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Leveraging Technology to Become More Productive with Jared Goralnick of SET Consulting and AwayFind.com

Jared is a serious multi-tasker with the projects to back it up. He is currently President of SET Consulting, a firm dedicated to helping organizations work smarter and look better in Microsoft Office. He also writes the blog, Technotheory.com which is focused on helping people use technology to become more productive. In fact, instead of just talking the talk, he walked the walk and will soon launch AwayFind.com which is an e-mail productivity tool inspired by the work Tim Ferriss did in his book “The 4-Hour Work Week”.
In between juggling many tasks, we recently sat down for an interview and I was able to spend some time with him and discuss productivity and his new project, AwayFind.com. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Steve: Let’s start out with the basic concept of productivity. Do you think technology has helped us or just increased our ability to handle more?
Jared: When I started SET (software efficiency training) Consulting in 2002 it was with the hope of getting people more productive with technology, so they could better enjoy their work and leave their offices a little earlier. But most people are as concerned with how much they work as they are with the results. That is, they feel the need to work at least eight hours, regardless.
So, technology does help us to accomplish more, and certainly offers conveniences. But, in and of itself, I don’t think it’s led us to work less or be any happier.

Steve: How long have you been working in the technology space? What motivated you to start SET Consulting?
Jared: I’ve been in technology since my first HTML support job at a startup in ’95. I worked in web or Windows development at four other startups, half of which are still in existence, and I spent three years in development with the Federal Trade Commission.

While working at the FTC I realized that even the most technical users weren’t particularly adept with the seemingly basic Microsoft products like Word, Excel, and Outlook. I saw this both walking-through the office, and in some training sessions I held. After some more investigation, I considered that there was a market in helping people who used these tools 6+ hours per day. I had always been the kid who shared the little “computer tricks” with friends; it turned out that law firms, government agencies, and small businesses needed those tricks even more.

Steve: What is your philosophy on using technology to become more productive?
Jared: Productivity should never be an end in itself. If you focus just on how long things take, then you can become a cog in a machine. But if you can better apply your time to skip past the minutiae, then you can be more creative and add greater value to everything you touch—in other words, a little thought about productivity can help people to use technology as a vehicle rather than an obstacle to getting stuff done.

Steve: You are definitely someone who has been inspired by productivity thought leaders. Who do you find are most effective and why?
Jared: I’ve learned and been inspired by people like Tim Ferriss and Marc Orchant. Tim has really helped people to see their 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s completely differently: as the time we should really be enjoying ourselves. Marc Orchant was a personal role model who exemplified just how much the tools can accomplish, and where to draw the line between tools and education. So many others have offered their ideas and inspiration, and I was an early adopter of David Allen’s Getting Things Done, as you might guess.

He taught me that whatever we do for personal organization, we need to rely on a system and get stuff out of our head, or we’ll never be able to focus and things will always slip through the cracks.

Steve: Switching gears a bit, I would like to talk about your exciting new project, AwayFind. This summer you launched it in a small beta and have grown it since then. What is the basic principle of AwayFind?
Jared: The principle that underlies AwayFind is that one needs to check their email less often if they want to focus on the task at hand, or escape from their work. AwayFind makes this possible by giving people the confidence that they can be reached with time-sensitive messages when they’re not checking their email.

Steve: How was it motivated by the “4-Hour Work Week”?
Jared: Tim stressed the value of an auto-responder to assist in people’s email workflow. I really liked the idea, but didn’t want people to have to call me when they needed me sooner. So I decided to create a similar solution with AwayFind—rather than providing my phone number, I placed a web link in my auto responder that could SMS me or delegate the problem when something urgent arose.

Steve: What are some lessons good or bad you have learned from a software product like this?
Jared: The slogan for SET Consulting used to be, “Technology does not create productive people. We do” – it stressed that how people use technology drives their productivity, not the software itself. Similarly, AwayFind on its own won’t make people more productive—they still have to check their email less often. In building AwayFind I’ve learned how to draw the line between what technology can accomplish and what I have to offer or teach people in order to change their behavior. I’m still learning.

Steve: How much does it cost and how does one signup for the beta?
Jared: AwayFind is “Freemium”—most features are totally free, but some additional branding, security, and routing features will be purchasable for a few dollars per month (still working out the exact price, but it’ll be in the $5-10/range and offer 30-day trials.)

The first 25 who click over to www.awayfind.com from this page will get an invitation code within an hour.

Steve: As we close the interview I would like to leave our mostly overworked small business owners who are our loyal readers a bit of productivity advice. What are the top 5 things a small business owner can do to get more productive?
Jared:
Gosh, that’s a tough question. Most of it comes down to guarding your time and minimizing interruptions:
1. Turn off all email notifications: on your smartphone, in your email program, etc.
2. Don’t multitask: do one thing and do it well.
3. Learn lots of keyboard shortcuts instead of just mouse-clicking things. It’ll take a few weeks to master them, but 2 seconds saved 1,000 times per day will add up
4. If there’s something you really want to accomplish but continue to have trouble with, tie an external commitment to it—for instance, tell your friends you’re doing it, set a deadline that costs money that relies upon it, make a plan with a co-worker/spouse/friend to work on it one day/weekend, etc
5. Sign up for www.awayfind.com and stop checking your email 100 times per day!

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