Weekly Round-Up #185: Due Diligence, Night Owls And Time Theming
This week we take a look at why you need to do your research, no matter the subject or project. We also see whether you’re really a night owl or are just confused and whether you should theme your days to become more productive than ever.
In this week’s round-up we take a look at why you need to do your research, no matter the subject or project. We also see whether you’re really a night owl or are just confused and whether you should theme your days to become more productive than ever.
This Is Why You Need To Do Your Due Diligence! – Prime Your Pump
If you’re buying a house you’ll have a survey done. Buying a big ticket item like a car or expensive TV? You’ll check out reviews and maybe go for a test drive – so why should anything else be different? In this article, Prime Your Pump argues (quite rightly) you need to apply due dilligence to other areas of your life as well (especially house mates if this article is anything to go by!)
Struggling With Depression & Anxiety? Here’S What You Need To Know – Doublewood Supplements
We’ve written a few times in the past about mental health issues and how important it is to recognise you may have a problem. It’s important to keep revisiting these issues as they don’t suddenly appear and then get magically cured and this article may help give a few pointers on what to look for and get some help from the links in the first article.
The Blurring Line Between Personal And Business Tech – RingCentral
Where does your word day start and end? It used to be that we would have a separate phone for personal and business use. Even if customers don’t have our mobile phone numbers or personal email addresses with the use of collaboration tools like Slack, Assana or Basecamp it’s easy to just “Check in” to see what’s going on – I know I’ve been guilty of that at 10pm on a Friday night and it’s ruined my weekend whereas if I was blissfully unaware the problem could stay put until monday. While it’s great to have workers able to access their email and work stations from home RingCentral highlights the imporance of boundaries between office and personal life.
6 Best Productivity Podcasts For Remote Work – Team Gantt
If you’re working from home then and reading this blog then you’ll be interested in more productivity tips and tricks so you may learn something from these 6 productivity podcasts – just don’t listen to them when you’re supposed to be working, it doesn’t pay to multi-task!
How To Save Data – Panda Security
If you’re on a limited data tarrif on your smartphone then you’ll want to learn how to save data so you can carry on watching Youtube videos on your commute without going over your limit. Apparently, accoriding to this infographic from Panda Security “Young” adults use 2.9gb of data and those over 55 use 1.4gb of data. I sit firmly between the two age groups and rarely use more than 500MB of data! I’m luck that I can hook into quite a few free mobile wi-fi hotspots but if you don’t have that luxury read the article for a few simple tips on how you can save data.
Top Tip: Turn on Google’s Data Saver if you’re running chrome on Android
The 22 Best Microsoft Office Add-Ins – Zapier
There are over 2,000 add ins for Microsoft office and I don’t know about you but I don’t have the time to go through all of them of the off chance one of them will be super useful. Fear not! Zapier has gone through the lot of them and has whittled it down to 22 of the “must have” add-ins that will help your productivity, performace and automation.
How To Use Facebook Collections To Manage Curated Content – Social Media Examiner
I’m guessing that this feature has been rolling out to people slowly over the past 5+ months as it’s only just become available to me. You can now create collections (categories) in your Facebook saved items area to help you categorise your items. This is great for me as qute often I’ll bookmark something for a round-up, something else to add to my What Katy Cooked Next feed and then something I want to read later and it used to get in a right old mess. Now you can tag your items as part of a collection and only show those items so you can get to your imporant content more quickly.
12 Books Elon Musk Thinks Everyone Should Read – IFL Science
We all know that Elon Musk is a great inventor, he’s also come up with some (interesting ideas around meetings](https://work.qz.com/1255636/tesla-ceo-elon-musks-advice-for-when-youre-dragged-into-useless-meetings/) (just walk out!). He has 12 books that he thinks you should read if you want to become productive and come up with ideas – and they’re not all boring management books (one of them is the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy*!
Time Theming Is An Expert-Backed Strategy To Make You More Productive – Curiosity
People seem to either love time theming or hate it. The basis of the idea is that you devote an entire day to a subject. That’s right – one day to one subject. I’m a big fan of time boxing as a method of getting things done – this is where you map out blocks of a day (hour, hours or a few hours) to do a single task – I’m not sure whether an entire day devoted to a task would work for me.
You Might Also Like: TimeBoxing: What Is It And How To Use It
What do you think of Time Theming? Think it will work for you, or are you better working by the hour? Let me know in the comments.
Reaching Peak Meeting Efficiency – Steven Sinofsky On Medium
We have both a love and hate relationship with meetings – as the first paragraph of this essay on Medium shows at least! In this article Steven Sinofsky looks at why meetings can be soooooo bad (boring powerpoint, no water & breaks anyone?), why we need them and how you can make them a little better.
You Might Also Like: Get your Free Managing Meetings EBook
How To Implement A Killer GTD System In Google Sheets – Coach.Me
I’ve been practicing some form of GTD since I first read the book around 2005. I’ve fallen out of love with it, re-adopted it and hashed it about but one thing I’ve never really been happy with is using the sytem in a digital forms. Mike Sturm has taken up that challenge and ran with it all of the way out of the park! He’s adapted Google Sheets to track all of his projects, next actions, waiting fors and more and the great advantage with it being a Google product is that it’s with you everywhere you have an Android device or internet connection. The one caveat is that some formulas only work on a full web browser and wont’t work through the sheets app.
You Might Also Like: Why GTD just isn’t for me
Signs You’re Not A Night Owl, Even If You Hate Mornings – Business Insider
I am a Night Owl – I do my best work after about 10pm at night (you don’t even want to know what time it is that I’m typing this!). This article did give me some food for thought though – am I just putting off going to sleep, am I too tired to sleep? If you’re not sure whether you’re a night owl or not then this may make it a bit clearer for you.
We’ve All Gone Sport Crazy!
As someone from England I have to be pretty proud of how we did in this year’s World Cup. Having seen so many missed penalties, Frank Lampard’s ungiven goal against Germany and Maradonna’s now infamous “Hand Of God” I’ve often wondered how England would have faired if the decisions went our way. There are so many more I won’t list my personal grievences here but check out Betway’s article on how England’S World Cup History Could Have Been Var-Y Different.
Now Wimbledon’s over, how about you check out how much money the Highest Earning Tennis Players are making (according to Coral). It’s nice to see that there’s a woman up in the top ten (even if Serena Williams shouldn’t have been seeded for Wimbledon – but that’s my persobal view(.
It’s a shame I stopped playing tennis – I’d quite like to earn a hundreth of what these guys are on!
Have A Great Weekend
I hope you have enjoyed this round-up, as always if you have any links you like to share with me and my readers please contact me through the website or send me a tweet.
Until next week, Stay Productive!
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