Trippin’ with TripIt

A while back, my friend Phil Gerbyshak (aka. The Make It Great guy) suggested I check out a travel site  called TripIt.  The service allows you to “connect” with people you trust and share travel itineraries.  At the time, I was busy and wasn’t too sure about the idea of yet another social networking kind of thing.

In December, the siren’s call of TripIt pulled me in and I started using it. I’m now hooked.

So – what does TripIt do?  I’m greatly simplifying the power of TripIt, but I think of it as a database that tracks two things about you:  Where you are (or will be), and what you’re doing (or planning to do) while you’re traveling.  It compares your trips to those of other people you’re connected to (more on that in a minute) and lets you know when you’ll be near someone you know.  That makes it simple to plan ahead and arrange a get-together if you so desire.

Let me tell you a bit about how it works…

Getting your trips in

Letting TripIt know where you’ll be couldn’t be much simpler.  You have two choices:

1. (the easiest) Forward a copy of your travel itinerary (or confirmation email) to plans@tripit.com.  They’ll process it and automagically add the trip to your account (they know who you are because you associate one or more email addresses with your account).
2. (only slightly more difficult) Go to the TripIt site and click one of the “Add Trip” buttons.  You then manually provide a few pieces of information about your trip and it will be added to your account.

Pretty simple.  And if you have an oddly formatted itinerary that it can’t handle, you get an email notifying you there was a problem.

Making connections

TripIt is strictly an “opt in” kind of service.  You need to invite others (or be invited by them) to connect and give permission to share trip information.   TripIt makes things easy here, too.  You can invite people manually, use their “find people using TripIt” wizard, or use TripIt’s application in LinkedIn (I’ve used a combination of all three).

TripIt analyzes all of trips you and your connections will be taking, which enables some cool things:

• You are notified when friends are planning to visit your hometown (including telling you whether you’ll be in town that day or not)
• You get a dashboard of what upcoming trips are happening the next few weeks in your network, which allows you to recommend things for them to do while traveling
• You automatically create a history of your travel including a running total of your miles traveled
• You get a pre-trip reminder that your trip is about to start, along with average temperatures for your destination
• and more…

Oh, and TripIt is free.

My verdict

I like TripIt much more than I ever expected to.  I’ve already made some connections I wouldn’t have otherwise made during my travels even though I’ve only been using the service for about 2 months.  The two things that really made it easy for me are the ability to email itineraries for processing (that makes it so easy to use TripIt), and the integration with LinkedIn (one of the few social networks I use consistently).  Simplicity is key.

If you travel quite a bit (or know people who do – remember, it will tell you when they come to your town) I recommend you give TripIt a try.

Click to read more ...

Laugh to death by PowerPoint

I’m always on the lookout for ways to make PowerPoint more interesting.  In the past, that’s been things like using “Beyond Bullet Points” and whatnot.  Here’s another idea:  be funny.

I stumbled across the YouTube channel of a comedian named Tim Lee, who uses PowerPoint in his act – and he is very good! Check out the video below (or use this link).  If you like it, be sure and subscribe to Tim Lee’s YouTube channel.  Enjoy!

---

Related items:

• Beyond Bullet Points review
• Presentation pet peeves

Click to read more ...

Learning styles – awesome interview

In my last post, I talked about David Allen’s latest book, “Making It All Work.”  One thing I didn’t mention is that I’m a charter member of David’s “GTD Connect” program, which provides access to a lot more information, resources, and other “stuff” to help GTD users.

One of the deliverables in the GTD Connect program is an ongoing series of interviews with various people.  The latest was an interview with a guy named Frank Sopper who specializes in learning styles. Normally, these interviews are inside GTD Connect’s gated community but I was so intrigued with this latest interview I went looking for a way to share it with you.

I’m happy to report that Frank Sopper has a public link to the interview on his company’s web site.

If you’ve ever been accused of being OCD or ADD,  this is a must-listen.  For everyone else, it’s just a good idea.

Click to read more ...

David Allen: Making It All Work

As you may know from my past writing here, I have been a follower of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD)  methodology for many years.  It’s been a cycle of awesome productivity, interspersed with frustration and thrash.  Why?  I tend to get bored with repetition and systems, even when I see their value and GTD has been no different.  Well, to be fair, it’s been a bit different because I’ve noticed that I am able to stick with GTD much longer than many other processes.  But it’s still a bit of a struggle.

The promise of a book

When I heard about David Allen’s new book, “Making It All Work,” I preordered my copy pretty early.  I was intrigued by its premise (promise?):

“Making It All Work” addresses: How to figure out where you are in life and what you need; How to be your own consultant and the CEO of your life; Moving from hope to trust in decision-making; When not to set goals; Harnessing intuition,spontaneity, and serendipity; And why life is like business and business is like life.

So, now I’ve read the book – did it deliver?

First, this book is not a substitute for the original.  It’s more like a sequel, building on the solid foundation of GTD and extending it with some of the lessons and new perspectives David has learned since his methodology has become a phenomenon.

