Why will e-book readers succeed? Not because e-books are good replacements for paper books — but because they’re good complements to paper books and documents, especially for work-related reading rather than pure pleasure.
Time and again we see that technology doesn’t have to mean an end to the old ways of doing things. Tech tools allow us to do things in different ways or to do things we couldn’t possibly do before, adding new value to our lives, not just reproducing value we could already access. The computer never made offices paperless; in fact, it led to more paper output. Online personal information management apps don’t make paper to do lists obsolete. Sticky notes still have value in a digital world.
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You may have seen the big news over the weekend: a key piece of the San Francisco Bay area’s highway infrastructure was destroyed by a spectacular gasoline tanker truck fire. Sure enough, the news coverage included the key point that savvy web workers have grown to expect: “Transportation officials…were urging people to telecommute if possible.” This advice gets trotted out after every natural and man-made disaster; when society gets disrupted, it’s telecommuters to the rescue!
But I’m starting to wonder how long we’re going to have to watch telecommuting (and by extension, other forms of web work) be marginalized this way. Implicit in the “telecommute in case of disaster” message is the other message that no sensible person would do this in normal times. Given the choice, of course everyone would prefer to get up an hour earlier in the morning and join all the other commuters in their giant vehicles, jockeying for position in the multiple lanes of a still-intact I-80 to I-580 connector in order to have the pleasure of being tied to a desk, wearing a suit and tie, for eight hours.
What’s it going to take to make telecommuters first-class citizens of the working world, rather than the crazy uncles that most companies don’t really want to talk about? Advances on many fronts, I think:
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David Allen’s Getting Things Done personal productivity scheme suggests you track the next physical action you need to do for each of your projects. Once you finish that action, you immediately identify and record the next. This leads you inexorably towards your goals at the same time it clears your brain of “open loops,” outstanding and amorphous need-to-dos that distract and disturb you. But might there be benefit in postponing deciding what the next step is until you’re ready to act?
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Improve your workgroup productivity by changing anything — In the 1920s and 30s, industrial efficiency researchers at Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works plant found that raising lighting levels increased productivity… as did lowering the lights! The Hawthorne Effect describes a productivity increase due to the attention of management rather than as a direct effect of the change itself.
Maybe this applies to personal productivity as well. Do you find you get a short-term boost in productivity when you try a new personal management scheme? Perhaps it’s not the scheme itself, but just the act of paying attention — or shaking things up — that makes a difference.
14 ways to get more done — Put the Hawthorne Effect to work by running your own efficiency experiments with these tips. My favorite: “write down ideas and get back to them later.” Preferably after a nap. I find that sleeping not only improves memory, but also often leads to new insights.
9 ways to get less done — Nine allegedly addictive online games.
3 ways to get stuff done and chat with your peeps too – Lifehacker editor Gina Trapani’s tips for making yourself available by instant messaging while still getting “real” work done. She notes that using specific status messages like “busy – email pls.” helps people know when it’s okay to contact you.
Share your files on your website — With a line of code, add Box.net’s Box Widget to your blog or other website and make your files stored on Box.net available for downloading. If you have a Box.net professional account for $19.95 a month, you can allow your colleagues to upload documents into your Box.net account using the widget. That’d be an easy way to gather inputs on a collaborative project from multiple people. It supports password protection by folder too. Here’s a demo.
What would an Internet file system look like? — Rod Edwards imagines it. Maybe it includes something like Box.net and its widget.
Know when to ditch a project — Om Malik writes on FoundRead about the decision to shut down GigaGamez. FoundRead addresses itself to startup founders, but the issue of quitting is just as relevant to individual workers who are only trying to build Me, Inc into a profitable and satisfying pursuit.
Seth Godin’s new book The Dip addresses the question of when to quit by proposing that there are “dips” — temporary setbacks that you can get through — and “cul-de-sacs” — dead end roads. In his interview with Guy Kawasaki, Godin says “Smart people can see Dips in advance and plan for them.” That seems too facile. More likely, it takes some experimentation to know what’s going to work and what’s not.
Sites like Gmail, Google Reader and del.icio.us are essential, functional and extensible. We live in them. But aesthetically, they don’t win raves out of the box. Thank goodness a web application’s look & feel is only skin deep. With a few add-ons and tweaks, it’s easy to completely change the browsing experience for popular, yet not-so-easy-on-the-eye sites.
You use Firefox, Safari or Camino as your default browser, right? Of course you do. So read on.
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If you walk the Web 2.0 walk, there’s a strong attraction to the notion of keeping your data “in the cloud” – that is, using web-based applications to manage everything. From e-mail to appointments to project management to time-tracking to invoicing to document management to party invitations, there’s really no need to use any application on your own computer other than a browser these days. But there’s a hidden danger to this lifestyle: who’s backing the data up in case something goes wrong?
That recently became an important question for a bunch of users of Google’s Personalized Home Page service, who logged on to discover their personalizations (in some cases rather extensive) had vanished. Sure, maybe losing a portal isn’t the biggest deal in the world – but what if it was your time-tracking application that went out on you? Or your online accounting?
If you work on your local PC, you get to take responsibility for backing up your own data. If you’re using applications on the corporate network, then it’s the job of the IT department. But for web applications, the situation is less clear. If a web app lets you export your own data, does that make it your problem? Do you check the terms of service to see whether the supplier has an acceptable backup policy? Or are you the sort to just trust the cloud and assume that everything is all right?
Ultimately, this may be one of the key issues to be tackled by the still-nascent web OS projects. Until then, the wise web worker is the one who assesses the risk of using hosted applications to store critical data, and who has made plans to weather any disasters.
Web work is fun, but getting paid is important too, and if you’re an independent there’s no accounting department to handle that for you. A relatively new application, Cashboard, offers a new take on this essential activity perfect for those who use the web as their operating system.
Cashboard handles more of the process than most time-tracking applications. It covers creating and sending client estimates, tracking time (either by direct data entry, through using a Mac dashboard widget, or through integration with a standalone OS X application – there’s no Windows integration yet), and creating, sending, and tracking invoice status. It does all this in a fairly obvious interface of tabs and tables.
There are lots of little touches here that make it obvious that Cashboard is being built by web workers for web workers. One that will be big for many users is Basecamp integration: if you use Basecamp, Cashboard can share projects and tasks, and then invoice for time that you record in Basecamp. Other nice finishing bits include multi-currency support, weekly timesheet entry for quick catchup when you’ve been lazy about recording things, and an accounting view that shows you outstanding invoices.
You can try Cashboard with one project for free. Paid plans (which are half price while they’re in beta) run from $7/month for 7 active projects to $40/month for 100 active projects.
There are lots and lots of good reasons to use pen & paper to keep track of lists and tasks. Not for me. I had surgery on my dominant wrist in 1989, and as a result my handwriting looks like scribbles after just a few minutes. Typing doesn’t bother me at all.
Those of us who rely on electronic task management face some challenges: If we use a desktop application, our data is only accessible when we’re at that computer or device. To solve that dilemma, we have web-based applications. Now we can get at our tasks from any browser on any computer. But now you have no control over the server hosting the application, you worry about security and you’re limited to the narrow functionality and scalability the developers put in the application.
So what do you do when you want the ease and cross-platform compatibility of a web-based task manager with the control and security of a desktop task manager? One possible solution is to download and install a database-driven task management application on your own, to the server of your choosing. It’s easier than you may think.
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