I often write and speak on workload management. But even I occasionally get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of requests and assignments. I’m in such a state right now.

In the last week I’ve attended board meetings for three different companies. Two were out of town. In addition, I have spoken publicly five times and am right in the middle of reviewing the copy-edited manuscript for my new book.

That doesn’t even count the 669 e-mails I have received in the last week. (Yes, that’s the exact count as of 10 minutes ago. It only represents the ones that have come through to my private account.) No wonder I feel overwhelmed!

But I’ll bet your life is no different. The reality is all of us have more work than we can possibly do. When you add to this the demands of regular exercise, family, church, civic duties, and some semblance of a social life, it becomes impossible.

Here are six things you can do to cope. Trust me, I am preaching to myself!

1. Acknowledge you can’t do it all. The idea that you will eventually get caught up is a myth. It’s impossible. You have more work than you can reasonably expect to get done. And unfortunately, your workload is not static. Even now, while you are reading this post, your inbox is filling up with fresh new tasks.
2. Accept the fact some things won’t get done at all. This flows from the first item. You have to make peace with the fact that you must leave some things undone—for the sake of your own sanity.
3. Practice workload triage. On the battlefield, medics have to decide where to apply their limited resources. They can’t help everyone. According to Dictionary.com, triage is
   

   the process of sorting victims, as of a battle or disaster, to determine medical priority in order to increase the number of survivors.”

   Some patients will survive without medical care. Some won’t survive even if they have medical care. Triage means ignoring these two groups and focusing on those that will only survive with medical care.

   You must know which things you can safely ignore and which things demand your intervention.

4. Categorize your tasks by priority. In my view, this is the one thing missing from David Allen’s system. It assumes all tasks are equal. Or to say it another way, you can only decide a task’s relative priority in the moment.This doesn’t work for me. I end up with scores of tasks I must review every day. My eyes glaze over, and I fall prey to what Charles Ummel calls the Tyranny of the Urgent.

   Instead, I like the Franklin-Covey method of assigning a priority tag to each task:

   A—urgent and important
   B—important but not urgent
   C—urgent but not important
   D—not urgent or important

   I personally categorize each task with one of these tags. At the beginning of each day, I focus on my A’s first. If I get those done, I move to the B’s, then the C’s.

5. Practice intentional neglect.Many people practice the opposite—unintentional neglect. They forget to do something or they are late in meeting their deadlines. They don’t like this behavior and neither do those who are counting on them.But this inevitably happens if you don’t practice intentional neglect. You must decide in advance you will not do category D tasks. They are neither urgent nor important. They are simply not worthy of your time or attention.

   “But,” you may ask, “what about tasks I don’t think are important but someone else does?” Great question. Let me give you an example.

   When I was a CEO, my Board sometimes asked me to do something I thought was a waste of time. I didn’t regard it as important. But, because I served at their pleasure—and wanted to keep my job!—I re-categorized it in my mind as important. Sometimes, it is a simple matter of re-framing the task.

   On the other hand, I recently received a lunch request from a man who is an acquaintance. He is looking for a job and wanted to discuss career possibilities in the publishing industry. This is no doubt important to him and possibly urgent. For me it is neither, so I declined.

   The bottom line is you must learn to say “no” to the unimportant tasks, so you can say “yes” to the important tasks and actually get them done.

6. Do the next most important thing next. Multi-tasking is a myth. You really can’t do more than one thing at a time—at least more than one thing that requires focused attention. So get your list of priorities, do the most important thing first, then move to the next item and work down your list.

For today, I have six things I’d like to accomplish: one of them is an A, four are Bs, and one is a C. I’m starting at the top and working down the list.

I left my role as CEO of Thomas Nelson in April 2011. I thought I could get by without an assistant. Boy, was I wrong.

As a result of greater focus on writing, my blog traffic spiked and my comment load doubled. I started getting more email. I had to book my own travel. I soon felt overwhelmed.

Initially, I thought I’d hire a part-time assistant. I even created a job description and sent it to several people I thought might know of someone. A few people applied.

But then I started counting the cost:

• Where would I put them, since I work out of my house?
• Would I have to supply my assistant with a computer? a cell phone? other equipment?
• Did I want to pay payroll taxes and keep up with the paperwork?

So, I switched gears and considered a virtual assistant (a “VA”). I re-read Tim Ferriss’s excellent chapter on virtual assistants in The 4-Hour Work Week (see Chapter 8).

I had hired a “VA” a few years ago while I was still at Thomas Nelson. I did this more as an experiment than anything else. I hired someone in another country for about $10 an hour. It was cheap, but the service was disappointing. I decided this time that I would hire someone domestically.

I posted on Twitter that I was looking for a virtual assistant. Within an hour, Bryan Miles of eaHELP.com responded. We talked by phone a few minutes later.

I was impressed by Bryan’s responsiveness, personal values, and operating philosophy. After considering a few other options, I decided to give his firm a try.

Bryan assigned Tricia to my account. I was immediately impressed with her. She has worked for me since August, and I couldn’t be happier. People I interact with, assume that we are working out of the same office. She has her own michaelhyatt.com email address. I routinely get compliments on her responsiveness and efficiency.

Here’s what she does:

• She screens my email. She checks my main email accounts, handles what she can, and “redirects” the messages that require my personal attention to my private account. She has reduced my email load by 90 percent.
• She books my travel. She handles all the details, including airline reservations, hotels, car rental, etc. She sets up a trip in TripIt, so I have everything I need in one place.
• She makes calls on my behalf. She makes appointments (both personal and professional), confirms my appointments, checks my voice mail, and follows up as needed.
• She manages my calendar. Almost nothing gets on my calendar unless it passes through her first. We have agreed together that I will only accept appointments on two afternoons a week, and she works to stay within those boundaries.
• She handles other projects as needed. I continue to turn over more and more to her. For example, she recently screened all the people who had applied to be a community leader on my site. She and my manager, Joy, ended up picking the final ten I appointed.

Basically, Tricia can do anything that doesn’t require her physical presence.

I started using her for five hours a week and quickly went to fifteen. I found that I was so much more productive that it was well-worth the additional investment.

Tricia has now become such a partner in my business that I no longer even think of her as virtual. She’s just one of my teammates—and a very valuable one at that.

Vision and strategy are both important. But there is a priority to them. Vision always comes first. Always. If you have a clear vision, you will eventually attract the right strategy. If you don’t have a clear vision, no strategy will save you.

I have seen this over and over again in my professional and personal life. Once I got clear on what I wanted, the how almost took care of itself. Let me give you an example.

In July of 2000, my boss suddenly resigned. I was already the Associate Publisher of the division, the second-in-command. With his departure, I was asked to take his job. I became the publisher of Nelson Books, one of the trade book divisions of Thomas Nelson.

I knew our division was in bad shape. But I didn’t know how bad things really were until I became the publisher. I took a deep breath and began to assess reality. Here’s what I found:

• We were the least profitable division of fourteen in the Company. We had actually lost money the previous year. People in the other divisions were mumbling about our performance and how we had drug the whole company down.
• Revenue growth had been basically flat for three years. In addition, we had just lost our single biggest author to a competing publishing company. This made revenue growth going forward even less likely.
• As a percentage-of-revenue, inventory and royalty advances were the highest in the company. In other words, we were the least efficient users of working capital. We were consuming enormous corporate resources and providing virtually no return to our shareholders.
• We were publishing about 125 new titles a year with ten people. Everyone was overworked and the quality of our output showed it. We simply had too much to do.

