Productivity

August 23, 2011

Four step strategic planning model

In her presentation, Wilma Matthews, the Co-Author of On Deadline: Managing Media Relations, described a four step strategic planning model:

• Set a goal: the business outcome. What you want your communications to achieve.
• Establish strategies: The broad approaches you are going to take in order to achieve the goal.
• Define objectives for each strategy. Objectives are the measurable tasks that will be undertaken in order to realize the strategies.
• Develop tactics - the tools that will be used in order to achieve the objectives.

Wilma used the example of World War II in order to illustrate the application of these concepts.

• Goal: Win the war.
• Strategy: Surround Germany to choke off the resources that fueled its military force.
• Objective: Invade France. This is measurable. You’ll know if you’ve succeeded and to what degree.
• Tactics: What will you use to do this? e.g. ships, planes, soldiers, etc.

In summary:

• Goals = the broad outcomes
• Strategies = the approaches you will take
• Objectives = the measurable steps to achieve the strategies
• Tactics = the tools you will use

March 03, 2010

Home Office

We are in the process of building a home office. A very exciting and rewarding home improvement project. We have painted the ceiling and walls, added Ethernet and phone jacks and updated the electricity in the room.

One of the problems that I have encountered is when I moved my desk into the room, it was going to block the Power and Ethernet jacks. We had a flat power plug power strip available, but I haven't been able to find a flat Ethernet cable.

I have search several websites for a flat Ethernet Cable and the only thing that I keep finding is a flat cable that goes under a rug. I haven't found a low profile cable anyplace. I know there was a company that made these, I just can't seem to find them right now.

One of the places I was looking at is X-TremeGeek.com they sell all sorts of cables and the popular Power Strip Liberator Cables, which I have plenty of in my power supply bin in the basement. 

Another good source is CyberGuys, they have all sorts of great technical products. I was not able to find any Ethernet cable products that would fit my needs. Still a great place to shop, lots of neat things!

July 21, 2008

Parkinson's Law

How true is Parkinson's Law?

Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

Which basically means that if you plan 2 hours for a project, then the project will take 2 hours, regardless if others can do it in half the time. Something will make the project last as long as you schedule it.

If your into Productivity, you should read more about Parkinson Law and the famous Cobb-Webb theorem.

March 08, 2008

Quote of the Day

I saw the following quote on someone bulletin board today:

Do the things that you have to do
so you have time to do the things you want to do

The quote was attributed to someone, but I didn't write down the name.

January 16, 2008

PDF Central

I am working on updating the PDF Section on my website. There's a fair amount of traffic going to the page, but the content hasn't been updated recently so its time to step up!

So the goal is that by January 31st, I'll have at least 24 new and exciting PDFs on the site. This should be an easy and manageable goal since I have plenty of creative PDFs on my computer that I can share.

Here is the list of the top five downloaded PDFs from last year:

1. Gulf War - A PDF version of my popular 1991 Gulf War page.
2. Blackjack - A handy Blackjack guide to learn the basic blackjack strategy.
3. Planner - Going on a trip? Use this Packing Planner to make sure you don't miss anything.
4. Hollywood Sign - Everything you could possibly want to know about the famous Hollywood sign.
5. VegasHotels - General information on the various hotels in Vegas, including hotel reservation numbers.

Check out the PDF section for more exciting documents!