Monday Morning Motivation: Hacking Realtime

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Trying something new here, Monday Morning Motivation posts, designed to get you up and working on stuff you’ve probably been putting off forever.

Today: The concept of “Hacking Real-time,” to dump stuff off your plate before it even comes onto your plate. What follows are a bunch of hacks, either virtual or otherwise, that I use daily to help keep stuff from ever landing of my “I really need to get this done” plate.

1) Business cards: Business cards are the bane of our existence, as we get tons and tons, and if we don’t file them right away, they multiply and take over our desks, drawers, and filing cabinets. Enter Yolucard – The second I get a card (or right after a speech, if I get tons of them,) I take three minutes and photograph them all with YoluCard. The next day, after they’ve all been recognized and OCR’d through the cloud, I come back and import them all into my contact management software. In this case, Google. The OCR is amazing, It’s messed up like, one card in a thousand. It’s a great, great tool. Bonus: Each import is tagged in Google Apps with the date, so I can send follow-ups that are much more personalized.

2) How do I remember to send those followups? How do I remember where I parked at the airport? Or my hotel room? FollowupThen. One of the greatest finds ever, FollowupThen is a simple, yet incredibly useful tool. I simply send an email to any point in the future – [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], you name it. Then, at the assigned time, I get an email back with what I told it. Simple, effective, and so easy.

3) Your daily walk, whether through airports, malls, or simply supermarkets,, while healthier than using a Rascal, isn’t as healthy as you think. Two things to do here: 1) Get RunKeeper, and whenever you’re walking, track it. You can do this with tons of other apps or devices, too, but I like that RunKeeper keeps everything in one place for me – every exercise I do, and it connects seamlessly with WiThings. But I digress. Turn it on when you get to the airport, shut it off when you leave. Make it a game, and the miles add up.

The second thing that I do is treat everything as a potential workout. I was on a Tram at the Vegas airport headed to the “D” concourse the other day. Simplest thing in the world? I leaned up against the wall and sunk down into a “sitting” position, without anything to sit on, and tried to hold it for the entire tram ride. Boom – 50 second “sitting plank.” Got escalators and stairs? Take the stairs, and use your luggage as extra weight. hold it in both hands, and climb. It’s the simple modern conveniences that contribute to us getting fat. Lose some of them, life gets healthier.

4) Now that TimeHop has finally made an Android version, I’ve started using it again (even though I still prefer the email version that they stupidly killed.) But what I do with it is this: When I have ten minutes, I I go through my previous years, and email the people I connected with to say hi and remind them of what we did. It’s a great way to strengthen your network, while keeping reach-outs free of self-promotion.

5) Finally, I always keep a copy of Docusign, LastPass, Evernote, and DropBox on every device and machine I use. Of course, two-step authentication is turned on with all of them. But ever shoot a video on your phone then can’t email it because it’s too big? Send it to DropBox, and send the link to friends! Easiest hack ever!

Bonus hack: When you’re somewhere without cell service – underground, subway, snooty restaurant, etc… Take that time to pull your battery and restart your phone. Doing so frees up anywhere from 5% to 90% of RAM, and speeds up your phone tremendously. I try to do a batter pull about once a day, if I can.

Tell me your best Monday Morning Motivation hack – I’ll have Meagan pick the best one, and we’ll send you some ScotteVest swag!

Join the discussion One Comment

  • Sharon Thomson says:

    Make a to do list, identify urgent vs. important, schedule it into your calendar, organize yourself by using online tool like ProofHub And get everything in order before Monday

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