FORTUNE: How I Work - The Diigo Meta page

• 17 Jun 09
  

  amac 2009

  imported Bookmarks ceo goals tech tools productivity work business gtd google tips life

  • Focus relentlessly
  • Be compulsively organized -- and delegate.
  • 15 more annotations...
  • • I'm an e-mail addict. It keeps me connected to work even when I'm not at the office. I do about an hour of e-mail in the morning after I've skimmed the newspapers. I usually have to go out for lunch, but I hate it. I'd rather have lunch at my desk and read though e-mails between meetings.
      
    • The hardest thing to do is to establish priorities.
    • Many successful women have become successful because they're just awfully good at being compulsive and organized and doers. But it's hard to be successful and be a control freak, because if you cling to things, you're going to be a bottleneck. Delegating to other people -- appropriately delegating -- is very liberating. There isn't anybody on my team I don't trust 100 percent.
    • Staffers send me stuff at home, and I always read it at night -- the only time when seven people aren't coming to me at once. I'm able to think in a more peaceful way than when I'm in my normal routine. My normal routine is pretty much putting out fires all day in my office.
    • My day usually ends in the office at about six o'clock, but then I go to two or three parties a night. Authors, who are the most important people in our company, really appreciate it when the CEO turns up at their event. In between, I check e-mail on my BlackBerry. I can write answers,
    • I have two assistants now. I have an assistant from 7 in the morning till 4 in the afternoon, and then an assistant from 4 to midnight. I wake up somewhere between 5 and 6 A.M., and get to the office about 8, before the phone calls start. On the days that I'm not traveling -- I travel probably 50 percent of my life -- I try to get home by 7:30 P.M. I typically don't sign off e-mail until midnight.
    • It's hard to juggle being a businessperson with being a creative person. You have to organize yourself -- PR needs me for PR, and the licensing division needs me for licensing, the bridal people need me for bridal. I prioritize by going to the next collection that's due. And as the collections get bigger, it gets more challenging.
    • Then, no matter when I get home at night -- and it's usually late -- I do at least an hour or two of e-mail. It's usually when I'm watching "Law & Order" reruns.
    • I prefer my schedule on notecards, which I keep in my jacket pocket.
    • At work the first thing I do is read the flash report, which is our roadmap of what we do that day. We manage day-to-day in our business. I'm proud that we are so nimble -- we have great information flow to make that happen.
    • I have an assistant in France, one in Japan, and one in the U.S. They are all bilingual: Japanese and English, French and English. My assistants screen all the mail and documents. I'm very selective. They know exactly the topics I am interested in and what should be diverted to other members of the executive committee.
    • I have this thing about reading all my e-mails. Most people just go delete, delete, delete, but I don't. Other than obvious spam, I read everything that comes in, even unsolicited proposals. I don't read the whole thing, but I'll read the cover letters, and there are moments I feel that somebody has something.
    • I'm always stopping by our stores -- at least 25 a week.
    • I try to be a sponge to pick up as much as I can. I'm traveling internationally now one out of every seven weeks.
    • My staff is always able to reach me. As an owner I am always accessible. That's the big difference. I am the CEO, not the COO, but at times I've still had to be partial COO to fix all the myriad things that can go wrong: calm dissatisfied clients, handle employees who want to leave, or renegotiate. These things are very hard to manage in addition to being creative. And that is the challenge of owning a creative business.
• 28 Jul 08
  

  Kimberly McCollum
• 26 Jul 08
  

  Brad McAllister

  success inspiration technology

• 17 Jul 08
  

  Erin Remple

  productivity technology articles lifehacks to_be_read

• 16 Jul 08
  

  justin hardman

  productivity interesting technology

• 

  Karla Karr

  Read a few of these fellow workers outside of the field of education. It gives interesting insight into the way they work and only a glimer of what skills are needed in the workplace from now and into the future.

  productivity edtech

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  Dan Vos

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  David Bill

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• 01 May 08
  

  ziru zhu

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• 11 Feb 08
  

  FruFru FourOne

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• 28 Jan 08
  

  gholker

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• 13 Dec 07
  

  miyama

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• 05 Jun 07
  

  Sebastian Geib

  work productivity business tips reading

• 01 Sep 06
  

  Hyun Shim

  success

• 17 Aug 06
  

  rawwell

  productivity

• 04 Aug 06
  

  Warich

  juhtimine

• 03 Aug 06
  

  Fentid pENG

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• 05 Jul 06
  

  hiroshi

  productivity

• 07 Apr 06
  

  Jérémie Pottier

  business google

• 16 Mar 06
  

  PG Holmlov
  • I get up between 5 and 5:30, and naturally the first thing I do is make some coffee; depending on my mood, it's either an espresso macchiato or one of our Indonesian coffees in a French press. I'll take my coffee, read three newspapers -- the Seattle Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times -- and listen to a voicemail summarizing sales results from the past 24 hours. This has been my routine for 25 years.
    
    There are always Starbucks with their lights on somewhere around the globe, and we open five new stores every day. So I've learned how to leverage my time. In the early morning I focus on Europe. I'll call Greece or Spain or wherever, either at home or on the drive into work, to talk about challenges -- do the numbers make sense? -- or to congratulate them. These personal conversations are very important.
    
    At work the first thing I do is read the flash report, which is our roadmap of what we do that day. We manage day-to-day in our business. I'm proud that we are so nimble -- we have great information flow to make that happen.
  • I get up between 5 and 5:30, and naturally the first thing I do is make some coffee; depending on my mood, it's either an espresso macchiato or one of our Indonesian coffees in a French press. I'll take my coffee, read three newspapers -- the Seattle Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times -- and listen to a voicemail summarizing sales results from the past 24 hours. This has been my routine for 25 years.
    
    There are always Starbucks with their lights on somewhere around the globe, and we open five new stores every day. So I've learned how to leverage my time. In the early morning I focus on Europe. I'll call Greece or Spain or wherever, either at home or on the drive into work, to talk about challenges -- do the numbers make sense? -- or to congratulate them. These personal conversations are very important.
    
    At work the first thing I do is read the flash report, which is our roadmap of what we do that day. We manage day-to-day in our business. I'm proud that we are so nimble -- we have great information flow to make that happen.
• 15 Mar 06
  

  Andreas Rohlfs

  Frisch

• 08 Mar 06
  

  neilp9

  google marissa mayer

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