In this issue:

• New features (and user shout-outs)!
• The Chrometa Badge: a new way to impress your clients
• 5 ways to get a complimentary license
• 2 interviews with Brett Owens

View our January newsletter in your browser You can also subscribe to our email newsletter.

We're excited to announce that we are now providing free licenses of Chrometa for law students! The idea spawned from a conversation that we were having with the fine folks who run Social Media Law Student. We were originally planning to offer a steep discount on Chrometa for students in their listening audience...and then I started thinking back to my days as a student (which were not too long ago). I was always broke (some would argue I still am!) Why not just make it free. So there you go - if you're in law school, here's how you can get a free copy of Chrometa:

1. Download the free trial of our time tracking software.
2. Send us an email from your school email address (.edu)
3. We'll send you a complimentary license code back!

It yours to keep - we hope that it's of use to you in law school, and of course we'd encourage you to use Chrometa when you land your first gig.  The partners will be in awe of how many billable hours you rack up :) And we ALWAYS appreciate your referrals - please refer Chrometa to friends and family who you think will benefit from it using this form: http://www.chrometa.com/refer-us.php They'll thank you - and so will we!

Time management, in and of itself, will not really help you be more productive. You're probably wondering what kind of lettuce I've been smoking to write this in a blog focused on productivity and - hello - time management. I'm talking about time management in the classic sense of the word. Getting through your "to do" list faster. It's a complete waste of time. What you really need to do is to look at everything that you have on your list - and pick the single most important thing. Then work on it, uninterrupted, until it's completed. The uninterrupted part is the toughest, by far. It's SO easy and tempting to check your email, answer the phone, respond to an instant message, or click over to a website. But if you can master this ability, you'll boost your productivity significantly, and you'll be able to work the same, or even less, hours. This is possible because you're assuring two things. First, that you're working on the single most important task at hand. Not the most urgent task, or the easiest one - but the most important one. So often, we plow down our "to do" lists, with our heads down, without seriously questioning whether it makes a difference if we even do most of the items on it. And the sad truth is - it doesn't. The 80/20 principle tells us that 80% of our results will come from 20% of our inputs. By picking the single most important task to work on, we're making sure that it falls within the critical 20%. And secondly, by focusing 100% of our energies on this item, we'll accomplish it much faster than we would have if we'd allowed ourselves to be distracted by interruptions, or worse, tried to multi-task and complete two or three items at once. Interruptions are the real killer. It's amazing how fast you can get something done, if that's all you do. I hadn't realized this until I started using our time management software to measure the amount of active working time I was spending on work items. Sadly, items would often sit on my "to do" list all week, where'd I'd get to them on the weekend. And with the benefit of no incoming interruptions (because the rest of the world was out having a life), I was able to focus, and get the thing done. The real surprise came when I checked my elapsed time spent on the task after the fact - I realized that I could get A LOT done under an hour. Like, basically anything on my "to do" list would be accomplished in an hour or less - provided I just sat down and did the work. So try this exercise tomorrow - pick one thing, and work on it until it's done. No distractions, and no excuses. You'll be amazed at what you can accomplish.

On Tuesday, January 12, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti. Estimates of the numbers killed in the catastrophic earthquake range from 50,000 to 200,000. Read more about how to quake unfolded (BBC)
Haiti Struggles With Death And Destruction After Catastrophic Earthquake
Our Commitment to Assist Victims of the Haiti Earthquake As a little software company far removed from the disaster, we want to do our part in supporting the relief efforts. This past weekend, we've donated 20% of sales to assist earthquake victims through the Red Cross. And starting today, through January 31, we've pledged to donate 10% of new sales to the Red Cross. Our donations will be made at the end of each week. If you've purchased a Chrometa license since last Friday, you'll be pleased to know that a portion of your purchase has gone to support those most in need at this moment. Other Ways You Can Help (via Google) Also accepting cash and in-kind donations are the following sites: Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, UNICEF (1-800-4UNICEF), Direct Relief, Yele Haiti, Partners in Health, Red Cross, World Food Program, Mercy Corps (1-888-256-1900), Save the Children,Lambi Fund, Doctors Without Borders, The International Rescue Committee, Care, William J. Clinton Foundation, Meds & Food For Kids, Feed the Children, Habitat for Humanity, Mayor's Fund for NYC

We were honored and delighted to be interviewed by Rob Ameerun, Founder and Owner of Legal IT Professionals, to kick off a cool new podcast series they are launching. Rob and I chatted for twelve minutes about legal time capture, Chrometa's history and plans, and trends that we see for 2010 and beyond.  You can listen to the audio of our interview here: http://www.legalitprofessionals.com/index.php/News/ten-minutes-with-brett-owens.html

Hi, my name is Brett.  And I have a serious email problem. I just learned that I spend a quarter of my working hours staring at my Inbox. You may be wondering – how is that even possible?  Brett, what are you – braindead?! Sadly…I may be.  Here’s the shocking proof – captured by Chrometa itself:

Note that in this sample, I have 37 hours of active time (so that does not count phone or meeting time – only active time on my PC).  This was recorded over a 2+ week span. Due to product testing and such, Chrometa was not running all of the time (though my co-workers may scoff and say that I’m busted for putting in 20 hour weeks!) AND here’s the really sad part – individual emails are recorded separately, by their subject line, and are therefore not even included in this massive number! So the 8+ hour entry under Microsoft Outlook – Inbox is solely due to time that I spent looking at Outlook, without an individual email open.  There are a limited number of things I could have been doing, and none of them are particularly productive:

1. Checking for new email
2. Reading an email through the preview pane
3. Looking at my calendar

I’d like to look at the bright side of this finding.  Like you, I often consider myself way too busy to get everything done that I’d like to.  So in a sense, this underperformance is a good thing, as there’s a lot of room for improvement! In fact, I know that productivity experts often assert that any time you waste is not limited that time itself, but also encompasses the “switching cost” of diverting your focus.  So if my Inbox time is in fact due to obsessively checking for new email, then I’m losing a lot more time than is even displayed here! Since it is a new year, and a new decade to boot, it’s a perfect time to look at this area as some real “low hanging fruit” for improving productivity.  It’s safe to say that checking email every 5-10 minutes is a disastrous approach – but what is the right approach? Personally I’m used to being on the “front lines” from a sales and support standpoint, so a once or twice a day checking of email wouldn’t suffice.  But what would the optimal frequency be?  Every hour?  Longer?  Shorter? What email best practices would you recommend?