Honestly, things could not have been worse. However, as the new divisional executive, I recognized that things could not have been better for me. This was a great career opportunity. If I turned the division around, I would be a hero. If I didn’t, that would be okay, too. After all, the division was a mess when I inherited it. I couldn’t lose.

The first thing I did was to go off on a private retreat. I had one objective in mind. I wanted to get crystal clear on my vision. What did I want to see happen? What would the division look like in three years? I didn’t care about strategy; I was only concerned with vision.

Through the years, I had learned that if you think about strategy (the “how”) too early, it will actually inhibit your vision (the “what”) and block you from thinking as big as you need to think. What you need is a vision that is so big that it is compelling, not only to others, but to you. If it’s not compelling, you won’t have the motivation to stay the course and you won’t be able to recruit others to help you.

For example, if I had been strategic before I was visionary, I might have said, “Well, I don’t see how we can accomplish much. The situation is so dire. We don’t have many resources to work with. Let’s just try to get to break-even this next year. Maybe we can reduce our working capital some by selling off a little obsolete inventory. And, maybe we can sign a few new authors and get a little revenue growth.”

Do you think anyone would have gotten excited about this? Would this vision have attracted the right authors? Would it have retained the right employees? Would it have secured additional corporate resources? I don’t think so.

The problem is that people get stuck on the how. They don’t see how they could accomplish more, so they throttle back their vision, convinced that they must be “realistic.” And, what they expect becomes their new reality. This is simply faith applied negatively.

I didn’t take this approach. Instead, I developed a vision statement that I found compelling. If I couldn’t get excited about it, I couldn’t sell it to others. Instead, I gave myself permission to envision the perfect future. Here’s what I wrote down:

Once I had this on paper, I came back to the office and called a meeting with my entire staff. I reviewed our current reality. I was brutally honest. The situation was dire, and I didn’t pull any punches.

I then shared the new reality—the vision—and described it in as much detail as I could. I was genuinely enthusiastic and committed. Because I found the vision compelling, most of the them did, too. Some were slow to get on-board, but in the end, even the most reluctant ones came around.

I personally read through this vision daily. I prayed over every part. I asked God to guide us. Little by little, He brought us the strategy and the resources. However, I spent way more time—probably ten-to-one—focused on the what rather than the how.

When people would ask, “How in the world are you going to accomplish this?”, I would just smile and say, “I’m not sure, but I am confident it is going to happen. Just watch.”

And, guess what? It happened. I thought my initial vision would take at least three years to accomplish. Amazingly, we had an almost complete turnaround in eighteen months. We exceeded almost every aspect of our vision.

Over the next six years, Nelson Books was consistently the fastest growing, most profitable division at Thomas Nelson. It had one bestseller after another. It was home to almost all of our company’s bestselling authors during that time.

This didn’t happen because we had a great business strategy. It happened because we had a clear vision of what we wanted to achieve. That’s where it started, and that’s where you have to start if you want to experience a different reality than the one you have now, you have to get clear on what you want.

Here’s what I recommend:

1. Get alone with just a journal and a pen. If you can get a way to a solitary place, so much the better.
2. Make sure you won’t be interrupted. Turn off your cell phone, e-mail, television, etc.
3. Close your eyes and pray. Ask God for inspiration and guidance. What you ultimately want is alignment between His plan and your vision. But don’t make this harder than it needs to be. God usually speaks through our desires. If that’s a new thought, then read John Eldredge’s book, Desire: The Journey We Must Take to Find the Life God Offers.
4. Write down your current reality—all the things that you don’t like. Be brutally honest. It’s difficult to change unless you find your current reality unacceptable.
5. Now write down what you would like to see happen. Write it down in detail. If you can, use all five senses. Write it in the present tense, as though it has already happened. This will make it more believable to you.
6. Share your vision with the people who have a stake in the outcome.
7. Commit to reading your vision daily. This is critically important. “Faith is the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). The more you can “see” this, the more likely it will come to pass.

Remember: Don’t get hung up on how you will accomplish your vision. Just believe God and watch it come to pass.

Recently, I was preparing to deliver a speech and found myself in a funk. I was experiencing an unusual amount of distraction and self-doubt. Fortunately, I had about four hours before I was to go on stage. So, I decided to call my wife, Gail.

She instantly knew I wasn’t in a good place. (This is one of the many benefits of long-term marriage. My wife can read me like a book.) After listening to me whine for a few minutes she said, “Okay, I want you to hang up and go for a run. Call me when you are done.”

I was tempted to blow her off, but I knew in my heart that she was right. I needed a big shift in my emotional state. It wasn’t going to just happen. I needed to do something.

When I called her an hour later, everything had changed. My emotional state had shifted—dramatically. I was focused, alert, and upbeat. I had a can-do attitude.

This was a good reminder of something we had learned years ago from Tony Robbins:

Emotion is created by motion.

If you want to change your emotional state, often all that is necessary is for you to change your physiology. I have experienced this first-hand again and again.

Don’t believe me? Try this:

• Slouch in your chair
• Round your shoulders
• Take shallow breaths
• Close your eyes
• Frown and then sigh

If you are like me, almost immediately you will start feeling down—maybe even a little discouraged. As it turns out, discouragement and sadness have specific physical manifestations.

But so does joy and confidence.

This is why you can look at someone and say, “You look like you are having a difficult day.” Or conversely, “Wow. You look like you are on top of the world!”

Over the years, I have learned (and Gail periodically reminds me) that I can change my emotional state for the better by focusing on my physiology rather than my emotions. So can you. Try these five steps:

1. Put on some upbeat music. This can dramatically alter your mood, because of the memories you associate with certain tunes. Gail recently created a playlist of “Music for an Outstanding Day,” which I borrowed. It is awesome!
2. Stand up and stretch. Try to reach the ceiling. Get on your tippy-toes. If you are brave—and no one else is around—jump up and down for 60 seconds. Shake it out. Rotate your neck. Look up.
3. Take several deep breaths. Oxygenating the blood makes you more alert and awake. Close your eyes and concentrate on breathing. Draw the air deep into your diaphragm (or gut). This is a great way to forget about what has you down or afraid.
4. Get your body in motion. The more vigorous you can move the better. Go for a run, a bicycle ride, or simply a walk—preferably outdoors. This stimulates your blood flow and gets oxygen to to your whole body. If you do it long enough, your brain will release endorphins that elevate your mood.
5. Focus on the positive. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he“ (Proverbs 23:7). Think strong, positive thoughts. Affirm what you know to be true. Give thanks for what you have rather than what you don’t have. Shift your internal narration to what you get to do rather than what you have to do.

I am now going through this process a couple of times a day, usually first thing in the morning, then again after lunch. It has given me the energy and emotional boost I need to be productive and stay productive.

“I don’t have time to read.”

When I tell people about my blog, that’s one of the comments I usually hear in response. The implication—or at least the way my possibly oversensitive mind takes it—“You must not have any life to read that many books … loser.”

Of course, I exaggerate. But, really, it’s a tension a lot of people in our overworked and overstressed society deal with. They understand that reading is important—after all, their second grade teacher made that clear. But nobody has the time to read a Dr. Seuss book, much less To Kill A Mockingbird or (gasp!) Infinite Jest.

