Richard Nantel

Each year on January 1, I enjoy a wonderful meal of “ragout,” a traditional French Canadian stew, with my family. Seated at the dinner table, we take turns sharing our goals and resolutions for the new year. Here’s what was presented last night:

• My 80-year-old mother-in-law kept hers short and to the point: “to not die.”
• My mother, tired at the age of 76 of shoveling her car in the winter, wants to find an apartment with indoor parking.
• My teenage daughter does not believe in goals or resolutions, so she chose to sit this out. (Her lack of goals seems odd to me considering she’s a disciplined and very driven high achiever, an honors student who views any mark under 85 as failure.)
• My youngest daughter wants to “land her axel” in figure skating.
• My wife wants to become a great squash player.
• My sister intends to get a better job.
• My sister’s boyfriend wants a vacation down south with my sister.

The great composer, Igor Stravinsky, once said that it’s important to end a piece of music sooner instead of later. You’re not looking to satisfy the audience; you want them to leave the hall wanting more. Each year, I break this important rule when sharing my goals.

Listing my goals and resolutions adds a brain-numbing, filibuster-like feel to the evening. Let me be clear: I have goals and resolutions. Lots of them.  I keep them in lists. I then keep lists to keep track of my lists. Here are just a few of my 2009 goals and resolutions related to learning and work.

Make blogging a higher priority

For most of this year, I wrote a post once per week on this blog and a daily post on our group blog, Workplace Learning Today. In the last few months, my frequency posting to my personal analyst blog has dropped to once per month. Going forward, I intend to return to a weekly schedule.

Why? Blogging provides quiet time for reflection. In our more/faster/better world, it can be an oasis in a person’s weekly schedule. In addition, maintaining a blog is a great learning tool. Writing about a topic is, in my experience, a more effective way to learn than to simply read about a topic.

Continue finding ways to increase my productivity while reducing stress

I reread David Allen’s “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” this year. It’s a fabulous book. Putting his methodology into practice has never been completely successful for me. I’ve tried paper-based lists in notebooks, folder structures in MS Outlook, and lists in Google Docs. The problem has been a lack of one central repository for everything. In November of 2008, I discovered Nozbe, a fabulous online organizer that’s designed around David Allen’s methodology. For the last two months, I’ve used Nozbe daily for everything from listing my projects and next actions to using it to take notes in meetings, to using it to store important files. This is now the most valuable piece of software I use. I’d be lost without it. (BTW, that’s where I store my very long lists of goals and resolutions.)

Make deep dives into topics

The senior analysts here at Brandon Hall Research have annual goals. This year, I proposed a new addition to their goals. Under the section titled “Great team,” they are asked to identify a skill they’d like to develop. They will then be asked to deliver a one-hour presentation to the other analysts on what they’ve learned.

It’s ironic that, as CEO of a company that provides research about workplace learning, I have little time to spend learning at work. My days are filled with “doing,” and I rarely have a few hours to study something. From what I’ve read, this is a common complaint. Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes in the acknowledgments of his bestseller, “The Black Swan:”

“It is impossible to go very deep into an idea when you run a business, no matter the number of hours the occupation entails—simply put, unless you are insensitive, the worries and feelings of responsibility occupy precious cognitive space.”

I’m going to attempt to change this pattern in 2009. I’ll be blocking off time each week for work-related learning.

Out of fear that some of you are fidgeting and glancing at your wrist watches, I’ll end my list of goals and resolutions here for now. Please share yours.

Dealing with e-mail can be like shoveling in a snow storm. Reply to 10 e-mails, press the Send and Retrieve icon, and 15 more arrive. Answer those, and 20 more roll in. If you have an empty inbox, you’re likely unemployed.

To handle this flood of messages, many people keep their e-mail application open at all times; replying to messages as they come in. They become addicted to their e-mail. The result is that their workday never includes uninterrupted blocks of time to focus on tasks that require reflection and concentration.

This type of workday is unproductive and demoralizing. In addition, research indicates it’s bad for brain health. A better solution is to schedule replying to e-mail for specific times of the day, be disciplined about replying to urgent messages first, and leave blocks available to do actual focused work.

Because of the volume of messages we need to deal with, a fundamental skill all knowledge workers need is the ability to manage e-mail. New tools are beginning to appear to help workers acquire these skills. TechDirt writes about one such tool, HitMeLater. Just forward any e-mail to a special address, and the service sends it back to you as a reminder on the date and time you determine.

What a great idea. Gone are the dozens of items I have flagged for follow-up. I’m sold.

A week ago, I switched to browsing the Web using a portrait- rather than landscape-oriented monitor. Although my new monitor can pivot back and forth between the two orientations, I haven’t moved it back to landscape mode since trying out the Web in vertical format. This is definitely the right orientation for all the reasons I listed in my last post.

This discovery has made me question other dumb things I’ve been doing for no other reason than I’ve always done them that way. Here are four others:

1. Typing

My colleague Gary Woodill turned me onto voice recognition software last year. My brother-in-law, a surgeon, had given me a demo of the same software package a decade ago, and the results were so terrible, I suggested he’d have his medical license revoked if anyone ever saw his dictated medical reports.

Software has come such a long way in a decade, I should have realized the time for voice recognition might now be here.

After going through the requisite “training” period, the software I selected, Dragon Naturally Speaking, works beautifully. I can honestly say that it’s now a much faster and more precise way to input words than typing.

I start up the program when preparing to write a lot of text but sometimes forget to use it for small tasks such as composing e-mail. I need to break the bad habit of typing all the time and need to remember to keep the voice recognition software open all day.

2. Lugging around a laptop

When traveling, or when I just need a change of scenery by heading to Café Marmalade down the street, I’ll take my laptop. Sometimes I can’t get a spot next to an electrical outlet, so I end up swearing when my laptop shuts down after a couple of hours.

If it’s not the anemic battery, it’s the weight that has me cursing. I’ll find myself walking somewhere carrying my laptop and all of its related accessories until my shoulder aches for relief.

Ninety-five percent of the time, all I’m doing is writing or working within a spreadsheet. Is a laptop really the best tool for this? No.

I need to stop reaching for my laptop and take a PDA and a folding keyboard on my next trip. (I don’t think the other coffee shop patrons will want me using my voice recognition software, so here’s a case where typing makes sense.)

The battery for my PDA never seems to die, and the setup weighs almost nothing. Plus, both keyboard and PDA fit into my coat pockets, so my shoulders will thank me.

3. Emailing documents

Old habits die hard. I still often find myself working on a document and sending it by e-mail to someone for revisions or input. I need to be better at remembering to put the information in a wiki or in Google Docs and sending a link instead.

4. Spending time showing someone how to do something without looking to see if the procedure already exists on the Web

The other day, I created a short tutorial to show some team members how to edit their Outlook signature files. Had I been smart, I would have Googled or Youtubed “edit outlook signature” and sent them one of many links.

I think this is a generational thing. I learned to do things on computers by exploring. My 14-year old daughter doesn’t waste her time. She’ll just turn to Google and type “how do I connect to a home network using Vista?”

In an era where answers are ubiquitous, being action-oriented can be a waste of time.