Recession Proof Your Job with Web Based Tools

The economy is the story of the year. And although Congress is poised to pass a $700 billion bailout of the banking industry, we're not out of the woods. Many feel that a deep global recession is imminent. This means there will be layoffs - perhaps lots of them. To protect your job, you need to ensure that you are personally accountable and adding value every day.

Social software and web applications, if applied correctly, are sharp arrows in your quiver. They can also become massive distractions. Here are three techniques using web tools that can help you become more personally accountable in your career.

Track Your Browser Time with PageAddict

Time and attention are finite resources that must be harnessed properly if you want to succeed. Nevertheless, this is not simple in the connected age. Given that many of us work in Internet-related fields, it's easy (and some would argue quite valuable) to spend the entire day in your email inbox or on Friendfeed or Twitter. Problem is, you may not accomplish a thing.

Like my friends Paul Stamatiou and Kevin C. Tofel I spend the vast majority of my computing time "in the cloud." This means my browser, Firefox, is used more than any other application. But recently I have started using PageAddict, a free Firefox extension, to collect data on my Internet usage and I have found it invaluable.

PageAddict monitors the sites you visit and logs your time. You can then tag them into categories. All the data is stored locally on your computer. A similar tool that people love is called RescueTime. However, given that I spend a ton of time in my browser I have found PageAddict more than adequate for my needs.

Above is a screenshot from PageAddict that shows where my time was spent over the last two weeks. Email includes my corporate web-mail and GMail. Soc Nets includes Facebook, Friendfeed and Twitter. While docs covers Google Docs, which I use to write, and Google Spreadsheets, which I use for GTD, goals, projects and ideas.

As you can see almost all of my time online is work related. Still I can see that I need to shrink my social network usage a little bit and increase my time with documents, web applications while also keeping RSS contained. I also need to go through the undefined section to see if there are big groups of sites that can be tagged.

Wrangle RSS

Many of us are RSS addicts. ReadWriteWeb recently did a great job showing how blog reading can help you grow in your career. This has certainly has been true for me and it's why I read 568 feeds, tag much of what I unearth there, file it in Gmail and share it liberally.

Still, as great as RSS is, it can eat your time. I have worked over the last couple of years to a) shift most of my reading to the early mornings or evenings when I have time to really ponder the content and b) use RSS as a knowledge management hub for information that others can use, including you, my colleagues and clients.

Google Reader Trends gives you the data you need to track this over time. You can see how many items you have read, what day/time you consume feeds as well as how many items you have shared. It also shows you the feeds you read the most, even via a mobile device - this is something even RescueTime or PageAddict can't track. Analyze the data and make sure it's aligned with your goals. Below is a screenshot from my reader.

Track All Your Time via a Web Calendar or Online Spreadsheet

In my field we all track our time. In some cases this is how we know what to bill clients for our time. In others, it's to ensure that we aren't over-servicing accounts. However, if you don't have to track your time I highly recommend it since it's a great way to ensure that you are focused and delivering value.

I have been using Google Calendar to track my time. I set up a calendar just for this purpose and use it to log when I start/completed a task. Then I transfer this data to our enterprise-wide time tracking tool. What I like about using GCal is that I can search my time or go back to a specific date to see what I did when. I also use bookmarklets to speed up the logging of my time.

As a next step I may move this to Google Spreadsheets or Zoho since I can generate charts to see where my time is being spent. I also want to think about how to synchronize my logs with PageAddict.

Bonus Tip: Create a Motivation Wall with Picasa or Flickr

This tip isn't really about measurement, but it's a little web app hack that I use to motivate myself. Using Picasa Web Albums I set up a private album called "The Motivation Wall." On the wall I collect images of people - some living, some dead - who achieved greatness. I try to hit this site every so often because I know it will inspire me to do the same.

In the screenshot above you will find some of my heroes - Michael Jordan taking the final shot to seal victory in the 1998 NBA Finals, Michael Phelps winning his seventh gold by a hundredth of a second and Ben Franklin (a tinkerer like me) discovering electricity.

Additional links of note...


23 Personal Tools to Learn More About Yourself


Bytes of Life : For Every Move, Mood and Bodily Function, There's a Web Site to Help You Keep Track

Comments

[Blake Perdue]

Great post, although I wonder how much overhead you're adding by logging activities into Gcal. As great as these suggestions are for tracking how you spend your time, I am not sure these are enough to save people their jobs if the economy really does sour.

