Fixed-schedule productivity

You know those half-days of work before you're about to go on vacation? You show up to work, have to leave by noon, and have a lot of things to get done before you go -- some of which you've been working on for weeks. It's always amazed me how, in that 3-hour span, you finish what might have taken 2 days if there weren't a pressing deadline, and often with higher quality results. You find a way to reach elusive people, get final answers to lingering questions, and cross off for good non-essential tasks.

Like most people, I generally consider myself to focused and disciplined when I work. But after I have one of these super-focused half-days, I realize how unproductive I am the rest of the time. Which is why Tim Ferriss's time management ideas (chapter 5) in the 4-Hour Workweek resonated with me and so many other people. Here's Ferriss's core argument in his words:

There are two synergistic approaches for increasing productivity that are inversions of each other:

1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20).
2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson's Law).

The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.

Ferriss recently tweeted about similar case for setting strict deadlines and focusing on what really matters: "fixed-schedule productivity" from Cal Newport. Newport, a post-doc at MIT, has a short version of his argument on his blog, but the longer, example-backed version from this guest blog post is better.

Here's Newport's one-sentence summary of the approach:

Fix your ideal schedule, then work backwards to make everything fit — ruthlessly culling obligations, turning people down, becoming hard to reach, and shedding marginally useful tasks along the way.

And here's his more detailed summary:

The steps to adopting fixed-schedule productivity are straightforward:

1. Choose a work schedule that you think provides the ideal balance of effort and relaxation.
2. Do whatever it takes to avoid violating this schedule.

This sounds simple. But of course it’s not. Satisfying rule 2 is non-trivial. If you took your current projects, obligations, and work habits, you’d probably fall well short of satisfying your ideal schedule.

Here’s a simple truth that you must confront when considering fixed-schedule productivity: sticking to your ideal schedule will require drastic actions. For example, you may have to:

• Dramatically cut back on the number of projects you are working on.
• Ruthlessly cull inefficient habits from your daily schedule.
• Risk mildly annoying or upsetting some people in exchange for large gains in time freedom.
• Stop procrastinating.

In the abstract, these are all hard goals to accomplish. But when you’re focused on a specific goal — “I refuse to work past 5:30 on weekdays!” — you’d be surprised by how much easier it becomes to deploy these strategies in your daily life.

Even though they're very similar (and I think 4-Hour Workweek was the inspiration for fixed-schedule productivity), I find Newport's case more palatable than Ferriss's -- because the steps to follow it are more concrete and his examples are of people who work a normal workday. That's not to say it's easy to stick to, but I'm trying ...

A plea for more Paradox of Choice research

Like Freakonomics co-author Stephen Dubner, I found Barry Schwartz's Paradox of Choice very persuasive -- even though one of my favorite free market commentators seems to equate Schwartz with the devil (here and here). In a recent blog post, Dubner cites new research that runs counter to Schwartz's argument that too much choice often leads to paralysis and unhappiness. It's interesting, but it's only from one sources and seems pretty limited.

What I can't figure out is why there's not more debate and research taking place on this issue, which seems so critical for economists, marketers, product managers, usability and design experts, and plenty of others in business and academia. How many choices to offer its users / customers / donors / etc. seems like a decision almost every organization faces in some area at some point; many face it constantly.

And it's not just makers of jam or chocolates. I've struggled with this issue with my resume writing service -- where I think we've gone from offering 2 packages, to 3, to none (custom-only), back to 2, back to 3, and for now to 6, with a frequent temptation to go back to 3. And Karan and I have wrestled with the "choice question" on our customer review site -- where I've seen in usability sessions that offering multiple ways to respond to a recommendation request causes confusion and frustration.

My datasets are unfortunately too small to provide clear evidence. But with the growing ability to measure conversions and sales so effectively on the Web, and the growing ability to run scientific A/B tests (e.g. show 50% of website visitors 5 choices, show the other 50% 2 choices), large companies with large dollars at stake surely must have some results on this that would illuminate the debate -- so that those of us interested don't have to keep reading about jam. Or have I just missed them?

Wikipedia's declining volunteer base

For many people like me, Wikipedia is the most successful example of opening content creation up to the masses and empowering and motivating volunteers to contribute high quality work. So this recent front page story from the WSJ is interesting, and a little troubling:

Volunteers have been departing the project that bills itself as "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" faster than new ones have been joining, and the net losses have accelerated over the past year. In the first three months of 2009, the English-language Wikipedia suffered a net loss of more than 49,000 editors, compared to a net loss of 4,900 during the same period a year earlier ...

