Everyone has their own best practices and tools for getting the job done. Some include holding onto their iPhone for dear life or learning how to stay organized even during the chaotic times. Our recurring segment “It Works for Me” will feature business professionals sharing their secrets on how they get the job done. First up is Pete Marsack from BlueRock Technologies.
Company Name: BlueRock Technologies
Job Title: Vice President, Consulting
Where do you live? Northville, MI
Where do you work? Troy, MI
What is your office environment like? A subtle mixture of caffeine drinks, nerf gun bullets, and creative chaos. It’s an open workspace where the teams can collaborate without having to shout through walls to get a point across or step outside to enjoy a sunny day.
What technology do you use at work? I’m an Apple fanboy at work, armed with a MacBook Pro, iPad, iPhone and large Thunderbolt monitor. It looks like an Apple store threw up on my desk.
What technology do you use at home? At home is where the truth comes out. An Alienware supercomputer sits in my office running Windows 8.1 that generates enough heat to keep me warm in the winter and enough radiation to make sure I stick with two kids.
On a scale of 1 (never) to 10 (always), how often are you connected to your smartphone? 8. I do put it down when I sleep and have trained myself to ignore it when I drive. Also, I try to set a good example for my kids, so I enforce a “no technology at the dinner table” rule. Other than that, I am sadly glued to the thing almost like Siri had the voice of Scarlett Johansson.
What is your favorite organizational tool? I use a combination of organizational tools depending on the need. Microsoft Outlook (along with the Office365 Suite) seems to be my typical base of operations with the help from other software that is more specific to my industry, such as ConnectWise.
What is the latest website/app/tool you are obsessed with at the moment? The app Word Lens amazes me. Using the camera in your mobile device, it will translate text that it sees to another language. Honestly, I don’t have a ton of productive or practical use for it but I just love using it on random signs and documents.
Can you recommend a book? Sure, we have a book club here with a lot of great reads. I would start with The Law of Success by Napoleon Hill since so many other books have been derived from the principals discussed in this book.
What’s your best time management tip? Don’t be distracted by Facebook or Twitter if you need to get things done. Try to schedule email checking times 2 or 3 times a day versus having it in your face all of the time and reacting to inbound email. Triage your upcoming work week the Saturday or Sunday before the week actually hits. This keeps you more focused to delivering actual results and small victories vs. reacting and responding to the typical chaos of the business day.
What’s the strangest thing in your office? Me, probably 🙁 There is also a half-dead plant over in the corner that has always seemed out of place and kind of strange, but I can’t really blame the plant for that.
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