Time tracking blog

Think about your daily routine for a second.  Chances are it involves the obligatory email check with the morning coffee, either handheld or laptop.  A ride on the subway or train might be your chance to catch up with last night’s tweets, facebook messages, or answering some of those incoming emails.  First thing in the office requires a wake up (or boot) of your daily tool of productivity: that silicon chip based metal or plastic box containing most of tools you need to get the job done, aka your computer.  Your day will most likely progress in the same manner, and when the network goes down, the first response is to flip the switch on the 3G-network function, and merrily carry on your way.

Now imagine every single one of those tools is ripped out of your hands, all in the name of National Security.  That’s exactly what may or may not be happening to President Obama when he takes the reins full time today.

The story comes from Jeff Zeleny’s coverage of Obama having to part with his dearly beloved Blackberry in last November’s NY Times.  Some quotes from the article that REALLY raised a couple eyebrows included:

For all the pre-requisites and power afforded the President, the chief executive of the United States is essentially deprived by law and by culture of some of the very tools that other chief executives depend on to survive and to thrive.

Aides said he [Obama] hopes to have a laptop computer on his desk in the Oval Office, making him the first American President to do so.

A decision has not been made on whether he [Obama] could become the first e-mailing President, but aides said that seemed doubtful.

There are a number of ways these arguments are flawed, and I’m quite convinced that Mr. Zeleny did an excellent job in the journalism department, I’m not so sure about the National Security Administration.  Let’s take a look at a statement Mr. Bush made just before taking office in 2000:

“Since I do not want my private conversations looked at by those out to embarrass, the only course of action is not to correspond in cyberspace. This saddens me. I have enjoyed conversing with each of you.”

Here, President Bush is indirectly referring to the Presidential Records Act.  Basically, this act states that any and all communications the President (directly) makes should be recorded and available for public viewing.  Fair enough.  But.  There are a few convenient exceptions to the rule in so much as the President has an executive right to delay this information by up to 12 years.  By default, the information is withheld from the public for 5 years.

What we’re seeing here is a literal hand-tying of one of the most important men in the world.  What would happen if every CEO of every Fortune 500 Company were suddenly told that they could no longer use the Internet, email, or mobile device?  Pure outrage, and perhaps a collapse of business as we know it.  So why then cut the man with his finger on the red phone out of the loop?

I honestly don’t think that Obama is the type of guy who’s going to be emailing classified documents from the East Wing to his buddies in Chicago at 3 a.m. anytime soon.  And even if he does, Google’s beer goggle feature might be able to prevent him from doing so.

Ok, so we’re covered on any embarrassing public record conversations coming to the light of day (5+ years after the fact), which inevitably leads us to the security concerns.  There’s no doubt that the President of the United States is a high-risk target to hackers of every variety under the sun.  The presidential computer (AirMacOne?) would be a target for just about every intelligence agency in the world.

But before I shoot myself in the foot with this argument, let me remind you that the CIA, FBI, and each branch of the military regularly use email.  And what’s more, the FBI even has a tendency to lose these computers, and as of 2007, have implemented none of the recommendations made in the 2002 internal audit.  But yet, the man in charge can’t have his own email address and laptop?

The United States Government employs a LOT of smart people.  These smart people know a lot of things about secure environments, both physical and virtual.  All emails to the presidential email address (which in all actuality never reaches the president) and any incoming and outgoing network communications are monitored extremely closely.  Why would it be difficult to create a special presidential task force for the existing system?

And the penultimate statement from the NY Times article:

“The nature of the President’s job is that others can use e-mail for him.”

Whatchutalkin’aboutWillis?  Here’s just another example of an overly sensitive response from an overly critical ‘security community’ with the be all/end all answer of “Don’t use a computer”.  The way I see it, an email is an email, no matter who sends it.  I guess technically, the President would be cleared of all guilt and association if he did not physically send the email, but still, are we really cultivating a system of @$$ covering?  This hearkens back to the days of secretaries where Peggy Olsen was responsible for getting Don Drapers coffee, answering his phone, and typing his correspondence.  The Oval Office is rapidly growing out of the touch with the country it’s designed to serve.

So in essence what we’ve got is THE CEO of all CEO’s that’s going to be forced to work with 19th century tools in a 21st century age.  Imagine your only source of information came second hand from advisers.  Would you still be doing as good a job as you’re doing now with the world readily available at your fingertips?  How would you be able to see the big picture in an unbiased way?

If the President of the United States of America is truly a figure that many turn their eyes and ears to in times of need or otherwise, why then are we strapping the blindfold on, and sticking the earplugs in?

Photo and Quotes from the NY Times

Related articles:

• Missing White House E-Mails Traced, Justice Aide Says

I don’t have any kids, but I have friends that do.  Being the good guy that I am, I reluctantly agreed to that ‘Hey, can you watch Jessica tomorrow night?’ question that pretty much every childless friend is bound to encounter at one point or another.

After piling stuffed animals, phone numbers, and a few books into my arms, Katja and Mike were off for a night of merriment, while I was at home with a 4 year old.  Naturally, my first reaction was ‘How the heck do I keep a 4 year old entertained until she passes out’?  As it turns out, 4 year old girls aren’t that interested in basic movement and combat controls of a level 72 Tauren Shaman, which left me with those books.

Hmmm…what’ve we got here?  Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Little Engine That Could, and Snow White.

