August 15, 2005

Ginny, I don't know how you do all the things you do already. But how do you EVER have time to read all the stuff that's on boingboing.net? Has Evelyn Wood moved to Sullivan's Island?

Say, whatever happened to Evelyn Wood? Did her system disappear with her? Or don't enough people read to make it relevant?

Time Starved

Most of us are time starved.

15% of all meals in this country are eaten in the car.

50% of all soup is eaten out of the home.

Food companies are looking for ways to make their products more portable. News channels are force-feeding us two of three messages simultaneously (image, super, and crawl are the typical combination).

Newspapers are summarizing the entire paper on page one and then summarizing other stories inside and running shorter and shorter stories. In Switzerland, there 's a newspaper called 20 Minuten, because it can be read in less than 20 minutes!

You can even buy pre-loaded iPods.

We've got a great client - West Ashley Toyota - who just keeps thinking of smart ways to meet the needs of their customers. Today they told us that they'll have a mobile service van that will go to people's homes and change their oil and conduct other maintenance without any interruption of their car buyer's life. Hey, that's smart!

What are some things you can do with your business to be more responsive to people's time pressure?

Here are some things we can do:

We can manage meeting time smarter...with clear agendas and decision-making, using the time for subjects that need to be discussed, rather than information that can be imparted some other way.

We can present choices and decisions more clearly to clients, so their time is spent more efficiently.

And we can think of the time consequences of our recommendations...will they help our clients and/or their customers save time or manage time more wisely?

Better yet, we can pro-actively think of ways to respond to consumers being so time starved.

We are currently switching to an even better information system in our company, and that will improve both the speed and the clarity of our communications.

And how 'bout marketing materials? Are they quick to read and understand?

And what about instructions? I've just read the instructions for a new camera. They seem to have been written by someone for whom English was a second language. I got so frustrated that I put the instructions and the camera into the closet.

Who's got the time??!!

How much smarter it would have been for the camera people to get a really smart designer and writer to make the instructions not only easy to follow, but fun!

Time. How precious it is. Help someone save it or manage it better and you've got a real leg up on the competition.