TED Community » Francis Wade

About Me

I am a management consultant with a love of out of the box ideas and solutions.

Location:
Jamaica, Kingston 8
Current organization:
Framework Consulting
Past organizations:
AT&T Bell Labs
Current role:
Founder
Gender:
Male
Areas of expertise:
Time Management, Culture Change, Operations Research
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More About Me

An idea worth spreading

We each have our own individual, unique time management system and shouldn't try to change them drastically, but instead to upgrade them gradually.

Talk to me about

life in Caribbean companies
triathlon
designing membership sites
social networking
creating a time management system

Comments

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  • A reply on Conversation: Can young adults be taught how to change their individual approaches to managing time so they don't also fall into crazy techno-habits?

    Feb 22 2011: The thing that's difficult about attention and control is that neither can be measured. It's easy to have a conversation about what was worked on and when, but I believe it would be easier to fool oneself about being in control and paying attention.

    Having said that, I think that both attention AND time need to be managed. Once time is allocated to an activity, it pays to give it one's full attention, according to Csikszentmihalyi (author of "Flow") and others. Many people make time choices that prevent them from ever giving anything their full attention, and many people don't know to give anything their full attention, even when they have the best possible schedule or plan.

    We need to do both well, in order to be as productive as we can be.
  • A reply on Talk: Jason Fried: Why work doesn't happen at work

    Dec 7 2010: Ed, I think you are saying that we need to manage our time better. Having to fulfill two or more roles at the same time doesn't say much about needing silence to get some tasks done. People who try to do their jobs without any quiet thinking time run themselves into the ground, and never become productive.

    In my time management classes, I hear people complaining that they are too busy to sit down each day and make a time-plan. That's the kind of silent time that would make a big difference to most knowledge workers, regardless of the number of roles they play.
  • A reply on Talk: Jason Fried: Why work doesn't happen at work

    Dec 7 2010: It's true that employees are different, but I also believe that they also need different kinds of workspace to be effective. I think Fried is using the fact that many need quiet time to get a certain kind of work done to make the broader t point hat workers can't get the kind of workspace they need at work, and have to go to extraordinary lengths to create it for themselves. This isn't good or bad -- it's just something that management needs to recognize and decide whether or not it makes sense. If it doesn't, then they are lots of policies and investment that can be created to give employees the space / quiet/ interactivity they need to be effective, at the moments that they need it.
  • +3

    A comment on Talk: Dan Gilbert: The surprising science of happiness

    Nov 22 2010: This lecture brings to mind Byron Katie, and her book "Loving What It Is." In a way, she gives practical steps to accomplish happiness in any situation, by focusing attention on the quality of thoughts being believed at that moment. My experience echoes what Gilbert says, and I have noticed that my "beliefs" are unreliable if they aren't consciously questioned.

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