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Today I officially announced this at work, and I am very excited to share it with all of you. As of next week I will no longer be working in the SharePoint and Office Business Intelligence space. I’ll be joining the team at Microsoft that makes wonderful products for Apple platforms.

Those of you that know me well will probably find this to be of little surprise, but it’s a very welcome change and something I am very excited about.

I can’t quite say what I’ll be working on yet, but for the Mac faithful readers of my blog, stay tuned and I’ll divulge more as it’s appropriate to do so.

I have been at Microsoft for just over 3 years now. One thing that I have learned is that when we are in full swing, the amount of balls in the air at any given time can be completely overwhelming.

One of my personal weaknesses has not only been my ability to juggle, but my ability to catch all of the balls before they hit the ground. Like most people, I am at my best when I am working on things I am very passionate about, but I become less and less efficient when dealing with things that don’t strike a chord with me personally.

In a collected attempt to remake myself for 2011, I reached out to a coworker who had a process that while I originally mocked it, seemed incredibly effective. Late last year, I sent him an email asking him to explain his process to me, and he responded with a meeting invite and came to my office to show me the ropes.

Kevin laid out a super simple plan that sounded too simple to actually work, but I guess sometimes the best things are. Here are basics:

Carry the index cards with you everywhere you go

This one was easy for me, all day I am usually wearing a hoodie or a jeans or something with pockets, I keep the a half dozen index cards and a pen handy at all times. When I head home, I slip them into an outside pocket on my backpack.

Only use one index card at a time

This one was counter intuitive at first, but in practice it’s an incredibly efficient way to keep yourself from over-committing or letting things pile up. The keys to the kingdom are right here if you ask me. When my card is getting too full, it’s time to make a decision, and there are only two options really. When I can’t seem to fit any more tasks, I need to either stop and knock out some things to get them off my plate, or I need to find a way to delegate or reset expectations for whomever might be depending on me to deliver something. I find myself regularly assessing what I have going on and prioritizing my day into manageable chunks now, and it’s been a huge help for me.

Try to keep a clean card

You might think that having a card full of crossed out things would make you feel like you are just killing it and getting everything done. Crossing things out definitely feels that way, but this step is important to me also. When I get to about 3 empty lines left, I stop and cross out what I have done, and rewrite the unfinished items on a new card. This accomplishes two things: rewriting tasks over and over is a personal nag to just bite the bullet and get it done and a cleaner, emptier card is kind of a mind hack to keep you from feeling overwhelmed. As soon as you start having to sort through crossed out items, or negotiate notes you made in the margins because you were short on room, you’re going down the wrong path.

Break work into manageable chunks

The last thing to mention is how you deal with both big and small tasks on the same card. I use the same card for all of my tasks, and I deal with them exactly the same way. The only difference is how I move forward with big, multi-step problems. This week I took on the task of writing a social media strategy for my team at work. A quick example of how I’ll use the index cards in this task is as follows:

Initially I’ll write “Social Media Plan” when I take on the task. I won’t remove that task from my card until I have effectively scoped what I want to accomplish and set a date for when I intend to deliver it.

I’ll schedule the meeting that I intend to use to present my plan, and break down all of the things I need to do to be prepared for that. I use OneNote for work projects, and I’ll create a notebook and write down all of the tasks I have decided I need to complete to be ready for my presentation.

Once I have the monster scoped, I’ll strike out “Social Media Plan” and write down the first task I need to complete on my index card. At this point it’s rinse and repeat until I have everything I need in place. At that point I might make a note on my card like “Review Plan with Manager.” So I don’t forget to get and incorporate feedback in my plan. Once I am finished with all the tasks and comfortable with the plan, I’ll present it, and follow the exact same process with implementing it.

Notice how I have never let one project dominate my card. It’s always a task I need to complete to make progress.

Closing the loop

Now that you have fixed your problems in getting things done, you can also fix how your coworkers perceive you and help them be more efficient as well. This is how to make sure your index card is helping the rest of your team. When you stop to take time to rewrite your card, also take time to send and email or phone call to the people related to the item you are not moving to the new card. That way people depending on you know that you have finished and they can move forward.

