Ever wonder how Netflix can process so many movies, correctly, so often? See this post for one answer… pretty sweet.
When I first started traveling for business, a good friend of mine took me aside and gave me three valuable pieces of advice:
1) Plan downtime into every trip. Don’t schedule every minute of the trip with meetings, meals, and entertainment; allow yourself some alone time (to soak in a tub, read a book, call the family, explore the local area, etc.)
2) Be healthy on the road. Don’t use a business expense account as an excuse to eat too much, drink too much, and exercise too little. Exercise after work and before dinner – every night.
3) Plan for the worst, and hope for the best. This involved losing things (rental car keys, airline tickets (back when we still had paper tickets), and hotel room keys) – so he developed, and shared with me, his system:
a) Have a place in your briefcase or purse where these 3 things go – and put them there every time. For him, it’s an outside flap on his briefcase while on the road, and the bedside table in the hotel room. For me, it’s a specific location in my purse, whether in the hotel or on the road.
The benefits to this? In case of an emergency, you can grab these things and be out of the hotel in less than 10 seconds – with a way to get home, get back in, or drive away.
In 15 years of travel, I’ve only had to evacuate 3 times – but all 3 times I was outside with my purse, keys, phone, etc. while others around me were wondering how to get back into their room, angry that they forgot their car keys, or worried that their wallet was still in the room.
b) Always leave an itinerary, with hotel phone numbers, office numbers, etc. with someone ‘back at the ranch’ so that they can get in contact with you if you lose your cell phone or are out of service.
Stay tuned for Part 2 –
Here’s an interesting post by my friend Cristina Favreau – we had the opportunity to visit in person recently when I was in Montreal, and I find this topic to be a bit fascinating, as I’ve used this technique many times without really considering it time management – which just shows that we can ALL learn something, no matter how skilled we are, in our passion/field!
http://blog.cristinafavreau.com/2009/12/time-management-while-you-sleep/
If you suffer from overwhelm, procrastination, too many to-do’s and not enough time, then you’ve come to the right place. Here, on the Efficiency Dr. blog, my staff, respected contributors, and I will be providing tips and tools for managing your time and tasks. We’ll share our personal stories (anonymously if they are particularly embarrassing) of times when even our own best laid plans have gone astray, and what we could have done to stay on track.
Encarta’s definition of efficiency (as it relates to our purpose):
1. competence – The ability to do something well or achieve a desired result without wasted energy or effort
2. productive use of resources – the degree to which something is done well or without wasted energy
Being efficient is not about multi-tasking! Research has shown that trying to do multiple things at once is not as effective as focusing on one task at a time.
We can define efficiency more loosely as feeling good about your work and the time it takes you to do it. As human beings; we’re not going to achieve the efficiency level of a machine, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t improve. Essentially this is the purpose of the Efficiency Dr Blog, to provide you with information and techniques (prescriptions, if you will) that will enable you to perform your tasks, work, or projects with satisfaction, and without wasted effort.
So, if you are ready to get more done with less effort, sign up to our RSS feed, follow us on Twitter, and remember to think positive. If there’s a will, there’s a way! Not every method will work for everyone, which is why we will be bringing new ideas to the discussion each week. We are confident that if you struggle with time, at least a few of the ideas we share will work for you!