Work  Breakdown A key principle of lean manufacturing is creating smaller batches, ideally, batches of one unit. It reduces inventory and enables a greater degree of customization. The same thing has been happening to a lot of information work. Think about it. You get an email for which you need to provide a quick response. […]

Everyone’s Favorite Health Drink   Coffee can be indispensable in the workplace. We just read a study about how coffee really works. Kind of the reverse of the conventional wisdom. According to this study, in layman’s terms, coffee doesn’t really “wake you up” as much as it keeps you from getting sleepy. Here are the details.  […]

OK…I have a pretty good level of familiarity with various time and task management methods and tools. Still, I can’t seem to keep up. And no matter how close to keeping up I get, I still have a million things on “the list.” It seems like the only time management method that works is kind […]

We were conducting a job analysis meeting earlier this week to document work outputs, tasks, supporting knowledge/skills, etc. for two roles. (We will use the information to define the roles and map out an overall recommended career/development path.) We do this work frequently but this time I was struck by the tension between streamlining and […]

Put Up Your Hands and Move Away from the Smartphone… There has been a lot of interest in multitasking lately. People argue that it is impossible…that it is really nothing more than rapidly switching between doing two individual tasks. Others argue that it may be impossible for “older people” but that today’s “wired” generation can […]

Originally posted on November 15, 2007 by Pete One of the toughest decisions is whether to use paper or electronic tools for running meetings, managing to-do’s, even taking notes. Paper wins for speed, flexibility, and the ability to look at more of it at once…you can spread it out. Electronic wins though for portability…and who […]