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.
TIMEBACK BLOG 
A Nice Collection of Productivity Ideas
Posted May 1, 2007 @ 10:41 AM
Ben over at The Instigator Blog has launched an interesting group writing project to create The Ultimate Guide to Productivity, a collection of productivity tips from around the blogsphere. As with any effort of this sort, you'll find ideas that work for you next to ideas that make absolutely no sense for the way your brain is wired. No matter -- the real value comes from assessing your work habits, identifying the waste and inefficiencies, and then making appropriate changes.
Here's my contribution: learn to live in your calendar.
Most people don't have a clear plan for their activities and responsibilities for each day, and as a result, they lose time trying to figure out what they should do. Think about the last time you went to the supermarket without a shopping list -- how long did it take you to get out of there? How much money did you spend? If you're like 99% of the population, the answers are "too long" and "too much." And that's for something simple like buying groceries.
You need to be religious about putting all your commitments into your calendar. Only by "living in the calendar" can you see all the commtiments you've made and allocate your time accordingly.
If you're an Outlook user, you can help yourself by setting the program to open in Calendar (rather than the Inbox). Here's how:
1. Go to Tools => Options
2. Select the Other tab and click on Advanced Options
3. Click the Browse button. Select Calendar. Click Okay.
Now when you start up your computer in the morning, the first thing you'll see is what you have to do -- not all the noise and clamor in your email. (And don't forget to buy the Fruit Loops.)