S8 Reading and Assignments

SESSION 8 – MOBILITY- READING MATERIAL

Stay Pro-active and in Control While on the Road

For millions of people today, work involves travel. It is commonplace for office workers, managers, and executives to take their laptop and PDA on the road, along with their traditional, low-tech business necessities — briefcase, business cards, pens and pencils. More and more often in my seminars people ask what to do about their work flow system when they fly off to Houston, Detroit, Portland, Hartford, or wherever their job assignment takes them. They know they will spend some time on an airplane and in a hotel room. They intend to use that time productively, and want to synchronize their on-the-road working system with the methods and tools I’ve taught them to use in their office.

You obviously can’t take your office with you, yet with a small amount of planning you can prepare your business trips for maximum productivity and work flow integration. Let’s look at a technique that will support you as you take your business to other cities, whether distant or not so far away.

Mobile Turtle: First you will want to make sure that you take care of your most important active tasks while traveling. These are in your Turtle, and so you need to make your Turtle ‘mobile’. This does not mean picking up your entire Turtle stack, let alone what is in your Turtle Holding Area (THA), and loading it all into your briefcase. Rather, as you are getting ready for a particular trip, take a few minutes to do the following:

Determine the length of your trip (number of days, including travel time).

Estimate your focus time while traveling. This means the usable amount of time you will be in flight (or on a train, if that is how you’re traveling). For example, if you’re flying from Phoenix to Chicago, you might have 3½ hours each way, totaling seven hours. Estimate your available down time while away, for example three nights with two usable hours each night, totaling six hours.

Add the hours you came up with in Steps 2 and 3. In the example given, that would be thirteen hours.

Take with you that number of hours worth of prioritized work from your Turtle stack, which will also indicate what you’ll need from your THA.

Take along any ancillary information you need to complete the work, for example reference materials, relevant articles, and client files.

Mobile Pending: You’ll want to take all information from your Pending terminal requiring follow-up work that will come due while you’re traveling:

  1. Determine the time frame of your trip.
  2. Add some additional time to your return date to cover any unexpected extension of your stay. This is important contingency planning, in case you don’t get back to your office on schedule and there are Pending items that come due during that extended period.
  3. Review your Organization System’s calendar for all Pending tasks coming due within this extended time frame.
  4. Take with you all Pending items you’ve identified in Step 3. The symbols in your Organization System calendar will indicate the location of those materials. For example, your paper Pending File (PF), Pending E-Mail (PE), and Pending Holding Area (PHA), Home (paper or electronic) (H).
  5. Also take any ancillary information you need to complete the Pending work. For example, reference materials, relevant articles, and client files.

Reading: Travel time is a great time to catch up on your business reading, so take along items from your Reading stack.

Supplies: To facilitate keeping the work items in order while you travel, be sure to take along the following supplies:

· A folder containing blank Turtle Sheets·

· A folder to hold your traveling Turtle·

· A folder for your traveling Pending.

These items will prepare you for staying in sync with your office terminals, keeping up with your work, and knowing that you have every project and task under control. You will take … The Pleasure To Forget … on the road with you.

SESSION 8 – MOBILITY – ASSIGNMENTS

Assignment #1

Turtle Work

Step One: Determine the length of your trip.

Step Two: Estimate your available focus time while traveling (on a flight, train, bus, limo), as well as in your hotel after work.

Step Three: Estimate your available downtime (non-working time), while away.

Step Four: Total your available focus time and down time.

Step Five: Take with you the work from your Turtle Stack that is equivalent to the total time determined in Step Four.

Step Six: Take along all ancillary information that you may need to complete these Turtle items.

Assignment #2

Pending Work

Step One: Determine the time frame of your trip.

NOTE: Add some additional time to your return date to cover any unexpected extension of your stay.

Step Two: Review your Organization System’s calendar for all Pending items coming due within the time frame of your trip.

Step Three: Take with you all the Pending items that you have just identified.

Step Four: Take along any ancillary information you may need to complete this Pending work.

NOW HAVE A PRODUCTIVE, SUCCESSFUL, ORGANIZED AND STRESS-LESS TRIP.