In the last few years, I’ve dramatically changed my lifestyle. I’ve trained for five half marathons and two full marathons while working a full-time job. I’ve read 30 novels since last September. And, on top of all that, my wife and I had our first child last June. Kids have a slight effect on your schedule. Maybe you’ve heard?

Life is hectic around our house. But I’ve somehow managed to make time to read in the middle of all that. And I say that not to pat myself on the back but to show that, even with a busy life, it is possible (and important) to make time for hobbies you’re passionate about.

Here are a few tips that have helped me:

1. Sacrifice something. You’ve got 24 hours in a day. You spend 8–10 hours (hopefully not much more) working. You spend 6–8 hours sleeping. You’ve got family and friends to spend time with every day. All of this doesn’t leave much time for other interests, like reading. So your golf game, like mine, might take a hit. You might have to turn off the television after 9:00 p.m. But, if reading is a priority, you’ll make time for it. As Jon Acuff puts it: “Be selfish at 5 a.m.”
2. Make a routine. If I say I’m just going to “find time to read,” then it will never happen. I have to make time to read. So here’s what I do: I read during my lunch break, and I read at night, beginning around 8:45, after family time, after the wife and little guy are in bed.
3. Set a goal. You’ve heard this so much that it’s clichéd. But it works. My goal is to read 101 novels. Usually, I would’ve given myself a deadline, but I didn’t want to speed read through the books, so I just chose to read them as they come. At my current pace, I’ll reach my goal in three more years. Maybe you should set a goal to read one book a month. If that seems unlikely, then make it one book every two months. And take it a step further—tell someone about your goal. Or, if you’re crazy like me, start a blog about it. There’s nothing like that extra accountability to keep you moving.
4. Have fun. You don’t have to read a book simply because a friend suggested it, you know? Think about your hobbies, interests, and passions—then go and read about those subjects. I once spent five months reading nothing but casual, behind-the-scenes books about restaurants and chefs. I’m a chef groupie, I guess. Once you’ve read a few “fun” books, then dabble into the more serious, thought-provoking stuff.
5. Mix it up. Once you get into the flow of reading, branch out of your comfort zone. If all you’ve read is nonfiction business books, then relax a little and pick up a novel. If you’ve plowed through Stephen King’s entire catalog in a few years, maybe it’s time to give a leadership or inspirational book a try. The point is: If you read the same style of book over and over, you’ll eventually get burned out and go back to watching two hours of Brady Bunch reruns every day…unless you’re reading 101 books for some crazy blog, of course.

As a result of these basic steps, I’ve dramatically altered my lifestyle over the last year. If I’m not at work or spending time with family or friends, I’m probably reading. At 9:00 every evening, you can probably find me in my “man cave,” in my chair, lights dimmed, reading a book or updating my blog. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Hopefully, one day, my mind will thank me for the daily exercise. As Dr. Seuss says, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”

And who’s going to argue with Dr. Seuss?

I have been thinking a lot about discipline lately. Everyone knows you can’t succeed without it, yet few people seem to possess it.

My friend, Andy Andrews asks this question:

Can you make yourself do something you don’t want to do in order to get a result you really want?

If so, then you are disciplined—at least in that area.

The key is on focusing on a result you really want. In this sense, the key to discipline is goal-setting.

Over the years, I have found that I can become disciplined in any area of my life by taking five specific steps. Whether it is trying to get in shape, maintain a blog, or develop a great marriage, the psychology is the same.

1. Determine your goal. Notice in Andy’s definition that the key is in knowing what you really want. If you are going to succeed, you must be specific. You must be able to see it. Write it down and—while you are at it—add a “by when” date.

   Example: I will lose 20 pounds of body fat by December 31, 2011.

2. List your reasons. This is often the missing piece in both goal-setting and discipline. You have to ask, Why is this goal important? What is at stake in my achieving it? I list both the positive reasons and the negative.

   Example:

   • I want more energy.
   • I want to lower my cholesterol.
   • I don’t want to put myself at risk for heart disease.
   • I want to look more trim, especially on video.
   • I want to demonstrate that I can lead myself.
   • I want to be a good example to my family.
3. Identify likely obstacles. As soon as you start swimming against the current, you will start feeling resistance. It’s as if the universe conspires to keep you from succeeding. That’s why you have to anticipate these obstacles and build strategies to overcome them.

   Examples:

   • Obstacle: Mindlessly eating for lunch what I always eat. Strategy: Plan my lunch before I leave the house—where and what I will eat.
   • Obstacle: Inability to work out on the road. Strategy: Make sure the hotel has a workout room before I book it. Also, pack my workout clothes and shoes.
   • Obstacle: Eating more calories than I intend. Strategy: Record everything in LoseIt, thus educating myself about the calorie-count of various foods.
4. Develop new behaviors. This is where you should focus. What are the positive, new behaviors you want to develop to replace the old, negative behaviors.

   Examples:

   • Drink two-and-a-half liters of water a day to stay hydrated.
   • Eat healthy snacks like raw almonds, celery, carrots, etc.
   • Share entrees with Gail when we eat out, so that I eat half the normal serving.
   • Chose simple grilled fish rather than beef or chicken.
5. Stay focused. Read your goals daily, review your reasons why, anticipate obstacles, and work on your new behaviors. If you get off-track, don’t beat yourself up. Sometimes it is three steps forward and two steps back. Just shake it off and re-lock on your goal.

Discipline is not really about will-power so much as it is focusing on what you really want. If you get clear on that, it suddenly becomes much easier.

Apple released the iOS5 upgrade for iPhone and iPad last week. It is a major upgrade and is free. I downloaded it immediately. It has some great new features, not the least of which is the the ability to sync your mobile devices without connecting to your desktop first (via iCloud).

However, I was reluctant to upgrade the phone itself. I already had an iPhone 4. Why did I need a 4s? I just wasn’t sure it was worth the investment, especially since I got most of the new bells and whistles with the iOS5 upgrade.

However, one of my daughters upgraded to the iPhone 4s on Friday. She convinced me to try it, especially after I realized that I could like get $300+ for my iPhone 4 on Ebay.com or one of the used gadget sites.

So, after speaking in Indianapolis on Saturday morning, I walked across the street to the AT&T store and bought the 64GB model in black. I didn’t have to wait in line, and they activated it for me on the spot. They also transferred my contacts to it.

After using it for the last 24 hours, I am impressed. Here are the three biggest benefits to me.

1. A Digital Assistant. Siri, is the voice recognition software Apple has built into the 4s. (It is not available on the 4.) You can speak to it like you would a real person. You can ask it for your next appointment, the weather forecast in any city, or directions to your destination. You can even ask it for restaurant recommendations near you. I found it surprisingly accurate.

   This technology is also built into email and texting. This enables you to dictate a text message or an email message and Siri will transcribe it—supposedly. For some reason, I found this much less accurate and, frankly, not worth the effort. I am going to continue trying and see if Siri gets “smarter” with practice.

2. A More Powerful Camera. The 4s boasts an 8 megapixel sensor. That is 60 percent more pixels than the iPhone 4 and more than enough for 90 percent of the shots I need to take. (For those rare, high-end shots, I have a Canon 60D with 18 megapixels.)

   In addition to the sensor, the 4s sports a new fifth lens, an enlarged aperture (f/2.4), face detection, and reduced motion blur (i.e., image stabilization). It also now allows for basic photo editing—crop and rotate photos, auto-enhance photos, and remove red-eye. It can also shoot gorgeous 1080p HD video.

