Links

Taking Email Etiquette to the Next Level

Not unlike publishing free/busy time from your Outlook calendar, this article discusses publishing email activity in an attempt to better inform those making requests of you via email. (Source)

…it periodically checks the user’s email load based on specific measurement parameters chosen by the user – unread messages in your inbox, total number of messages in your inbox, or how much mail you’ve recently sent. After an initial 12-hour analysis, courteous.ly determines the user’s email habits and what constitutes “light,” “normal” or “high” e-mail amount. It then updates the user’s status of email volume level every 10 minutes, which is reflected in an individualized courteous.ly link.

May have to play with courteous.ly and gmail.

ComputerWeekly: Report predicts IT skills shortage crisis as data growth set to outstrip staff numbers

From this ComputerWeekly article… (Source)

IT departments will have to manage 50 times the amount of information, 75 times the number of files and 10 times the number of virtual and physical servers, with only 1.5 times the number of IT professionals to manage it all, by 2020.

HBR: The Only Way to Get Important Things Done

HBR: The Only Way to Get Important Things Done

Great article–I love the rituals he highlights:

  • Abiding by a specific bedtime to ensure that I get 8 hours of sleep. Nothing is more critical to the way I feel every day. If I’m flying somewhere and know I’ll arrive too late to get my 8 hours, I make it a priority to make up the hours I need on the plane.
  • Work out as soon as I wake up. I’ve long since learned it has a huge impact all day long on how I feel, even if I don’t initially feel like doing it.
  • Launching my work day by focusing first on whatever I’ve decided the night before is the most important activity I can do that day. Then taking a break after 90 minutes to refuel. Today — which happens to be a Sunday — this blog was my priority. My break was playing tennis for an hour. During the week it might be just to breathe for five minutes, or get something to eat.
  • Immediately writing down on a list any idea or task that occurs to me over the course of the day. Once it’s on paper, it means I don’t walk around feeling preoccupied by it — or risk forgetting it.
  • Asking myself the following question any time I feel triggered by someone or something,: “What’s the story I’m telling myself here and how could I tell a more hopeful and empowering story about this same set of facts?”

HBR: The Only Way to Get Important Things Done

Great Harvard Business Review article—I love the rituals he highlights… (Source)

Abiding by a specific bedtime to ensure that I get 8 hours of sleep. Nothing is more critical to the way I feel every day. If I’m flying somewhere and know I’ll arrive too late to get my 8 hours, I make it a priority to make up the hours I need on the plane.

Work out as soon as I wake up. I’ve long since learned it has a huge impact all day long on how I feel, even if I don’t initially feel like doing it.

Launching my work day by focusing first on whatever I’ve decided the night before is the most important activity I can do that day. Then taking a break after 90 minutes to refuel. Today — which happens to be a Sunday — this blog was my priority. My break was playing tennis for an hour. During the week it might be just to breathe for five minutes, or get something to eat.

Immediately writing down on a list any idea or task that occurs to me over the course of the day. Once it’s on paper, it means I don’t walk around feeling preoccupied by it — or risk forgetting it.

Asking myself the following question any time I feel triggered by someone or something,: “What’s the story I’m telling myself here and how could I tell a more hopeful and empowering story about this same set of facts?”

InfoWeek: The Five Core Competencies For Developing IT Leaders

InfoWeek: The Five Core Competencies For Developing IT Leaders

Departmental directors should have mastered the basics of managing people, including teaming, motivation, follow-up, task assignment, legal issues, communications, and company policies. But many haven’t. High-potential directors often have gotten to where they are because of their deep personal knowledge of an area, a favorable set of circumstances, or a great team. Often, my first step in developing a high-potential director is to move him or her to a new area under a different VP and monitor carefully how the director and VP manage the change.

InfoWeek: The Five Core Competencies For Developing IT Leaders

From this InfoWeek article… (Source)

Departmental directors should have mastered the basics of managing people, including teaming, motivation, follow-up, task assignment, legal issues, communications, and company policies. But many haven’t. High-potential directors often have gotten to where they are because of their deep personal knowledge of an area, a favorable set of circumstances, or a great team. Often, my first step in developing a high-potential director is to move him or her to a new area under a different VP and monitor carefully how the director and VP manage the change.

Near Field Communication (NFC): What is it and why should you care?

Near Field Communication (NFC): What is it and why should you care?

So not only will you be able to make payments from your phone – throwing your wallet out the window and creating extra space in your pockets for your hands – the same device will also contain your ID, railcard and all those frustratingly addictive membership and loyalty cards that you can never find when you actually need them.

Learning 2.0: How digital networks are changing the rules

Learning 2.0: How digital networks are changing the rules

To date, educators and policymakers have been considering how to integrate new media into education, but with the speed of innovation and the rapid adoption of the newer generation, the population may be better served if they were reflecting on how to prepare people to live with new media in purposeful way. In other words, simply learning how you can use the Internet to learn about the Renaissance is not enough, we must learn to paint a Sistine Chapel of our own.