As a few people from Wikipedia point out, the decline in the number of participants isn't necessarily a bad thing; the real question is, are entries and quality and usefulness to readers continuing to go up? Maybe a smaller number of participants can do this better than the earlier (or current) large number. But at the very least, the numbers and anecdotes suggest that the organization needs to do a better job attracting, or not scaring off, new participants -- especially among women, people over 35, and tech novices.

Virtual interns

As we start recruiting for our first Marketade interns, this recent WSJ article on virtual internships caught my eye, and makes me wonder: for most internet-based small businesses, is it better to have an A-talent intern working remotely, or a B-talent intern working with you face-to-face? The article mentions the site Urban Interns, which I'm going to try out.

Stanford web credibility guidelines

A few years ago, my friend Paul sent me this great list from B.J. Fogg and the Web Credibility team at Stanford. Unlike a lot of top 10 tips lists, this one is backed by rigorous research. High recommended -- I revisit them every few months.

Patriots vs. Colts and data vs. intuition

I was shocked when I watched the ESPN highlights of the recent Patriots-Colts game. With 2 minutes left in the game -- leading by 6 points -- and with the ball on their own 28, Pats coach Bill Belichick decided to go for it on 4th-and-2.

I've always disliked Belichick and so I was happy to see the Pats fail to convert on the play, and then look silly giving the ball to Peyton Manning with less than 30 yards to go for a touchdown. The Colts scored a TD and won the game, 35-34, while Belichick looked up at the sky.

But as it turns out, Belichick's call was the right one -- if you go by the data and probabilities. As one Fifth Down blog post in the NY Times puts it, "Twenty years ago…..case closed. It was a bad move. The people with the pens and microphones had spoken. Heck……ten years ago this would have been the case. But, a funny thing happened. The N.F.L. stat geeks ... fought back."

Here's a leading geek's analysis, quoted in another Fifth Down post:

Scenario 1: The custom case for the specific offensive and defensive features of the Colts and the Patriots.

Going for it: 77.3% (Probability of Winning for the Patriots)
Punting: 75.7%

Scenario 2: The case for two N.F.L. average and equal teams in every offensive and defensive category:

Going for it: 78.6% (Probability of Winning for the Patriots)
Punting: 76.4%

Scenario 3: The break-even point on the decision occurs when the team with the ball is about 5 percent weaker than N.F.L. average on offense and 5 percent better than N.F.L. average on defense, while the opposing team is 5 percent better than N.F.L. average on defense and 5 percent worse than average on offense.

The results of Scenarios #1 and #2 clearly point in favor of Belichick’s decision, although not by nearly as wide a margin as we might have expected. Additionally, the analysis in Scenario #3 really cements the case for “going for it.” Applying this benchmark and comparing it with the far different characteristics of the Patriots and the Colts makes the call all the more clear.

Thumbs up to Belichick on a courageous and correct call last night.

In his Freakonomics column, Steven Levitt praises Belichick not only for making the right call, but for doing so knowing that "if it failed, he would be subjected to endless criticism." In other words, he cares more about winning than his reputation.

For fans of data-driven decision-making -- in business, sports, or any other sphere -- this is a fascinating case study, and I find myself liking Bill B. just a little more these days.

NY Times small-business guide to using Facebook

A few good tips from "How to Market Your Business With Facebook" from the NY Times:

• Identify a short list of goals before you begin.

• Show some personality in your page.

• Don't shill. Use your page to engage-and trust that sales will follow.

• Use Facebook data to analyze your customer demographics.

Google Webmaster Blog: meta keyword tag doesn't matter

I recently did some SEO work for a client, whose web designer later suggested I didn't know what I was doing because I hadn't touched the site's meta keywords. So I went looking for a credible source stating that meta keywords don't matter. I didn't have to look hard; a little over a month ago, Google's Matt Cutts posted this hard-to-misinterpret announcement on the Google Webmaster Central Blog: "Google does not use the meta keyword tag in web ranking". Matt McGee captures the significance of this post in his Search Engine Land column:

Google is telling the world what every seasoned webmaster and search marketer should already know: The keywords meta tag has no impact whatsoever on how Google’s search engine ranks pages. None. Zilch. Nada. And while Google often needs to be somewhat ambiguous when talking about how it ranks pages, the message in today’s blog post is perfectly clear ...

