TCOBaG – kNow ThiNkIng AllOwEd

I hear this, I read this, I have this problem myself at times.

There’s just not enough time in the day to get it all done.

Suffering from the ‘not enough time in the day’ syndrome?

Bullpucky!

Yep, one of the things that is eating up your time is just that sort of thinking.

Okay, Allen, so what can I do about it?

Glad you asked . . .

This is one of the biggies, even for the biggies. When you whip this, you’ll be absolutely smoking.

My take on Mike Litman’s “Success 6″ method. That’s a great resource btw, Mike Litman.

Nutshell:
At night, list the 6 most important things you need to do tomorrow. (may not do this justice on the fly, but hope you get the idea. He also recommends choosing the ones that you know will better your life, business, etc, and that you find you don’t want to do.)

Put them in order of importance. (I like to put them in order of reward if done.)

Next day, take out your list, start at number 1. Finish it. Move on.

That night, take what’s left of your list, oh yeah, you’ll have days you don’t get all of them done, and make it 6 again.

One thing that works for me especially well, is instead of using the ‘today I’ll do this, this and this’ method, I use the list, and put “I’ll do this before 11:00, this by noon, this by 3:30, this by . . . ”

Rinse repeat.

Be well, live well, die last.

Allen

Who is the winner when your Willpower goes head-to-head with your Imagination?

Willpower, without it, you are left wafting in the breeze, victim of any and every whim that takes you.

Ahhhhh, where did that ‘whim’ come from?

Just popped out of thin air?

That ‘whim’ usually comes from your imagination, and your mind is a powerful projector, a personal ‘movie maker.’

What makes you want to bite into that donut even though you’ve vowed to lose those extra 10 pounds? Is it really a lack of willpower?

I think not.

I think that your imagination is to blame

The key here is to focus on using your imagination to support your willpower, instead of undermining it.

When the urges strike you, don’t just grit your teeth, clamp down on something nearby and refuse to let go. This method will end in failure more often than not.

Instead, focus on your image, the one you created of the new, better, healthier, wealthier (whichever is closest to your specific goal) and let that feed your willpower.

Tell yourself, “I see myself feeling, looking better, and this donut isn’t part of that plan.” Imagine what it will feel like to obtain that goal, what you will look like, what others will say about you, think about you, or what you will think about yourself when your new goal has been reached and you’ve scratched it off your list.

Ask yourself, after I give in to this urge, how will I feel? Is that how I want to feel? Will it truly be worth it?

Then, willpower and imagination will be working together to help you instead of being locked in a cage match, winner-take-all brawl that willpower is bound to lose.

TCOBaG: When all you have is a hammer . . .

everything looks like a nail.

A friend of mine when asked a question about solving a certain content management system problem came back with a very detailed, quite concise way that the problem might be solved using a customized script snip to reach a solution.

I’d not want to bore you too much with the technical details, but his follow-up to the question his response sparked started with this statement: “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

The question of course was “Doesn’t that seem like overkill?”

What does that have to do with marketing? Success? Getting what you want?

Well, as always, I’m so glad you asked . . .

First, my friend is a programmer, and pretty serious about it. What he does, he does like you and I breathe. Kind of like the folks who still hand code html in a text reader, like Textpad, or Notepad.

How many times have you asked a question, especially a solution based question, and their response revolved around what they knew best?

Of course, it happens all of the time.

What this means for us, is that if we’re looking for a programming solution for our problems, ask a programmer, sales copy solution, ask a writer.

If you ask a programmer about fixing a problem with visitors hitting your order page but not following through I can guarantee you that his (or her solution is going to be something script based.

If you like surprises, then ask the sales copy guy how to solve your Linux server issues.

If not, and you’re really looking for a way to handle the nail, ask the guy with the hammer.

Could it be that “Influence” has been translated into Japanese? Could it be required reading for realtors?

I’ve been reading Robert Cialdini’s “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” and it makes me feel sooooooo foolish

How many little triggers are there that set us to doing things, sometimes that we want/need/should do?

But how many are there that we are unaware of? that lead us off into the ‘land to be fleeced’? or at least into the land of susceptibility?

