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.

Image by by laverrue

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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.

Set-up Gmail Filters to Email Yourself and Filter Deals and Coupons

Gmail filters are designed to organize your inbox, so that different types of email get sent to different folders. You might have come across this type of thing when you’re teaching your email client to recognize what’s junk mail and what’s not. Filters mean messages don’t go into your inbox and clutter it up, and help you to carry out the right task, when you need to do it. Implement these two steps and you’ll never miss a trick…

It’s quite simple to set up a Gmail filter. Just open up Gmail within your browser, choose settings > filters > ‘create new filter’. From there you can choose to make your very own ‘DEALS’ list (or something like that), which essentially involves you emailing deals you plan to use to yourself. This way, you could even email deals to yourself from your cell phone, and it will go into your filtered mailbox ready to be reviewed later on.

First let's create a filter:

• From: your email address
• To: your email address
• Subject: DEALS (or whichever label you wish to give it)

After the first step, you can then use the various settings for different options. For instance, you can choose these emails to bypass the inbox completely (not checking this option will mean the message appears twice; once in your inbox and once in the filtered box too), and automatically star each email (to then unstar it once the deal is reviewed / used):

Use "Email Yourself" FireFox Addon to Collect Deals in Your Inbox

If you’re not already using the Mozilla FireFox browser, I highly recommend you install it and transfer your bookmarks over. It is incredibly useful for the simple reason that you can install plenty of cool add-ons. In this case, the Email Yourself! addon provides users with the ability to:

1. Select a part of the web page they’re browsing,
2. Send the summary of the page in an email (with the link and page title) to yourself.

Now, edit the add-on settings (navigate tools > add-ons) so that the add-on uses your own Gmail address, and the subject title to match what your filter recognizes. The default for Email Yourself! is ‘Sent via Email Yourself!’ so you could keep it as that, but it could be anything, for example ‘DEALS’ (in this specific case).

Basically, you are sending an email to yourself via the add-on, so you want your Gmail filter to recognize the specified name. From then on, you’re free to test out the add-on tool.

For example, using my favorite coupon collection from PromoCodes or CouponSherpa, easily select the deal details (like coupon code and the amount) you want and email the deal yourself using the tool:

Now, whenever you need any deal, just enter the "DEALS" folder within your Gmail and find the collection of your selected deals. Go shopping and save now!

coupon image by striatic

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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.

The important thing to learn here is that you should try to explore as many different ideas as possible when solving a problem, since a better solution might be at hand.

How many alternatives, concepts, or sketches are enough? [Via Simpler is better]

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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”.
    
   
2. Set the delivery time: choose the time and date when you assume your recipient will have cleared his mailbox.
    

That’s it. Now send the email. It’ll move to the outgoing emails folder and will be sent automatically when the due time arrives.

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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).






3. Send a reminder – if the due day arrives and you haven’t got any reply,  forward the email with a reminder.

Of course you can’t go through that process with all your emails, but for the important ones, It certainly worth the effort.

You can do that with Gmail or outlook

You can apply this method whether you’re using Gmail or Outlook.
Outlook users – to create the event, simply drag the email into the calendar folder.
Gmail users – to transform an email into an event, click “more actions” and then “create event”.

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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.

When to use it

Most processes do not require using a checklist. You should, however, use it in the following cases:

• When the output must be of high quality and there is no room for mistakes.
• For complex operations, especially routines ones, which parts of them might be forgotten.

Building and using a checklist

Here is what you should include in your checklist:

• Unobvious things – things that are not an integral part of the process and might be forgotten.
• Very important things – such as brand attributes.
• Things that have been forgotten in the past.

Note that your checklist will be growing for some time until it gets stable.

To use it, simply go through all the items in it and apply them. Remember that you have to consistently use your checklist for it to be effective. This might be hard sometimes, but high quality requires effort.

Example

Here is an example of how I use checklists. As a student, I had a checklist for each phase in a course lifecycle. Throughout the semester I used it to make sure that I didn’t forget important activities, such as skimming through reading materials at the beginning of each semester, reviewing graded assignments in the midst of the semester, and using special leaning techniques when studying for the finals.

Have questions? Insight you would like to share? Feel free to Post them in the comments.

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How to Use Checklists to Deliver High Quality Outputs

Have you ever felt at the end of a work day that you didn’t accomplish anything? That even though you worked all day long, I’ve only finished half the things you thought you will?

In this post I’ll explain how to plan your day through by building a realistic agenda. By doing so you will be able to control your day, know what you will be able to do (and what not), and allocate sufficient time to do the important and urgent tasks.

Follow These Steps to Build Your Agenda:

1. List your task for today – write down a list of tasks you want to accomplish today. The important thing is that you add two more tasks to that list – breaks and unplanned events.
   
2. Allocate time to each task – next to each task, write how long you think it should take or want to work on it today. Next to breaks write 25% of the total time (about ten minutes break for every 50 minutes of work and another one hour for launch. Breaks are essential for productive work – do not skip them). Next to unplanned events write another 10% of the time. The sum of all your tasks and breaks should be equal to a full work day.
   
3. Schedule your day – Write the start time for the first task. Then write the next task and its time and so on. Do not forget to include a break every 1-2 hours. Write the unplanned event as one of the tasks.
   

That’s it. Your daily agenda is ready. Now that you know what you are going to do today and when are you going to do that, you are more likely to achieve the goals you set.

One important thing to remember is that this schedule is dynamic. That means that you can switch between tasks as long as you do not exceed the time allocated to each of them. this is whay you can “plan” an unplaned evnt.

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Time Management – Get Things Done by Setting Up an Effective Agenda

I strongly recommend watching the following presentation at least two times. The first is now, so that you know it exists. The second is when you'll actually need it - before building an important presentation.

Why? Because it easily explains and illustrates how (and why) should good presentations be built. 

Good PowerPoint Design – for business presenters

Via Business Model Design and Innovation

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Effective Presentations using Power Point – A Quick and Useful Guide