Tag Archive for Productivity

| December 3, 2020
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10 Ways to Make Teams Easier

10 Ways to Make Teams EasierThanks to the continuing COVID-19 lockdowns and the resulting growth in work from home, Microsoft (MSFT) Teams has been steadily growing its user numbers. The collaboration platform has expanded from 20 million users in November 2019 to 115 million daily active users (DAU). This growth has put Teams among the most popular collaboration platform during these uncertain times. 

keyboard shortcuts in TeamsIf you are part of the growing number of project managers working from home using the collaboration software Teams to keep in touch with your project teams – are you an efficient Teams user? It has been estimated that you might be spending 64 hours every year on unnecessary keyboard-to-mouse coordination in Teams and other GUI’s. Here are 10 keyboard shortcuts to increase your Microsoft Teams productivity in 2021.

Teams Keyboard Shortcuts

1 – Zoom In – (Ctrl+Equals sign) – This keyboard shortcut helps find things visually, especially after a long day, when your eyes are tired out from all the blue light fatigue. You can zoom in anywhere across the Windows app to improve its accessibility. .

Toggle audio and video2 – Toggle mute – (Ctrl+Shift+M) – Use this keyboard shortcut to cut out noise during calls, quickly chime in without adding to ambient noise, and have more focused conversations.
Bonus tip#1 – Toggle video (Ctrl+Shift+O) but this is available only on the desktop version.

3 – Start an audio call – (Ctrl+Shift+C) – Use this keyboard shortcut from within a chat to start an audio call with chat participants. Bonus tip#2 – Use Ctrl+Shift+U to starting a video call.

4. Go to sharing toolbar – (Ctrl+Shift+Space) – It is called collaboration software for a reason – This keyboard shortcut brings up the toolbar so you can share your screen, give someone else control and start the whiteboard.

5. Blur background – (Ctrl+Shift+P) – If you are WFH with a messy bookshelf or a refrigerator with kid’s drawings right behind you -this keyboard shortcut lets you quickly blur the background and present a professional setting for your video feed.

quickly attach a document6. Attach files – (Ctrl+O) – This keyboard shortcut allows you to quickly attach a document or a file when communicating with someone via chat. It will open a pop-up menu where you can choose to add files either from Microsoft OneDrive or from your local storage.

7. Start a new line – (Shift+Enter) – This keyboard combo is useful for when you want to create paragraphs or bulleted lists inside a chat message. It will bring the cursor to a new line, within the message, instead of sending it right away as would happen if you were to press only Enter.

8. Edit a chat message – (Page Up arrow key) – If you have missed out on any information or made a typo, the Page Up button on your keyboard lets you edit your last sent message without having to press the More button.

9. Enter an emoji – (emotion keyword) – Instead of scrolling thru the lists of emojis – type in the keyword within the parentheses. Examples include

  • emoji(cry),
  • (CWL),
  • (Hi),
  • (ROFL),
  • (smile),
  • (sad),
  • (wink),
  • (Yes) .

10. Find additional emojis – (:word) – Microsoft Teams works with several third-party players to populate its emoji library, so there may be more emojis to express your feelings. Type in “:” followed by the word, and an autocomplete menu will start suggesting emojis – From Avocado to Zombie

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While MSFT Teams is not designed for project management – there is no built-in way to track tasks, risks, manage resources, or do other PM things. It should be a tool in your toolbox. A report by Forrester on Teams found that:

  • Teams reduces the number and duration of meetings and business travel.
  • With easy access to information in one place and less time wasted switching between apps, Teams save workers up to four hours per week.
  • Teams enables remote working which accelerates decision-making and increases productivity.

Stay safe out there!

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Project Management | Tags: , , , , , , ,
| November 21, 2020
Comments Off on 5 Ways Taking Notes Can Improve Your Life

5 Ways Taking Notes Can Improve Your Life

5 Ways Taking Notes Can Improve Your LifeJotting down everything that happens at your daily meetings can boost your productivity and make your workday better. Handwritten notes are a powerful tool for creating the neurocircuitry through the hand-brain complex supporting the brain’s capacity to retrieve information. Here are a few examples of how taking notes with a pen and paper can make your life better.

million dollar idea1. Make a Million

How often has a million-dollar idea flashed through your brain and then it’s gone? They can come to you in the shower, at the gym at lunch and if you don’t write them down, you will forget them as soon as you enter the office or sit down at your desk. Carrying a notebook with you can change that. Just scribble your million-dollar idea down and carry on. 