Take a knee little Jessica, Uncle Dan is about to unleash a whole load of productivity life lessons that you’ll thank me for later down the road.

To be fair, it didn’t start off like this, but about three-quarters of the way through Goldilocks, a lesson in productivity started to form in the back of my mind.  It seems like I’m not the only one who’s had this revelation as well, Hunter Nuttal at Pickthebrain.org wrote an excellent article about Goldilocks and Productivity back in October.

To summarize Hunter’s article, Goldilocks and the Three Bears represents an example of an economic concept known as maximum sustainable output.  This is a concept that measures a country’s (or individuals) highest level of output over a sustained period of time.  The Bear’s porridges represent 3 different phases of productivity output.  The ‘too hot’ porridge can be seen as kicking your personal productivity into overdrive, eventually causing a ‘crash and burn’.  The ‘too cold’ porridge can represent underperformance, or doing less than you’re capable of.  And the ‘just right’ porridge can be seen as the perfect medium – representing maximum sustainable output.

After an encore of ‘again, again, again’ (this girl is destined for CEO level work), we moved on to The Little Engine That Could’ (coincidentally also mentioned by a commenter on Hunter’s article).

‘The Little Engine That Could’ has to be the genesis of the ‘Positive Mental Attitude’ school of thought.  Generally when I’m reminded of PMA, I usually respond with a ‘Yeah, I got your PMA right here buddy’, but after reading this story to a four year old, I’m starting to rethink this theory.  If you’ll recall, the Little Engine was faced with a challenge that even the larger Engines in the trainyard either refused, or didn’t even attempt.  With the assistance of a PMA, this little Engine overcame an insurmountable obstacle.

Jessica ended up falling asleep somewhere around page three of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’, so sadly I wasn’t able to impart the words of social responsibility and word ethics hidden in ‘Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work I go’, but we can save that lesson for the next visit with Uncle Dan.

Lessons learned:  Always seek to obtain that ‘just right’ level of your maximum sustainable output, Think you can – Think you can – Think you can, and wait until at least age six before starting ‘em on WoW.

As far as business blogs and productivity tools go, there are a great number of them that, well frankly, bore the pants off of me.  Sure there’s Lifehacker which is always a guaranteed smile, but for the most part, lots and lots of business bloggers tend to grab a bunch of statistics and/or other data, run it through the ‘What would my big fancy diploma on the wall say about this’ filter, and generally spit out material that’s about as exciting to read as sniffing glue.  Wait…sniffing glue might be more entertaining.

Thank heavens for Merlin.  Merlin Mann that is.  If you’re not already familiar with Merlin and his 43 folders blog, do yourself a favor.  Merlin’s recently posted an update to slideshow/presentation that he debuted back in January at Macworld.  While I only caught bits and pieces of it through the grapevine, Merlin’s done a whole lotta work on this one, and revamped a number of topics and material.

The subject of this talk is ‘Time and Attention’.  He’ll be delivering it….hang on, just got an email.  Brb.  Right.  Where was I?  Oh yeah, Merlin’s going to be talking with the folks over at GoDaddy abou…a sec…phone.  Ummmm.  Oh right…talking to the folks at GoDaddy.com about Inbox Zero and Time and Attention.

Merlin fully admits that the irony of über cool picture slides is that you don’t get the slick audioness of it, so this deck includes some of Merlin’s main talking points.  And if you’ve never seen this guy speak…the subtitles are almost as accurate as a German translation of a French film that was directed by a Mexican director.  In other words…they do only a third of the justice as seeing Mann in person.

Mann’s main focus in this deck is Time and Attention and how to manage both to work in the utmost productive state.  Give it a whirl…tell the boss its ‘research’.

Blackberry buzzing at 4am to report previous days’ sales figures. Review budget and change sales forecast. 6am Breakfast with potential investor. Blaze through 100+ emails. Oh, and don’t forget the ‘Tweets‘ in between. All this and more before 9am. And do they love it? Do they live and breathe it? You bet they do. And how do you get a CEO to unguardedly show their frustration? How do you get the coolest of cool to boil like a 4^th of July lobster pot?

Bring up the topic of “Productivity”.

As the CEO of TSheets, a productivity tool for business leaders, I have set out on a quest to find and interview CEOs on every level to find out what makes them tick, what makes them productive, and what their “secret sauce” is. I am calling this list the “Top 10 Productivity Tools CEO’s use to Manage their Time” From Steve Jobs to the start up CEO in their garage, I want YOU to weigh in.

My goal is to get into the heads of business owners on all levels, from local mom and pop drycleaners to Fortune 500 companies and the best-of-the-best Web 2.0 executives to find out how they stay productive and what they do to stay on top of their game.

So far, I have interviewed 15 CEO’s such as Frank Gruber, Brad Feld and Seth Godin, and there is a common thread – Passion! These CEOs are all relentlessly passionate about getting things done and making things happen but often get bogged down in the minutia.

Over the next few weeks, I want to speak with 50 CEOs on every level about this very issue. Specifically, I would love to hear from guys like Kevin Rose, Pete Cashmore, Jason Fried, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Arrington, Marc Benioff and Steve Jobs.

The icing on the cake: I have been asked to present my findings to Shel Israel and Robert Scoble on their new Work Fast Show. So consider this a shout out to CEO’s everywhere!

If you are a CEO ~ Here’s how to weigh-in: Email me (matt@tsheets.com) or Click here for updates on Twitter.

Let’s get into the minds of the best of the best!