I recently read J.D.’s post at Get Rich Slowly warning us to Beware the Insidious Power of Marketing. It reminded me of the power of what we see, hear, smell, taste, and feel to influence our actions, even in ways we are unaware of. Advertising takes advantage of this by doing it’s best to subtly move us closer to making that next purchase, to buying just one more whatchamacallit, to “investing” in a bigger home, a faster car, or a nicer computer. However, the power of advertising and marketing can be used for good too. The concepts behind effective advertising are fairly simple psychological principles. Because they are being used by people to make a living, the application of the principles of psychology to influence behavior has been studied and perfected over many years. We can take advantage of those principles in our lives to change our own behavior just as effectively as the advertisers do.

Personally, this means that I try to surround myself with “advertising” for my goals. The idea is embodied in lifehacker’s recommendation to make a collage to get motivated. They don’t talk about doing anything more than just making one, partly because that can be so motivating by itself. But of course, you’d need (well, I’d need) something more frequent and regular to fight the advertising designed to get us to eat a lot. Make sure to put the collage up somewhere that you’ll see it every day, preferably many times a day. Trust me, that’s cheaper, timewise and magazine-wise, than making a collage every day.

Of course, making a collage is not the only way you can advertise to yourself. Something I’ve started doing is listening to motivational talks by men and women I admire. Podcasts about hobbies you want to spend more time on can be just what you need to actually do something about it. I can’t tell you how many times in the last few months I’ve been listening to a podcast on the commute home and made a note to myself about something I should change or do. When I follow through on that, I feel great. Even better, when I don’t I’m usually reminded of it the next day or the next week by another podcast.

And that’s exactly what advertisers are trying to do. They fill your head with ideas of things to buy and then incessantly remind you about them. They often do it by claiming, explicitly or implicitly, that if you just have their product, then you’ll be rich, famous, in control, powerful, funny, cool, athletic, healthy, happy, relaxed, or whatever. Of course, owning a given product doesn’t make you that person, or we could all be perfect by taking on enough debt. And a perfect person could pay off the debt easily, right?

But wait, aren’t I recommending that you advertise to yourself in order to become all those things and more? Frankly, yes, if that’s what you want. However, the key to advertising to yourself is finding out what it really takes to change. If your goal is to run a marathon, then advertise that goal to yourself in a way that actually helps. Some of that advertising can be “awareness” based, just to regularly remind you of your goal. At least some of it should link that goal to the actual steps required to acheiving it. And by this I don’t mean buying the latest, most expensive running shoes that you saw in the mailer from your local sports shop. The key is finding ways to link the euphoria that you’re sure will accompany accomplishment of your goal to the sometimes hard-to-do things that are required.

Of course, advertising for real products can be used when you’re doing this. Some of the most inspiring stuff out there is in the form of advertisements, such as Nike’s Move commercial. Just don’t feel like you have to buy Nike’s shoes in order to move. And the tools now exist to make exposing yourself to this great stuff, whether it’s commercial advertising or not, very easy.

Speaking of tools, I have to admit that my MP3 player died a couple weeks ago, and I’ve gotten so used to my personal advertising during the commute that listening to the radio is a trial. In my mind, it’s well worth the investment to buy a new MP3 player, because it’s an investment in myself. The key for me to remember is

“If I can market to myself the person I want to be, slowly but surely I can become that person.”

I’ll have to post that quote on my mirror or something…

I’ve been thinking recently about daily tasks. I use Outlook and my Palm (standard ToDo app) and don’t currently use daily tasks in either one. In my Palm I follow David Allen’s advice to have next actions with no due date, so all my categories, except tickler, don’t use a due date. I’ve set Outlook up the same way with flagged items and search folders, rather than using the tasks module. I just email myself tasks and flag them as appropriate. But sometimes I would like daily tasks - the 3-5 things I would like to get done during the day.

Let’s look at how tasks have been managed in different systems. The classic FranklinQuest system used daily tasks and they were then carried over from day to day if they were not completed. This had some of the benefit of the tickler file, in that you could write a task down on the day (in the future) when you wanted to be reminded to do it. All tasks that needed to be done as soon as you got to them went on the daily task list. Obviously in David Allen’s world of 100+ next actions, this would be ridiculous, especially on paper, but also in PDA’s or Outlook. What happens in reality is that most of a persons next actions are in the pseudo-tickler of future task lists.

