Tag: Productivity

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Apple’s first iPhone appeared in 2007. Since then there have been nine product cycles. Microsoft recently took the wraps off its third Surface Pro tablet in 18 months. Samsung’s Galaxy S5 is the fifth model since the Galaxy S i9000 appeared in 2010.

Technology giants like Apple, Samsung and Microsoft update products at least once a year. You don’t have to.

There are pressures to upgrade. Companies don’t spend a fortune launching and marketing their new products for nothing. They want to persuade you there are immediate benefits from upgrading.

It’s easy to get caught up in the hype.

Unnecessary upgrades

Sometimes there are real productivity benefits. More often the upgrade is far from essential.  Some changes are little more than cosmetic. Others are just incremental: a few more pixels here, a little faster there, a bit more storage elsewhere.

In most cases the extra features are merely “nice to have”. And often the productivity improvements come from updated software. Often you can update the software on your existing device to get 90 percent of the advantage you’ll get from buying the newer device.

There’s a good financial argument against buying every upgrade: it’s expensive.

Buying a new high-end smartphone once a year adds up to around NZ$100 a month. There’s something wasteful about sticking workable year-old smartphones in a drawer — especially when you consider many contain rare materials.

Save your money, save the planet

So when should you upgrade? If your device still works for you and does everything or most of what you need, then sit tight and save your money. If you are frustrated by shortcomings — be honest here — then it could be time to spend.

Remember also that devices will often go on what they could do on day one for many years. Until recently I had a laser printer that was getting on for 15 years old. I only got rid of it when I could no longer buy toner cartridges.

That’s unrealistic for phones, tablets or PCs. As a rule of thumb, it makes sense to update phones roughly every two years — it’s no accident mobile plans last for 24 months.

And anyway, heavily used handheld devices tend to run into problems from about two years.  Tablets and laptops should last a little longer, say three years. Desktop PCs can go on for many more years if you’re willing to upgrade internal components.

There are times when upgrading can save you money in the long-term and some physical upgrades are important to some people. If you’re on the move most of the day, then moving to a device with longer battery life is likely to make a real difference to the way you work. I found this when I move to a MacBook Air that can go all day on a single charge. Likewise, moving to a phone with a bigger screen has made me more productive.

The upgrade hamster wheel isn’t a bad thing. Competition between brands means they continue to throw good and bad ideas out to the market. The improvements may be incremental, but technology gets better year-by-year. The key to making it work for you is to move when you’re ready for a change and not to let the companies making devices dictate when you upgrade.

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Whether you use a smartphone, tablet, PC or all three here are five apps to give your business an immediate productivity boost. All are available for Windows, OS X, iOS and Android:

OneNote: Microsoft’s excellent note-taking app was an overlooked jewel for a decade. Now it is free.

OneNote looks and works like a paper notebook. You can use it to save all kinds of data: text, audio, pictures and video. It’s unstructured, you simply clip items and drop them anywhere on a OneNote page.

Once you’ve saved material you can organise your hoard in pages, sections and notebooks. Best of all you can sync notebooks across your devices, so you can find that essential piece of information on your phone when away from your desk.

Dropbox: There are many ways you can save files in the cloud. Dropbox is simple, reliable and completely independent of hardware or operating system brands. Store a file in Dropbox and it is immediately available wherever you have an internet connection. Many also use it to back up data.

Wunderlist: Dozens of apps aim to replace writing to-do lists on scraps of paper. Wunderlist scores as the best because it stays simple while adding enough extra functions to keep you on your toes. You can prioritise tasks, give yourself timed reminders and set up recurring items.

Pocket: Seen something worth reading online, but don’t have time to finish it now? Send a link to Pocket and read it later. it’s a great way to head off distraction when working I also use it when I see something on my phone, but the print is too small to read. A quick clip to Pocket means I can view it later on a bigger screen.

Skype: Plenty of alternatives products do voice or video calls and provide messaging services. I find Apple’s FaceTime works best when there’s decent connection at both ends. However, nothing works reliably across as many devices and operating systems as Microsoft’s Skype. You can chat, swap files, send txt messages and even call conventional phone lines.

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Set aside one day a week when you don’t switch your computer on.

A day when you don’t check mail, update Facebook, or tweet.

No firing up the desktop for game playing.

It doesn’t need to be the same day every week. You may have to trim things according to needs and deadlines. You may only be able to manage one day a fortnight.

Go off-line and let the brain rest. Or, if not rest, allow it to change gear.

Take a break instead of constantly responding to incoming messages. Just let them pile up.

There’s always tomorrow.

You can de-stress. And before you say you find it stressful not being in constant touch with cyberspace, think again. You know that isn’t true.

The online world will go on without you.

Read books, chat to friends, play sport, enjoy the sunshine or bake muffins instead.

That way, when you get back online, you’ll be refreshed. It is like a mini holiday. It may sound like a cliché, but you will work better after taking a day-long break from your computer.

Digital sabbath not original

The digital sabbath is not an original idea. If you are religious, it came at the end of the first recorded week. The Biblical creation story says God rested on the seventh day.

Ancient Jews worked for six days then strictly observed the Shabbat when many everyday things were not allowed. They knew this was mentally, and physically, healthy.

I first heard about the idea of a digital sabbath in an online forum – sadly I don’t recall who or where the original idea comes from.

Problems

It is harder to take even one day’s rest from the digital world if you have a phone, an ebook reader or if you use the computer as an entertainment hub for music and video. And you may have a job, or some other responsibilities that make going off-line difficult.

Nevertheless, I suggest you do what you can to give it a try, reconnect once a week with the analogue world.

I’m not perfect

I’d like  to report I take a full day away from my computer every week. The truth is, I don’t always manage it. Although I try to schedule a full day off each week, I generally only get a couple of full-blown digital sabbaths each month.

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An article in CIO magazine about Peter Drucker – who first coined the term knowledge worker.  It isn’t a soft piece. In The comeback Charlatan (now offline) David James is critical writing;

He talks about knowledge as the organisation’s vital “resource”. It is not a resource (resources are inanimate; knowledge is an act of animate humans).

Likewise, his use of the economics-derived term “productivity” is doubtful. It is not how much knowledge is “produced” but how well it is applied.

In an interview with BRW, Drucker dismissed these concerns, saying that “eventually, we will have to work out the proper methodology for both defining and measuring knowledge, work and the knowledge worker”.

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Mark Shead at Productivity 501 writes about the Hawthorne effect:

The Hawthorne effect refers to some studies that were done on how training impacts employees’ productivity at work. The studies found that sending someone to training produces employees that work harder. The funny part about it is that you still get the productivity increase even if the training doesn’t teach them how to be better at their jobs. Sending someone to training helps them feel like they are important, like the company is investing in them and they are valuable. Because of this, they work harder.

An explanatory note at the bottom of Shead’s post points out the original tests were to do with changing light levels. You can read Shead’s original story at Hawthorne Effect : Productivity501.

It’s also worth reading the Wikipedia entry on the Hawthorne effect. There’s also a good definition of the effect at Donald Clark’s site: The Hawthorne effect.  Clark writes:

The Hawthorne effect – an increase in worker productivity produced by the psychological stimulus of being singled out and made to feel important.

Clarke links the effect to work done by Frederick Taylor who gave birth to the idea of industrial psychology.

My own common sense experience as a manager says you should pay attention to workers as a matter of course. Sadly this isn’t obvious to everyone. It certainly wasn’t back in the 1920s and 1930s when these ideas were fresh and new. If the effect is clear among knowledge workers at your workplace, it’s a sign you aren’t managing people correctly.

See also: Taylor’s scientific management doesn’t apply to knowledge work