2. Be Better

Taking notes will help you improve the quality of your work (work and personal). Your notes are your personal external memory storage. Your notebook can be a “refresher course” on all the things you have picked up through life. 

Taking notes can make you look good – to your boss. If you’re in a meeting and are seen to be writing all the key factors and ideas down, this is a subtle hint about your character. It shows you have determination, can self-motivate, and are efficient.

To Do list3. Check It Off

 Notes can help you keep your To-Do list up to date. Studies have shown that as soon as you walk out of the room – your brain will automatically forget what was discussed. Writing things down can stop this from happening. So when the inevitable change comes thru you have a base to build your new day (or week). 

4. Be Your Own Master

You have a plan. You need to stick to it. But it is all too easy to get sucked into a whole host of conversations, “busy” activities, and, of course, the ever-addicting world of social media. Taking notes can help you stay on track and do the things you need to do rather than put them off for “tomorrow” (or get sidetracked by the never-ending flow of emails, text messages, and phone calls).

thinks their request is the most important thing you’ve heard all dayJotting down as and when you get more requests piling in helps you prioritize them. This allows you to focus on the activities that are really urgent, rather than those you feel are urgent. You don’t have to constantly derail your day because someone thinks their request is the most important thing you’ve heard all day. The world doesn’t work like that, and you shouldn’t either.

5. Taking Notes Reduce Stress

After a meeting (or any activity at work) your brain will be cluttered with loose ends, ideas, and just a boatload of information. This isn’t good for your stress levels – having a cluttered mind can feel unsettled. Taking notes is a sure-fire way to regain control of your thoughts. 

This isn’t good for your stress levelsStudies have shown that stress-free minds are more productive. Being stress-free physically increases your brain’s density in the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for much of our conscious thought and reasoning, and the ability to focus through emotional turmoil.

Controlling stress is extra critical during the COVID pandemic lockdowns. The U.S. Institute of Mental Health says that long-term stress may lead to serious health problems, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and other illnesses, including mental disorders such as depression or anxiety.

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pen and paper notebook

For note-taking – I use a pen and paper notebook. I can take it pretty much everywhere to capture those million-dollar ideas. I know that many like to take their notes on a laptop or tablet because they think it’s easier to edit and organize their notes and tasks. But research (PDF) says using a laptop or tablet may be slowing you down and cluttering your notes with irrelevant information.

Stay safe out there!

Related article

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Project Management | Tags: , , , , ,
| August 2, 2020
Comments Off on Pizza and the PM

Pizza and the PM

Pizza and the PMOne of the implications of the COVID-19 virus has been that most in-person meetings are getting moved online or canceled as we continue to shelter in place and work from home. As a project manager, I schedule my share of the 11 million meetings that take place every day in the U.S. – all of which are now online thanks to COVID-19. One of the factors I consider when setting a Microsoft (MSFT) Teams or Zoom online meeting is pizza. 

Bad meetingThat may sound goofy. Pizza can help the PM decided how to shape a meeting. The PMI PMBOK does not venture any suggestions on how many is too many participants for a meeting. My experience says that too many participants over-complicate a meeting and make a video call unwieldy and not enough of the right people prevents decisions from sticking. PMs are looking for a meeting that is just right.

The Bezos rule

One way to get the right number of project meeting members comes from Jeff Bezos. While not a PM – you really can’t argue with his cred’s – richest man in the world – Amazon (AMZN) – second billionaire in space. TargetTech says that Mr. Bezos uses the 2 pizza rule to decide how many attendees should be invited to a meeting.

2 Detroit pizza ruleWhile, sadly, the 2 pizza rule does not mandate that pizza be present at meetings, it means that every meeting should be small enough that attendees could be fed with two large pizzas. Mr. Bezos is known to have used ‘two pizza’ meetings and small project teams to foster a decentralized, creative working environment when Amazon was a startup.

