BACKGROUND

After nine years at AT&T where my work focused on systems and system effectiveness, followed by more than 20 years as a computer and systems consultant, I have a few ideas how to make you, your staff, and your computers more productive and effective (read this as having the ability to produce more widgets, in less time, for less overall money). Presented here in no particular order are the most effective steps you can take to create the greatest productivity. Keep in mind that not all steps are appropriate for all environments. For example, if you have a 3 GHz Mac Pro with 32 GB RAM with six 30" monitors, it is unlikely that adding more RAM or another monitor is going to produce a positive result for you.


THE SYSTEM

FASTER COMPUTER

For most situations, this means a new computer. Simply upgrading your CPU is almost never a cost-effective option. I'm a huge believer in selling your current computer once it is 9-11 months old, using the money to purchase a new computer. Why? Your current computer is slower now than it was 10 months ago. With each system and application update, your computer needs more RAM and CPU cycles to run the "upgraded" software. I do recommend selling your computer before it is 12 months old so that it is still under AppleCare. This makes it far easier to sell.

If a new computer can give you an additional 20% speed boost, and if you have the skills (more on that later) to make use of that speed, then YOU are more productive. If a person is on their computer 50% of the work day, and the total cost of that person to the company is $50,000/year (think payroll, health plan, social security, etc.), and you get a computer that is 20% faster, then overall that person may be 10% (50% of 20%) more productive. 10% of $50,000 is $5,000 increased productivity. If the new computer cost $3,000, this is a steal! If you sold the old computer for $2,000, the overall cost is only $1,000! Try to get this level of return from your stocks!

MORE RAM

Mac OS X loves RAM. In many environments, you can realize 50-100% speed gains just by installing more RAM. How much RAM should you have on your computer? That will likely require a consultant to take some measurements. However, as a general rule under Mac OS X 10.5 and higher, 2 GB RAM is the bare minimum for any work computer. Running graphics or video software? Add 2 GB. Running a Virtual Machine such as Parallels or Fusion? Add 2 GB. Like to keep more than 4 general applications open concurrently? Add 2 GB.

To get a quick and dirty estimate of how much additional RAM you may need for best system performance, perform the following:
1. Run your Mac with the applications you typically have open for at least an hour, working on multiple documents as you might in a hectic day.
2. Launch Activity Monitor (/Applications/Utilities/).

3. Select System Memory tab. There are several areas to pay attention to:

• Free: Indicates how much RAM is currently available for use.
• Page Outs: Indicates how much data has recently been swapped out of RAM to make room for other data because of insufficient RAM.
• Swap Used: Indicates how large the swap file is on your hard drive. The swap file is where the swapped contents of RAM go for temporary holding, until being swapped back into RAM.

As soon as you have Page Outs or Swap files in use, you have run out of RAM. What is the big deal? RAM can read and write data in the realm of 10ns (nanoseconds, or billionths of a second), hard drives read and write in the realm of 10ms (miliseconds, or thousanths of a second). This means that whenever you have run out of RAM and have to swap data to the drive to free up space for other data to enter RAM, you have just slowed your computer down by a factor of 1,000!!! Keep in mind that the slow down may translate into just a few seconds here and there - or minutes or hours a day for the Photoshop or video producer.

LARGER MONITOR

Business Week magazine ran some productivity studies a few years back to discover what makes for the largest productivity gains. Their findings show that increasing the size of the monitor (more pixels) can often give better results than a new computer. A larger or second monitor dramatically reduces the number times the user needs to scroll or move windows around. A computer user will waste about 2 seconds on each scroll. If a user is able to eliminate 1,000 scrolls a day (not at all unreasonable), we are talking about an additional 30 minutes a day used to make widgets, instead of clicking the mouse!

GREATER INTERNET BANDWIDTH

Most businesses think that a 1.5 Mb/s Internet connection is blazing fast. It is. For 1 or 2 people. But if your organization has 10 people using the Internet at the same time, each person may be getting only 1/10 of this speed. For not much more money you may be able to significantly upgrade your bandwidth (depending on geographical location). If your staff can access the web 2-5 times faster, it makes a huge difference to how many widgets they can build each day.

It is a wise move to test your Internet speed from time to time. This verifies that there are no problems on your circuit.

