Avoiding Crisis Management

One of the key themes of my 'productivity for managers' chapter was addressing and avoiding crisis management, by which I mean feeding off of events rather than just doing a consistent and reliable job.  Another term for this is reactionary workflow, and the incomparable Zen Habits blog has a collection of seven tips on fighting reactionary workflow for us to analyze. 

The key thing we need to remember is to manage our communication channels.  Keeping email open all day will lead to reactionary workflows and crisis management.  Trust in our people, and ourselves, to work without constant oversight, reporting, and feedback.  I love the tip to develop "power hours" in which you focus on a task and ignore everything else.  Another excellent point is to not dwell--something I myself have to work on!

What resonates for you with this post regarding your own productivity?

Welcome, part II

I just learned that Ning is going under, so here is the new community in support of my book, Productivity for Librarians, available soon from Chandos.   Unfortunately the forums will no longer be available but they weren't high traffic to begin with.  If I see a need to revive them I'll search for a new home for the community, but time is of the essence with Ning's closing free accounts.

Welcome (or welcome back!).

Saying no

People often ask my advice on how to say no...they must not pay attention to the fact that I need advice there too!

Luckily this past week the blog Wise Bread issued a great post on 12 Straightforward Ways To Say No. I think I will need to print this one out and post it near my computer. There are so many great tips here. Number 6 is one of my personal favorites and was something I championed throughout my book. Take a look at the list and let me know your favorite!

Knowing when to quit

One of the key themes I deal with in my book is how to know when to quit. Quitting projects is vital for productivity--we can't do it all, all the time. Sometimes tasks will need to be pruned. However, this is a challenge for just about everyone. How can we tell what's important to continue? How can we tell where we should put our time and what we should stop doing?

The Drawar design site featured an insightful article last week called Letting Things Die where it tackled those questions. It deals with the psychology of letting things go as well as how to determine what should die. Highly recommended!