3. A Faster Processor. The 4s uses the dual-core A5 chip—the same one used in the iPad. It is twice as fast as the iPhone 4. Apple claims that it delivers up to two times more power and up to seven times faster graphics. In my limited use it seems much quicker and more responsive. It is delightful to use.

   Apple claims that it does all of this without negatively impacting battery life. So far, that has not been my experience. It could be that I am just using it more than I was using my previous phone. However, it may also because I too many notifications were turned on by default. I have since turned a bunch of those off and am hoping that helps.

One hitch I had was that all my contacts were duplicated. I think, however, this was a function of iCloud on iOS5 rather than an iPhone 4s problem.

I was able to eliminate this by downloading a program called Contacts Cleaner from the AppStore ($4.99) and re-syncing. There may be an easier, cheaper solution, but this is something Apple should fix. If you Google the problem, you’ll find many users complaining about it.

All in all, I am quite pleased. I am glad I upgraded to the 4s.

Should you upgrade? If you haven’t already, I would start by installing the iOS5 software. That will give you a lot of new functionally and may satisfy your need for a new Apple fix. Then you have to ask whether or not the benefits I have described are worth the upgrade to you.

Everyone’s heard of the “To-Do List.” Whether you use Outlook, Gmail, a dedicated task manager like Nozbe (which I use), or the back of a paper napkin, the idea is the same: you list in priority order the items you want to get done. Simple. Elegant. Powerful.

Until you have more items that you can physically get done.

Enter the “Not To-Do List.” I stumbled across this idea several years ago, and I keep coming back to it. The idea is to list all the activities you are intentionally going to stop doing for the sake of greater productivity.

Here’s why this is important. As people succeed at work, they attract more and more assignments. It’s like they become a task magnet. “Give it to Laurie,” they say. “She’ll to a great job!” The problem is that people are a finite resource. I don’t care how good you are, you only have so much energy and so much time. It’s true for me. It’s true for you.

The only way for these super-productive people to continue to grow professionally without going crazy is periodically to decide what they are not going to do.

This is particularly important for people who have just been promoted to a new job. That’s when you really face the pressure to perform and it’s the most difficult to say, “no.”

But you must say “no” if you are going to say “yes” to the things that really count—both in your job and in your life.

Keep in mind that the great risk for people in a new job is that they continue to do their old job. Read that sentence again.

“Now why would they do that?” you ask? Probably because it is familiar. And probably because their supervisor didn’t tell them they had to stop doing it. Being aware of this dynamic is half of the battle.

The other half of the battle is to sit down and literally create a Not To-Do List. Here’s how:

1. Find a quiet place where you can think.
2. Look at your previous month’s calendar activities. Write down anything you’re not sure really fits your current job description.
3. Look at your upcoming appointments for the next month. Again, write down things that are questionable in terms of your current job description.
4. Go through your to-do list(s) and do the same thing. Write down the questionable activities.
5. You should now have a list of “not to-do candidates.” Good work! You’re almost done.
6. Now go through the list and put an asterisk beside each item that is significant enough that you want to add it to your official “Not To-Do List.”

Once you get your list done, share it with your assistant (if you have one) and your colleagues. If you can enlist their help (no pun intended), they can assist you in screening out activities and tasks that no longer belong on your to-do list.

It’s especially important to discuss your Not To-Do List with your boss. You need her buy-in so she doesn’t keep assigning you work that both of you have decided you should no longer be doing.

Just to stimulate your own thinking, here is a the Not To-Do list I prepared back when I became CEO:

Even if you haven’t just been promoted, you will find the Not To-Do List helpful. This is especially true if you want to maintain some semblance of balance in your life.

If you don’t periodically take a machete to your to-do list, it will eventually grow over everything and strangle you! I know of no better way to “buy time” than with this simple tool.

I have been writing for a while now about Evernote, the software that turns your computer into a digital brain. It allows you to remember everything. Literally.

Yesterday, someone asked me if I had a list of all my blog posts I’d written on this topic. Sadly, I had to admit that I didn’t. The best I could do was point them to my blog’s search engine.

So I decided to pull together this list of all my posts, to make it easier for those who want to get up-to-speed fast. Also, I have decided to call this series, “Evernote for Busy Leaders.” If I write additional posts, I will include them here.

1. How to Organize Evernote for Maximum Efficiency
2. How to Use Evernote If You Are a Speaker or Writer
3. How to Use Evernote with a Traditional Paper Notebook
4. How to Use Evernote with an iPad to Take Meeting Notes
5. How to Email Your Documents Directly to Evernote
6. How to Scan Documents Directly into Evernote
7. How to Get Your Stuff into Evernote
8. Is Your Data Safe in Evernote?
9. How to Use Evernote as a Blogger
10. How to Find Your Stuff in Evernote
11. 7 Evernote Resources You May Not Know About
12. How to Get Your Kindle Highlights into Evernote

When I read anything, I mark it up. Margin notes, circles, and, most of all, highlights. In fact, I buy highlighters by the box. Or at least I did, until I started reading so much on my Kindle.

Now I use the Highlighter feature of the Kindle to mark passages. I also occasionally use the Notes feature to record my thoughts about a passage. (This is actually pretty cumbersome on the Kindle itself. I usually only do this if I am reading on my Mac. Then I can use my keyboard.)

I only wish that I could store all these notes and highlights in Evernote, which has become my digital brain. Well, now you can! It’s easier than you think. Just follow these eight steps:

1. Create your highlights as usual. This feature is different on each device. I find it easiest on Kindle for Mac or my iPhone.
2. Log into your unique Amazon Kindle page. Who knew you even had a unique Kindle page? It contains a list of all your books, with links to the notes and highlights. You can even record your progress then rate the book. Your main page will look similar to this:

   

3. Click on Your Books. This is at the top of your Kindle page. Choose this option instead of Your Highlights. It will narrow the display to notes and highlights for a specific book, once you select one. You should now see a page similar to this:

   

4. Select the appropriate book. You can either search for it in the search bar at the top of the page or scroll down your list of books. Once you select a book, you will get a page that looks similar to this:

   

5. Click on the Evernote Web Clipper icon on your browser’s toolbar. Note: if you haven’t done this previously—and you really should—you can find the appropriate one for your browser here. On Google Chrome, the web clipper looks like this:

   

6. Select the appropriate notebook and tags. This is optional, of course. However, I store my Kindle notes and highlights in my Reference notebook. I use the booknotes tag. Keep in mind that Evernote automatically indexes every word in the note, so you don’t have to repeat key words as tags. Now select Clip full page.
7. Go to Evernote and make sure the new note is there. You might need to sync first. You can now add additional notes or delete unwanted material. For example, I delete the section called “Posts from this Book.”

   

8. Copy and paste your highlights to other applications as needed. I often use highlighted passages in blog posts, Keynote slides, speaking notes, or manuscripts. Anything is possible.

If you are disciplined about this, you can have near-instant access to all your book notes and highlights in Evernote. It really takes very little effort once you get the hang of it.

There is something about the word productivity that makes every blogger blush deeply.

You turn on your computer, check your email and Facebook, and forget why you logged on. Forty minutes later you walk away feeling guilty and unproductive. It happens to you every single day.

The Internet is inherently unproductive. Every aspect tries to consume your attention. Your friends want you to read their updates. Apple wants you to check out their latest gadget. Google wants you to click on as many search results as you can.