1. Launch your web browser and visit: http://speedtest.net.
2. Click the Begin Test button.

3. When the test completes (usually in under 2 minutes), the window displays your ping, download, and upload speeds. Compare this to your service play. If it's more than 25% off, it's time to put a fix in.

TREAT YOUR TOOLS RIGHT, AND THEY WILL TREAT YOU RIGHT

Downtime may be the biggest productivity killer of all. According to Information Week magazine, in a Fortune 100 business, one hour of computer downtime can equate to $50,000 in total productivity loss. The article did not go into detail on how they came to this number, other than when staffer A's computer is down, she cannot produce the widget that is required by staffer B. So staffer B is down for that hour as well. Of course, B was to pass the massaged widget onto C, so C is also down for an hour. And up the corporate ladder the downtime cascades.

Treating your computer right includes:

• Protecting your system from the ravages of power fluctuations (surges and sags)
• Protecting your system from destruction by malware (yes, Mac's do have malware)
• Repairing directory damage
• Keeping your system and applications up to date

This is where your skilled IT consultant comes in handy!


THE USER

TYPING SKILLS

A production line is only as fast as it's slowest link. Far too many computer users think that doubling the speed of their computer is going to make a huge difference. But if the user's work often revolves around keyboard entry, and the user can type only 15 words per minute, it's their fingers that are the bottleneck!

As long as our I/O technology is stuck in the 20th century, we need to develop our 20th century skill sets - this means being able to type, and type fast and accurately. There are plenty of Typing Skill games on the market that are very good at getting your speed and accuracy up to par. If you are not able to type at least 40 wpm with 95% accuracy, it's time to get there.

COMPUTER SKILLS

A quality plumber can tell you all about the different types of wrenches and pipe. A professional welder can go on for hours about the different types of welding rods, and the right amperage for each metal. Even my farrier can talk my ear off about the pros and cons of different anvils, rasps, and each of a 100 different horse shoes.

How many of the 500  functions in MS Word can you name (assuming you use MS Word)? When was the last time you spent a full day learning about your primary software tool (much less the 3-5 days it typically takes to learn all about the software). Why not? If you don't know all about your tools, there is no way you can make full use of them.

There are any number of ways to improve your computer skills, from reading the manual (free but often mind-numbing), taking a classroom workshop or class (expensive but individual attention), to online classes (inexpensive, fast, targeted information, but often impossible to have your questions answered).

KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS

Many years ago a productivity study by Harvard (as best as I can recall) tested the difference between users of equal skills, with one group learning and using keyboard shortcuts, the other group not learning or using these shortcuts. 

Depending on the software category (word processing being the best-case, graphic application being the worst-case), those users using keyboard shortcuts were up to 100% more productive than the other group. 
Sure, your dominant application may have 500 functions, with 500 shortcuts, but you don't need to learn all of them. The 20 most used will make a dramatic impact of your productivity.

STAY ON TASK

Many studies have been conducted over the past few years on email use. Universally these have found that email is at once the most important contributor to our overall productivity, and among the worst detractors from productivity. The main problem appears to be the Attention Deficit Syndrome many of us exhibit with regard to email - we tend to check our email every 5-10 minutes.

The problem with this pattern is that it takes from 30-600 seconds for us to get back on track with the task we were processing before checking the email. If we check our email every 10 minutes, and it only takes you 30 seconds to get back on track, you have lost 20 minutes each day just getting back on track! If you have a more complex task set it will take longer to get back on track, and you may loose over an hour per day.

Corporate productivity experts are now recommending that we check our email only at specific times of the day, or at most once every hour.

FLEXIBLE MINDSET

I find that the users having the most difficulty with computers (which can only result in lowered productivity) are almost always inflexible in their mindset. What I mean is they "fight" the computer, demanding that it work as they think it should work, instead of using the computer as it does work. Think of someone demanding to use their flat head screwdriver on a Phillips screw. High on frustration, low on productivity, and not a whole lot of fun to be had.

Instead of fighting with your system, learn how the system is designed to work - which includes bugs -  and work with the system (very Zen - be one with the Mac). As with any tool, once you have learned how to work with the software as it was designed, you may be in an excellent position to have it bend to your will (think of a rock guitarist playing a song with the guitar behind his back - easily done even the first time by someone who has learned their instrument. Not so easily done even the 100th time by someone who has not learned their instrument).

Tags: productivity, Total Cost of Ownership