Writing for life

Who do you really work for?

It’s not a trick question, it’s not that I suspect you’re involved in some sort of shady commercial espionage. It’s a simple, straightforward query:

• Do you work for your supervisor?

• Do you work for your line manager?

• Do you work for your HR Department?

• Do you work for your CEO?

The answer, of course, is none of the above. When you break it down we go to work for ourselves. Whether we’re self employed, working on the shop floor, of a high-flying executive with a swanky corner office… we work to support ourselves, our families and the lifestyle we’ve chosen to live. Work is a means to an end, and while you might enjoy, or even love what you’re doing, ultimately it’s just a vehicle for your financial security, personal achievement and development, fulfilment and, ultimately, happiness.

Unfortunately we tend to forget all of that. We get caught up in the frantic hustle and bustle of working life. Long hours, stress, unrealistic expectations, unmanageable workloads and tortuous commutes conspire to erode the very things we’re working to secure.

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Published in the Evening Echo 28/04/2008

Do you ever feel that there aren’t enough hours in the day? Well, you’d be right. Researchers in the US recently discovered that typical middle-class city dwellers are cramming 31 hours worth of ‘life’ into each 24 hour period thanks to multi-tasking and an array of time saving gizmos.

Hands up who’s checked their e-mail on their laptop or blackberry while making their morning coffee? Or used a bluetooth headset to join a conference call on the commute to work, while listening to the traffic report on the radio and checking out alternative routes on the sat-nav?

We’re multi-tasking like crazy to try and squeeze more into our busy lives. Apparently the technology of today has allowed us, for better or for worse, to shoe-horn an additional seven hours worth of tasks into the average day compared to only a decade ago (primitive old 1998 – back when nobody had ever heard of Google).

After a flurry of activity in the morning we arrive at work – which is often a blur of e-mails, calls and meeting combines with switching between multiple tasks to meet unrealistic deadlines. But, according to the study, conducted by global consumer research firm OTX, all of the multitasking we do during our working day pales in comparison to the frantic task juggling that happens once we get home in the evenings.

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Time is a curiously elastic commodity. One minute it’s flying by so quickly you don’t even notice it’s passing, the next it draws out into what seems an eternity. Have you ever looked at the clock, thought you had plenty of time to do whatever it is you needed to get done, only to glance up at it again a few moments later to find all of that time had evaporated?

It happens to me… a lot. Time, in our house, compresses and expands with gleeful abandon. Take this morning for example. This morning started off normally enough, time seemed to be behaving itself. Then the children started “playing” with a bit too much exuberance, time compressed and in the blink of an eye I lost a couple of hours. Suddenly it was lunchtime.

Take an arbitrary period of time… let’s say two weeks. If you were off on your holidays for two weeks, and were set to leave in exactly two weeks you can guarantee that the fortnight before you travel will drag on interminably, while your two weeks in the sun will veritably fly by. You’ll be home again almost before you realise you’ve been away. That’s time playing it’s “funny” little games again.

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At the IT@Cork Technology in Business conference last week, a fantastic day was rounded off perfectly when my name was drawn at the end-of-conference drinks reception and I walked away the proud new owner of a HP iPAQ Voice Messenger Smartphone.

The HP iPAQ 514 voice messenger — so much more than just a phone

First impressions are great — it crams a fully functional Windows Mobile 6.0 pocket PC into a package that’s no bigger than your average mobile phone, and with WiFi and Bluetooth onboard, VoIP capability, and support for push e-mail, POP3 and IMAP it’s got everything you need stay productive on the road.

I’ll post a more detailed review when I’ve had chance to play with it — but up to now I’m delighted with it. I was thinking of upgrading my clunky old Nokia anyway — and this, as they say, will do nicely.

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“Working it” column published in the Career Moves section of The Evening Echo on 29/10/2007

Time! You can almost hear it tick-tocking away… and the more you have to do, the quicker it seems to tick.

I’m hopeless at managing my time. Oh, I know the theory. Prioritise, just say no, structure your work, focus on the most difficult thing first, delegate… yaddy, yaddy, yadda!

I have structured, prioritised to-do-list’s coming out of my ears, and my hard-drive is crammed with time-saving, productivity-enhancing gizmos that beep and whistle at me when I should be doing things. I have a plethora of time management options spread before me. Why then, don’t I have enough time?

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"Working it" column published in the Career Moves section of The Evening Echo on 22/10/2007

Back in the “bad old days” when I worked in an office, I’d often find myself sitting through pointless meetings, idly twiddling my thumbs as someone too fond of their own voice droned on about something that everyone in the room already knew. There’d be no clear agenda to these mind-numbing exercises in superfluous bureaucracy, and more tangents than your average trigonometry lesson.

Eventually, via a protracted and tortuous route, the meeting would close pretty much back where it had started. It invariably achieved zip, nada, zilch – apart from wasting inordinate amounts of time and money, and generally leaving attendees frustrated and annoyed.

Not all meetings were like that, of course… but the overriding impression I’d have when leaving most meetings was that my time could have been more productively engaged doing something else.

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As a freelance commercial writer I work with clients all over Ireland, and indeed around the globe, without ever meeting them face to face. Modern communications technology makes it possible for me to to do all the research I need, and to communicate with my clients efficiently and effectively without ever leaving my office.

So the question is are meetings really necessary? And from my experience the short answer to that is no.

In the business world an inordinate amount of time and money is wasted travelling to and attending unnecessary meetings. But here’s the thing… in Ireland most people are used to operating within a business culture where meetings are de rigueur. Completing a project with somebody without meeting face-to-face requires a paradigm shift, and some people are uncomfortable with that.

The bottom line is that for independent contractors providing a service meetings will be necessary as long as clients deem them necessary… but before deciding to meet consider the following:

• What is the objective of the meeting — what do all of the stakeholders want out of it?
• How much time and resources will be tied up in the meeting (think about all of the people who will be attending, and ask yourselves if a meeting really represents the most effective investment of their time)?
• Could the objectives of the meeting be more efficiently met through other forms of communication?

If a meeting really is necessary try and make it as effective as possible by:

• Having a clearly defined agenda before the meeting starts… and sticking to it.
• Keeping it brief.
• Limit the number of attendees at the meeting — the more people involved the less effective the decision-making process tends to be.
• Agree clear actions based on the points covered in the meeting and confirm them later by e-mail.
• Suggest potential alternative for the future… like conference calling, web conferencing, e-mail, instant messaging, etc..

The truth is that in most cases the time you spend in meetings could be used more effectively, allowing you to deliver more value to your clients. The trick, of course, is trying to convince your clients of that fact!

Technorati Tags: meetings, time management, business, communications

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Why is it that every time I open up a web browser I seem to fall into a black hole?

I go online to check my e-mail and look up one or two things. Three hours later, after navigating countless sites, browsing (and occasionally posting in) several forums (or should that be fora?) completely unrelated to my original quest, and comparison shopping for things I have no intention of buying, I eventually find myself on e-bay.ie bidding money I don’t have for things I don’t need. It’s mental!
Sometimes I wonder how we all managed before the internet — but more often these days I find myself contemplating how much more I’d get done without the constant distraction of a gazzilion websites just the other side of my browser.

Discipline… must have discipline.

Hey… there you go, I just found my New Year’s Resolution for 2007. I SHALL BE MORE FOCUSSED WHEN SURFING THE WEB!

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