Having dual screens works well for desktop users, but what about laptop workers, or people who don’t want to spend the money on a second monitor?  That is where your Ipad can come in.  There are a number of applications available for the Ipad that can turn it into a second monitor, I chose Diplaypad because it is inexpensive and very easy to use.  All you need is a wireless connection.

To set it up

1. Download display pad onto your Ipad.
2. Download the Displaypad app onto your mac or pc from the companies website.
3. Make sure the laptop and Ipad are on the same wireless network.
4. Launch Displaypad on the Ipad
5. Launch Displaypad on the laptop
6. Select your Ipad from the list of available devices on the Laptop

Thats it, simple.  Now all you have to do is drag things to the right of your main screen and they will appear on the Ipad.  For this to work really well, I put my Ipad standing up vertically in it’s case and set it to the right of my Macbook.

The resolution and screen refresh rate are not great, so this is not for watching video, but it really excels when it comes to setting up a second screen.

Best of all you can take this setup anywhere.  It also looks pretty cool to anyone passing by.

1. Invisible Shield – I am a big proponent of screen protectors, these devices cost $500-$1000 dollars.  Invest a little money in a screen protector.
2. Carrying case that doubles as a stand – many cases out there are just that, cases.  What you need is a case that doubles as a stand.  Make sure it can stand your Ipad up vertically and is stable.  Here is an example
3. Noise isolation headphones – pick up a pair of headphones that block out external sound.  Etymotic and Shure make good in ear versions similar to earplugs, Bose and Beats have good over the ear versions.  These are great for those times you need to block out external distractions and focus on what you are doing
4. Stylus – a Stylus you can use to write, draw, and navigate your Ipad with is great.  I am currently using one from Targus that my wife bought me as a Christmas present and love it.

Some people may recommend a keyboard, I’ve never used one and never felt the need.  It makes the Ipad to much like a computer and that is not what I am trying to achieve.  If you have a small business you make look into Intuit’s Gopayment credit card swiper for the Ipad and Iphone.  I think this is one of the next hot things that will be big over the next 3-5 years.  You could probably even use it to let your friends pay you those annoying IOUs by credit card(could be morally questionable but that is for you to decide)

1. Dropbox – simple way to share files between your computer and your Ipad.  The basic version is simple and just works.  I recommend getting this app whether you use an Ipad or not.  I an open and view documents and powerpoints in dropbox which is great.
2. Evernote – the ultimate cross platform note system.  Save your notes on any platform and access them anywhere.  I will take handwritten notes, email them to evernote and they are searchable through an optical recognition capability that evernote has.  Yes, evernote reads handwriting.
3. Dragon Diction – take voice notes and transcribe them into text notes.  Still needs work but is definitely usable
4. Note Taker HD – use your finger or a stylus to handwrite notes, draw diagrams, create mind maps, and mockup/sign pdfs.
5. Skype – make phone calls from your Ipad
6. PDFReader – quality pdf reader

These 6 apps can make up the core of what you need for your business suite.  In a future post I’ll talk through the workflow on how I use the apps.

To kick off the series I’ll discuss why I decided to get a Tablet and why I chose an IPad instead of an Android tablet.

Why I bought a tablet

Tablets are something I’ve been interested in for quite some time having written a post back in April 2011 discussing if you should buy a tablet.  The conclusion I came to is that tablets were a novelty and not really necessary.  Of course about 6 months later I changed my mind and bought one.  The big inspiration for me  centered around meetings.  I spend every day meeting with clients, taking notes, discussing ideas, and trying to engage with them.  I found that having a computer in the room clicking away formed a barrier between me and the other person in the meeting, it also proved to be a distraction.  I would easily lose focus and check an email, or look something up on the web.  My eyes would constantly go between my client and the computer sending a very clear message that they were did not have my 100 percent focus.  In short, I was being rude and I didn’t think I was going to do anyone any favors by continuing this behavior.

Instead of a computer, it is perfectly acceptable for someone to bring a pen and paper into a meeting to take notes.  I did this for years, but I tended not to reference my notebook later on and seldom took the time to transcribe my notes back into my computer.  It was tedious for me so I seldom did it.  I wanted to go purely digital where I wrote things down once and was able to file them right away for future use.

