[zephyrracer]

Keith I feel your pain, cell phone calls and emails can easily eat up 3 hours a day, having had this problem one of my solutions was to have walking meetings daily, we would hold emails and cell calls and discuss issues at the time of our walks it also spurred ideas and solutions, this saved a great deal of time with duplicate question and answers, discussions started out with bullet points schedule concerns and everything else, result was 20 minutes a day verses 3 hours a day, some other areas helped in the process was it gave team members a hands on and visual prospective, answered questions before they were asked and my favorite we became visual to all creating a stronger team collectively. Your deal is surly different, hope this helps a little.


Quick story at a family reunion at Boyett's in TN walked in place was crowded everyone looking down into their laps being the bible belt I thought all were saying a prayer before the meal as I walked through to my table I started to laugh at myself as they were all playing with their blk berries. People are in the communication mode as they think they type even as they sit next to each other.


Happy Holidays Gregg Blakemore

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by zephyrracer

having had this problem one of my solutions was to have walking meetings daily, we would hold emails and cell calls and discuss issues at the time of our walks

Years ago I worked for a semiconductor manufacturer. Someone in management noticed how much time was being wasted on meetings, so they took all the chairs out of the conference rooms. The number (and length) of meetings went WAY down after that.

[Deadhead]

I struggle with the calendar and managing tasks since mine all pop up at random. I basically use my phone as a note pad, which is treacherous as I have found out through losses, but I have one nugget to offer.

When I was in my 20s I worked in a busy law office. One of the old Attys I worked for had very successful ways of dealing with all of it. One element may still apply - he saved all his calls until the PM, usually the LATE PM. He made all of them at one time every day. Only scheduled or emergency calls got through beyond that. It shortens them when you know you have a stack of them to get through.