The Power of Weekend Brainstorming

At work you may come up with ideas, but lack the time or concentration to expand on them. There is a method you can use on the weekend, away from the distractions of work that will allow you to work on these ideas and also come up with some great new ideas.
Brainstorming is a [...]

How To Survive a Long Term Project – The End is in Sight!

As managers we often face long-term projects and initiatives that test our metal. Our IT department is near the end of an initiative that has evolved over a seven-year period. It has encompassed many projects, many departments and a lot of my time.
Now with less than 10 weeks left until the end of this [...]

Improve Your Time Management in Easy Three Steps

For busy managers time management is essential to getting things done. Time management is about controlling  your most valuable resource, your time. Time management is a process and just like any process you can improve it.
As I mentioned in the post Management Tools – Time and Problem Management Simplified I am a big fan [...]

How To Work Under Pressure

In the IT world working under pressure can be a daily occurrence. Knowing the steps to take when faced with an issue can greatly reduce the stress of working under pressure.
Deadlines, project changes, unforeseen obstacles, critical outages are only a few of the stressful issues that can arise in the IT world. We face [...]

Management Tools – Time and Problem Management Simplified

If you are an active manager, always on the go or away from your desk I have an invaluable tool to help you with time and problem management. A pen and a pocket list. It is a very simplified “Getting Things Done” system, and very useful for active managers.
The concept is simple. Take a [...]

10 Ways To Motivate Your Mind On Monday

It is Monday morning and for whatever reason you can not seem to get going. Here are 10 techniques to spark your mind at work and get your day off to a positive start.

1. Commit to a quick win. Think of a task you know you can get done quickly and do it. You will [...]

To-Do Lists – Getting Started

Do often feel overwhelmed by the amount of work you have to do? Do you sometimes forget to do something important? If so you are not alone. Most of us work in an environment of information overload. One of the most useful tools to tackle this problem are To-Do lists.
To-Do lists are organized and [...]

Five Ways to Control Interruptions

Your day is starting good. You feel energetic and you are getting work done. Then an email comes in that you must deal with that involves researching months of paperwork. Your phone rings with a low priority call that ties you up for 10 minutes. On the way to a meeting six people stop [...]

Tech Junkies Getting Things Done (GTD) On NPR

On February 19, 2008 technology writer Omar Gallaga participated in an episode of the National Public Radio (NPR) show “All Things Considered”. The topic of the show was David Allen’s Getting Things Done method to increase productivity at work and at home.
For those not familiar with GTD, since being published in 2001 as a self-help [...]

IT Meetings Go Topless

A recent trend being discussed around the web is the concept of topless meetings. No, not what you are thinking. They are laptop(less) meetings where laptops, smart phones and other handheld distractions are prohibited. Living in the IT world they seem like a sacred right. We’re busy people who need to stay in [...]