The video below is a nice animation of a lecture by Dan Pink. It talks about the things that motivate people, and especially knowledge workers (my wording). The interesting thing it reveals is that in activities that are highly cognitive (versus mechanical), it is not money that motivates us, but the following three factors:

• Autonomy - the ability to be self directed, that is, control our activities rather than being managed.
• Mastery – the urge to be better at stuff we do. The example given in the video is of people who play instruments just for fun, and not for money.
• Purpose – making a contribution to something transcendent.

I think that the most interesting practical suggestion in the video is this:

Pay people enough so that monIey is not a consideration anymore, and then making sure the three motivation factors are satisfied.

Continue reading “Video – The Three Factors That Motivate People”»

When you’re trying to organize a particular area of your life, perhaps shopping, your finances or stock orders, it can be a huge help to have technology on your side. Just recently I’ve been trying out Google’s Gmail filters, and I’ve found that if you use them in a certain way (in conjunction with FireFox and its addon), you can come up with some cool ideas.

One of the most fun ways to use Gmail Filters is to use it for organizing coupon codes and hence creating shopping lists.

Continue reading “Guest Post – Get Ready for Shopping Season: Collect Deals in Your Gmail Inbox”»

Iain Barker explains why you should consider more alternatives when solving a problem (in his case, user interface design) rather than trying to optimize the first reasonable solution found. As illustrated in the image below, jumping too quickly into the iterative phase (the phase where you refine a given solution) might prevent you from seeing a better solution.

As to answering the question “how many alternatives are enough?” The somewhat obvious answer given is that it depends on the specific constrains that are imposed upon you, such as time and budget.

Continue reading “Finding the Right Solution – Explore As Many Different Ideas as Possible Within Given Constraints”»

When you send an email, the recipient must have enough free space to get it. If he doesn’t (i.e. his mailbox is full), your email will not be delivered to him. When that happens, you should Send it again, but use outlook’s ability to schedule the actual delivery time. That means that you’ll get this monkey off your back by sending the mail right now, but it will actually be sent in a later time. How does that solve the problem you ask? well, It is likely to assume that your recipient will have cleared his mailbox by the midst of that following day (since it is full and he will not be able to send and receive emails). Thus, he will get your email. If he didn’t clear it by that time, you will get back an announcement that your email could not be delivered.

Scheduling an email delivery

Take these two steps to schedule an email delivery:

1. Click the “options” button: write your email as you would normally do. When it is ready to be sent, click “options”.
    
   Continue reading “How to Send an Email to Someone Whose Mailbox Is Full (Outlook Only)”»

Have you ever sent an email asking a coworker to schedule a meeting, or a document for review to your boss, but remind bothered whether he will remember to do that or just read your email and forget?

Here is how to handle these situations. whenever you send an important task by email and want to be peaceful minded about it getting done, you should gain back control by scheduling a reminder. here is how to do that:

1. Include yourself as a BCC (that is, add your email address in the BCC filed). That way, you’ll get a copy of the email without the other recipients knowing about it. Then,



2. Move that email from the inbox to your calendar. Save it as an event a few days later (enough time for the other person to complete the task).



Continue reading “How to Keep Track of Tasks That You Assign by Email [Best Practice]”»

Checklists help to deliver high quality outputs by recognizing routine procedures and must-have attributes of these outputs. Checklists have several more benefits and they are easy to create and use. Here is how to get going:

What is a checklist

Checklist is a list of items (names, characteristics, tasks etc.) you check or consult when performing a task. It is used to make sure that the output is complete and consist, that no mandatory attributes has been forgotten. For example, you can use a checklist of activities you must take before publishing new content in your website. This might include spellchecking, review by others, adding tags, adding picture, writing an extract and so on.

Some Benefits

Using a checklist provides these benefits:

• Standardization – it helps keep outputs standard when more than one person is involved or when one person produces many items over time (for example, blog posts).
• Prevent cognitive overload - it frees your mind from the the routines so that you could think about the main activities and process innovations.
• Continues improvement – as new insights, activities, and attributes are added to the checklist, your outputs will improves.
• Collective learning - people who are new to the process can use the checklist to learn it and to avoid reinventing the wheel.

Continue reading “How to Use Checklists to Deliver High Quality Outputs”»