« FreeiPods.com, ResponderInfo, and the Online Lead Generation Business | Main | Technology Quarterly »
Latest Stories
- Excel Wankers and Recession Averages
- Sorry, New York is Closed. Check Back Later.
- Catching Falling 2009 Earnings Estimate Knife
- Survivorship Bias in Global Markets
- Talking Positions on a Lazy-ish Retirement Portfolio
March 12, 2006
How I Work
The current Fortune magazine contains a series of short interviews with an electic list of people ranging from Starbucks' Howard Schultz, to jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, to Judge Richard Posner, asking them all "how they work". Fascinating stuff.Some highlights: Howard Schultz thinks email is a crutch, Posner can write 20-30 pages of text in an evening, Google's Marissa Mayer uses Pine as her main email app, and portfolio manager Bill Gross doesn't use email (much) and is rarely on the phone.
Sphere It
| 
Digg it
| 
Bookmark it
| 
Stumble it
| 
Facebook it
Interesting, also, that email usage seems to be bimodal. The interviewees claimed to be either email addicts (Marissa Mayer: "I'll just sit down and do e-mail for ten to 14 hours straight.") or email skeptics. The majority seems to trend toward the skeptical side, but it isn't entirely clear if the trend is based on personal preferences or on genuine issues with email as a business tool.
If there's a formula, it seems to be: wake up early, manage interrupts effectively, make lots of room for face time, and don't forget to exercise.
Adam -- Right, that's more or less the formula I extracted. Granted, correlation isn't causality -- there may be lots of ineffective sorts who also wake up early, manage interrupts effectively, make lots of room for face time, and exercise -- but it sure seems like a reasonable place to start.
Amazing how they balance real world, digital world and home life (do they have one?)
the other extreme is a recent BusinessWeek article which says a sizable portion of our population want nothing to do with the digital life...
"Of the survey respondents who say they don't use the Web, 24% make more than $50,000. Some 39% of the Netphobes attended or graduated college or have at least some associate degree training. And 29% are 44 years old or younger."
different strokes...