On Thursday at TiER1 we hosted a roundtable discussion with some of our clients on the topic of personal knowledge management. Recognizing that everyone faces the growing challenge of being as informed as possible with a seemingly unlimited amount of information prompted us to host this event. We were interested in learning and sharing tips, tools, or methods that people use to manage their personal knowledge base. From email, work tasks, and news to social networking and sports, the group had many great insights to share. In the spirit of learning and sharing, we wanted to pass on those insights by posting them here.
One thing the group found particularly helpful were personal Internet portals. These personal home pages will automatically aggregate and update information you’re interested in all in one place. A portal may include a snapshot of your inbox, news feeds, recent entries from blogs you follow, weather outlook for one or several cities, a calendar, sports, and more. Instead of browsing multiple sites, you save time by seeing what’s important to you consolidated in your portal. Following are examples of these portals:
Along the lines of information, it can be tough to find new things worth your time in the vast sea of the Internet. Social bookmarking sites are tools that can help you discover what other people are looking at online. They also enable you to share, with either the world or just your friends, what’s caught your eye on the web lately. Discovering, sharing, and commenting on sites or articles through these tools can make your online experience more relevant and interactive. Try these sites out to discover new things and share what you find:
While not a social bookmarking site, Google Reader is similar in that it will allow you to share what you’re reading, see what other people are reading, and even leave comments. It’s also similar to a portal in that it aggregates websites, but it’s intended more for reading articles and blogs than displaying weather and other information. Check it out here: http://www.google.com/reader.
Finally, our roundtable group had some personal productivity tips:
- Organize and tackle your day based on the things you need to get done. Sounds simple enough, right? But how many times have you found yourself working on the latest thing in your inbox or distracted by a phone call? Begin your day by prioritizing the tasks at hand and then stay focused; don’t let the daily distractions derail you.
- Be cognizant of when you tend to be most productive during the day (in the morning, after you workout, etc.). Once you’ve found your zone, try to block it off and make that your dedicated work time for priority tasks.
- Now that you know what to work on and when, minimize disruptions. Some of our roundtable participants mentioned logging out of IM, turning off email notifications, and silencing their phones.
If you’ve got some tips or tools of your own to share, we’d love to hear them.
Nice summary John. The round-table was helpful to me. Afterward I played around with the google/reader a bit more. Thanks for the opportunity to participate.
Thanks so much for a great discussion. Its on my list of “to do” to create groups in Facebook!
I saw a report online this AM that I thought was particularly intersting after our converation….
Lightspeed research did a survey about who we trust in making buying decisions and this is what they say…..”As the web has expanded our social graph with networks of connections and associations, we’ve responded by expanding the universe of people that we trust. The fourth most-trusted source in the Lightspeed study was “A good contact on a social network,” ranking equal to neighbors.
Bloggers ranked more highly than traditional journalists and at the same level as a store assistant.