venkatna's (Venkat Narayanan's) WebLog : Productivity

Disconnecting from work

venkatna — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 23:04:00 GMT

I have had this blog for a while now and have been posting an entry about once every two weeks. I just have not been able to post any useful content at a higher rate. I wonder how people like Scoble or Omar Shahine or Dare Obasanjo do it. I find just about enough time to do all the things i have to do at work. I also see they take well publicized breaks from work. I have not been able to do that either. I work all day, go home and log in to work. I wanted to go the entire long weekend without doing anything related to work, but i dont think i can handle that. So, i reached a compromise. I am not going to login to work, read email, read blogs or even think about work until Sunday morning. One day, i should be able to handle it. Let us see how it goes.

- Venkat

Keyboard shortcuts

venkatna — Sat, 28 May 2005 04:06:00 GMT

I like to use the keyboard as much as i can. I find I am more productive and it hurts less when I use the mouse less. If you want to find out the shortcuts for Microsoft products, the best place to go to is http://www.microsoft.com/enable/products/keyboard.aspx

Take a look. It is a very useful site and is a huge help.

- Venkat

Take Back Your Life - Yet Another Review

venkatna — Sat, 19 Mar 2005 00:58:00 GMT

I got a copy of Take Back Your Life by Sally McGhee a couple of weeks ago. I just finished reading through it and thought I would give my opinions.

If you have never heard about David Allen's Getting Things Done, this is a good read for you. This book is essentially the same as GTD. I did find out that Sally McGhee and David Allen have done some work together.

This book details using Outlook to implement GTD (In Sally McGhee's words, Integrated Management System). I found the writing a little bubbly. I don’t know how else to say it. This is a bit longer than David Allen's Getting Things Done, but in my opinion more useful in a digital world.

If you don’t already have a system and use Outlook extensively I would definitely suggest this book. It is well worth your time.

I have been using GTD and Franklin Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People on and off for a while. I also attended a course built around Sally's book around two years ago at Microsoft. All of these systems suggest the same thing: Reduce your collection points, empty your head, create tasks for everything in a trusted system and be disciplined in completing your tasks. Easily said, but very hard to maintain over a period of time.

- Venkat