Email one of the time killer around

It is easy to be trapped in the multimedia environment.  I never knew how much time and energy was drained just reading email from my mobile.  It is what I called mixing important and urgent at its best.  So I started to calculate how much time I spent writing one email on my laptop and writing the same more less email in my mobile, to my suprise it took 30 minutes for a 10 minutes time email. Which mean although I feel better (for just a moment)  where I can see no more pending tray on my cellphone at the same time I have absorb 3 times the time needed.

It is very very important to pick battle in order to win a war.  Either you shut your mobile and let it be tomorrow's problem or you would select email based on person's name (you don't want to ignore your boss do you) and base on the subject but then again subject can fool us. There are too many urgent is put on the subject  which hard to separate with the important ones.

Aside from the time spent , energy is spent also because you would be doing that on your rest time after going home from office, we are not meant to be working or constantly in the aware state at all time, it's like a caveman being alert at all time for any wild animals to come, they decided to live in a cave and takes turn to watch the surroundings.  We should do like the caveman take a rest conserve your energy and be back vibrant on the next day.  Cherish your time and energy , honor your own body.

A body that has been disrespected in few years may bite you at the end.  Instead of asking what can you do for the company perhaps it is about time to ask why are you doing what you are doing.  Why is it important for you to answer that email?  The question is important not why is it urgent to answer that email? 

Being a know everything is not helping either, sometimes you just want to help just because you know doesn't mean you have to answer it.  Is it selfish?  well again time is the essence here we only have 24 hours a day.  If every questions from any directions had to be answered we may end up exhausting ourselves.  So what to do then?  One thing for sure to have many FAQ or ready answered questions made hence the same repetitive questions can be avoided.  Find pattern for the questions that keep coming to you.

Experts doesnt mean that you would share your knowledge all the time, there will be time when you have to choose which battle you want to win for the day.  So it's about prioritization as well.
Create focus focus focus.

Personally I would go with coming in early have a clear mind and start replying my email.  Oh one more thing don't start reading all incoming email after work on your cellphone, at the end you will read it twice in the office anyway, not worth the time.  We read email once per email.  We may read the attachment one or twice depends on the complexity of the attachment but not the email.

You can be easily overloaded just by reading emails.  Oh one more thing please please do not reply all when you don't have to.  And those thank you word , perhaps we can hold it I think we can sufficiently work without a one liner thank you reply - a bit harsh but seeing 100 emails with 10 of them are a one liner thank you messages - you probably in a very kind loving company...

Eating an Elephant in the Dark

So what happened if you eat an elephant in the dark?
Hmmmm probably you ate more than you can chew.

Eating elephant in the dark is like managing a project without knowing how big the scope is hence you never think of getting help (resources) nor know how long are you going to keep chewing. This of course under the assumption the scope only have size as the challenges sometimes scope can shift which create another problem the elephant goes around and you are chewing air (scope shift). 

Can you imagine eating an elephant while it's running you may get an air bite (non added value task, running ramp without a clear focus), or even worst got trampled by one (a disaster)!

So what to do?

Define the scope, scope can creep and it always does so make sure you have buffer of resources and time.  Shed some lights to the room, ask around find the edge of the room hence you know how far can the elephant goes.  It can start from having a flash light once you get more requirements the uncharted room becomes less complex, open the window to get more sun coming in (but please not let the elephant jump out the window).  Aaah finally you can see the elephant how big the size is and what color does he have, it is a pink cute elephant (you would not expect that would you?)

Make a project charter this is sort of the killing action , yup it is quite scary indeed and it has to be done because a cute pink elephant will run around in the bright room and it would be difficult to pin him down, right?  So a project charter define and describe what we are after and what is the outcome.  When you get a vivid enough outcome - SMART goal.  We then smack the head of the elephant to put it unconcious (please mind this is all methaporically speaking no animal was hurt in the event)

When you see a pink elephant you would then know that it would be stupid to attempt to chow down such big size of meat.  This is where we need to break the task into small bite size from there we can then decide whether we want to increase the resources or to extend the time.

Define the resources, now you know how big it is, time to call friends to have a party and have a splendid feast.  So you start calculating if within one seating you can eat 300g of meat, and this elephant weigh at 3 tons, you probably need 10.000 people to come. Or you split the party into numerous events which lead to longer completion with less people. It can be done through this as well.  When you go to your facebook you realize you only have 1000 friends hence you may not be able to complete this with one party hence you can define the time.

Define the time, now you know how many friends you have, time to break them into a certain spand of time.  Like my friend always says "anything is possible with time and money" and there is a truth to it.
So now we just calculate the amount of time needed, if you only have 1000 friends that means you need to throw 10 rounds of parties that is a lot of event isn't it.  And always always have buffers, it is known that not all of the time our resources can come to the party and sometimes party can have malfunctions this is where Risk Assessment comes.  For this example let's just say 500 (50%) friends come at all parties as average and 20% malfunction parties from there you can then calculate how many more parties you need.  So the buffer becomes 10 parties X 200 % (for the people) = 20 parties with 20% possibility of malfunction we bump it up to 24 parties. 

If every parties has 2 weeks gap that means you will need 48 weeks to accomplish this.

Than goes to Gantt Chart to map out the project plan! 

So can you eat an elephant? The answer is "yes,you can!" - within less than a year we would end up with couple of bones only! 

34

Today is my birthday, not much is being done in terms of travelling or fine dining.  I just bought Jco donut for my colleagues and got some congratulations from other department who thought that I was giving them some dim sum which of course it's not from me it just happened to be on the same time as our inside sales sharing their joy after receiving their bonus.  Well I just nod and smile, it would be too much of a hassle to explain which one is mine and which one is from the sales.

One thing I remember was after midnight yesterday, my wife decided to surprise me with couple of candles on top of an expensive tasty cheese cake.  I blew the candle and I just went back to sleep ,  I am sure there must be a jaw drop moment.  My poor wife.  You do know I love you right :).  Just got carried over on my first badminton play after so long has been postponing to go and have an exercise with excused of not having time.
(I know lame excused but I am tired- I swear I swear)

Before I go to sleep I decided to go to my learning room just to check my internet connection. 
I found my scribbled of goals from my timeline therapy back in 25-26 July 2008 (3,5 years ago).
It says

1. Get married - done
2. My own house & car - done
3. Successful NLP trainer in Indonesia - pending
4. Live a happy life - on going

I have to say timeline therapy is indeed a powerful tool to catch our dream 75% completed.
I wish I could be satisfied with my achievement but something void still inside, the 25% is still missing. 
Not that I am not grateful with all that have been showered to me, I am blessed really blessed.  I just really need to focus on my NLP trainer until today it just there in the scribbled no concrete achievement.
I know I can do it, I know I have the ability to do so, yet no vivid action until today.

Wise man once said, it is better to have pain of discipline than to have pain of regrets.
3.5 years from the time I set up the goal yet the part that I thought I can make it still in pending status.

For now I am cherishing all that I have including my wife who happened to be sleeping by now after trying to make a surprise after midnight.

One more point to go, let it be in 2012.

And Lord thanks for all the blessing and each second given to me