But there is good news. Believe it or not, productivity is overrated. It is not the secret sauce that leads to success. You do not have to get a lot done in a short amount of time.

When I email Seth Godin, he invariably writes back within minutes. Despite what others tell you, that giant checks his email early and often. Nothing wrong with that.

But if you do not have to be productive to build a successful online community and business, what do you need? You need to provide content that is worth people’s attention.

Attention is difficult to get. For example, let us suppose you have an audience of five hundred readers. If you publish articles twice per week, your audience grows accustomed to this.

If you start posting every twelve hours, you are suddenly demanding extra attention. Eventually you wear them out and they unsubscribe. There is a limit to the amount of attention your audience is willing to give you.

You must learn to use it wisely.

You must learn to be efficient in the amount of content you make visible.

Every word you write is asking to be read; every picture you tweet or Facebook is asking to be seen. The more you scatter across the web, the less attention your followers are able to give each item. In other words, each item becomes decreasingly effective.

Every time you disappoint your readers, you decrease the likelihood they will open your next email. If you want your stuff to spread, you must learn to censor what you publish.

This is a painful business. Very few writers can do it. When you see someone who achieves success every single article, you may rest assured he is editing like mad. Creating a wildfire every time you post is a difficult feat.

If your archives are lousy, you lose potential subscribers. You may have an awesome article today but the meager post you wrote two months ago is hurting you.

This applies to every aspect of your online presence. For example, it is often tempting to tweet snippets of your life’s happenings, but the result of these outbursts is an undermining of your relevance; followers grow less likely to pay attention to your next tweet, which might be great content.

These things are all connected, you see.

The less noise you make and the more effort you put into each point of contact, the more attention you build. As you develop a reputation for only putting the best of yourself online, readers will notice. They will reward you with a healthy dose of their attention.

Attention is a difficult thing to get, and an easy thing to lose.

You must play your cards wisely.

It has nothing to do with productivity, and it has everything to do with efficiency.

How does this affect you? Instead of spending five hours writing ten blog posts, spend five hours writing one good post. This means the amount of attention you are asking is less, and the prose you are offering is superior.

If it takes me all day to write an email that makes me a lot of money, that is better than spending five minutes to write an email that fizzles on impact. Yes, the email must do its work efficiently, but I do not have to be productive in its construction.

Individuals are the building blocks of an audience; treat them as such. Give them stuff worthy of their attention. But do not bother with being productive in the process; it is okay.

Instead of shouting and splashing, slow down and be unproductive. Focus on just one thing and do it right. You will be spinning circles around your competition.

Or better yet, love your enemies and tweet this out. They need some help.

Over the last few months, people have asked how I am doing since leaving my CEO post at Thomas Nelson. For the most part, great. I am really enjoying this new phase of my life.

But last week, I was feeling overwhelmed. It seemed that I was spending all day, every day mired in administrative detail—responding to emails, making travel plans, and filling out expense reports. Ugh.

This the first time in more than a decade that I have been without an executive assistant. I had clearly taken this role for granted, not realizing how much it had freed me up to do what I do best.

So what to do?

At first, I decided to power through it. But that didn’t work. The tennis balls have been coming over the net faster than I can hit them. My volume of email alone has doubled in the last 90 days.

Next, I tried to enlist my wife, Gail, to help. Bad idea. She already has a full-time job as a homemaker, mom, and counselor to countless women. (After watching her in action for the last few months, I have a whole new appreciation for her!)

Finally, I decided that I had had enough. Something had to give. I needed to take a different approach if I was going to get my head above water.

I took the following seven steps:

1. I decided I had to make a change. This sounds almost trivial, but it is essential. Evidently, some people like being overwhelmed. They wouldn’t admit this, of course. But they thrive on stress in a perverse way. Perhaps it makes them feel important or indispensable. They may complain about their workload, but they are unwilling to do things differently. Are you ready for a change?
2. I identified my three high payoff activities. I asked myself, What is it that only I can do? Where do I add the most value? What is really important as opposed to merely urgent? For me, that is writing, speaking, and networking—in that order. Anything else is a waste of what I have been given. What are your high payoff activities?
3. I identified my three biggest productivity sinkholes. This was easy. For me, it is responding to email, booking my own travel, and meeting with acquaintances who want my advice. (As much as I’d like to do this, I am drowning in requests.) I decided I had to eliminate—or at least dramatically reduce—these activities in my life. What are your productivity sinkholes?
4. I spent time reviewing the productivity basics. In his book, The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss, says that the key to productivity is elimination, automation, and delegation. Some stuff is just no longer worth doing. Other stuff can be put on auto-pilot. Most of the rest can be delegated. Have you made a list of which activities fall into which category?
5. I decided to do the math. Unfortunately, I had fallen into a common paradigm: I was thinking that if I could do something I should do it—myself. Balderdash! If you can make $50.00 an hour, is it a good investment for you to do tasks that you can hire done for $12.00 an hour? I don’t think so. This is not only bad math, it is bad stewardship. What do you make an hour? Could you be more financially productive if you delegated?
6. I hired a virtual executive assistant. I realized that I wasn’t ready for a full-time one. I wanted to take this one step at a time. Thankfully, there are scores of companies (offshore and domestic) that specialize in providing virtual assistants for as many hours as you need. I did this several years ago, and it was a positive experience. I decided to go with Miles Advisory Group. I am very impressed with their responsiveness. Have you ever considered a VA?
7. I am scheduling the important tasks. I know, I know, I teach this stuff. You’d think I would already have this nailed. Well, I did. More or less. But it was a completely different context, namely, CorporateWorld. Now I am having to implement the same thing in a different context. I am now scheduling my important tasks first and forcing my productivity sinkholes into small blocks of time. How much of your calendar this week is dedicated to high payoff activities?

Just going through this process has had a huge, positive impact on my attitude. Nothing has really changed yet, but I am already feeling less overwhelmed and more in control. I am ready for a change. Are you?

I have a hard time saying “no.” Perhaps you do, too. I think it is more common than we think, especially for those who are empathetic or nurturing. We just hate the thought of hurting someone else’s feelings.

I didn’t really notice this problem in myself, because for most of my career I have had an assistant who said “no” for me. If someone had a request, they had to get through her first.

This gave me the buffer I needed to consider the request more carefully. I then let her say “no” on my behalf. The fact that I didn’t have to deliver the bad news myself kept me focused and productive.

Now that I have left the corporate world, everything has changed. I don’t currently have an assistant (a problem I am working to remedy). That means the requests are all coming straight to me.

For example, a few weeks ago, an acquaintance—someone I met briefly at a conference—sent me an email. These aren’t the exact words, but this is typically of the kinds of requests I now get:

I read your blog daily and follow you on Twitter. We met briefly after your speech in Dallas. I am going to be in Nashville next week and would really like to meet with you.

I am in the middle of a personal crisis and could use your counsel. I know you are busy, but this is really important. It would mean the world if you could make time for me. Could I buy you breakfast, lunch—or just coffee—to pick your brain?”

I ended up saying “yes”—and was kicking myself almost immediately. The lunch meeting ended up being a total waste of time. He didn’t come prepared. In fact, when it was all said and done, I had no idea what he really wanted.

The problem is that I am now getting several of these requests a day. It could be a full-time job if I let it.

But that’s not going to happen, thanks to the encouragement of my family and close friends. There is too much at stake. They are holding me accountable.