PS - Nice shoutout to Stammy.

[par7133]

We could underline the [TWITTER] role, bringing away [NEWS] and [BLOGS] .....

[Debbie Weil]

Steve,

This is interesting (and useful). Two questions:

1. I just downloaded Page Addict and realize I need to spend a fair amount of time categorizing/tagging where I'm going online. Is this correct? Did you do the tagging *after* you'd used PageAddict for several days -- or before?

2. Tell us more specifically how you're using Google Calendar to track your time spent on projects. Do you keep it open and set up an event with a "start" time... and then remember to enter the "end" time? Or is it something cleverer. Do tell!

[Montana Low]

Nice point about the importance of personal efficiency while the market itself becomes more efficient.

Quick question: Why do you spend the time doing all that manual calendar entry + tagging + charting, when you get complete time tracking, with apps and sites automatically categorized, and all the data plotted and graphed using a service like RescueTime?

[Time Tracker]

Great post Steve! Not sure any of these would actually retain a job in a soured economy, but you bring up the good point of being personally accountable and adding value everyday. Obviously, a great way to do this is to keep track of your daily activities and look for ways to improve. Another alternative to using GCal to track your time would be our simple yet powerful time tracking device at TSheets.com. Logging time couldn't be simpler that a click, and with a wide variety of mobile functions, there's no excuse to not be tracking your time. Our reporting features match all those described above as well, and applies to multiple users. Not only can you be on top of your own time, but any one else that you may have linked to your account.

[Robin Capper]

I'm using combination of app's to create project/task & time records. Once you've built a bit of history it becomes a very useful tool to figure out what you do, what's important or not. Especially if you have a demand driven multi-task role.

Not sure what benefit doing it on-line would be unless working from multiple locations/hardware?

MindManager (Project Tasks) + Outlook (Tasks to Time) and analyse with Excelhttp://rcd.typepad.com/rcd/mindmanaging-your-day-ind.html

[Steve Rubel]

@Debbie

Re PageAddict, once I started to see patterns of sites that's when I grouped them tags. I believe if you add the tags later on, it will move all of your archived data as well.

Re. Google Calendar I keep it open all the time and then basically block out when I started/completed a project as you say. Then at the end of the week I search for all of the time labeled that way and log it in our enterprise system.

@Montana RescueTime won't tell me when I spent time on client A vs. client B. That requires my own input

[Josiah]

I like your idea of creating an online motivational wall for inspiration. I'm in the process of creating an offline version with real pictures, but the web version sounds good also.

And thanks for sharing the pageaddict extension link. I'm going to install it now...

[Ted Murphy]

568 feeds? Yikes, i'm a newbie. I searched your site (nice use of Google custom search functionality, btw), and came across this reference to Google being your preferred reader:

http://www.micropersuasion.com/2007/09/how-to-data-min.html

Anything new you'd like pass on regarding RSS best practices?

[Steve Furman]

Steve,Really great suggestions for anyone, and your timing is perfect. Wondering how to take it to the next level. Tie-in the magic quadrant of employers needs/offers and employees needs/offers. That exchange seems to be so much in play these days. Do you think that employees who are active and effective in the social space will be valued at a premium by employers? Thanks for your insights. Am following your Tweets.Steve Furman

[Rick]

Tracking what you're doing doesn't mean you're doing the right things, or that your area of service will remain relevant and valuable.

It's been my observation that people who enjoy benchmarking default to this behavior when they really don't know what to do. ;)

[Dumb you are (yoda)]

You are dumb.

[Nick Stamoulis]

Great idea! I've never heard of that tool and would be interested in using it. It's a shame they don't have it compatible with other browsers.

[Jeff Yablon]

Nice article (yes, seriously), but... how does it fit its title?

Jeff YablonPresident & CEOVirtual VIP

[Kyle Austin]

Thanks for this. You’re onto something with looking further into Personal Knowledge Management and now this latest post. Tools that will help us effectively use and mine all these new digital tools (and the data they bring us) are going to be crucial moving forward....

[Murray]

For time tracking, I'd suggest dumping google calendar and looking at slimtimer/bubbles - it's great!