Employee Rewards?

It’s nice to think of ways to say thanks to employees that are doing a great job. It doesn’t have to be anything big, but can be something as simple as a gift certificate to a local restaurant or the movie theater.

However there are things which just say all the wrong things. For example, if your employees have come in over two weekends to clear up a big backlog of work, you don’t want to reward them with stupid meaningless gestures. A manager here decided that they would “reward” their employees who worked so hard by gathering a bunch of rocks and hand painting “You Rock” on them. This manager then handed them out to their employees.

Google Calendar Images

There’s been speculation for the past year about Google releasing a Calendar product. Well now there’s been some screen shots leaked. Check it out at I Heart The G. Also available over at TechCrunch. The logon page for CL2 (Google’s name for their Calendar product) is here. It won’t let you login, but it must be getting close.

WordPress and NewsGator

NewsGator has plug-ins for several different Blogging engines (so you can post to your Blog directly from Outlook), but didn't have one listed for WordPress. After some searching around I ran across a beta version of a plug-in (exe or zip) on this NewGator forum.

This post and the previous one were both submitted via the plug-in. So far it is working well. Give it a try. I did mention it is beta, right? So YMMV.

Getting out from under

I thought technology was supposed to make life easier? Instead it’s just made us too accessible and overloaded us with way too much information. Ellen McGirt from Fortune magazine address some of these issues in her story here.  The key thought and paragraph in the article is this:

“So how are modern knowledge workers to weave their way through the minefield of interruptions and conflicting priorities? The simple answer is this: By figuring out what is actually worth paying attention to, and when. Which turns out to be really hard to do.”

Ultimately I find it takes stepping back from trying to deal with everything coming at you and setting aside time to be creative and strategic. I’m working towards this using a few different tools. One is the Getting Things Done system. Once I can get all my “stuff” out of my brain and into my system, then I can use my energy and brainpower to deal with issues that I’ve identified as important.

Secondly is making sure I set aside some time to actually think. I may not even have a predetermined goal or issue that I need to think about. In fact some of my most productive times come when I don’t plan them out in advance. But you have to set some ground rules for yourself.

1. No computer. That means no eMail, no Web, no reading blogs. I know this is the most difficult step of all, but it can be done.

2. Have paper and pencil available. Nothing worse than having a great idea only to see it vanish because you never wrote it down.

3. This one is kind of strange, but I find performing menial tasks help me think. Mowing the lawn for example almost always results in either some new great ideas popping into my head, or the answer to an existing problem presenting itself. And remember item #2. That means keeping a small notebook or index card with you all the time.