I have now resolved to say “no” to everything unless there is a really, really compelling reason to say “yes.” In other words, I have switched my default response from “yes” to “no.”

Sure enough, I have getting plenty of opportunities to practice!

As I was thinking about this today, I was reminded again of why it is so important—not only for me, but probably for you as well. I wrote down five reasons.

If we don’t get better at saying “no,”

1. Other peoples’ priorities will take precedence over ours.
2. Mere acquaintances—people we barely know!—will crowd out time with family and close friends.
3. We will not have the time we need for rest and recovery.
4. We will end up frustrated and stressed.
5. We won’t be able to say “yes” to the really important things.

This last one was the clincher for me. Every time I say “no” to something that is not important, I am saying “yes” to something that is.

Note: if you think this is somehow unspiritual, think how many times Jesus said “no” either explicitly or implicitly, so that He could stay focused on His Father’s business (see John 11:5-6 for one example).

When it comes to Evernote, I am a hopeless fanboy. It has become an indispensable part of my productivity tool box. I use it as much as I use email or my calendar.

While it is easy enough to get started with Evernote, it is a program that is incredibly deep and rich. Just when I think I have mastered it, I discover a new tip or trick. In addition, the company regularly issues new updates with additional features.

For example, last week I discovered that I can share a note with others by creating a “shared note URL.” Just right-click on any note and select Share | Copy shared note URL to clipboard. To demonstrate, here’s a template I use with event planners who book me to speak. You can share this via an email or (as I am doing now) in a blog post.

Because I have written a number of posts on Evernote, people assume I know more than I do. The truth is that I know where to find what I need to know. Rather than keeping these resources to myself, I thought I would share them with you.

Here are seven Evernote resources you may not know about:

1. The Evernote Essentials e-Book. The author, Brett Kelly, does a great job covering the basics. This is where I tell everyone to start.
2. The Evernote User Forum. The Evernote user community is large and growing. They are also actively engaged in helping one another solve problems.
3. The Evernote Blog. This is the best place to hear about new updates and features. There’s nothing like getting it straight from the horse’s mouth.
4. The Evernote Trunk. This is a built in resource catalog of third-party hardware, software, gear, and even notebooks (e.g., recipes, restaurants, photography tips, etc.)
5. Ron’s Evernote Tips. This is actually a series of three Evernote notebooks created by Ron Toledo, the marketing Manager at Evernote. You might also want to subscribe to his Tumblr blog.
6. Evernote Blogcast. This is a podcast contains news, tips, and tricks for Evernote users at every level—beginner to advanced. This is great resource to listen to during your morning commute or run.
7. My previous Evernote posts. I have written several posts about Evernote, mostly from the perspective of how I am using it to manage my personal life and career. You can find the complete list below.

This should get you started. If you have come across other Evernote resources, I would like to hear about them.

Be honest. You’re distracted, right? In fact, that’s probably why you are reading this blog post instead of working on that project you should be working on now.

Maybe you’re like my friend, Justin, who told me a few weeks ago that he was having real trouble making progress on his book. “The deadline is looming,” he admitted. “But I can’t seem to get focused.”

I know the feeling.

If that describes you, I have good news. Here are seven steps to getting unstuck. They are not that revolutionary on their own, but practiced together, they are like a defibrillator for your productivity:

1. Create a to-do list for today. Many people keep lists, especially those who have been inspired by David Allen’s GTD method. They have scores—perhaps hundreds—of tasks, neatly divided by projects, contexts, or areas of focus. But they don’t know what they need to get done today. So create a simple list for today with 5–7 actions on it. Keep the list short.
2. Turn on some inspiring music. You need music that is not distracting. For me that means instrumental-only selections. I have built a playlist in iTunes called “Soundtrack Favorites.” In it, I include some of my favorite tracks from Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius, Searching or Bobby Fischer, The Horse Whisperer, Finding Nemo, Dances with Wolves,” and others.
3. Turn off the social web. Shut down HootSuite, the tab in your browser with your Facebook account, and email. If you don’t have the discipline to do this, use a program like Anti-Social (which I use and love). It allows me to keep those programs open, but cuts off my connection for a specific time-period. (If you use a PC, use Freedom.) It also allows me to keep my browser open for research.
4. Do one task at a time. Multi-tasking is, at best, over-rated. At worst, it is a myth. Instead, you need to focus. Starting, stopping, and switching tasks before you finish costs you time, energy, and productivity. Instead do one discrete task from beginning to end. Check it off your list and then go to the next task. After a few of these, you will feel the momentum build.
5. Group similar tasks together. This is the value of GTD: do tasks that require a similar context. If you need to run an errand, run a bunch of them while you are out. If you need to do a financial task, do several. Why ramp up to do one? Leverage your effort across several.
6. Take frequent breaks. This is one of the secrets behind the Pomodoro Technique. Work intently for a defined period (say, 25–48 minutes), then take a break. Be as rigorous about the breaks as the work. You’ll find that this actually increases your concentration and productivity. (I use the same method for running. It’s called the Galloway Method.)
7. Rinse and repeat. Go through several cycles like this each day. The main thing is to surge and then rest, surge and then rest. As you do so, you will learn the best length for your own optimal cycle.

Productivity is like any skill. The more you practice it, the better you get. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t initially make as much progress as you want. Stick with the process and expect to improve. You will!

A friend recently sent me a fascinating article on “batching.” After reading it, I became intrigued with the idea of dedicating blocks of time to similar tasks in order to decrease distraction and increase productivity. While there are variations of batching, the Pomodoro Technique seems to be well thought out and tested. There are also free tools and resources to get you started.

What Is Batching?

Batching is simply a form of time management that allows a person to maximize concentration and decrease distraction. As a result, it increases your productivity, creativity, and mental sharpness, while decreasing fatigue, procrastination, and stress. Batch processing is the grouping of similar tasks that require similar resources in order to streamline their completion.

Too many of us go through our day allowing distractions to dictate our activities. We’re in a constant state of reacting to the needs or interjections of those distractions (e.g., email, phone calls, text messages, voicemail, meetings, etc), However well-intentioned, we often allow the priorities of others to supersede our own. How often have you had a project or specific tasks that required time and focus but an email or phone call distracted you from accomplishing it? Working in a perpetual state of shifting tasks and refocusing attention creates fatigue, stress, and decreased productivity.

Every time we become distracted, it takes an average of 15 minutes to regain complete focus. Unless you are intentionally managing your time, there is a very good chance that you operate in a constant state of unfocused response. If that’s the case, you are not being nearly as effective or productive as you could be and you’re simply not giving yourself, or your employer, your best (note: your best is not defined by how hard you work but by how smart you work).

Batching minimizes the amount of distraction that’s placed on our increasingly connected lives. It not only protects us from the distractions of others, but also from our self-inflicted distractions. How many times have I seen an update on Twitter or Facebook from a friend that indicated they should be ______ (fill in the blank; writing a paper, editing, answering email, working on a project, cooking dinner, etc.)?

Batching is setting aside an intentional amount of time for intentional tasks and making an intentional effort to not allow the distractions or interjections of others break that focus. After that block of time is up, take a planned break, then begin the next block of focused time. Each block of focused time is dedicated to one task or set of similar tasks.

