I recently came across an email with a Quote from a daily progress meeting (by the project manager ) which I had forgotten about:

“We are going to continue having these meetings, everyday, until I find out why no work is getting done.”

This was a project from hell. We did great work and I have good memories from it, but it landed my client colleague in hospital and caused quite a few resignations from the consulting partner (I was an independent). We were taking 3 countries live per month !!! Risky business.

End result: Project ran out of budget for the year, was scaled back from about 50 consultants to 5, project manager left or was asked to leave. The project was eventually restarted with a new budget the following year and went live later that year.

This has been a particularly crazy week with meetings galore and very little progress. It is a fine line of when are there too many meetings. On the one hand, it is very useful to sit in on meeting to find out what others are doing and dealing with. On the other hand, you need to decide when they actually add value to your part of the implementation.

As SAP is an integrated beast (which is a blessing and a curse in itself), I have often been amazed at how just picking one thing up in a seemingly unrelated meeting, can make all the difference in the world. It would be nice if you knew in advance what that thing was and arrive just in time, spend 5 minutes instead of 90 minutes .

We almost need a dedicated resource who can read the future so that you can co-ordinate you entry and exit to meetings, and spend the other 85 minutes doing some other productive work.

I wonder how we could sell getting this person on board . They would certainly be worth the money.

That’s all for now. It’s 4.00 am am I am “Sleepless in Boston”.

The SAPGuy

We all only have 168 hrs a week.
Lets say we sleep for 8 hrs a night, or 56 hrs a week
Lets say we spend an additional 12 hrs a week eating
So we now have 100 hrs remaining.
Say we sell 40 hrs to our boss and use about 8 hrs commuting.
This leaves use with about 52 hrs to distribute between our partners, kids, hobbies and relaxation.
Realistically, this is often more like 40 hours.

I am a big fan of anything that saves me time or automates something, in short, improving my productive time. And in an increasingly digital and mobile world, it is important that it is accessible from anywhere. From a “Getting Things Done” (GTD) perspective, ToDo lists are equivalent of the everyday “runway” tasks (as opposed to 10,000″, 20,000″.. tasks). Through the years I have tried many systems. These have ranged from complex FiloFax paper and electronic based systems to simple ToDo in my planner pad. In general what I am looking for is:

• Simple but with adequate features
• Access it from anywhere with an interned connection.
• Classify and group the Tasks
• Prompt me for tasks due and do not show me tasks that are not due
• Prioritize my tasks
• Add notes
• Free or low cost

Towards the end of 2006, I discovered a free online tool called Remember the Milk which more than met my criteria. It is one of the new breed of Web2.0 web applications (with the creation of some modern programming languages like AJAX and the new ideas of social networking, it is now possible to create complete interactive applications online that also can take advantage of networking of multiple users – known as Web2.0). Here is a screen print of the application.

And here is a second screen print of the tasks tab.

As you can see, you can create context specific lists. And not only that, but you can then tag (one or more simply free form descriptors) each individual task. And all the tags are displayed in a tag cloud (also known as word clouds).

The relative size of the word indicates the relative importance of the word (calculated by the number of & priority of tasks tagged with this word). It is a simple visual representation of the tasks and their importance. Each task can have:

• Due date
• Repeat
• Time Estimate
• Location – links to Google Maps
• URL
• Number of time postponed
• Shared with
• Notes

Some other great features are the ability to share task lists or individual tasks, and get a daily notification of your tasks due today and overdue tasks. This makes it easy to allow other users to see what you are busy with and for you to manage your own task list.

All in all, it is a really impressive little tool and I have found that it helped me immensely to save time and plan my time and tasks. Be sure to read the help notes and the blog to learn more about more tricks and features.

I highly recommend that you try this application. That’s all for now.

Regards
The SAPGuy

This is something that has always bugged me on SAP Projects. You send somebody an important email, or reply to an email, only to discover several days later, that they never bothered to open it. How do you get them to open your email?

I decided to start observing myself. I get about 100 email’s a day (about 65% is spam and goes to my spam folder). Why do I open some email’s and why do I ignore others? Let use practical example to examine these questions.

Here is a snapshot of my personal mailbox for the last 40 minutes.

The first that strikes me is that the main thing that makes me open an email, is the Title.

Why don’t I just open and read them all? This shows 10 email’s in the last 40 minutes. Of these, 6 want me to buy something, 2 are concerning some consulting opportunities, 1 is from a friend and 1 is a daily inspirational quota. Lets say I looked at all of the email’s and it took me about 2 minutes for each. That is 20 minutes gone from my life. And that is only And has any of these email’s advanced my goals for the day. Unlikely.

