When you have lots of ideas for things to make, how do you choose which projects to actually work on?
In this episode of Work Smart, idea guy Bryan Serven asks the question every entrepreneur has wrestled with; I offer a way to reframe the question and weigh your options, and author of Do More Great Work Michael Bungay Stanier weighs in with a great tip. Press the play button below, and then check out part 2, which covers how you know when to kill a project you're already working on.
Working remotely is so liberating--you get to do what you do best, in a location of your choice, sans commute, maybe even in your pajamas, without your co-workers or boss always looking over your shoulder. But telecommuting also requires a lot more effort when it comes to maintaining relationships and connections with people back at the office. In this week's episode of Work Smart, IBMer Rich Edwards asks about the best practices for staying connected and building relationships from afar. I share some advice based on my own work-at-home experience, and then I ask author of Telecommuting Success Michael Dziak for his. Hit play on the video above to watch and check out the accompanying mind map over at FastCompany.com.
The perennial question we always got from obsessive Lifehacker readers: How do you actually be more productive if you spend all your time looking for new ways to get stuff done?
In this week's episode of Work Smart 2, I got to give my best answer to that question. Bill Clark asks how you can actually work smarter when you spend a lot of time learning new productivity tricks. I share my favorite tool for keeping yourself honest, and then asked author of productivity bible Getting Things DoneDavid Allen for his thoughts. (In short: there are worse ways to waste time.)
Press play on the 2-minute, 30-second video clip below.
I've travelled to 9 different cities already this year and I've got 4 different major work projects going on, so keeping on top of everything on the go is something I've had to get good at out of necessity. This week's Work Smart video is a question from Daniel Beck, a work-at-homer like I am, about how to not let your whole organization system fall to pieces once you leave your (home) office.
I was lucky enough to get none other than David Allen to agree to be my expert in this segment. I was pretty nervous talking to David, as his material has been an inspiration for me for years now. Hopefully I didn't come off as too much of a dork on Skype with him.
The second season of my Work Smart video series at FastCompany.com premiered yesterday, with a question from Suhasini Kotcherlakota about how to take better meeting notes, and some answers from me and Brad Isaac, who wrote a great piece on mind-mapping meetings at Lifehacker a few years back.
Despite the fact that I still can't watch and listen to myself on film without cringing, I am so pleased with the results. Adam Barenblat at FastCompany did an amazing job on the art and design, which is based on a fun new webapp: Popplet.
My latest FastCompany.com video segment, shot several weeks ago, is about managing your social media updates, partly by funneling them all into one place (like your email inbox).
Then Google Buzz launched.
So, here's my social media productivity two-punch: first the video, then a walk through Google Buzz's more advanced features.
I'm thrilled to announce a new series of weekly videos and blog posts that I'll be publishing at FastCompany.com called "Work Smart," which will cover personal productivity in a digital world. Long-time Lifehacker readers will recognize much of the material, but some fantastic editing and animation make each 2-4 minute video segment a whole new, fun format. The debut Work Smart video segment takes on the age old digital productivity problem: email overload.
In this 2 minute, 45 second segment, I describe my three-folder system for emptying your email inbox on a day-to-day basis, and keeping on top of everything you have to do, are waiting for, or want to keep on hand for reference.
When you have lots of ideas for things to make, how do you choose which projects to actually work on? 
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