see filter #7)

Once you set up the labels above, you’ll be ready to get started on setting up your filters. You can add more labels anytime as described above, or by selecting “New label…” from the “Choose label” dropdown that Gmail offers as part of the “Create a filter” process.Gmail "create a filter" process offers option to create a new label

For the first few weeks after you set up your filters, you should quickly scan all of these folders every day, just to get a sense of what is landing there. This will help you fine tune your filters (perhaps adding a couple of rules to catch more messages, or adjusting the criteria so fewer messages get filtered out of your inbox) and to help you figure out how often you need to check each of these quasi-inboxes. My guess is that you’ll decide to ignore some of them completely (like notifications), check others on occasion (like your newsletters, if you have a few minutes to spare) and a couple every day (like your “followup/action needed”).

 
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