Enigin Digital

Enigin Productivity Tip #2: Deciding what is important

One aspect of productivity is deciding which of your current tasks are important and which can wait. You will know instinctively which tasks you should place in high priority, as these are the tasks which are giving you the most ‘hassle’ at that time. ‘Hassle’ maybe in the form of a customer who keeps contacting you, a fellow staff member putting pressure on you or an order may have come down from the Enigin Management team for some work which needs urgent attention.

I mentally sort my tasks in to the following categories:

Urgent - This needs to be your number one focus until such time as it’s complete, nothing is more important and your life will be easier once it’s over. Having more than 1 task in the ‘Urgent‘ category will probably increase your stress level!

Important - These are tasks which are time-sensitive and need completing as soon as possible. If you’re not careful then ‘Important’ tasks can soon get elevated to ‘Urgent‘

Other - These are items which you’ve discussed with a co-worker and the phrase “when you’ve got time” is heard. Not time-sensitive, but tasks from ‘Other‘ can at anytime be elevated to ‘Important‘

Many people promote the use of a ‘all singing all dancing’ task management application, but I find that simplicity is the way forward. At Enigin, I started by using a pen and paper but then moved on to using TadaList by 37signals about 5 months ago. I am now considering moving back as there is something satisfying about drawing a real line through your tasks as they are complete!

You can also use your email inbox as a task list, but this has a huge drawback… it means that anyone can add items to your task list without asking you first!!

Enigin Provides Online Software for Energy Professionals

Here at Enigin, we build innovative online software tools for our Energy Professionals to use to promote and manage their businesses. Our suite of applications is Internet-based, enabling them to access their vital business information from any computer around the world.

Nucleus - This bespoke CRM system is the centre of your business activities. Nucleus allows you to manage all your contacts and sales activity, allowing you to report on which of your sales people are performing the best. It also allows you to keep a record of all communication with a particular customer and to directly email groups of customers based on search conditions. Nucleus is also the control center for Enigin Eniscope setup and deployment.

ECOS - Our Enigin Customer Ordering System enables our distributors to order energy-saving products from us at wholesale prices and contains a wealth of product information to help them decide on the best products for their customers

Telesales - Our Telesales application enables a team of telephone sales personnel to process a database of prospects efficiently and effectively. The system has in-depth analytics allows a manager to view call statistics and success rates per person.

Emailer - The Emailer application is used to send out bulk mailings to prospects and includes statistics regarding Open/Click rates.

Igloo - Igloo is the Content Management System which powers our Distributor websites. It enables our distributors to manage their own websites without installing any software on their PC’s.

Knowledge Base - The Enigin Knowledge Base is the first port of call for our Distributors to find answers to 90% of their support queries. Due for launch in January 2010

Internal Tools - We also have many internal software tools to enable us to provide a high level of support to our distributors.

As you can imagine, our small team of developers certainly have a great deal of work on their plate, but we love it and are constantly looking to build new innovative tools.

If you would like to find our more about our software tools then please request a Business Information Pack from our Business Opportunity website, one of our Business Managers will be happy to answer your questions.

Enigin Development Team ♥ Mac

All members of the Enigin development team use Mac products - either a Mac Pro or Macbook Pro and Apple Cinema displays. Here’s my personal reasons for using these fine machines:

1. They generally don’t go wrong! I’ve been using Macs for around 3 years now and I can’t recall a single time when I’ve had any major issues. It’s certainly true that they don’t crash as much as Windows-based PC’s.
2. Mac OS is UNIX based. This is the same technology which powers the Enigin server cluster.
3. They are optimised for user happiness! Being in front of Mac OS is such a nice place to be and let’s be honest, the hardware looks awesome. If you’re in the development business then why wouldn’t you want to use the nicest equipment around? You practically stare at it for 8 hours a day!

All the above items contribute to my productivity, I would estimate that I get 50% more work done since I switched from my Sony Vaio 3 years ago.

Here’s what the software development company 37 Signals think about Mac:

The last of the Enigin Directors has just completed the move to Mac so we are all hopeful for a company Mac policy soon!

Enigin Productivity Tip #1: Getting in ‘The Zone’

An office environment can sometimes be a hotpot for attention-seeking noises and activities. Telephones ringing, Enigin staff talking, customers visiting, emails arriving, meetings, air conditioning units and the list goes on! Even if we try not to listen and pay attention to this interference, our minds are inquisitive devices and you can often find your focus wondering.

The development department at Enigin is lucky as we have the benefit of a separate enclosed office but still sometimes the ‘outside world’ invades our space!

This may sound like a rant, but actually it’s a real problem. As programmers, we need to focus all our efforts on the job in hand, as writing software code takes a great deal of concentration and mistakes are easily made. You often hear developers talk about getting in ‘The Zone’. ‘The Zone’ is a state of mind when you are 100% focused on your software, you can almost visualise the application coming together as you type and generally you are thinking 3/4 steps ahead of where you are. For me personality, it takes about 20 minutes to get into this state. So now, that tiny amount of interruption to your ‘flow’ actually takes 20 minutes out of your fully productive day.

One method I use is to wear headphones during the day. Sometimes I don’t even have music playing! I find they block out many of the high-frequency sounds in the office. If the Enigin office is particularly noisy, for example when our air conditioning unit is running, then I tend to blast out music fairly loudly from my ‘phones. Interestingly enough, I find it really easy to concentrate when listening to loud Dance and House music! As a hugh Jazz fan, this is very puzzling and against my natural tendencies!

I’m sure there will be many more articles on productivity as it’s a hot topic with me at the moment!