David Allen’s Getting Things Done and the FranklinQuest system come from a fundamentally different paradigms. Both systems are looking at tasks as actionable items. However, FranklinQuest values the “What should I do today?” view and David Allen values the “What should I do here?” view. Of course, both are valid and useful. Both views of your tasks lead to certain behaviors and attitudes, as well as to certain pitfalls. A Franklin planner guy will not be able to take advantage of the funny little intervals of time that are everywhere. A David Allen acolyte may put off certain tasks indefinitely because they’re never important enough (one of my regular problems). Also, David Allen’s strict delineation between the calendar and the next actions lists doesn’t handle tasks with a due date very well - e.g. it needs to be done as soon as possible, but no later than next Monday.

Then there is the classic 7 Habits system, which focuses on the week. Daily tasks do show up though. They are placed on the day you’d like to work on them, either in the calendar or in a task list for the day. Here is merely another view put forth as an entire planning paradigm. The 7 Habits system has some of the same problems as the FranklinQuest system, in that items must be forwarded, at least each week. During the week they’ll still be in front of you but you may tune out stuff that hasn’t been brought forward to the current day.

Ulitmately, you want a system with all of these views. However, such a system is entirely impractical on paper because of the overhead of keeping everything synchronized. Enter my ideal task manager. Obviously it would have at the very least the views we’ve discussed already. I love having a context based view: what are all the things I can do right here, right now. So does David Allen. But I also want a view of the tasks I decided to do today. They’re not appointments and they’re not on my calendar, and they don’t necessarily have to be done today, but choosing a specific set of tasks to do in a day gives me a goal to work towards and allows me to get into a groove of similar tasks (not just similar based on context). I also want a view of my week with tasks, appointments and upcoming tickler items. This is the context that the 7 Habits system provides.

Wait! you say. Each of those systems not only provides you with the view, but also a way to use the view. Now how are you going to use multiple views? When do you switch views? How do you know that looking at one view won’t hide something important or possible in another view? It all comes down to one question - When you can look at and organize your tasks in any way you want, easily and quickly, how do you then use those views of your tasks to be even more productive?

Sounds like a good problem to solve.

A new link (though not so new anymore) on the FranklinCovey web site is titled “Productivity Tips.” It showed up in the last couple of months, I’m not exactly sure when, and has been sitting there on the home page ever since, minding its own little business. Clicking on this link takes you to “Productvity Tip #1.” Yep, that’s right, their very first one. Only now, in 2003 has FranklinCovey, formerly FranklinQuest and the Covey Leadership Center, started coming up with productivity tips.

This is their business for crying out loud! At the very least they could have picked a random sampling of paragraphs from any number of their books (7 Habits, 10 Natural Laws, 23 Fun Ways to Spend Your Afternoon) and had people go to Productivity Tip #34 on their first visit - and then a new one every time after that. Their web site already offers very little reason to return on a regular basis. The least they could do is pretend that its something new. But I do go back, what can I say - I owe a lot to these people. And when I do, and find to my dismay that they’re still working on their second productivity tip, it makes me want to slowly burn my planners in retribution. Ok, not really. Maybe just rip it into small pieces and throw them into the wind. But then, when I take the time to reread Productivity Tip #1 (hey look, I’m wasting my time at your web site about time management! So there!) and find that it really is a random paragraph taken from 7 Habits (… or was it First Things First?) then I actually do burn my planner - ok, well the pieces that the wind didn’t take away.

Its not that its a bad tip - its a great tip in fact, but I already knew it. So maybe next time I’ll drop in at The David Allen Company web site and see if they’ve got any new coaches articles or perspectives to read. At least their’s change every once in a while.

The Time Trap is a book of common sense. And by that I don’t mean common sense that people have forgotten about and therefore need to be reminded of. The common sense in The Time Trap is common sense that most people have either ignored or not yet discovered.

In the former case, there are many people who ignore the common sense in The Time Trap because of more fundamental challenges. They’re like the telemarketers who have forgotten that calling people during dinner time to try to sell them something they don’t want is rude. It’s not that they never knew it, but that other things are more important (read: money) and they know that a certain amount of rudeness can get them some money. So some people ignore common time management techniques because they know that doing so can accomplish other objectives that they have, whether or not they acknowledge them. One example is the person whose work just isn’t as important to them as tonights baseball game. No amount of time management technique will help this person be more focused and accomplish more at work. They just won’t. Because the game is more important they’ll give more thought and effort to the game, whether by reading the latest Sports Illustrated, browsing the teams web sites, or chatting with coworkers about it. In fact, this person does not want to be more effective at managing their time to do more work - they’re already quite effective at getting less done at work, while appearing to do enough, so they can spend more time on the game. The problem of time management in this case is not the techniques but the motivations, the fundamental desires and attitudes of the individual.

