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Join us for our first virtual panel on Tonight, Wednesday May 20th at 5 PM EST, Navigating the Ad Industry When the Economy Sucks. Tom Christmann & Paul Fix, award-winning ad creatives and co-deans at Adhouse, will be joining us and taking questions.
https://zoom.us/j/94553752267
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FTI consulting- any thoughts ?
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I've become a fan of what's called the Pomodoro Technique, to the point where I bought a little timer that can count off 25 minutes. The idea is you set the timer and work with strict focus for 25 minutes. And then you take a brief break. An Italian computer scientist came up with the technique years ago by using a plastic kitchen timer shaped like a tomato, hence the name. Anyway, it works. It's surprising how much you can get done if you're doing one thing at a time.
Bowl Leader
Yes! I do that too! I have a roll timer for different settings. This is the closest I think I’ve gotten there.
My professional organization does a lot of virtual online networking and programming which is important for my skill development and for career opportunities. I am also in a steering committee of a local professional organization and have about 2-3 meetings a month for those. I also attend webinars talking about tools for my profession, best practices, market reports, how-tos for certain rankings submissions, etc.
Inevitably these take place in the 11 am - 2 pm range which is the busiest in terms of emails and requests that come into me. Plus, I often have work meetings in the afternoons. Not to mention so many emails that are spam or update alerts or you name it. I cannot hope to ever leave the office before 7 pm again (I am still dreaming of being able to) if I don't keep an eye on emails and file, delete, or shoot quick responses to them as needed while I am in a meeting or webinar.
I've always been good at carrying on a conversation while doing something else, though reading something else does shut off my brain from the listening part for a split second, but I can switch back and forth in a split second. I don't know if that comes naturally or can be honed, to be honest. I just know I'm wired that way.
That being said AI has been amazing. If I'm on an online meeting, I turn on the audio record feature of my paid Evernote account on my phone, and when the call or meeting is done, I hit the "Transcribe" and "Summarize" buttons in there (which appear alongside the screenshots I do, if relevant, or the presentation PDF that I drag and drop on there when it is sent out after the session). I then read through anything I may have missed when I have a spare second. Often I caught most of it and missed just some tidbits.
If I was really distracted by a big urgent request while a session was occurring, and I missed most of it, and I feel like the summary didn't do it justice, I either speed read through the transcript, or then I listen to the recording on my phone in 1.5 X speed (or more, if intelligible at that speed) during my commute the next few days.
That's how I manage to both do my work and get trained and network. In my industry (legal) we are expected to respond quickly to attorneys, their assistants and staff because they are under time pressure from clients, too. So I can't switch off from emails and IMs for more than an hour at a time max. My focus time happens after 5 pm when the emails and IMs die down and I can quietly work and focus (I am not a 4-5 am wake up to get work done kind of person and prefer to work until 10 or 11 pm if I need to).
Rising Star
I’ve made the same conscious choice. There’s a sacrifice to it for me though which is I am drowning in email because I can’t treat zoom calls like a study hall anymore.