Here's are some excerpts from Google's blog post:

Q: Does Google ever use the "keywords" meta tag in its web search ranking?

A: In a word, no. Google does sell a Google Search Appliance, and that product has the ability to match meta tags, which could include the keywords meta tag. But that's an enterprise search appliance that is completely separate from our main web search. Our web search (the well-known search at Google.com that hundreds of millions of people use each day) disregards keyword metatags completely. They simply don't have any effect in our search ranking at present.

Q: Does this mean that Google ignores all meta tags?

A: No, Google does support several other meta tags. This meta tags page documents more info on several meta tags that we do use. For example, we do sometimes use the "description" meta tag as the text for our search results snippets, as this screenshot shows:

Even though we sometimes use the description meta tag for the snippets we show, we still don't use the description meta tag in our ranking.

Q: Does this mean that Google will always ignore the keywords meta tag?

A: It's possible that Google could use this information in the future, but it's unlikely. Google has ignored the keywords meta tag for years and currently we see no need to change that policy.

Redbox and limited choice

Interesting article from Rob Walker in the NYT on redbox's success in offering a limited selection of DVDs to consumers.

"In the venture's early days, [president Mitch] Lowe says, redbox actually experimented with different models, offering wider selections, including classic and foreign films (because the kiosks can hold 600 discs). 'What we found,' he says, 'is that today there are so many choices out there, consumers are really looking for some help and guidance'."

If you've read Barry Schwartz's work, this will sound familiar.

WSJ on volunteer advisers

Have a startup and want to tap into free advisers? The WSJ has some options: "Some small-business owners say their firms are surviving tough economic times thanks in part to advisory boards they regularly turn to for fresh perspectives and support."

Inc. on microtesting

One of my favorite parts of The 4-Hour Workweek is Tim Ferriss's discussion of microtesting new products -- marketing something cheaply and scientifically online to see if you get interested buyers before you go produce it. It's very consistent with ideas I've long been attracted to, in particular: predicting the future is impossible, and it's better to get user feedback on products as early and often as possible. And it's an especially appealing approach for startups and small businesses that can't afford to spend a lot on developing products that go bust.

A recent article in Inc. magazine - "The Bootstrapper's Guide to Launching New Products" - offers some good examples of "microtesting" or "minimum viable product." "What sets this approach apart from practices like using focus groups," the article points out, "is that companies base product development decisions not just on what customers say they want but on how they vote with their wallets."

Giving new products a familiar ring

Good piece in the NY Times - from a Harvard B School professor - on the importance of positioning new products within familiar categories:

"Humans instinctively sort and classify things. It’s how we make sense of a complex world. So when companies develop innovative products and services that don’t obviously fit into established categories, managers need to help people understand what comparison to make. Without that step, potential customers might just walk away wondering, 'What is it?'"

Wash Post on digital nomads

I recently came across this fun front page article from a couple months back in the Post on the rise of 'digital nomads', people who "work -- clad in shorts, T-shirts and sandals -- wherever they find a wireless Web connection to reach their colleagues via instant messaging, Twitter, Facebook, e-mail and occasionally by voice on their iPhones or Skype."

The article describes people who work from coffee shops, hotel lobbies, the DC-NY buses, and rooftop pools (though no mention of my favorite nomad spot: public libraries and law school libraries). Despite being a nomad for two years now, I'd never heard of "jellies" until this article: "Nomads who want the feel of working with officemates have begun co-working in public places or at the homes of strangers. They work laptop-by-laptop in living rooms and coffee shops, exchanging both idle chitchat and business advice with people who all work for different companies. The gatherings are called jellies, after a bowl of jelly beans the creators were eating when they came up with the name." Interesting.

The article closes by mentioning my current main nomad spot:

"Slightly more formal co-working centers have opened across the country, including Affinity Lab in office space above the Diner in Adams Morgan. Ads on the wall at Tryst offer space to the fully-evolved nomad who doesn't want a formal office but still wants a community of people to swap ideas with -- and a fax machine. Members pay $235 a month to work in a communal room -- no desk included -- or $575 for a desk. Users include designers, software startup entrepreneurs, nonprofit group staffers and an importer of Chilean wine."

