Lindsay Olson » Productivity

Interesting links: November 20-26

Lindsay — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 20:25:23 +0000

Interesting links for the long weekend reading... Happy Thanksgiving and enjoy!

Career

Business

Not paying dues for Generation Y

Lindsay — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 15:44:26 +0000

In this video, Penelope Trunk talks about the "not paying dues" mentality of the new generations entering the workforce.

Penelope's points:

People want to do meaningful work - not just the new generation entering the workforce, but everybody. Don't tell Gen Y's a crappy job is a good job, just be upfront with them and make some compromises like giving them mentoring for some of the grunt work they'll have to do (what other generations consider is paying dues).

Flexibility. Don't expect them to work from 9-5. Manage by results.

Productivity. Time management is a subject they are very well versed in and many operate in a mode of productivity that other generations don't get. Penelope talks about the most read blogs by Gen Y are those about personal productivity. It's all about David Allen and his book "Getting Things Done." Just because they can listen to their Ipod and instant message at work doesn't mean they're not productive.

Do you agree? What is your company doing to make a Gen Y friendly workplace?

Tweet what you spend

Lindsay — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 11:01:27 +0000

In Argentina, I don't have the luxury of paying by debit card for everything. More often than not, I need cash for a majority of my daily transactions. For the financially organized, tracking cash spending is a chore. It implies I'll waste a lot of precious time waiting for the vendor to write out a receipt and then trying to read the illegible handwriting to manually enter it into my personal finance tracking system when I discover it again. Forget trying to get my husband to do this too!

On my quest to improve productivity (and sanity), I stumbled upon this recent post on Lifehacker about a Tweet What You Spend. Rescued!

You can register a new Twitter account (make it private) and then you follow Tweet What You Spend, it follows you back and you complete the registration process. After registration, you track your spending through Tweets. With your mobile phone at the point of purchase, you use your Twitter account to sent the details of your purchase and the service uploads it to your cash journal to be categorized and later imported into whatever personal finance software you use.

Here is the quick tutorial video to get you set up.