I picked up this post from Darren Gosbell’s blog. It is a pointer to Adam Cogan’s “Rules to Better Dead Time”. Just to summarise, Adam’s list consists of the following leading questions:
- Do you use suspend on your notebook?
- Do you set Outlook to work offline so you can do emails on the go?
- Do you have a word document with a list of your tasks?
- Do you make your calls when you’re in the car?
- Do you use an XDA II, SmartPhone or Pocket PC?
- Do you carry a trade magazine with you?
Thats a pretty good list, my answers would be:
- Yes.
- Yes.
- No.
- No.
- Yes.
- No.
Its not that I disagree, I just have replacements for the same thing – Darren listed one of his (podcasts). I don’t use word to track my tasks – I actually use Outlook, I know the limitations that Adam is talking about and I create custom views to create a date weighted prioritised list.
I don’t make calls in the car mostly because I don’t drive that often, my typical mode of transportation is the bus, which I usually use to dispatch the morning or evening e-mails and catch up on some blog reading (kind of a replacement to the trade mag thing).
Between blogging, and e-mail I find that I don’t have too much dead time. The challenging moments are when I’m going down to the bus stop only to see the bus drive off. Then I have a good 15–20 minutes until the next bus – how do I cope with this?
Lately I’ve been reading some bits and bobs from the Harvard Business Review around innovation in the enterprise, but I don’t take it with me every day. If I happen to be waiting at a bus stop with a bench I am very likely to break out the laptop and hookup via iBurst.