The article explains that Mr. Bezos’ decision to keep meetings small in order to encourage productivity is backed up by science. The late Harvard researcher J. Richard Hackman devoted nearly 50 years studying team performance and concluded that four to six is the optimal number of members for a project team and no work team should have more than 10 members.

2 pizza rule advantages

Team complexityAccording to Professor Hackman, this is because communication problems increase “exponentially as team size increases.” Ironically, the larger the team, the more time will be spent on communication instead of producing work.

The author points out that the 2 pizza rule has several other advantages.

  • It helps prevent groupthink. Groupthink is a phenomenon that occurs when a large group’s need for consensus overrides the judgment of individual group members.
  • It discourages HiPPO, an acronym that stands for the “highest-paid person’s opinion.” HiPPO describes the tendency for lower-paid employees to defer to higher-paid employees when a decision has to be made.
  • It cuts down on social loafing. Social loafing occurs where more people on a team means less social pressure, which could lead to less engagement.

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The optimal number of team members is 5. You can feed them with 2 large pizzas and if there is a vote, it will not end up in a tie.

Do you think 5 is perfect sized project team?

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Stay safe out there!

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Project Management | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
| June 4, 2020
Comments Off on 9 Things To Do When You’re Slammed With Work

9 Things To Do When You’re Slammed With Work

9 Things To Do When You’re Slammed With WorkWe have all been there – Work starts to stack-up –  deadlines, assignments, meetings, reports, bosses, staff and COVID-19 are all demanding your attention. How the %$#&*! do you get anything done with all of these distractions?

When we have too much to do, we can freeze. Spinning without traction, we move fast but don’t make progress on the things that are creating our stress. Because when there’s so much competing for attention, we don’t know where to begin and so we don’t begin anywhere. 50% of people report feeling overwhelmed at work. Herding turtles as a former co-worker described it.

Herding turtlesHaving a lot to do and having too much to do are very different things. No matter how you define them, a lot can be motivating, but too much can make you freeze in your tracks, resulting in you doing a whole lot of nothing. No matter how well prioritized your tasks and projects might be, when you have too much to choose from, you often simply don’t know where to start. Here are nine tricks to calm your mind and dive into your herd of turtles when you feel overwhelmed.

Freak out

Try giving yourself some space to freak out. Set a timer for ten minutes and freak out, surf the Intertubes or stare out the window. It will help get the anxiety out of your system.

Stop beating yourself up

Stop beating yourself up

Your reaction is normal. Get strategic about how to chip away at your work.

Take five breaths

The military uses tactical breathing (PDF) when faced with critical situations, and this technique is proven to help people handle frightening work stress. Breathe in for a count of four, hold for four, breathe out for four, and repeat.

Write it down

The act of writing by hand also has proven stress-relieving properties. Handwrite everything that needs to get done. Some people find comfort in handwriting their to-do list and seeing their nonthreatening penmanship on a sheet of paper.

Hand write everything that needs to get donePrioritize your work

Start with prioritizing by deadlines. For tasks with shared deadlines, order them by magnitude, putting the bigger items on top. Once your priority list is final, step back and see if this gives you a sense of order and direction on where to start. If you still have a hard time getting motivated, pick the task you most want to do. It’s better to do something than nothing.

Start with the easy stuff

What can you knock off in the next 15 to 30 minutes? Make phone calls, answer emails, etc. Then, attempt one of your beefier tasks.

You’re not aloneYou’re not alone

Talk with a co-worker. People love to help others solve problems. Share your project challenges with a trusted colleague what do when they have too much on their plate> What can you delegate? Can someone be bribed with a coffee? Can you talk to your manager to gain some perspective and guidance about your workload and priorities.

Use Timers

Set a timer for 30 or 40 minutes – something you can commit to. Focusing your attention will increase your motivating stress and decrease your paralyzing stress. The contained time periods will also give you a framework that will help you chip away at the important work.

Harvard Business School explains that working against time keeps us focused. Using a short time frame actually increases the pressure but it keeps our effort specific, and particular to a single task. That increases good, motivating stress while reducing negative, disconcerting stress.

Go for a walkTake Twenty

Go for a walk or get a coffee. Take some time to truly disengage your brain from the work you’re doing. You’ll be surprised at the focus and brilliance you bring to your big list of tasks when you’re feeling refreshed.

