How to be productive for the whole team

How to be productive for the whole team

We talked recently about Oliver Burkeman‘s fantastic article “Why time management is ruining our lives,” and specifically about how “Inbox Zero” creator Merlin Mann is an inspiration when it comes to recognizing the work-life boundaries essential to true productivity. Rereading the article today, one passage in particular stood out to me: “[Productivity expert Tom] DeMarco points out that any increase in efficiency, in an organisation or an individual life, necessitates a trade-off: you get rid of unused expanses of time, but you also get rid of the benefits of that extra time. A visit to your family doctor provides an obvious example.… Continue reading How to be productive for the whole team

Email Tips from the Pros: CEO Secrets to Managing Your Email

Last week we shared a great article from Business Insider Singapore: “The email habits of Tim Cook, Bill Gates, and 16 other successful people”. It features a nice spread of founders and CEOs and gives some helpful insights into how these very busy people manage their email. The whole thing is worth a read, but here are a few Timyo-pertinent highlights: Jeff Weiner “sends less email to receive less email”. The LinkedIn CEO noticed that his inbox was becoming overwhelmed. According to the article: ‘Turns out, it wasn’t just [my colleagues’] emails that were generating all of that inbox activity—it… Continue reading Email Tips from the Pros: CEO Secrets to Managing Your Email

Founder Interview: How Timyo Helps You Manage Your Team

Founder Interview: How Timyo Helps You Manage Your Team

One of the key aspects of Timyo is how much it can improve communication within a company. To get the manager’s-eye-view on how Timyo changes things, I sat down the other day with our very own manager, Timyo’s founder, Fabrice Dumans, and asked him a few questions about working with Timyo within his own team. Chris: Fabrice, I know you came up with the idea that would become Timyo based on your own experiences as a manager. Can you talk a little bit more about Timyo’s genesis? Fabrice: Sure! As an executive at tech company, I was managing hundreds of… Continue reading Founder Interview: How Timyo Helps You Manage Your Team

Learning from Google Teams

From Google’s re:Work blog comes the fantastic post “The five keys to a successful Google team”. As People Analytics Manager Julia Rozovsky explains: A group of us in Google’s People Operations (what we call HR) set out to answer this question using data and rigorous analysis: What makes a Google team effective? […] Over two years we conducted 200+ interviews with Googlers (our employees) and looked at more than 250 attributes of 180+ active Google teams. (New York Times Magazine has a much longer and thorough article about that process here.) The main takeaway: Who is on a team matters less than… Continue reading Learning from Google Teams

How Timyo Helps You Lead Your Team

Last week we shared a great Forbes article called “6 Ways Successful Teams are Built to Last.” There’s some good stuff in here, and it’s worth reading in full (it’s also a quick read, which is nice), but I wanted to pull out a couple of things and talk about how Timyo fits so well into these leadership strategies. 1. Team Building Isn’t Just Trust Falls and Company Karaoke. “Building companies requires the know-how to build long-lasting teams.” Author Glen Llopis is absolutely right to put team-building front and center when it comes to a company’s success. The phrase “team-building”… Continue reading How Timyo Helps You Lead Your Team

8 Great Tips to Improve Team Productivity: Part II

“The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” —Phil Jackson Last week, we started our look at some great tips from recent articles about team productivity. Here are the final four: 5. Clear Expectations are Key. From Time Management Ninja we have “9 Ways for Bosses to Boost Their Team Productivity”, which includes the following helpful insight: “Communication is one of the tops things that bogs down team productivity. Set clear expectations around how the team should communicate. This should cover everyday communications, as well as status updates.” By helping to… Continue reading 8 Great Tips to Improve Team Productivity: Part II

8 Great Tips to Improve Team Productivity Part 1

8 Great Tips to Improve Team Productivity

“Talent wins games, but teamwork wins championships.” —Michael Jordan Over the past few weeks, we’ve been sharing some interesting articles focusing on teams and team productivity. They’re all well worth reading in their entirety; meanwhile, in this two-part post, I’ll be pointing out a a few highlights: 1. Humans are built for teamwork. Science of People has a thorough article about “The Science of Teams” that is well worth reading. They point out that humans are literally designed for teamwork—we have evolved as “prosocial” animals. As the article puts it: “Humans are wired to cooperate. So much so that we… Continue reading 8 Great Tips to Improve Team Productivity

getting things done with timyo

Getting Things Done with Timyo

At Timyo, we are big fans of David Allen‘s book Getting Things Done, and the time-management system that it outlines. So it’s no accident that Timyo aligns so well with the “Four D’s” of Getting Things Done: Do It. Defer It. Delegate It. Delete It. In case you aren’t familiar with the Getting Things Done approach, it basically boils down to the idea that so many of the vague stresses in our lives are stressful precisely because they are vague—our brains are full of nebulous, free-floating anxiety that stresses us out unnecessarily. By simply enumerating what all of those stressors… Continue reading Getting Things Done with Timyo

productivity tips from around the web part 2

Best of the Best: Top 10 Productivity Tips from Around the Web (Part II)

….Aaaaand we’re back! Last week, we began a quick look at 10 of the best productivity tips from around the web. Today, we’re following up with our top five picks! Enjoy, and happy…productivitying? No. Happy producing? That sounds weird. Let’s just go with: Enjoy! 5. Boring is Best. Again from Chris Bailey, we have a reminder that for all of the great productivity advice out there, the best advice is also the oldest, and probably the same thing you’ve been told since you were a little kid: Eat well, exercise, and get enough sleep. As Bailey puts it: “[A]s someone who… Continue reading Best of the Best: Top 10 Productivity Tips from Around the Web (Part II)

“Your Brain on Email”: A Psychologist Reveals How Email Affects You

We’ve talked a little bit about the psychological impact of email here at Timyo before, but I wanted to recommend a great article at the Huffington Post by real psychologist Dr. Emma Seppälä, who is the Associate Director at the Stanford University Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (which has got to be one of the coolest job titles ever). The whole article is well worth a read, but a few key takeaways: 1. Not just quantity, but variety counts. When it comes to stress, it isn’t just the quantity of stressors that reach us through our inbox,… Continue reading “Your Brain on Email”: A Psychologist Reveals How Email Affects You