The Impact

As I have already mentioned, this little trick has changed my work life. I respond faster, I get more done, and people who count on me would probably tell you that I am much more reliable in general. Kevin gave me his technique, that he had taken an adapted from someone else. I am giving you mine that I have adapted from Kevin. If you are having trouble keeping yourself organized, this might just be the trick.

Don’t just take my word for it, this is what Kevin had to say when I asked him contribute to this post. One last thing, writing this blog post is on my index card, but not for long!

From Kevin:

The index card technique was introduced to me by my first manager here at Microsoft, Jim Rodrigues.  When I first got re-orged into CRM , I found my scope of influence growing rapidly after finding myself in a mission critical role of ensuring builds come out on time and automation runs before most of the team comes into work.  Unfortunately, my skills to cope with the increase of things to do did not grow at that same scale.  As a result, I found myself with a lot of things going on and no system to ensure that I was delivering on them.  It got very easy to get in the habit of doing a cursory job on anything that wasn’t an immediate fire drill, and because I wasn’t seeing things through to the finish I found that things would come back to haunt me.

This is some feedback I got verbatim in my review from 2004:
I love the enthusiasm and in the last few months I have seen you really driving for results.  It’s not that you ever did not but now there is more determination than ever before.  You are improving but I would still encourage you to think through a task to 100% completion as it really bugs me when I think we are done with something and then later discover there are issues that we really should have known of.  I don’t have the bandwidth to hands on these items to make sure when we are saying we are done we have thought of everything so I need you and other senior leaders to ensure this.

While brainstorming strategies with Jim, he came up with the index card system to help keep me focused on what is important.  It immediately helped by keeping the volume of work I commit to doing down to a manageable level.  By acknowledging the fact that I can’t accommodate more work because I’m too busy, it helped me avoid overcommitting myself.  And because the workload was manageable, I had the time and space to think through how to REALLY resolve a work item as opposed to just making it go away for the day.  After using the system for a few months and resolving those repetitive, nagging issues in an orderly fashion, I found that I was getting large blocks of free time during the day, which I then in turn invested in increasing my scope of influence and ability to impact my work.  Now I’m at the point where I have a pretty strong emotional connection with my cards and I actually feel happiness when I cross something off, especially something that I know is going to make a material difference in my world.

That’s straight from the horse’s mouth so to speak, and I am a true believer, it really works, ask my team.

The last time I saw Steve Ballmer speak, he was all about services being the future. I don’t think I realized that quite so much as I did tonight.

I signed up for the Mozy service to handle my gigs and gigs of raw photos, and it got me thinking. I pay for Flickr, Dropbox, GoDaddy, Mozy, Justin.TV, Hulu, Netflix… That’s just the tip of the iceburg I think. If you imagine the days when you dropped wads of cash on Photoshop, Office, Logic, ProTools.. imagine getting those apps as services for $4.95 a month.

That’s the way it looks like lots of boxed software is going, and for some things I think it’s great.

It will be interesting to see what regular content updates and additional services that companies like Microsoft and Adobe will provide to keep you paying your hard earned cash every month, but I think it’s going to be very interesting.

Recently I wrote a blog post that painted a local chain of stores in a less than positive light. I have received tons of feedback from people saying everything from unfair to despicable. I think it brings up a very interesting topic for us to discuss in this ever merging world between blogs and news.

The difficult part for me is that I still completely believe what I believed when I wrote it. I think that my opinion is valid and I think that I am only doing what we as Americans have been doing since the beginning. I saw something I thought was not right, and I spoke up about it to try and effect change.

That being said, I am just one guy. My opinion is just that of one guy. In the case of The Mac Store, they are probably getting unfairly punished because my blog gets quite a bit of traffic and always ranks very well with Google.

Right now hundreds of people are reading this article daily and it’s showing up #5, as the full title “Skip Seattle’s Mac Store for the Apple Store.”

While I did mean to write it, and I do still believe my opinion is valid, I agree with one of my readers who said “the punishment doesn’t seem to fit the crime.”

