Writing Effective To-Do Lists
After reading "The Tyranny of the To-Do List" in The Times, by John Tierney on 25th January, I suddenly realised that the way I had been writing my to-do lists was worthless and a waste of time. Each item on my list was much too vague and, physiologically, when you don't specify exactly how you will do something your unconscious mind will bug your conscious mind to make a plan; the Zeigarnik effect.
As soon as I read this I was straight onto Trello to create my own personal to-do list with "To-Do (In Short)", "To-Do (Planned)" and "Done" as separate lists. As soon as I have an action it is put into the first column, just so that it is not forgotten. Then, the next stage is to write exactly
how that will be achieved, however obvious the plan seems.
Suddenly, your unconscious mind stops nagging and you can concentrate much more clearly. Give it a try and see how it works for you!
Here's a little snippet of the article:
"That's how a proper to-do list can liberate you. Once you make a plan to deal with something, you're free to concentrate on other things. But you have to be reasonably specific in what you write down. The problem with most to-do lists is that they're too vague. They don't contain what Allen calls "Next Actions". If your list has 'Write thank-you notes,' that's a fine Next Action, as long as you have a pen and cards," Allen said. "But if you don't have the cards, you'll know subliminally that you can't write the notes, so you'll avoid the list and procrastinate." Your to-do list should instead begin with the task of buying cards - including the specifics such as where you're going to buy them and how you'll get to the shop.
That distinction might sound simple enough, but people get it wrong all the time."
Suggested reading:
Getting Things Done by David Allen
Willpower: Rediscovering Our Greatest Strength by Roy F. Baumeister
Trello: Say Hello to Easy Organisation
Introduced to us by Jeremy, of Knowology, Trello has made team collaboration and todo-ism an absolute breeze.
Trello allows you to create 'boards', which can separate teams/departments/categories, and then place 'cards' on 'lists'. Cards are individual actions, which can be expanded to give more details. Colleagues can be assigned to tasks, cards can be voted for, checklists can be added and due dates can be set. Checklists are a great way to manage progress, showing the percentage completion and giving a methodical way of working.
We have boards for each department, boards for current projects and boards to manage personal achievements. They can be made public to clients, or kept to yourself, and the best thing about Trello is that it is completely web based. You can access it from any device with an internet browser (made easier by the Trello app).
It's completely free, totally expandable (it has an API to enable internal software integration), and very intuitive.
Give it a try and see how versatile it is!
Read this for how to write an effective to-do list to get things done!
Process Management On-the-Go with FileDirector
FileDirector has just become a great deal easier to manage on-the-go for Apple users.
Introducing the iClient, designed to take workflow management to the next level. Available for the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad, the app features:
- A list of documents to work through awaiting approval
- Approve, reject or delay actions
- Ability to comment on documents
- Customisable task lists to ensure required actions have been made before approval
- Call back if number provided (iPhone)
- Dynamically select a user for upcoming activities
- Push notification option, making sure you are told as soon as a document has been submitted for your approval
How does it work?
iClient makes use of the process management features available on FileDirector and follows the rules set out within it.
For example, incoming post scanned into FileDirector can be automatically assigned to the right department according to the document type and/or certain pre- set conditions. If you want purchase invoices over a certain amount to be sent for approval to one manager, and others of a much higher amount to be sent to their manager, this can easily be set up.
The process management flowchart can be as simple or as complex as you like, making it a very useful and powerful tool for SMEs right through to enterprise-wide businesses.
Allowing members of staff in the approval chain to monitor the progress of documents and find out who is next to sign a document off makes for a much more productive and efficient workplace.
What if you don’t have an iDevice for this new app? Don’t worry, you can still be prompted through WinClient.
Here is a visual example:
Is Document Imaging Dead?
Over the course of the last month I've read a couple of forum discussions in which the question “is document imaging dead?” has cropped up. This question in itself seems a little strange, people are scanning documents in near enough every enterprise and it's very rare these days that you come across a business that doesn't have some kind of scanner in the office. Document imaging can't be dead.
I can, however, understand where the question comes from. I pulled this definition of document imaging from the AIIM website: “Document Imaging, or imaging, allows organizations to capture paper-based information and convert it to electronic images that are stored in a computer electronically”. This is certainly how imaging was described to me in the early days of my career, but how relevant is this to me now? In simplistic terms, not very. It's certainly not what I have discussions about these days. As I've already mentioned, pretty much every office has a scanner in it these days and these scanners are getting used regularly in scan to file
applications.
This process is document imaging. So what am I talking to people about now?
Actually, every conversation I have now is about content. I'm not talking about the simple process of scanning a piece of paper and creating an image, which in itself is useful in a business, I'm talking about scanning a piece of paper and using the content of that page to replace business processes and allow knowledge workers to make informed decisions. Intelligence has become the key word for those businesses that are serious about making the move towards a paperless environment. Just scanning your paper at the end of a process (when its ready for archiving) does not constitute a paperless office. So what's actually possible within the realms of 'Intelligent Imaging'?
Well, there are many many products out there that can offer a business a full electronic mailroom. This is the capability to scan all incoming paperwork, categorise it and extract index data or meta tags to be used to start off electronic workflows. This information can also be used to populate information within line of business applications and document management solutions. This is document imaging at its most powerful; removing the reliance on paper at point of entry into the business, minimising the amount of times a person has to touch the document in either physical or electronic format.
What's best though is that these solutions are not expensive any more either. Products like Ephesoft are really leading the way in making the electronic mailroom accessible to smaller businesses. With the advent of the Cloud there will no doubt be a pay-per-use electronic mailroom solution along sooner rather than later.
About Ephesoft:
Ephesoft are an open source software vendor. They make their software available for no charge, with a competitively priced annual maintenance fee for Enterprise Edition software. Ephesoft also offers a Community Edition, targeted at the SOHO market space, for which it does not offer support. There have been over 2,500 downloads of this edition, which is very impressive for a product that was made commercially available in 2010.
The goal of the market, or certainly my goal, is to reach a scenario whereby all incoming documents, be it electronic or physical, are put into the same funnel and wind up automatically where they should be in a process without human intervention.
In conclusion, I'd say that Document Imaging most certainly is not dead. It's very much alive and kicking and most likely growing on a daily basis, as more and more businesses realise the benefits of storing paper-based information electronically. However, it has become very much a commodity rather than a specialist or niche sale. This is proved by the amount of scanners we hire to customers purely to help them overcome a large paper conversion project. The expertise is now in intelligence and delivering business relevant content.
How to stop IIS going to sleep
We support numerous installations of a Dot Net application called FileDirector - superb document management system - that runs as a web site in IIS.
It was apparent that when the system is in full use with multiple network users logging in it responds perfectly. Launch it for the first time in the morning and it was very slowwwwww to login. The same was noticed for our internal software, a bespoke Dot Net application running on another server. The initial page might take 20 seconds to come up. I had googled IIS sleeping and other things like that, with various settings and timeouts you can change in IIS.
Last night though, I found a neat little tool called SmarterPing which also happens to be free. I installed that and set it up to Ping the required websites - including, simply, Localhost. This morning FileDirector has responded immediately when first logging in and our internal system Logrono has never been faster.
Clearly us users are allowed to sleep but when it comes to my Windows servers and IIS - no - you cannot sleep! You must stay awake and I will poke you every six minutes from now on.
Hope this helps.