Feeling overwhelmed and stressed doesn’t have to stop you from being productive. Instead, there are real steps we can take to make what we need to do more manageable, which will help us get more done.

Stay safe out there!

Related article

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Category: Project Management | Tags: , , , ,
| October 18, 2012
Comments Off on Do One Thing at a Time

Do One Thing at a Time

Do One Thing at a Time at workTony Schwartz asks in a recent post The Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time at Harvard Business Review, why is it that between 25 and 50 percent of people report feeling overwhelmed or burned out at work? The author suggests that it’s not just the number of hours we’re working. He says we spend too many continuous hours juggling too many things at the same time.

Wherever we go, our work follows usIn the article he argues that we’ve lost stopping points, finish lines and boundaries. Mr. Schwartz believes that technology has blurred them beyond recognition. Wherever we go, our work follows us, on our digital devices, ever insistent and intrusive. It’s like an itch we can’t resist scratching, even though scratching invariably makes it worse.

Not Helping

Mr. Schwartz points out that “time savers” don’t save time. He argues that answering emails during conference calls; eating lunch at your desk or make calling or sending texts while driving are not helping you be more productive.

sending texts while driving are not helping you be more productive.The biggest cost, assuming you don’t crash, is to your productivity. You productivity crashes because you are splitting your attention. You are partly engaged in multiple activities but rarely fully engaged in any one. The author explains this impacts your productivity when you switch away from a primary task to do something else. By switching between tasks you’re increasing the time it takes to finish that task by 25%.

The HBR article warns that if you’re always doing something, you’re relentlessly burning down your available reservoir of energy over the course of every day, so you have less available with every passing hour.

Increase focus at work

Mr. Schwartz suggests three policies for managers to increase focus:

Maintain meeting discipline1. Maintain meeting discipline. Schedule meetings for 45 minutes, and not an hour or longer, so participants can stay focused, take time afterward to reflect on what’s been discussed, and recover before the next obligation. Start all meetings at a precise time, end at a precise time, and insist that all digital devices be turned off throughout the meeting.

2. Stop demanding or expecting instant responsiveness at every moment of the day. It forces your people into reactive mode, fractures their attention, and makes it difficult for them to sustain attention on their priorities. Let them turn off their email at certain times. If it’s urgent, you can call them — but that won’t happen very often.

Encourage renewal3. Encourage renewal. Create at least one time during the day when you urge your people to stop working and take a break. Offer a mid afternoon class in yoga, or meditation, organize a group walk or workout, or consider creating a renewal room where people can relax, or take a nap.

Steps to take

The blog says that people have to set their own boundaries:

1. Do the most important thing first in the morning, preferably without interruption, for 60 to 90 minutes, with a clear start and stop time. If possible, work in a private space during this period, or with sound-reducing earphones. Finally, resist every impulse to distraction, knowing that you have a designated stopping point. The more absorbed you can get, the more productive you’ll be. When you’re done, take at least a few minutes to renew.

scheduled times to think2. Establish regular, scheduled times to think more long-term, creatively, or strategically. If you don’t, you’ll constantly succumb to the tyranny of the urgent. Also, find a different environment to do this activity — preferably one that’s relaxed and conducive to open-ended thinking.

3. Take real and regular vacations. Real means that when you’re off, you’re truly disconnecting from work. Regular means several times a year if possible, even if some are only two or three days added to a weekend. The research strongly suggests that you’ll be far healthier if you take all of your vacation time, and more productive overall.

Stop multitaskingA single principle lies at the heart of all these suggestions. The author concludes that when you’re engaged at work, fully engage, for defined periods of time. When you’re renewing, truly renew. Stop living your life in the gray zone.

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My personal experience reinforces the authors conclusions. My experience has been that I was able to get 2x the work done on a single telecommute day, than when I am at the office. Now that I have to be on-site everyday, my work output has decreased because I can’t work without interruption for any period of time.

I have found that you can’t focus on anything when you’re moving 90 mph and you can’t stop to take a breath. Maybe someday I will get an office and see the magic of doing one thing at a time.

Related articles

 

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him at LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

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