About Dan Markovitz
Dan Markovitz is the founder and president of TimeBack Management. Prior to founding his own firm, Mr. Markovitz held management positions at Sierra Designs, Adidas, CNET and Asics Tiger. Learn More...
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Leveling; smoothing out the flow; e.g., doing two performance evaluations a day for 3 weeks, rather than ten a day for three days -- and then needing to take a vacation because you're so burned out.
Overburdening people, process, or equipment; e.g., people working 100 hour weeks for months on end -- come to think of it, like most lawyers and accountants.
Uneveness or variability; e.g., leaving work at the normal time on Thursday, but having to stay at the office till midnight on Friday because the boss finally got around to giving you that project...at 4:30pm.
Waste; activities that your customer doesn't value and doesn't want to pay for; e.g., billing your customer for the really expensive 10am FedEx delivery because you didn't finish the document on time.
Well said!
I read my email once an hour (maybe a little more). I've turned off the visual popups and noises Outlook makes. I get more work done, and the only time it becomes a problem is when people who run their lives via "Email as IM" walk round to my deck and accost me with "why haven't you meailed me back X,Y and Z - it's urgent!". They need a little re-eduction, and over time it will come.
As a dope-smoking cobalt programming ex-folk singer once told me, "Do the importnant, not the urgent"