This is where it gets tricky though. I have two fundamental principles on my blog:

1. I always post the comments, even if they are negative towards me.
2. I don’t remove posts.

I think those are pretty sound principles for a blog. I have proven #1, most of the comments call me the bad guy, and that’s ok.

The 2nd one is a little trickier.

Here’s the Rub

I personally think The Mac Store doesn’t give fair value for the used machines they take in. Fair market value is a nebulous number of course, but in my eyes, offering someone 40% of the resale value when that customer is standing there waiting to buy a product in return is amazing. If the customer was standing there asking for cash, obviously it’s a different story because there is no reasonable expectation this person will build a business relationship with you and you are parting with your liquidity, and not another machine that you had bought from someone else for 40% of it’s value.

It’s important to remember that I found someone willing to make a deal for the laptop I wanted as an even trade, and the iMac is gone. I am not out here whining about the Mac Store to try and get them to make a deal. The computer is gone, the deal is done and I am happy with what I got. That doesn’t mean I have to just be quiet about a practice I don’t agree with.

So, what is unfair, defamatory, etc? Is it defamatory when a blog like cultofmac.com posts blogs about how bad Windows sucks? Is it unfair and defamatory when Fox News writes something about whatever politician they hate at the time?

Those sites have way more traffic than me and aren’t at all above writing negative articles about a company, product or person.

So, in effect, am I sorry I wrote this article? Not at all. Do I feel like the attention it has received will make any difference? Nope. Do I think The Mac Store is the devil? Of course not.

Regardless of the snippy comments that went in either direction, I think The Mac Store owes it’s customers a fair return for their machines, 40% is not it.

Is stating that opinion on my blog “using my right to free speech on the internet” irresponsibly? I don’t think so, if only people who agreed with businesses spoke up, we’d all be in a sad state. Whether it makes any difference at all, I want them to know that not all customers are in a take what they can get position, and $500 to keep me from having to deal with Craigslist is insulting *to me.*

In closing, I appreciate that The Mac Store sent me an email apologizing for the poor customer service:

Hey Jason,
Allow me to introduce myself, my name is (Name Removed), and I am the (Title Removed) of The Mac Stores. I just wanted to reach out to you after having read your blog post to say that I am sorry that you ran into this experience. I was hoping you happened to get the name of the person you spoke to on the phone, as I would like the opportunity to coach this individual on how to handle calls such as yours better in the future. While I completely understand your outrage at the service you received, please know that this is very out of the normal.

While it is true that our trade-in program does offer a lesser value than what you could get selling items on the open market, we do this in an attempt to make the process easy and painless for those making trades. It makes it easy for folks who do not want to hassle with Craigslist or EBAY, and are just looking to get something for the older machine.

Again, I am sorry that the gentleman you spoke to on the phone was so flippant with you. This is not a good representation of how you would be treated in out stores, and I would love an opportunity to have you come into our store and meet our Seattle (Title Removed) (Name Removed).
Thanks for posting your experience, and allowing a way for me to contact you. I appreciate feedback of any kind as it is the only way we truly know what our customers are saying about us.

Sincerely,
(Name Removed)

That’s the entire email, nothing being hidden. I appreciate the apology, but my problem wasn’t with poor service. I have offered them the chance to state their position on trade-in value on my blog with the following email:

Thank you for your email, I would like to apologize for the attention my
article has received. I was simply stating my opinion and I do still stick
to the opinion that your business treats customers unfairly in regard to
trades. While I still am sticking to my opinion, I have noticed that this
article is on the front page, #5,  when you search Seattle Mac Store and I
am sure it’s negative impact on your business is also not fair when you
relate it to the experience of one person. I am not in the practice of
removing articles from my blog but I am open to letting you have your say.
I believe in treating people, businesses and especially customers fairly
and I am sure this article is not painting you in a fair light.

I hope that they do take the opportunity to explain themselves. I am big enough to admit my mistakes and I could have approached the situation more tactfully, but I still would have done it publicly as an email to them saying “I don’t think your trade-in values are high enough” would have made a one way trip to the junk folder and everyone knows it.

