Comments on: Productivity? http://www.e2oh.com/2009/01/22/productivity/ Investigations Into Enterprise 2.0 Wed, 21 Jul 2010 13:40:43 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Jay Neely - Boston Entrepreneur & Web Strategist http://www.e2oh.com/2009/01/22/productivity/comment-page-1/#comment-359 Jay Neely - Boston Entrepreneur & Web Strategist Wed, 04 Feb 2009 02:10:31 +0000 http://www.e2oh.com/?p=73#comment-359 Hey Nate, I recently started using RescueTime, too. Another good app is Mint, which is to your money like RT is to your time. And I just wrote a post about switching to Google Reader for its Trends feature, which shows me where my time is being spent in my feed reader (something RescueTime can't do): http://socialstrategist.com/2009/02/03/self-knowledge-good-for-entrepreneurship-excellent-for-info-overload To respond to Austin's comment, one of the other things I wrote about are apps like Xobni and ClearContext, which will help you figure out how you're spending your time in e-mail, and where the most value comes from there. I see by your RescueTime widget that Outlook is your #1 time suck; you should definitely check those apps out. Good post. If you find some other apps that provide these kind of metrics for our regular activity, please, let me know! Hey Nate, I recently started using RescueTime, too. Another good app is Mint, which is to your money like RT is to your time. And I just wrote a post about switching to Google Reader for its Trends feature, which shows me where my time is being spent in my feed reader (something RescueTime can’t do):
http://socialstrategist.com/2009/02/03/self-knowledge-good-for-entrepreneurship-excellent-for-info-overload

To respond to Austin’s comment, one of the other things I wrote about are apps like Xobni and ClearContext, which will help you figure out how you’re spending your time in e-mail, and where the most value comes from there. I see by your RescueTime widget that Outlook is your #1 time suck; you should definitely check those apps out.

Good post. If you find some other apps that provide these kind of metrics for our regular activity, please, let me know!

]]> By: Austin Wheelock http://www.e2oh.com/2009/01/22/productivity/comment-page-1/#comment-354 Austin Wheelock Thu, 22 Jan 2009 14:11:14 +0000 http://www.e2oh.com/?p=73#comment-354 Nate - I think you need to determine the efficiency and efficacy of your email usage before claiming it is a total negative. While I agree (and you know I do) with your perspectives on the downsides of email communication in general, I think there is likely an inherent value in the emails you send particularly to those who do not use other communications channels. Too bad you cannot tag certain email addresses as "unproductive" email addresses (say, some corporate email that forces you to provide an inane and useless data call or a non-work related friend). Then you fine tune your productivity on email. On the twitter issue, it seems that the question is whether your twitter usage directly relates to your current work objectives. Clearly, Twitter is productive in other ways - creating an online presence, keeping up on niche topics, communicating with far flung teams, etc. Again, since it merges work and personal usage it is hard to say how productive or non-productive you really are. I am still on the fence for twitter. I think it is a great way to info and interact with people you would never have a chance to meet otherwise (the value of should not be understated, but I have found it to be VERY distracting to the point of having to turn off tweetdeck to get other work done. Nate – I think you need to determine the efficiency and efficacy of your email usage before claiming it is a total negative. While I agree (and you know I do) with your perspectives on the downsides of email communication in general, I think there is likely an inherent value in the emails you send particularly to those who do not use other communications channels.

Too bad you cannot tag certain email addresses as “unproductive” email addresses (say, some corporate email that forces you to provide an inane and useless data call or a non-work related friend). Then you fine tune your productivity on email.

On the twitter issue, it seems that the question is whether your twitter usage directly relates to your current work objectives. Clearly, Twitter is productive in other ways – creating an online presence, keeping up on niche topics, communicating with far flung teams, etc. Again, since it merges work and personal usage it is hard to say how productive or non-productive you really are.

I am still on the fence for twitter. I think it is a great way to info and interact with people you would never have a chance to meet otherwise (the value of should not be understated, but I have found it to be VERY distracting to the point of having to turn off tweetdeck to get other work done.

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