This is the perfect niche for a tablet.  A tablet is about the size of a notebook and you can easily lay it down on the table beside you.  This removes the wall that a laptop screen erects between you and the person you are speaking with.  If you use a stylus, you can actually handwrite notes on the tablet which is even better as this shows you are taking notes and not surfing the net or checking email.

With a tablet I could do all I wanted around meetings with none of the drawbacks I was currently experiencing.  This pushed me over the top and made me decide to make the purchase as I felt I had finally come up with a legitimate reason.

Why an IPad

I did a lot of research between IPads and Android Tablets, at the time nothing of value existed with a Windows OS on it.  There were quite a few really cool Android devices on the market with really compelling features and price points.  In the end it came down to the following factors that made me pick an Ipad.

• There is one size for the Ipad .  This makes it easy for a developer to optimize their applications for the IPad.  They can spend more time improving their application instead of working on compatibility across many devices of varying size.
• There is one company that controls the updates.   One of my biggest complaints about Android is all of the skinning and customization that an OEM does on the device.  Often times it is to such an extreme that Google updates are not released until the device customizations can be updated to work with the new functionality.  This can lag months behind Google releases, if the updates are ever released.
• Operating system fragmentation for Android.  With so many customizations and variations, there is no guarantee that the latest and greatest apps for Android would work on the device I selected.  Since it is the apps that make the device worth while, this was very important to me.

I personally like Google’s open model and think it has the potential to be superior to Apple in the future.  Unfortunately the “improvements” and customizations that companies and mobile carriers do on these devices fundamentally detract from the user experience and the faith that a device can stay up to date with the latest Google release and features.  Show me a base Google tablet with a standard 9.7in screen, no OS customizations, and will be compatible with Google upgrades for at least two years, I’ll show you a tablet that is really worth sinking your money into.

Otherwise, if you can afford one and you are not anti Apple I still believe the IPad is the way to go.

Each week I have at least some time spent either creating or reviewing presentations, usually around status updates.  Google Presentation allows me to quickly put together a clean and simple status page which I really like.  I can share with colleagues and everyone can work on their slide at the same time which minimizes admin overhead to combine everything together.  The problem is, Google has yet to get formatting right.  Adding bullets on one page can cause font issues on another page.  Italicizing a word may change the indent on a table.  There are a number of screwball formatting issues that occur on Google Presentation that can make things virtually unreadable.  With no rhyme or reason to the cause, you either spend a significant chunk of time fighting with format or just accept the oddball look and continue on.  Powerpoint is fraught with it’s own quirks but nothing as problematic with the core functionality as this.

Google Document and Spreadsheet work extremely well for me.  I also really like Google Calendar and Gmail.  The focus on simplicity is great.  Docs is also a great online repository with cool features.  I also really like Forms for survey purposes.

So with all this love (save Powerpoint) why do I think Office is better?  First it is the industry standard solution making it very easy and reliable to assume that I can create something in office and anyone can see it, edit it, or comment on it.  Second, the simplistic bugs that plague some of the Google apps just don’t occur in Office.  Third, Office has been around for coming up on 23 years.  They have taken all the feedback, built all the capabilities, and been able to refine the product for 9 years longer than Google has been a company.  Microsoft has Office in a great position filling a need that every organization has and filling it well.  For all the bells and whistles, it just works.

If Google could get their product to just work right all the time it would take a huge leap forward and be a true competitor.

I am a firm believer that to advance in your career you need to take on new responsibilities. As you are not an infinite source of energy, to take on new responsibilities you must rid yourself of existing responsibilities. There are two ways to do this.

The first option is to eliminate responsibilities so that they no longer need to be done. That may be possible for some things, but not for all. If you are responsible for the project financials on an initiative, you can’t just ignore the books and hope they come out right. However, you can decide to shut down the project as it is not meeting it’s goals.

The second option is to pass the responsibilities on to some one else to do. The only way to do this successfully is if you have capable and competent people around you who can successfully complete the new responsibilities. You can go a long way in prepping the individuals around you through people development. I like to spend a couple of hours every 2-3 weeks to focus on coaching. I’ll take this time to go through deliverables with the person, work on a skill they will need to move up to the next level, provide feedback on existing work, or go over a side project for the folks to work on in their spare time. This small investment in my time has resulted in utilities being built that sold extra work at clients, the ability to obtain help in a crunch when there is to much for me to complete on my own, and a fully engaged team willing to put in extra hours when needed with out any complaint.

