The Technotheory blog has an interesting post on using a simple rule to stay on top of tasks and emails: if you can do it two minutes or less, do it straight away.

“When you read your new email do you read all the messages once and then go back through them?  I do it, too, sometimes-but it’s the death of getting things done.  So here’s a reminder.

It’s totally cool to cherry pick which messages to deal with first based on the sender or subject, leaving the others unread.  But once you’ve started working with a message, deal with it now.

By dealing with it, I mean get it out of your inbox.  Maybe you should delegate it to someone.  Maybe you should respond with your calendar availability.  Maybe you should schedule a task to deal with it later.  But deal with it and archive it.so that it’s out of your inbox never to be stared at five more times.”

Read the rest of the post here. It’ll take less than two minutes to read, honest.

Agree? Disagree? Take two shakes of a tiger’s tale to let us know in the comments…

Merit and Liverpool Chamber of Commerce are working together on yet another land mark project offering financial assistance to small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) looking to invest in ICT hardware and software.

A further £500,000 of grants via the European Regional Development Fund has been allocated to the ICT Investment Fund which will be awarded to companies successfully applying for grants from across Merseyside.

John Blades, ICT Fund Manager said: “We will award grants of between £10K-50K which must be spent by 30 November 2008. The funding can be up to 40% of the total project costs for new hardware and software.”

The funding is open to small and medium sized businesses in the Merseyside area, except those in the Retail and Agricultural sectors, whether or not they are Chamber or Merit members.

If you would like more information about how the ICT Investment Fund can help your businesses please call John Blades at Liverpool Chamber of Commerce on 0151 227 1234 or visit the ICT Investment Fund website at www.ict-invest.info to download and complete an application form.