If you have read the first book, you’ll find some useful thought in this book from David himself, some of which may help clear any stumbling blocks you’ve encountered in your adoption of GTD.

Some of the things I picked up in this book are simply shifts in perspective – like thinking of your lists and notes as “bookmarks” to help you go back to where you were later.  I don’t do anything differently, but I find I’m more likely to “bookmark” with my lists now, and I often treat the bookmarks more like pointers than dissertations (and pointers are quicker, also making it more likely I will do this).

I was pleased to find that there are some new topics and methods in this book.  For example, the section dealing with Capturing has been expanded to include quite a bit of detail on brainstorming, processing, and clarification of what you’ve captured.  This section includes quite a collection of best practices.

A clearer map

David also includes quite a few mind maps that helped me, due to my visual thinking tendencies. There are maps showing how to make more effective lists, become more output-focused in your thinking, better cope with projects and reference materials, and quite a few other areas that often felt mysterious to me during my GTD journey.

There is also some solid material about weekly reviews (which I knew about but certainly haven’t perfected).

All of this converges in the book with the goal of helping you become better at managing your life by becoming better at GTD.  Of course, a book can’t provision good habits and consistent practice.  That’s the tough part.  And that’s where my trouble lives, I realize.

If you’re committed to GTD, you’ll get a lot out of “Making It All Work.”  If you’re new to GTD start with the first GTD book, then pick this one up after you have the basics down.

Cracking The Leadership Code

I just finished reading “The Leadership Code: Five Rules to Lead By,” from Harvard Business Press. In my experience reading these Harvard Business Press books can be hit-or-miss, since some of them can seem a bit dry and theoretical.  For me, The Leadership Code was definitely a hit.

Find the winning formula

The book set out to objectively determine:

1. What percent of effective leadership is basically the same? Are there some common rules that any leader anywhere must master? Is there a recognizable leadership code?
2. If there are common rules that all leaders must master, what are they?

The authors benchmarked a number of high performers and figured out the answers to these questions and collected some fantastic best practices along the way.

Five rules for leaders

There are five “rules” presented in the book, each accompanied by a set of diagnostic tools to help you determine where you and your organization are in relation to the high performers in the study.  Some of the tools focus on your strengths and weaknesses as a leader, while others focus on how functional or dysfunctional your organization may be.

The rules are:

• Rule 1: Shape the Future
• Rule 2: Make Things Happen
• Rule 3: Engage Today’s Talent
• Rule 4: Build the Next Generation
• Rule 5: Invest in Yourself

At this point you may be thinking, “What? Those rules don’t don’t seem very exciting.” 

But don’t let these descriptions fool you – The authors present compelling content about accountability, goal setting, true leadership, staff development, dealing with conflict & alignment, and strengthening your own individual skills.

Some things to think about, and some things to do

Each of the rules is discussed in detail, beginning with the findings from the study and a summary of the key capabilities effective leaders demonstrate for that rule.  After a discussion of the findings, the authors typically move into guidance on how to figure out where your gaps are in relation to the ideals.

For example, there is a “Leadership code self assessment” test to help you figure out your relative strengths and weaknesses in 5 critical areas, which map to the 5 Rules:

1. Strategist
2. Executor
3. Talent Manger
4. Human Capital Developer
5. Personal Proficiency

When you take the assessment, you’ll find you have strengths and weaknesses.  The authors found that effective leaders never scored below average on their weaker disciplines.

After you determine your strengths and weaknesses, how do you exploit your strengths and improve your weaknesses to at least average?  Good news:  the authors do a masterful job of providing practical, actionable advice for each rule.  I think the reason the advice rang true was because much of it comes in the form of stories from the high performers, who provide details on how they tackled shortfalls in each of the areas (including some war stories about when things didn’t go very well. 

The stories from the high performers made the rules feel “real” and helped me understand how these best practices can be applied in the real world.

Crack the Leadership Code

One important message I took away from this is that there are repeatable best practices that can help improve your leadership in any organization.  In other words, if you aspire to become a great leader, there is hope.

The other thing I noted is that the best practices were very congruent with some of the values-based leadership books that have made such an impact on me, like Managing With Aloha, and books I feature in the book list in the left sidebar of my blog.

In short, I highly recommend The Leadership Code.  If you want to find out more, the authors have also provided some resources (free and fee) at their book site.

Click to read more ...

Twitter: What’s the deal?

Over the past month or so, I’ve found my sea legs on Twitter.  I went from thinking it was a goofy fountain of randomness to something that is actually helping me increase my “reach” in interacting with the world (both sharing what I’ve found and learning from more people).

Want to know more about Twitter?  Here is a great video that describes how it works (this is from an awesome series of videos from commoncraft – check it out).  If you don’t see the embedded video, you can go there with this link.

If you want to ‘follow’ me on Twitter, you can do so by going to my Twitter page and clicking the “Follow” button.  You’ll need to sign up if you don’t already belong to this crazy thing.

You can also just lurk (i.e. watch without participating), both on my Twitter page or by watching the Twitter widget in the right-hand navigation bar on my blog.

Click to read more ...