I was cringing when I read the passage about the realtors using ‘dump houses’ to set clients up for the houses they really wanted to sell.

Why was I cringing?

Because I recently bought a house, in Japan, and this technique may have very well been in play . . .

Our realtor was showing us houses we requested to see. We were looking for a new house, a certain size (two small but growing boys after all need a little room, so their parents don’t eat them

One day we asked him to show us a house, that wasn’t new, and next thing we know he calls and says there’s a house a little like what we’re in the market for and he can show it to us.

The house was 5 years old, and still occupied, which kept us from running for the car within 5 minutes of arriving.

I’m sure we weren’t that good at hiding our disappointment, and our agent helped us out of there fairly quickly. When we arrived at our car, he said there was another house not too far away, a little older, but that we might as well look at since we were in the neighborhood.

We looked at it, we loved it, we bought it.

It looked great then. (fact is, it looks great now despite the fact that we’re living in it and I’m not the yard master or best gardener in the neighborhood).

I still wonder though if this wasn’t a classic, show them something pricey and crappy first, then show them the thing you really want them to buy and it will look so much better.

In any case, I’m still happy we bought the house. Would we have been so easy to persuade to buy a 15 year old house after looking at only new houses? I think not

Here’s a rough, on the fly response to this question I received from a colleague and friend recently:

Where do you want to start? Articles? That seems like it might be easier to
get around on, short, one topic, end it.

If you want to start there you could try the basic 5 part essay approach.
This ‘theme’ works in an expanded way so that you could just keep repeating
the process to infinity, adding related ’5 parts’ till you had a book

You’ll find this is just like public speaking, when done correctly.

Basics would be:
decide purpose
audience
topic
Then:
1. intro
2.body
Pa. support idea/examples
Pb. support idea/examples
Pc. support idea/examples
3. Conclusion

A little more detail . . .

1. intro: get the readers attention, show them what you’re going to write
about, give background if necessary start general and work your way to the
specifics.
That is, talk about computers used to take up whole buildings, whole floors
of buildings, then one room, then they were in a corner, then they were
desktops, then they were laptops, now they’re implanted under your skin.

Getting attention:
1. questions, open-ended, or you know what the answer will be, yes or no,
Have you ever been stopped by the police in your car? Have you ever been
shopping downtown? kinds of things, pulls them right in, they gotta say yes,
and then wonder what you’re up to, hehheh.
2. tell a story
3. quote somebody
4. background, history
5. statistics (trick with stats is to ‘relate the figures’ ie 430
yards=almost 4 and a half football fields kind of thing)

Giving examples/support: be specific whenever possible

Conclusion: restate your main idea, summarize your points, leave ‘em with a
question, or ask them to take action etc

See, you already know that stuff, right?

Want ideas for writing?
Read.

Ask and answer the questions that come to you.

Simple.

Then, check it.

Is the idea you want to write about stated clearly?
Do you have in place an attention getter?
(End the intro with the main idea you want to cover.)

Do you have enough supporting details? Are they specific?

Conclusion? Restated the main points? Left them something to do or to think
about?

Spellcheck it and let it rip

Check out this article I wrote recently:

http://www.linksnoop.com/article.php?n=904

It’s not exactly this pattern, but you’ll see it fits fairly closely. I
don’t think about that part any more, just do, like my bad golf swing,
hehheh.

Put your character, your voice into it, make it appropriate for the audience
you’re aiming for though, geez, I know you’ve got this stuff from speaking,
just transfer it here

You can start with brainstorming, free-writing, journaling, mind
mapping/clustering, too to get your ideas down, choose the ones that look
like you’ve got enough info to go on.

I think at our life stage though, that doing the question/response thing to
get ideas down on ‘paper’ is great and effective and efficient (Gary Halbert
line stealing there, sorry).

You might also try the hard way

Get an idea, get your mic, record the stuff, transcribe it, then edit it.
I’ve also done that, a lot before, more for music ideas/song lyrics
‘in-the-flow’ type of writing, but it works either way.

Need more? I skimmed over something? Didn’t make sense?