Web Design Masters

Personal Automation

When I talk about personal automation, I am talking about the way technology has forced us to search for ways to be more productive and efficient in our daily lives. I forgot who I heard this from, but the comment was “that we live in an over communicated society“. This being so true that it is important to understand how to filter trough so much information effectively. For example I had to invest on an iPhone not too long ago because my other touch-screen-phone was just not cutting it. It had very limited abilities and it was just taking too much time away from me. I could not set it up to receive emails instantly so that I could take care of them faster and not have to wait to get to a computer, I could not upload files via FTP to my website or blog, I could not listen my voice messages that were left in my office, it was difficult to create appointments and have them syncronize with my outlook, and much more that I could not acomplish with this old phone. With my iPhone I am now able to syncronize my phone to my outlook including all contacts, appointments, emails etc. I also have my phone setup to receive all my emails from 8 different email accounts in real-time (multi-tasker LOL), I can listen to office voice messages right while I am driving so that I don’t waste a minute of precious time. If this wasn’t enough, I use my iPhone as an iPod while driving and if anyone calls or if I get an email, it automatically stops the music no matter how loud to inform me that someone is calling! How great is that?

Personal automation is no longer a commodity, it’s a must for everyone. For me is actually fun, I really enjoy looking for new and creative ways to make my life easier, more efficient and more productive. I am constantly thinking of ways to spend more time with my family simply by automating my life in some way. Make sure you do your research; don’t just go out and buy an iPhone because someone else told you that it would make your life easier! it may not suit your personal needs of automation. Think about the things that you spend time on a regular basis that you would like to eliminate, and then come up with different alternatives, study those alternatives and then execute. If you find that you didn’t really acomplish what you intended…that’s ok, it’s part of constant improvement; there is always going to be a better way…….you just have to find it.

Have you automated your life lately? Tell us about it!!

Google Wave Project

I believe the main concept of the Google Wave application is that you will not use email to communicate with relatives or even people at work ‘as much’. Basically you will log into your google wave and manage your ‘ongoing’ conversations from there. It’s certainly an interesting concept considering that facebook, twitter and other social network sites are very close to this concept. The main difference will be that you can actually manage private conversations with people you chose and not have to worry about everyone reading what you are currently doing. It can be considered as a chat room but more advanced. It tells you if the other person is writing in real time (most chats have delays), you can back track easily on any conversation you’ve had in case you forget, you can also see the history of anybody else’s public conversation. This is just a brief overview of what Google wave will really bring to the table.

The one concept that I like is that you can use this tool at work. Basically it would be like twitter but inside your office. You can tweet all day about what things you are getting (or not) done at work. You can quickly ask questions to your co-workers without the hassle of having to send out an email.

I have requested a trial login from google so that I can try this app, I’ll keep you posted.

This of course is a tough question to answer, but most likely the answer is “not all the time and certainly not as they should be”. It’s hard to believe that business owners and managers do not invest time in developing a work structure for their employees to follow and for them to track.

You have to understand that employees who do little work, or those who slack don’t really do it intentionally. In most cases employees are just not motivated enough to get anything done, that is, the bare minimum. I can assure you that if you had a system in place that would make their purpose clear, they would be much more motivated.

There is one very important factor when understanding whether people are working or not, and that is ‘wasted time’. Many managers don’t realize how much time is spent on activities that bring no value to a days work. Let me give you a quick example, if you were to add up the minutes that it takes employees to do tasks such as; getting up to find a pen, delivering a message, talking to co-workers, looking for paperwork, tracking down answers, walking, moving stuff around, staring, personal phone call, getting coffee, smoking etc. you would end up with at least a few hours of pure “waste”. Let me give you an exercise that I find to be very useful. As hard as it may seem, or how unvaluable it may seem to you, I want you to stand in a corner where you can see a lot of the action going on and simply observe for a few hours. Yes, just stand somewhere where you can see what’s going on, and trust me, you will be amazed at things you learn from this; however the real trick will be what you will do to keep them from happening in the future.

People want to feel as part of the company, it’s your job to put the right systems in place so that you can have a productive environment.