Why Work Doesn’t Happen at Work

November 24, 2010 By 4 Comments

It is common to hear people, especially nowadays, complain that they have so much work to do that they’re pulling long night and weekend hours just to stay near the surface. Are these people working anywhere between 10-18+ hour days because they really have that much work? Maybe so. Or maybe it is because we’ve become accustomed to not being able to get actual work done while we’re at work.

This inability to get work done during the workday isn’t because of laziness or procrastination. It happens for many reasons but the main culprits include broken meetings and our addiction to interruptions. We’re also a society that is constantly connected and tools such as Twitter, Facebook and email make it even harder to disconnect.

A recent survey from Xobni even shows that 59 percent of employed Americans will be check work email during traditional family holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas while 79 percent report receiving work-related emails during these holidays.

It leads me to question how we actually break this cycle so we can get back to doing work at work and spending more time disconnected, recharging and spending time with our friends and family. Even if you’re not disconnecting, if you’re going to be doing work outside of the office, it shouldn’t be because you’re stuck in meetings all day. If you’re working after-hours, it should be because you’re putting in extra time on your projects or on improving the service that you’re providing to your clients and customers.

Jason Fried of 37Signals and the author of Rework (affiliate link) recently tackled this topic during a TEDxMidwest where he discusses that the main problems are M&Ms (yes, M&Ms but not what you’re thinking) and offers a few suggestions on how to breakthrough this problem and get back to getting work done at work.

If you can’t view this video, you can find it over on the TED website here.

What’s your take? Do you have this problem at your office? Do you need to be
workshifting to get anything done?

While you’re at it, don’t forget to realize the value of time and that being a big deal really isn’t such a big deal.

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My Interview with Restaurant Business Magazine

November 15, 2010 By 2 Comments

During BlogWorld Expo 2010, my friends at PepsiCo set up some time for me to sit down with Sam Smith, editor of Restaurant Business magazine and MonkeyDish.com about my restaurant, Caminito Argentinean Steakhouse.

It was a fun, short interview about the issues that the restaurant faced when I jumped in as a partner to help my best friend. We discuss some of the specific actions that we took and how that helped lead us to becoming the #1 steakhouse in the Pioneer Valley.

If you can’t see the video, you can watch it over on PepsiCo’s YouTube channel.


If we managed to peak your interest and you wanted to read more about what we’ve down as a small business to build our community and increase sales at the restaurant using social media, you can find more here and here.

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Filed Under: Caminito, Interview, Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Strategy, Videos Tagged With: , , , , ,

Being a Big Deal Isn’t Such a Big Deal

November 13, 2010 By 7 Comments

When I talk to my family, friends, colleagues or community and ask them how they’re doing, usually they respond with some variation on being too busy, tired and in need of a vacation. This is because we have been trained to run as hard as possible to stay competitive. For many of us, we live our lives online which exacerbates this because of the never ending firehouse of information and feeling that we need to keep up. We’re taught to focus on achieving our next accomplishment. We’re taught to never be satisfied and to just keep going.

When you step back though, you realize that being a big deal (however that is defined for you) might not be such a big deal. Is becoming the top expert in your industry worth it if you end up divorced because of it? Is being a Twitter celebrity as cool as it seems if you lose your day job because you spend so much time on Twitter? How about if you end up in the hospital because you haven’t focused on your health while pursuing becoming a big deal?

In this incredibly powerful TEDx speech, Scott Stratten uses personal life experiences to explore this in-depth. This is a “must-watch” speech and one that I have shared with anyone that will listen.

What are your thoughts?  How do you create a balance in your life?

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Filed Under: Hustle, Motivation, Personal, Videos Tagged With: , , ,

Realizing the Value of Time

October 17, 2010 By 2 Comments

An underlying theme of some of my recent posts have been the value of time. One of the main reasons why meetings are broken are because they take too much time and distract you from what is important. The reason why I was able to say “I love you” to my mom before she passed away was because my friend was a few minutes late picking me up. Both of these examples rely on the difference of a few minutes. If you could regain 15 minutes back from every meeting, you’d save hours per week (or more!) into your schedule. If my friend had been on time to pick me up, I would’ve regretted my last words to my mom.