Take time to share with and teach those around you. If you do this consistently I promise you will reap many rewards.

Leadership is a complex topic with far too many opinions on how to be a better leader. What I have learned over time is that different leadership styles are effective in different situations. Different groups of people respond better to one style of leadership than another. This makes sense as we are all different and what works for me may not work well for you.

Feel free to read all the books and try all the techniques but at the end of the day you need to be consistent with your team.. It is extremely stressful to not know which boss you will have to deal with on a day to day basis. Most people can handle a consistently angry and loud manager. What they can’t handle is the manager who is nice and friendly one day then tearing you to pieces the next. As a leader, you set the expectations and the tone for your team. If there is no consistency, there is no tone, and people do not understand the expectations. They will quickly stop following you and when that happens, you have failed.

How you deliver you message is up to you. Fail to deliver it consistently and it doesn’t matter what approach you choose, you will fail.

Thats it. Do these things and you will take back control of your email.

Last week I attended a leadership conference that my company put on. I was honored to attend as it required an invitation. The people attending were amazing and we had very senior leadership participating (think people that are responsible for thousands of employees). We covered a number of topics and I plan to write blogs on many of them, but the first blog is going to be about multi-tasking. You may be asking, why did they teach you about multi-tasking at a leadership conference. The reason is, trying to multi-tasking wastes your time, wastes the people around you’s time, and is often times rude. I’ve read numerous productivity books, I frequent Leo Babauta’s Zen Habits and Cal Newport’s, Study Hacks among other sites. Guess what, they same the same thing as the leaders of my organization. If you try to do too many things at once, you will not get anything done. It has to do with how our brains work. Whether it is how we are built or how we are conditioned to function, I am not sure, what I am sure about is… to get something done you should focus your undivided attention on it.

Turn off email alerts, stop texting, stop checking twitter, stop checking Facebook unless your job is to monitor and interact with these services, every time they ding and you look, that is minutes of lost focus on the work at hand. Over the past 5 days I am averaging close to 150 emails coming in across all of my email accounts. If I check each of these emails when they come in and assume it takes me a total of 2 minutes to read an email, respond or file, and get back to what I was doing. Believe me 2 minutes is unrealistically optimistic, most people take anywhere from 5 to 15. Sticking with 2 minutes I just spent 5 hours a day managing my email box. If I use 15, that would be 37.5 hours. When am I going to get anything done? Short answer is, I will not get anything done. I have to filter out the noise.

Understanding that to get something done I need to focus on it for set periods of time, I turn off all alerts, isolate myself, and get to work. This may be 20 minute stretches, this may be 1 hour stretches. Personally I can’t focus for more than an hour with out needing a quick break to recharge. If someone needs to talk to me urgently, they can call me, or walk over and talk to me. My job does not consist of handling 150 emergencies a day that require my immediate attention.

There are whole books on this topic, people write their dissertations on it, so I could go on and on. But I promised not to. So in summary, do not multi-task. Do multiple tasks one after the other with focus. Filter out the noise that keeps you from focusing. Try these things and you will be surprised how much more you can accomplish.

Just about all of us have a tasks and responsibilities that we need to perform on a regular basis.  This could be creating a report, processing some information, or writing up a review.  If you are doing this the same way you have always done the work, you are probably wasting a lot of your time.    So how can you do things better?

If what you are doing is computer based and repetitive I recommend looking into automation.  There is an amazing automation language called AutoIT.  AutoIT is a scripting language that can interact with any other application, it can simulate button clicks, entering text, or reading off information.  The language is amazing and can automate tasks that may have taken you hours to complete in the past.

If what you are doing is process related.  The improvement is a little more logic based than programming based.  Sit down and think about what you are trying to accomplish.  Of all the steps in your process, which steps are required, which ones are not?  Can any of the steps be completed quicker?

How can you batch the work.  Is there a way you can take the entire process and complete it start to finish without interruption.   Studies show that every interruption can cause over 30 minutes of wasted time trying to refocus on the original task.  If you can turn off email, close your door, and turn off your cell phone.  That same task that used to take 4 hours to complete may now be finished in 45 minutes.  The time savings resulting in focused effort is amazing.

All in all, there is always a better way to complete your work.  Spend a little time to figure it out now will save you hours of effort in the future.