I love web apps, everything Apple, post-work martinis, good seafood, Mumbai city and living well.
I often reminisce about the best 7.5 years spent in Chapel Hill, NC (Go Heels!).
When not in front of the computer, I spend my time reading, writing, playing golf, tennis, and traveling to distant places (Love Mykonos and the rest of the Med coast) with my wife and family.
I am also the founder of DeskAway, a simple yet powerful web-based work tracking tool.
I am currently working on a book on Web 2.0 & SaaS to be published in late 2010.
This is an updated stream of my work+life activities of a life in progress.
Time blocking is a technique I used while writing my book. I would finish all office work before 2pm and then either seclude myself in my cabin or head to the Kala Ghoda Cofee shop to write till about 6pm. This helped me prioritize DeskAway stuff every day (since I now did not have all day to mull over certain things) and give only importance to the things that mattered!
This is the “big rocks first” technique of scheduling your three most important tasks into your day and letting everything else flow around them.In case you’ve not come across the “rocks” analogy before, it goes like this:
You’re given a jar, three large rocks, a handful of pebbles and some sand. If you pour the sand and pebbles into the jar first, there won’t be room to force the rocks into it – but if you put the rocks in first, the pebbles can flow around the rocks, then the sand can be poured in to fill the gaps.
This works!
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Over the last weekend I actually had to set aside some time to figure out a solution to the many emails that were being bombarded at my Blackberry. Plus, I decided to put a stop on some of the RSS feeds and see how my life changes.
Here is what I did:
1. Every email that came in was inspected (manually) and either marked as spam, deleted (created a filter to delete emails of this type so I don't hear from them again!) or labeled (these are good emails). It's amazing to see so many newsletters without an option to opt-out. I decided to keep this filtering exercise going for another week or so. After 5 days emails to my blackberry have reduced. I will probably add some more filters so that I only get what I really need to see (e.g. server status reports, daily business pulse report etc.) and nothing else.
2. I went through my RSS reader and unsubscribed to any feed that I haven't read for the last month. At first, you want to hold on to every piece of information thinking that it will make you wiser but instead of having 2 sites give me the same web technology news I now have one. This helps me to sift through information really quickly and keeps the noise level down.
I am probably going to follow these steps on a weekly basis and see how things work out. As of today nothing has changed and I am actually becoming more productive. Philosophically, if a piece of news or an amazing article needs to reach you, it will reach you somehow - though Twitter, an email a friend sent or talking at lunch time about the news. You just need to be listening at the right places and have an awareness of getting in the information overload trap. Are there any other things that you do do keep the info-load level down?
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Earlier, marketing and sales took a lot of time. Today, if you have the right social media strategy, you could be sitting in your pajamas at home connecting with prospects from all over the world through search engines, Twitter, Facebook or even LinkedIn. Stuff that took days can now be done in hours. So, essentially, technolgy has helped us free time.
Though, the contrary is happening. New tools, sites, techniques and information is bombarding us from every angle. A feeling of information overload is creeping in. RSS feeds have become overwhelming and need constant pruning. LinkedIn and Facebook emails start pouring in (especially the group ones which you can turn off). Somehow, you get a feeling of being left out (and not being relevant) if you don't participate.
Take a deep breath and log off once in a while. The real world is sometimes more peaceful.
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Just read a great article on maintaining a work-life balance while building your business or even slogging in your job - Balancing Acts: If Not Now, When? A couple of interest excerpts from the article:
The reality is that when you are entangled in an entrepreneurial life, there's never a right time -- for anything. There's no right time, because there's no time (and usually no money, either).... An entrepreneurial life becomes all about postponing -- "When we break even…," "When we get that contract…," "When we hire that salesperson…" -- ah, yes, that's when our lives can move ahead.... The fact is that while you are building (and building, and building, and sometimes rebuilding) a business, you are also composing a life.... There are personal opportunity costs to starting a business if it causes you to postpone making a life.... If the entrepreneur doesn't build a high wall around his or her personal life, the business is sure to overwhelm it..... But we took those trips and did other things we could ill afford because we knew we had to keep living and squeezing as much joy from life as we could under the circumstances..... Gary and I managed to separate our reactions to our business situation (depressed) from our feelings about our personal future (optimistic)..... If you allow a business, even a successful one, to dictate the terms of your life, you will always find reasons to delay making the big personal decisions....
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For all of you'll who complain about not getting things done in the day because there isn't enough time, then check out this article - An 18-Minute Plan for Managing Your Day by Peter Bregman Follow the steps and it will leave you productive!
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Once I was back, things were still the same. Steady signups, conversion and we even managed to get a big feature rolling. So, what I learnt was simple - we create a false sense of urgency and get sucked in when we are online. We should use the tools that are at our disposal to get work done quickly (the reason why technology was invented in the first place), identify real-work from distractions, so that in the end we have more time to relax, play a sport and to live life to the fullest!
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Unfortunately, we get bombarded with so much information everyday that we forget to prioritize and hold on to certain things that don't matter in the long run. One of the major changes that I have implemented in the last few weeks is to have enough time during the day to reflect, think and implement certain key ideas - time that I spend alone without any distractions. Time that helps build the business and not only my social network. Some of the huge distractions that I have discovered are:
Twitter (personal account) - still trying to figure out how this hugely popular service can add value to my life without getting distracted. (As of Jan 2010, I am well set on Twitter. Immensely useful tool!)
Email notifications - constant email notifications might give your eyes a 'right-bottom' stretch from time to time but you are sure to get zilch done during the day besides replying and reacting to things that can wait.
RSS Feeds - As we surf the web we tend to subscribe to a lot of RSS feeds and then feel overwhelmed seeing '999+" feeds unread. Try to do some spring-cleaning with your RSS and see whats useful from time to time. Only keep the stuff that truly adds value. Be honest.
PS - A great summer reading for entrepreneurs is Tim Ferris's 4 Hour Workweek.
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