The Multi-Tasking Myth

We are creatures of structure and habit; without it, we get stressed and fatigued. There’s a myth that (s)he who masters the practice of multi-tasking will be at the top of their game. It couldn’t be further from the truth. Study after study has shown that multi-tasking decreases productivity dramatically and drains one of creativity. The purpose of multi-tasking is reactive in nature—it’s the ability to adapt to tasks “on the fly” and to constantly shift focus from one task to another. Multi-tasking creates a convoluted and stressful environment that is eventually unsustainable. Left unchecked, you will drop balls lose your sanity.

In an article for the the Harvard Business Review, Peter Bregman notes that our productivity goes down by 40% when we attempt to focus on several things at once. He notes that we are not really multi-tasking. Instead, we are rapidly switching from one task to another and interrupting our productivity.

The Pomodoro Technique

The Pomodoro Technique is one method for batching tasks. Here’s how it works:

1. Plan and prioritize the tasks that need to be completed, by writing them down.
2. Set a timer for for 25 minutes and devote that time to a task, or to a group of similar tasks. Larger tasks can be broken into multiple blocks or “pomodoro’s,” and smaller tasks (responding to email, returning phone calls, etc) can be grouped into a single block. After completing each Pomodoro, you put an “X” next to it and mark the number of times that you were distracted.
3. Take a 5 minute break.
4. Begin another block of time or “pomodoro.”
5. After completing 4 pomodoro’s, take an extended 20 minute break.

According to the Pomodoro website, you should see noticeable improvements in your productivity almost immediately and mastery of the technique in 7–20 days.

And what about the name? Pomodoro means “tomato” in Italian. The inventor of the technique, Francesco Cirillo (Italian), initially used a tomato-shaped kitchen timer when he developed the technique.

Pomodoro Resources

Here are some Pomodoro resources you might find helpful:

• The Pomodoro Technique one-page The Pomodoro Technique Cheat Sheet
• A free PDF of The Pomodoro Technique book
• The Pomodoro Technique To-Do Checklist
• The Pomodoro Technique Activity Inventory
• The Pomodoro Pro app for your iPhone/ iPad

I have written previously on how to get your stuff into Evernote. In fact, I have expounded on ten different tools, including my two favorites: emailing and scanning. This is all well and good. But how do you find your stuff when you need it?

In this post, I want to share four different techniques for finding your stuff in Evernote. Honestly, it is so simple to get started, that Evernote doesn’t even include a section on this in their Getting Started Guide. However, don’t let this fool you. Evernote provides a robust set of tools for finding almost anything—easily and on-demand.

1. Click on a notebook or tag and visually scan your notes. This is the easiest way to find your stuff. Just click on one of the notebooks or tags in the left-hand sidebar. Then visually scan the notes. This works fine if you don’t have a lot of items. As you add more notes, it becomes increasingly difficult. However, it is still a useful tool, even with the more advanced techniques (keep reading).
2. Type a search term into Evernote’s search box. This is the the technique most people use right away. It’s similar to Google, so you already know how to do it. Just start typing a search term. Evernote will start narrowing down the results in real time. If you click on a notebook or tag first, Evernote will limit the search results to those within that notebook or tag group.
3. Familiarize yourself with Evernote’s basic search operators. This is where Evernote begins to shine. For example, if you type:
   red white blue

   Evernote will return notes that contain red, white, AND blue. In other words, this default is an “and” search. However, if you type:

   any: red white blue

   Evernote will return notes that contain red, white, OR blue. This turns an AND search into an OR search. Note: The word “any” must be the first word in this type of search.

   You can also explicitly search for tags by typing:

   tag: receipts

   If you want to reference tags that consist of multiple words, you must enclose them within quotes, like this:

   tag: “post ideas”

   If you want to search for all notes that don’t have a specific tag, you can use the minus sign:

   -tag: paid

   This will return all notes (in my case, “bills”) that are not paid. There are numerous other “operators” you can use. You can find a complete list here. It is worth clipping this page to Evernote, so you always have it at your fingertips.

4. Save routine searches for lightening fast retrieval. This is the really cool part. Once you construct a search, you can create a “Saved Search” and re-use it whenever you need it. Just construct the search and select File | New Saved Search. Evernote will prompt you for a name, and it will be available to you with a mouse click from that point forward.

   I have Saved Searches for my Life Plan Documents (e.g., my Life Plan itself, my Ideal Week, and my Annual Time Block), Unpaid Bills, Reimbursable Expenses, Guest Posts, etc. Basically, any time I create a search, I ask, “Could I use this search again?” If so, I save it.

Someone once said, “My memory is perfect. It’s my recall that is broken.“ With Evernote, if you understand these basic search techniques, even your recall can be perfect.

Earlier this week, I attended a very productive meeting. It was long, but we accomplished what we set out to do. We made significant decisions, established accountabilities, and left the meeting knowing exactly what was expected of us. I think everyone left feeling that it was a good use of time.

Unfortunately, too many corporate meetings don’t go this well. Often, they are a complete waste of time. But the good news is that they can be substantially improved by observing a few simple rules. Here is my list of seven rules for more effective meetings.

1. Establish hard edges. Good meetings start and end on time. When you start late, you inadvertently penalize the punctual and reward the tardy. This only make the problem worse rather than better. People get “trained” to come late because they know nothing significant will happen until well after the announced start time.

   When you finish late, you also frustrate participants. People are busy. Meetings that finish late cascade into other meetings which must then also start late. Instead, we have to be as disciplined about our ending times as our beginning times. It’s amazing how much you can cover if you know you absolutely must finish on time.

2. Create an agenda. I don’t think any meeting should proceed without an agenda. If it’s not important enough to create a written agenda, then it’s not important enough to attend. Leaders must set the example here.

   They need to think about the topics to be covered and how the meeting should flow. I always like to start the meeting with a review of the minutes from the previous meeting (more about this in a minute). I like to end every meeting with two items: a review of the agreed-upon action items and setting—or confirming—the date for the next meeting. Agendas should always be circulated in advance of the meeting, so that people know what to expect and how to prepare.

3. State the desired outcome. If you are the leader, it is important to know exactly what outcome you want from the meeting. If you don’t know where you are going, how will you know when you have arrived?

   I would suggest that you state the desired outcome in the meeting invitation and then re-state it as you begin the meeting. For example, “the purpose of our meeting is to report on the results of our latest market research and give you a chance to ask questions.” Or “the purpose of our meeting is to evaluate prospective titles for Don Miller’s new book and determine which one we are going to recommend to the author.” Or “the purpose of or meeting is review the company’s Q3 operating results and provide a progress report on our five strategic initiatives.”

   By stating the outcome, the participants can work together to achieve it and keep the meeting from wandering off-track.

4. Review the minutes and action items. The first thing I do in any meeting is to review the minutes and action items from the previous meeting. This gives the participants context and gives those that were absent an opportunity to get up-to-speed.

   You also want to get a progress report on each action item from the person responsible for it. If you make a habit of always doing this, people will soon learn that you expect them to complete their assignments. If they have to give an account in front of their peers, so much the better. This may give them the added “incentive” to complete their assignments, so that they are not embarrassed in front of their colleagues.

5. Take written minutes. Someone should take minutes, even if the meeting only has two participants. However, detailed notes that chronicle the discussion as it unfolds are usually—in fact, almost always—unnecessary. In most meetings, recording the key decisions and action items are sufficient.

   You want to document decisions, so there is no misunderstanding later. You want to document action items, so that you can hold people accountable and track progress. Beyond that, you’re probably just engaging in busy work. You should distribute minutes as soon after the meeting as possible, so that participants can review the key items while they are fresh in their memory as well as review what is expected of them.

