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How do you set your agenda for the day?

As you know from listening to my podcast, I keep my TO DO list on paper. It keeps me honest about keeping it a reasonable length, and ruthless pruning items that I’m never going to do.

But even so, my list has far more items on it than I can do in any given day. So each day, I only accomplish part of what’s on the list. Usually, my intention is set by looking over the list and choosing 3-5 “must do” things. My actual accomplishments, however, end up being a complicated mix of those “must do” things (sometimes none of them, sigh) and dealing with stuff that pops up during the day.

For example, the other day, I was planning on recording a CD product in a marathon 8-hour recording session. This was my first such session and I simply didn’t know that my voice and energy levels are only good for around 2-3 hours. So now, the recording is spilling into additional days, displacing other stuff I’d planned to do.

How do you decide what to do each day? Does your method work for you?

E-mail? Oy! What are your e-mail issues?

I’m seeking to understand the challenges of dealing with e-mail. It’s not as simple as it seems. Of the people who find e-mail a challenge, different people have different issues. For some, it’s keeping their inbox empty; they get stressed out from a large, unanswered inbox. For others, it’s treating e-mail as interruption (“I know it’s probably not important, but I can’t help checking when the little notification appears on my screen”).

What are your big e-mail challenges? What parts of dealing with e-mail would you like to streamline?

Is the Net deeply changing the way you think?

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I just read this article in the Atlantic about how the Net has changed the way the article’s author thinks. He’s wondering what the larger, societal effects will be. Being The Atlantic, he’s also savvy enough to realize there may be unintended good consequences that can’t be predicted, in addition to the negatives he highlights.

The article gave me pause. Upon reflection, I believe he’s right. Ten years ago, usability expert Jakob Neilson was doing studies that showed people skim online, they don’t read in depth. And it’s pretty clear from anyone who’s spent five minutes in a browser that we jump from topic to topic pretty quickly.

I know that my own writing has changed. I used to love writing longhand in a lined pad, and now can barely form a sentence without having a text editor where I can cut and paste.

And as for reading? My tolerance for reading long non-fiction books went away years ago. I inch my way through them now. So do I absorb complicated new information that requires Thought and Contemplation? Er, not nearly as much. Maybe it’s simply that I’m older and busier, but it’s true that the Net has really habituated me to sound-bite reading.

That’s one big worry for my upcoming Get-it-Done Guy book, in fact. Part of the reason it is organized as many, many small micro-chapters is that I don’t believe anyone’s going to read a 200-page book straight through. And if I want to give readers value, it has to come in a form they can use.

How about you?

Corrupt research, even at Harvard

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I just read this article in the New York times. Harvard Researchers who study child psychiatry have done research credited with vastly increasing the diagnosis of childhood bipolar disorder. That increase comes with a pretty hefty boost to sales of prescription medication for the condition. And oh, yes, the researchers have received over $1 million apiece in consulting fees from—you guessed it—pharmaceutical companies.

The researchers are indignant at the idea that the consulting fees may have influenced their research. And indeed, no one has yet re-reviewed the research.

But hey! These are friggin’ psychiatrists. Social psychologists have known for decades that when you accept money from someone, you become biased in their favor. The bias happens even if you consciously try to keep it from happening. The bias happens even if you know about the bias effect. It’s part of the “commitment and consistency” principle of social psychology.

I’m in the middle of reading a book on the topic by two of the most prominent, well-respected social psychologists in the world, Mistakes Were Made. I’m only partway through, but I just read pages 43-55, which lay out specifically the studies that have shown than (a) scientists paid by industry tend to be influenced in favor of the ones making payments, and (b) doctors given gifts by pharmaceuticals (oddly, small gifts actually show a greater effect than large gifts) tend to overprescribe the company’s products. Exactly the issues highlighted in this article!

What I’ve read so far convinces me that any research conducted by a researcher who has received fees from a vested party should be considered suspect. Furthermore, any drugs prescribed by a doctor who has received fees or promotional gifts from a pharmaceutical should be considered suspect.

We’re trusting our minds, bodies, and children to prescriptions and research done by people who have powerful unconscious reasons to find problems and prescribe drugs. That doesn’t mean the research is bad, nor does it mean there was any conscious wrong-doing. But the very fields of psychology and psychiatry have known for decades that the more powerful motivations are those below consciousness, and those are the very ones motivations triggered by the gifts, consulting fees, and promotions.

What is hard work?

“Work hard and you’ll be successful.” “You just need to put in a little hard work.” “Whew! I worked so hard today.”

We say things like this all the time without thinking about it. Recently, my bedframe broke and I needed the mattress moved. Despite my newly developed manly-man muscles (thank you, Trainer Tyler), decades of sitting zombie-like in front of a flickering computer monitor has left me unable to do stuff like, say, lift things in the real world.

My cleaning lady and her husband offered to move the mattress. As I was watching them haul it between rooms, it looked like awful hard work. I sipped my martini and pondered the thought. Hard work.
Hard work. To an outside observer, I sit in one place all day and think. Sometimes, it feels like very hard work. My cleaning lady hauls mattresses, which I’m almost physically incapable of doing. Does she experience that as hard work?

The more I thought, the more a pattern became clear as to what makes something “hard work” for me. I don’t want to give it away just yet, until I’ve heard your thoughts.

Please tell me: what are some things you consider hard work, and what is it about them that makes them “hard work” rather than just “work” or “random activities” or “play”