March 2014 Summaries

"Don't worry, just drop the ball." This counterintuitive advice from Scott Hanselman is one of a dozen-plus productivity practices preached by him, a program manager at Microsoft and avid blogger and speaker. Hanselman balances his day job with blogging, podcasting, Twitter engagement, conference speaking, co-authoring over half a dozen books, and raising a family. He shares how he does it, emphasizing the importance of understanding effectiveness versus efficiency, defining work, and applying practices like the "Four Ds" (Do It, Drop It, Delegate It, Defer It). Hanselman also offers tips on inbox management, conserving keystrokes, triaging the inbox of life, getting rid of psychic weight, reserving Fridays for reflection, trying the Pomodoro Technique, realizing being busy is a form of laziness, facing the fact that multitasking is a myth, and cleaning out mental clutter.

Paul Joyce, the founder of Geckoboard, presents a scenario where a driver's intuition is overridden by panic when faced with an unexpected obstacle on the road. This experience parallels the value proposition of his startup's status board app, which aims to provide businesses with a clear view of their vital signs and facilitate better decision-making. Joyce's company uses its own product in various ways, including a customized status board for each team member, growth team, engineering, and product teams. The main board displays key metrics such as conversion rate and churn, while the CHI (Customer Happiness Index) measures customer engagement, MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) growth, number of paying customers, and customers in free trial. Geckoboard's display is flexible, with a focus on aligning metrics to business goals at any given point in time. The app has been successful, with 16-person team using it extensively, and Joyce attributes this to "dogfooding" - using the product itself to find new ways of using it. He emphasizes the importance of selecting the right metrics for businesses, identifying leading and lagging metrics, finding what impacts those metrics, and checking for "yin and yang" metrics that balance opposing effects. Geckoboard's approach is centered around creating a strategic dashboard that allows users to make better decisions based on data-driven insights rather than opinions or gut reactions.

Pocket is a content-saving app that has attracted over 11 million users who have collectively saved over 950 million items. It was originally released as Read It Later in 2007 and has remained true to its promise of "save for later" by avoiding discovery features like trending now or most saved by others. The app's focus on simplicity, ease of use, and user retention has contributed to its success, with over $7 million in funding and a high user retention rate. Pocket's creator, Nate Weiner, attributes the app's growth to keeping true to its original vision and avoiding distractions like paid advertising, which he believes can be hard to justify without a monetized product behind it. The app is designed to make saving content easy and accessible, with features like one-click saves and support for every major platform. Despite being started as a side project, Pocket has become a popular productivity tool used by its creator and millions of users worldwide.

Ari Meisel, who has Crohn's disease, uses a productivity system called "Less Doing" to help people manage stress and increase efficiency. The system is based on three principles: optimize, automate, and outsource. Meisel shares seven tips for improving productivity, including stopping to assess processes, writing down every step of a process, understanding that changing a process takes time, trying a virtual assistant, getting out of one's own way, running a test, keeping the home screen clean, and focusing on optimizing 95% of daily tasks. By following these principles and tips, individuals can reclaim their time and focus on what they want to do.

There are several tools that can help professionals share relevant Internet finds with their teams, turning daily reading into team discussions that could lead to new ideas. These include Evernote Web Clipper, which allows users to annotate and share web pages; iDoneThis, a lightweight reporting tool that generates daily email digests of team discoveries; Trello, a project management tool that can be used to surface ideas, resources, or projects; Pie, a web app where teams can collect and discuss links; Slack, a group chat and collaboration app that integrates with various services for easy search capabilities; P2 WordPress Theme, a low-friction platform that resembles Twitter to share links, status updates, and ideas. These tools enable teams to build an awareness of what everyone else is working on, potentially making every single member of the team a source for new ideas and insights.