So, with this small sample, we can conclude the following:

For me to advance and complete my daily goals, I need to ignore of filter out 95% of my EMail. Ideally, it should not even enter my mailbox as it just distracts my focus and attention.

Let’s face it, everybody today, wants a bit of your attention (time). Read this, look at this, buy this. And there is no way to shut it off. So how do we sift through the clutter to get to the stuff that is most relevant to us now? There was a study done at some university that resulted in the following term:

ADS – Attention Deficit Syndrome. Where a person exhibits the behaviour of ADD without actually having ADD.

Time is a precious commodity that we do not get back, and everybody wants a piece of our time. No wonder we are scattered and unproductive. If you are like me, there are times when I shout:

Stop the World,
I wanna get Off !!!

Back to email. So, back to the question: How do we get others to open our important email’s?

Here are 7 keys to getting your email read:

1. It is all about trust. And trust gets built up over time. Do I know you? Do I care what you have to say? Do you respect me and the value of my time? Have you built a reputation with me, for getting to the point and giving me information that is relevant?
2. Always add a title to your email. And, pay attention to that title. Make sure it is something that I would be compelled to open. Give me a clue to the contents, so I can prioritize what to open first. Or you move to the bottom of the list
3. If you are replying to an email, add something to the title to make me aware that there is more information I need to read. You are not just replying with Thanks. I appreciate getting the courtesy of “Thanks”, but I will look at it later.
4. Keep it short and to the point. And make sure it is relevant to me.
5. What do you want me to do?
6. Always answer the question: What do I care?
7. Take the time to establish my Trust.

In summary, put yourself into the other person’s shoes. Why should they care and open your email.

Hope you found these secrets useful. Feel free to leave comments in my blog.

The SAPGuy

How Productive are you? Or, phrased differently, how much time did you spend today advancing towards your primary goals?

About a year ago, John Reese (a famous Internet marketer), wrote an article about getting away from your computer and thinking on paper (or a clip board or a white board). He argued that this was a critical factor in his own productivity and success (which is considerable – he created the first million dollar day in Internet marketing). In fact, he has a planning and strategy room in his house where there are no computers allowed !! He is convinced that this is a significant factor in his success.  This is quite a statement from someone who makes his money from computers and the Internet.

I have been playing with that concept, and by gum, I think he is right. I know that if I am struggling with something, the best thing for me to do, is to get away from the computer (literally take a step back), go to another room and get out my favourite pen and a pad of paper. Or alternatively, drag out the white board and rethink the whole problem again from a higher level. It seems as if the following is true:

1. A computer can be a focus killer that degrades productivity.
   Why? Let me ask you something. How many computer applications do you have active now? I have 5. Research has shown that we can only keep 5–7 things active in out brains at one time. Therefore, I already have 5 distractions on my desktop. That only leaves 2 to get my work done. And probably the biggest time stealing culprit, is my email. If I really want to concentrate, I close it down.Experiment:
   Never read your EMail first thing in the Morning !!
   It may cost you an hour if you are lucky !!
   Try it and see what it does to your morning productivity.
   
2. Computers can link concepts and ideas into amazingly powerful networks of related topics (and sometimes unrelated). But that power can also be an enormous distraction that is another time and focus stealer.  Example: I just noticed there was a new version of my blog software (WordPress). An upgrade is typically a 15 minute job at the most. 2 hours later: I have upgraded Snagit; backed up my website; solved an annoying installation problem; and, oh, almost forgot – I also upgraded my blog. How much money did I just earn? Zip !! And I just lost 2 hours, never to be recovered again, and forgot what I was doing in the first place.Remember: This is your life, and it is ending 1 second at a time !!
   
3. There is something about writing things down on paper. It appears to connect with your brain and helps you visualize the problem better, which helps solve it. And if you write something down over and over again, such as a daily review of your medium and long term goals, magic happens !! You will be amazed !! Try it.Digital todo lists are very useful and have some nice features, like rolling over tasks that were not completed today. I use one  (www.sapguy.com/todo) that I will review as some stage, as I have found it awesome. However, I have found that a combination of digital and a paper todo list works best for me. Turning back to paper has boosted my productivity at least fourfold.
   

Hope you found my little insight useful. I know it has boosted my productivity. Feel free to add comments about your own experiences.

Signing off

The SAPGuy