6. Clarify action items. At the end of the meeting, the person recording the minutes should read off the action items. It is particularly important that these be stated in a specific format.
   • Start each action item with a verb. For example, “Review Milford contract with the agent” or “Call Jim and get latest turnover figures.”
   • Specify the deliverable. What exactly do you expect the person completing the action to do. It must be an observable behavior with a specific end-point. It may be a phone call, a written report, or a presentation. It should not be a process.
   • Assign a single owner to each action. No action should have more than one owner. You want one person to blame if the action isn’t completed.
   • Agree on a due date. Get a commitment from the person responsible. Be realistic but put it in writing. This is a commitment and should be treated as such.
7. Determine the next meeting date. This is easy to do when everyone is together. Everyone should be encouraged to bring their calendar to the meeting (or their iPad, iPhone, or Blackberry).

   If the meeting disperses without setting the next date, it makes it that much harder to schedule the next meeting. Take advantage of everyone being in one place to get this settled. It’s one less thing you have to do later.

Improving the quality of meetings takes work. Every once in a while we need to step back from the meeting itself and ask, “How can we make our time together more productive?” We need to be honest. Meetings consume a lot of resources. The more efficient they are, the better the return on our investment.

A few weeks ago, I started using Evernote as my primary “blogging workbench.” It is where I store blog post ideas, collect various post components, and then write the post itself. This has proven to be a robust solution that enables me to be working on several posts simultaneously.

I thought I would share my workflow with you. Yours will be different, I’m sure. But, hopefully, this will provide you with a few ideas.

My go through the following six steps in creating a new blog post.

1. Set up a blogging template in Evernote. There are certain components that I want to create or collect for every blog post. For example, I am now using the SCORRE™ method from the Dynamic Communicators Workshop (DCW) to prepare every post. This is an acronym for Subject, Central Theme, Objective Statement, Rationale, and Evaluation. I store my template in an Evernote notebook called Templates, along with numerous other templates I use on a regular basis.

   The template looks like this:

   

2. Create a new note for every blog post idea. Whenever I have a blog post idea, I go to my Template notebook, select my Blog Post Idea template, right click on it, and select Copy to Notebook. This puts a fresh copy of the template in my Blog notebook, complete with a “post ideas” tag. I then give the note title a unique name (the working title for the post) and then fill out as much of the not as I have the time and inclination to do. As a result, at any one time, I have dozens of post ideas in various stages of completion.
3. Assemble the various post components. When I get ready to really work on a blog post, I begin assembling the various pieces. I usually begin with the subject and the central theme. Then I add whatever is easiest to add first. It might be the relevant links, a few images, and then the objective statement. (I don’t have space in this post to go through what these elements are. If you want to learn the SCORRE™ method, I highly recommend DCW. You can get a $200 discount by using the special discount code: HYATTVAIL) Although it is primarily designed as a speech preparation tool for public speakers, it works equally well for bloggers.
4. Write your blog post in Evernote. I write the first draft of my post in in Evernote. i like having everything in one place. I don’t worry about formatting. I just try to get the post out, resisting the urge to edit my work as I am creating it. Once I have the first draft, I go back through and edit it. Once I have a stable draft that I am relatively happy with, I am done in Evernote.

   The completed note may look like this:

   

5. Copy your post to your blogging software. I select all the text in my post and copy it to MarsEdit, my blogging software of choice. This is where I add the metadata (i.e., post category, tags, and description). I also add all the formatting, including bold text, italics, lists, and other styling. I like a lot of control, so I personally work in HTML mode. However, this is not necessary for most bloggers. In fact, you could copy and paste your draft directly into WordPress.

   Here’s what blog post looks like in MarsEdit. Keep in mind that this is HTML code.

   

6. Schedule the post and review your work. When I am happy with my work, I edit the date I want the post to appear. I always schedule mine for 4:00 a.m. CDT. I then upload the post to WordPress. I then usually preview the post and review it on my site. The post isn’t live yet, but it gives me a chance to see the post in my blogging environment. I then proofread it a couple of more times and declare it done.

Evernote has enabled me to be more productive in my blogging. I love having one place where I can store everything.

In the last few months, Evernote has become my digital filing cabinet. It has enabled me to go completely paperless. Once I scan the paper into Evernote, I toss it into the recycling bin. Simple. Clean. Efficient.

However, as I have shared my enthusiasm for Evernote, several readers have expressed their concern for the safety of their data. Some have asked:

• What happens to my data if Evernote goes under?
• Who owns the data, since my information syncs to the Evernote servers?
• Do Evernote employees have access to my sensitive data? What if there’s a security breach?

I have researched Evernote pretty thoroughly, and I have concluded that my data is safe for the following six reasons:

1. Evernote is a successful, financially-solid company. Currently, the company has over six million users and more than 200,000 Premium (paid) users. It has raised three rounds of funding, including $20 million in its last round. Its investors include some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley. This is no guarantee that Evernote will make it, but certainly a lot of very smart people are betting on it.
2. Evernote has a clear data-ownership policy. Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote, has blogged publicly, “We do not own your data. Putting notes and other content into Evernote does not change its ownership or copyright status. If the data was yours to begin with, it remains yours after you put it in Evernote … you retain all the rights to your data.”
3. Evernote data is stored both locally and in the cloud. This is the beauty of cloud (remote server) technologies. A copy of my data is stored on Evernote’s servers and backed up by them. However, unlike some other cloud services (e.g., Google Calendar), my data is also stored locally on my hard drive. Even if the Evernote servers go down, I have the most recent copy of my data.
4. Evernote can encrypt sensitive data within a note. If you have something within a note that you want to keep private—passwords, financial information, counseling notes, etc.—you can do so by highlighting the data, right-clicking, and selecting “Encrypt selected text.” You will then be prompted to enter a password. In order to view that information in the future, you (or anyone else) will have to enter the password to do so.
5. Evernote data can be stored only on your local machine. When you create a notebook, you have the option of creating a local notebook or a synchronized notebook. The notes within a local notebook will not be sent to the Evernote servers. As a result, they will not be synched on your other devices (e.g., iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, etc.). However, they will be totally secure—or at least, as secure as your local drive.
6. Evernote data can be exported and taken elsewhere. Not only does the company provide ten ways to get your information into Evernote on sixteen different devices, but it is committed to making it easy for you to get all of your data out of Evernote as well. Using the desktop software, you can export all of your notes and content in HTML or XML format. As they say on their blog, “Our philosophy is that if you’re confident that you can leave Evernote at any time, then you’ll be confident enough to want to stay.”

There are no absolute guarantees in the world of digital media and cloud storage, but this is compelling enough to me. I use the various security tools Evernote provides and keep my local Evernote database backed-up. As a result, this is just not something I spend time worrying about.

Update: If you need something even more secure than what Evernote offers out-of-the-box, you can store your database locally on an encrypted database. If you are on a Mac, you can follow this guide. I am using this now. It took me less than ten minutes to set it up.

If you are on a PC, you might check this guide. You might also consider a free product called TrueCrypt. This is a free, open-source solution. However, I don’t have a PC and haven’t tried it.

Thanks to Atle Iversen, who works for the company that makes Dropbox. In the comments below, he suggested the encryption option for more sensitive data and recommended TrueCrypt.