The common sense in The Time Trap also lies undiscovered by many. They just haven’t thought about the issue enough to have realized some very self-evident truths. Once again this is a problem of paradigms: someone who is not aware that they can live a better life by leading and managing their daily and weekly actions will not have considered how to do so. Most people who do want to have more time, either to do better at the current priorities in their lives or to have time for neglected priorities, can generally come up with the common sense in The Time Trap with a little thought.

Now, that being said, the book can make one more aware of the possibilities of time and life management. Mackenzie consistently talks about gaining an extra two hours a day through effective time management. The techniques are generally geared toward helping knowledge workers do their work with less interruptions and busywork. Each of the twenty “biggest” time wasters are listed with an analysis of causes and a discussion of techniques for saving time. Many of the concepts can be very helpful, such as keeping a time log, triaging mail, phone calls, and visitors, proper delegation, and holding effective meetings.

However, I felt frustrated with the lack of cohesiveness throughout the book. In some ways, because there are so many different techniques and no real way of tying them together, The Time Trap merely introduces a bunch of new things “to do” that add to the stress and hassle of everyday life. Although Mackenzie does a good job of looking at specific problems and possible solutions, he does not find a comprehensive solution to effective time management. This book may leave many people wanting more, either immediately or over time. They may get a sense of some underlying principles of time and life management, but because they aren’t made explicit (I doubt Mackenzie could make them explicit) they remain just out of reach. An example of this is the way that Mackenzie recommends we use our extra two hours everyday. Half of the time he encourages us to use it to enrich our personal lives by doing things like spending time with family. The other half of the time he emphasizes using it to be more productive at work, thus adding more value to your employer. While I believe that effective life leadership makes it possible to do both, Mackenzie’s suggestions are nowhere near adequate for the task. He sets the reader up for failure by seeming to imply that they can do it all. In fact, this book could very likely lead a person to fall right back into time trap #4 - attempting too much.

Also, returning to my initial thoughts that many time management problems are related to our attitudes, paradigms and desires, we see that The Time Trap does not address this at all. Put in the context of a new paradigm, many of these techniques could be quite helpful. But without a change in attitudes and desires, trying to change our behavior alone will be both difficult and slow. While I suspect that anyone who reads The Time Trap will get out two or three techniques that can help them now, most people will not find a truly comprehensive plan for better managing their time.

I’ve been reading The Now Habit, by Neil Fiore, the last few days. A couple of thoughts stick out in my mind. The one insight that I got out of it was the idea of “guilt-free play, quality work”. As I mentioned in my last post, I can sometimes take the planning/productivity thing too far. I’ve got a couple weeks off work at the moment so I’m working on balancing some fun play with all the little projects and todos I would normally spend my time on. This concept came at a good time, when I was already considering that I needed a personal hobby or something that I enjoyed doing to give me a little renewal on a regular basis. So I went out and bought Flight Simulator 2004, something I’ve always wanted to do, and I’m slowly learning how to fly. Someday I’d like to learn how to fly real airplanes, but at the moment a simulator is perfect. I’m also reading some fun books. Because I’m bouncing back and forth between work on stuff that needs to get done, and playing with flight simulator or reading I’ve found I get more done than if I tried to not play (and failed) and I don’t feel bad about the play. My wife has also been good about giving me a little free time.

Other than that its mostly just a recap of a lot of things people already know about - visualization, self-talk, scheduling, focusing on the next step. He wraps a lot of these basic concepts in fancy language with some references to research and calls it good. Personally, I’m glad I read the book for the play/work concept, but I wouldn’t recommend it to others. I think that without a good understanding of the Character Ethic described in 7 Habits most people would take Fiore’s advice as an excuse to live easy, unproductive lives - essentially an excuse to procrastinate. If you can go into it with a clear understanding of your own purpose and mission, however, the concept of guilt-free play can help you through the rough spots that nobody enjoys.