Have you ever taken the time to break down time and realize how valuable time really is, even down to a millisecond? This Tungle video, produced by my friend Scott Stratten, breaks down time by providing powerful examples that will cause you to look at time in a new light after watching it.

If you can’t view this video, you can watch it over here.

A powerful underlying concept, eh? “Stop wasting time on things you can’t control, and focus on the things you can.”

Now, if I didn’t tell you earlier that the video was created for Tungle or if you didn’t watch the last couple seconds of the video, you would’ve thought it was just a motivational and inspirational video. One of thousands available across the internet.

But, go deeper than that and realize what Tungle and Scott Stratten have done by publishing this video. They have created emotionally compelling content based around the subject of time, the very issue that Tungle helps us to manage.

If you’ve never heard of Tungle, they are:

“…a calendar accelerator that let’s you easily schedule meetings and share with people inside or outside your business, even if you use different calendars. Tungle is not a calendar – it integrates with your current calendar, giving you the flexibility and control to connect, collaborate and get more done.”

Instead of a video about how to use their service, Tungle has created a video that illicit emotion thus causing you to want to share the video with your social graph. Think you’d have the same feeling if it was a video about how great Tungle is and how much time their tool will save you? Probably not.

The 71 videos that Tungle currently has uploaded to their YouTube channel, they have received a total of 83,428 views. Of those 83,000+ views, the above video has 25,132 views or 30% of all views and it has only been live for 2 weeks, as of this writing.

Looking for the underlying lesson here? Find ways to create compelling content that don’t just pimp your product. Tell a story, illicit emotion and give your community a reason to share your content.

Oh, and if you haven’t tried Tungle yet, go try it because not only does the tool rock, they’re team is pretty awesome, too. I f you want some more info about Tungle, I interviewed Tungle’s CEO Marc Gingras earlier this year.

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Filed Under: Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Motivation, Productivity, Social Media Strategy, Videos Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Meetings Are Broken

October 12, 2010 By 5 Comments

Useless Meetings Suck

In most companies meetings are broken. You and I both know it. We organize and attend meetings that take too long, are unstructured, involve too much rambling and not enough follow-up. We meet for the sake of meeting, not out of necessity. We allow individuals to hijack the meeting so it takes twice as long as it is supposed to. For the few minutes per day that we’re not in meetings, we’re being consistently interrupted. Yet, we’re still expected to complete all of our work on time even if we spend the majority of our life in meetings.

Does this sound like a conversation you might have had recently with a co-worker?

I know this has happened to me. I know that I’ve been both the culprit and victim of broken meetings. But, lately, I have become increasingly restrictive of how easy I’ll agree to a meeting without questioning the need to meet and the length of time required. Too often, as I’m sure you’ve experience, hour long meetings are scheduled because it sounds like a nice, round number.

Meetings don’t have to be the source of this much frustration. Meetings don’t have to zap your team’s productivity. Meetings don’t have to suck!

Now, this isn’t to say that meetings aren’t necessary. They are very much needed, when they’re structured, are respectful of your time, involve follow-up, and aren’t just a meeting to meet about the last meeting you had.

If you’re stuck in an organization that enjoys meeting just to meet, how can you fix it? How can you regain back your precious time?

Merlin Mann has come to the rescue once again. A few years ago he began preaching from tall mountains on how each of us could regain control on our inboxes with his, now famous, Inbox Zero speech. Now Merlin wants to help you fix broken meetings so that they return to be useful allocations of your time.

Merlin recently publicly rolled out this new presentation during a session at Twitter HQ. The entire presentation is a little more than an hour long but is worth every minute of your time.


In case you missed it during the presentation, Merlin shares 10 patterns for improving meetings.

10 Patterns to Improve Meetings

  1. Purpose
  2. Agenda
  3. Grazing
  4. Edges
  5. Guests
  6. Timekeeper
  7. No Ratholes
  8. Focus
  9. Follow-Up
  10. Consistency

What are your thoughts about broken meetings? Did you find a nugget or two of actionable information that you can take back to your organization and implement?

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Photo Credit: Kevin Lawyer

Filed Under: Productivity, Videos Tagged With: , , , ,
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