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January 28, 2005
New Strategies for Surviving and Thriving at the Office
I just witnessed a presentation by Julie Morgenstern about her latest book called
Making Work Work : New Strategies for Surviving and Thriving at the Office
Mergenstern offered some interesting advice and while admitting that the general workload has increased over the last years she mainly blamed email and the instant reply culture for inefficiencies during our workday.
As a remedy she suggested to not read your emails as a first thing in the morning and only read them at preset times (like every 1 or 2 hours). I'm pretty sure this doesn't work for me. Too often do I get important stuff that needs to be taken care of right away via email. In other companies all the really important things get communicated via the phone, but I'm glad that's not how it works here. We even use Instant Messenger (which she despised entirely, because it rouines your routine): I still like it. It is way less introusive then a telephone call and most of the time I can help someone or get information within two sentences.
Other suggestions made more sence to me:
If you shorten the time in the office everyday you are more likely to turn down the not so important requests you get. I'd like that - I can't say no ;)
Or tracking down the things/people that constantly come in to bring some extra important work, that really doesn't need to be done right away and deal with them appropriately.
I surely going to flip through her book a little more and we'll see if I can't get a little more organised ;)
Posted by marco at January 28, 2005 2:20 PM in Category