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Check Out Your E-Habits

Another week has ended. And, despite moving at the speed of light, you’ve once again barely made a dent in your more important goals or projects. Just about everyone wishes they had more time to focus on the really important things: Activities directly tied to job or key

According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product

business objectives. Spending time with key people – at work and at home. Exercise. Fun.(Remember “fun”?)

Intellectually anyway, we do understand the need to differentiate “forest from the trees” priority-wise. But with more “trees” to manage than ever, it can be tough even locating the forest, ne

; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

Examples of combination products may in

ver mind spending any meaningful time there. By far, the biggest source of new trees contributing to the workload logjam is email. But to view the problem of email as a problem of volume only is to miss out on the real problem. If the practices of the thousands of executives and managers who’ve a

lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

ttended Time/Design’s™ Power of Focus Management seminar are any indication, email itself is not the problem. The number one impediment to focusing on the big picture is how we respond to these “electronic trees.” In other words, if you want more time for your high priorityactivities, look no furthe

here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

than yourself.

We Have Met the Enemy and It Is Us

Here are three e-habits that undermine our ability to get to our high impact activities and some effective Focus Management™ techniques that can help:

1. Lost in the E-woods by 8:15 am

What’s the first thing you do when

d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

Combination pro

you arrive at your desk in the morning? Check your email, right? We say we want to spend more time on our forest activities but our behaviors indicate a love for the “e-trees.” Yet, when you begin the day by jumping into the trees, it’s easy to get lost in the woods. Sure you’re busy, but before yo

ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc

u know it, it’s quitting time and you never got near the high-impact stuff.

Solution: Don’t worry; you can still check your email. Give your forest activities the attention they deserve by making a separate list of your current goals and projects. Then use the time while your email is down

easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi

oading to review this list and build in time that day to work on one or more of these big picture activities.

2. E-Hugging

If the findings of a pre-course survey on the work habits of managers and executives at a major cable television network are any indication, the American office lands

nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically

cape is populated by “e-huggers.” These employees reported logging into email on average, 16 times a day, with one manager checking in a whopping 50 times. Based on an eight-hour day, this manager is interrupting her focus every 9.6 minutes. These constant self-interruptions make it virtually imposs

and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ

ible to spend any meaningful chunk of time in the forest.

Solution: If your email program constantly prompts you each time a new message arrives, minimize temptation by either turning off this feature or closing the program altogether. Then resolve to check your email no more than three ti

ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi

es a day. A morning, midday and end-of-day retrieval is optimal. If you are an ardent e-hugger, begin by weaning yourself down to six. Use the time you would have spent reacting to email to proactively concentrate on the big picture.

3. E-voiding the Forest

The pre-technology way to avoid

ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

Following aspects would a

buckling down was a stroll to the coffee machine. With the arrival of email, procrastinators never have to leave their desks. The 8:00 am leap into the e-trees and the continuous e-hugging throughout the day are but symptoms of a larger problem – eprocrastination. Not convinced? Take the Focus Man

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
Which combination prod

agement™ Pop Quiz: You have 45 minutes. Are you more likely to? A) Start on that high impact project you’ve been putting off all week or B) check your email. If you said “B,” join the club. Out of the thousands of people who have responded to that question, very few said they’d tackle the project.

cts are meaningful and rational?
Which therapeutic categories to select?
Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
Do combin

As for the rest of us, we tell ourselves that the reason we go for the email is because it’s faster and easier. But that’s not the only reason everyone heads for the virtual trees. Handling the small stuff addresses our uniquely human need to feel productive. With easily five major projects in vary

tions increase the patient compliance?
What would be the developing cost?
How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen

ng stages of incompletion at any given time, employees rarely feel “done.” Email satisfies our need to complete something. That is, until the next time.

Solution: “Forest” activities invariably entail “big verbs” (e.g. plan, develop, coordinate, research, relocate, etc). The trees involve

t?

As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel

small verb tasks like call, email, order and so on. This distinction is important because the brain automatically skips big verbs in favor of small ones. Given the choice between developing the strategic marketing plan and checking email, the later will always win because the course of action is rea

ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

dily apparent. What you need to do is break your big picture activities down into the kind of small action verbs that will satisfy our need for completion. The way to do this is by determining the very next action needed to move the development of strategic marketing along – like “call Fred,” “see

y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products

if conference room is available for a 2:00 brainstorming meeting,” or “make a list of possible marketing ideas.” Then use that 45 minutes before the meeting to knock off one or all of these manageable next steps. Don’t look for the rising tide of email to recede anytime soon. Instead, the key to fo

.

As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de

cusing on the big picture is to learn to manage your focus. Gain control over your attention and you gain greater control over your life.

You are welcome to reprint this or any of our productivity-enhancing articles in your organization’s newsletter or on your website providing the following attri

elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

bution and hyperlink appear with each article. 2004 Time/Design. Gain control your focus and gain control of your life. To learn more about Time/Design’s Focus Management™ tools, training and coaching, call 800-637-9942 or visit www.timedesign.com

tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

Working and maintaining a career based on the mentality of the Industrial Age employer and worker is a surefire way of ensuring that you will not achieve financial success and freedom. In the Information Age, more and more people are seeking financial freedom and income security to shore up their retirement account and lifestyle. The horror is that there is a huge class of workers trapped in the poverty lane on the highway of financial success and freedom.

Once a nurse finds out that they can keep their day job (or night shift) and start a nursing staffing agency on the side and make over $100,000 a year in extra income they quickly begin and try to find out how to get started.

Writing a Business Plan for your next entrepreneurial endeavor is crucial. You will need sufficient capital and a guide to keep you on track. One important part of any business plan is to size up the Industry and attempt to figure out your pecking order and specialty niches for your best chances of profitability.

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