 Technology
Best Practices
I.T. Can Steal Your Time
By Steve Roberts
It’s official; Windows Vista
is now shipping, along with the other Microsoft flagship
product Outlook 2007, and you’re not a MS fan then?
Novel, Google, Apple and other would-be-MS-iconoclasts
have a plethora of products to integrate, streamline and
organize your personal and professional lives. When you
complete your productivity suite with ‘smart phones’, or
‘Blackberries’, ‘iPhones’, or other PDA’s (personal
digital assistants), you and your business are now
officially plugged in, wired, synced, or any other
number of terms describing your information connected
status. Your business savvy is measured according to
your ability to be connected to a constant stream of
incoming and outgoing information, arriving in the form
of email, text messages, instant messages, attachments,
personal and team calendars and whatnot. The question
is; are you more efficient?
Efficient is usually defined as “effective action
without waste of effort, time, and expense”. There are
two key parts to the definition, effective and without
waste. Before you answer the efficiency question take
this short survey. (Answers are Yes, Sometimes, or
Never)
-
I regularly check or read
mail/messages during staff meetings.
-
…during a meal with family
or friends.
-
…during a private meeting
with a boss, employee, or co-worker.
-
…during a sales or customer
meeting.
-
I have configured my PC to
alert me when a new message/mail arrives.
-
I have configured my
Phone/PDA to alert me when a new message/mail arrives.
-
I stop my current work to
check/read new mail/messages due to alerts.
A score of 3 yeses or less
indicates a good practitioner of IT discipline, between
4 and 5 yeses indicates an impending need for IT
discipline, and greater than 5 yeses indicates that you
have abdicated control over information and IT stimulus
now reins in your place. This is far from scientific,
but before you start with justification about how
important your work and your availability are, read on.
In Proverbs (14:23) it says; “All hard work brings a
profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.” A modern
translation of this ancient wisdom might read, “All
effective work brings a profit, but mere activity leads
only to poverty.” As a nation we are still number one in
productivity, and we are working more hours to maintain
our lofty position. According to Bradley S. Klapper, an
Associated Press writer; “American workers stay longer
in the office, at the factory, or on the farm than their
counterparts in Europe and most other rich nations, and
they produce more per person over the year.” Mr. Klapper
goes on to report that our increased productivity; “…
has a lot to do with the ICT (information and
communication technologies) revolution.” No doubt. But,
just as Moore’s Law (computing speed doubling every 18
months) appeared to be doomed because the
miniaturization of circuits was pressing the limits of
quantum mechanics, so does our IT-induced productivity
appear doomed when pressed against the 24 hour day, 52
week year. At some point working longer and working
through the weekend, or working on our vacations won’t
keep us at the pinnacle of productivity.
A healthy view of technology is as that of an
information resource, and as with any resource, natural
or otherwise, information resources can be measured like
energy; that is, we measure its energy potential. A
gallon of gasoline contains 1.3x108 joules of potential
energy. Unharnessed, it is at best underutilized,
(imagine simply burning the gas in a container to heat
an outdoor area), and at worst it can be a bomb,
(imagine a gallon of fumes sparked in an enclosed area).
But harnessed, this same gallon of gas can propel your
automobile a great distance. IT discipline is putting
into place those harnesses that will allow you to
extract the maximum benefit from your information
resources.
I encourage you to adopt great technology to remain
productive and competitive in our ICT savvy world, and,
along with your technological ensemble, adopt a set of
guidelines to harness your IT potential. IT Discipline
is not simply time management; rather it is a structured
approach of integrating IT into your business process
while leaving you, the human, in charge.
Consider these simple points when writing your IT
guidelines:
-
Determine what information
is important or urgent, and disregard the rest.
-
Set time aside to review and
categorize new information.
-
Set aside planned work times
and don’t allow new information distraction.
-
Create a meeting policy
regarding non-meeting distractions.
-
Set your own standards for
person-to-person meetings; don’t answer your phone, read
your mail, or otherwise diminish the value of
interpersonal contact.
-
Reduce information alerts to
bare essentials.
Your work should not be mere
work; make your work effective by the application of IT
discipline and add to your bottom line today.
Steve Roberts is the founder of Restaurant Magic, a
Tampa based software-development company specializing in
enterprise-level business and reporting systems for
large restaurant organizations. Steve can be reached at:
sroberts@restaurantmagic.com
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