I’d also like to apologize to any of my readers the previous article offended. If you took the trade deal, I am not calling you stupid, I am saying you deserved more.

From the Author: before you read this post and get caught up in the flames, my summarized opinion is that I choose not to shop at The Mac Store because I think they way they do business is not very fair to the customer. To be double clear, this is with respect to trade- ins. I have had positive experiences in the past buying Mac and iPhone accessories. Unfortunately, I am choosing to take my business elsewhere based on the trade in experience and recommending to my friends and readers to do the same. There is no discount on Apple products there vs. The Apple Store, so I choose to shop elsewhere because I think that is characteristic of being unfair to customers, my opinion only.

I don’t usually write articles to slam a local business, but after being totally shocked at a phone conversation I had today, I did a little looking. After reading some of the reviews of these stores, I can’t believe they are still in business.

My Story

I have been trying to trade an iMac I have laying around for a small Macbook for a few weeks now. I had found a trader on Craigslist but they were looking like they wouldn’t be able to get the deal done, so I decided to check out The Mac Store. I went to their site first and saw that in their used Mac section, the Macbooks go for less than my model iMac goes for, $929 for my iMac and $869 for the Macbook. Given they were close in used value, I decided to give them a call and see if we could make a deal.

Now I know businesses need to make money, I assumed maybe $100-$150 would be enough to get it done. I couldn’t have been further from wrong. I called them, told them what I was looking for, and what I had. The gentleman on the phone then told me that they would be glad to offer me $430 in trade towards a used Macbook.

That’s right, they were willing to give me less than half of the used value, to turn around and sell me another used one. Now I don’t claim to be a math genius, but it seems like offering me $430 for something that they will turn around and put a sticker on for $929, a $499 difference. Ouch! That means that I would be paying $1368 for a used Macbook when a new one costs $999! Are you serious I said?

To which, in true Latrel Sprewell fashion, the gentleman said, “Look, we have to make money.” This is where the conversation turned insulting.

I said, “I totally understand that you guys need to make money, but it seems like a few hundred in profit is still a good deal, I would have to be stupid to take a $500 bath to ‘upgrade’ my computer to one that actually has less value!”

The upstanding gentleman on the other end of the line responded with, “It’s your call if you want to be stupid or not, I am not making you sell it.”

Wow. Talk about customer service. A quick look on Yelp and I had found countless stories of shoddy repairs, poor in store customer service, generally acting condescending towards customers.

If it were me, I’d pass these stores right by and head to the Apple Store or buy what you need from Amazon.

Update:

The Mac Store emailed me to apologize for my experience, and explained the situation. The basic gist is “we screw you because it’s convenient.” The direct quote is below:

While it is true that our trade-in program does offer a lesser value than what you could get selling items on the open market, we do this in an attempt to make the process easy and painless for those making trades. It makes it easy for folks who do not want to hassle with Craigslist or EBAY, and are just looking to get something for the older machine.

I could almost buy that if I was trying to trade in some old beat up machine, but a very recent model with current specs? If we extended their “courtesy” to cars for example (and of course some dealers try to do this, but that’s not the point) and my car had a used retail of $20,105 (which is real), they would offer me $8,846 for it? Kelly Blue Book Trade In is $16,800 though, nearly double the 44% of retail value The Mac Store offered me.

Now I know computers aren’t cars, and I don’t expect Apples to Apples, but I would have been much more agreeable to $803 or 83% like in the car world, which would still have netted them a profit of $166. In fact, in another very petty cash grab, they would have gotten more than that, I noticed the computers they sell say they do not come with a Keyboard and Mouse, so they would have sold the Bluetooth Keyboard and Magic Mouse separately at 100% profit.

Who sells a $1,000 computer with no keyboard and mouse?

They wanted me to call and meet the manager of the store, but I am not sure why. They made no overture towards making me a reasonable offer, and I did in fact trade that computer today straight up for a current model unibody Macbook exactly like I wanted. Even stevens.