BW looks inside Google

Robert Hof asks "Can Google Stay on Top of the Web?" in this week's BusinessWeek. Google seems to have offered Hof more access to their inner workings than most reporters. Most interesting to me was his description of the evolutionary, detail-focused way that Google makes many of its search results improvements:

To an outsider, many of the changes may look impossibly trivial. Several years ago, for instance, engineers noticed that while Google was returning useful pages when someone typed an acronym such as 'CIA'—providing links to the government agency and to the Culinary Institute of America—people were taking a slightly longer time than expected to click on one of them. So on the results pages, Google began highlighting in bold the full names. Immediately, Google saw more clicks through to pages—and faster, too. How much faster? Perhaps 30 or 40 thousandths of a second, on average, Singhal says. That's one tenth the speed of an eyeblink. 'This was a small idea,' concedes Singhal. 'But we have a real responsibility as a company to respect people's time.'

In doing research for the article, Hof held in-depth interviews with Eric Schmidt along with 4 key people in Google's search quality group. You can find links to each of those interviews on Matt Cutts' blog.

WSJ on Web tools for small businesses

The WSJ covers 8 free or cheap web services designed to help small businesses with organizing, raising funds, or gaining insights. The last 5 all looked interesting to me.

Digital handcuff tools

Ever since reading John Tierney's article on the science of concentration and Rapt, the book it discusses, I've been very interested in finding ways to cut down on distractions and find large blocks of time to focus on one thing. So this recent NY Times piece on taming your digital distractions was right up my alley.

Tired of getting sucked into Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the like, the author spent a few weeks trying out "a slate of programs to tame these digital distractions ...

The apps break down into three broad categories. The most innocuous simply try to monitor my online habits in an effort to shame me into working more productively. Others reduce visual bells and whistles on my desktop as a way to keep me focused. And then there are the apps that really mean business — they let me actively block various parts of the Internet so that when my mind strays, I’m prohibited from giving in to my shiftless ways. It’s the digital equivalent of dieting by locking up the refrigerator and throwing away the key.

He concludes that none of them helped him much, and I think I'd have the same experience. But I am going to try out RescueTime.

The biggest time-suck for me is email, and when I've been able to follow Tim Ferriss's suggestion to only check it twice a day, my productivity skyrockets. It's just very hard to stick to it. Maybe one of these tools will help.

Just go for it

From a WSJ interview with Chipotle founder Steve Ells:

Q. What advice do you give to other entrepreneurs starting out?

A. So many people told me it was not a good idea to a start a restaurant, especially a fast-food restaurant. There was so much wrong with it – it was too spicy; everything was done by hand, from scratch. Everything was wrong. But that's why customers liked it; it's different, in the right way. If you have an idea, just go for it. If everybody is telling you that it's wrong, maybe that's an indication that it's an original idea.

Learning from Mint

I'd just started using, and loving, Mint a week before they got bought by Intuit. From a user's perspective, this seems like bad news. From a Web business perspective, as this Slate article points, it seems encouraging and offers some good lessons. Not sure I get the difference between Web 2.0 and 2.5 as defined in the article, but it is true that more and more tools needed to grow a business online are free or very cheap. Most interesting part to me:

Yesterday, at a panel I moderated in San Francisco, Donna Wells, Mint.com's chief marketing officer, stunned a room full of digital marketing pros by noting that she really didn't have much of a marketing budget. Mint.com has gone from zero to 1.5 million users in two years with no ad campaign, save a mid-five-figures sum spent on search engine terms. Rather than purchase traffic, it has pursued the same type of strategy that food trucks and online magazines do: Using free social media and piggybacking on popular new communications technology. Mint.com has more than 36,000 Facebook fans and 19,000 Twitter followers, a well-trafficked blog, and a popular iPhone application.

Mint.com, which advises customers on how to pinch pennies, does some penny-pinching of its own. It uses Wordpress (free) to run its Web site and blog. To analyze traffic partners, conversion rates, and other essentials of an online business that generates its revenues through lead generation, it uses Google analytics (free and sufficiently simple that Wells' marketing staff can use it without the help of software experts). Wells referred to a bunch of other services it uses to keep tabs on its site, such as ClickTale and Crazy Egg and Compete, as "virtually free"—costing a few hundred dollars a month. Mint.com's main market research tool is Zoomerang, which helps companies conduct online surveys and collect user feedback. The cost: about $700 per year.

Business owners and happiness

Sue Shellenbarger covers interesting findings from a new Gallup survey in her WSJ column:

In the broadest, most-comprehensive survey yet of how occupation affects happiness, business owners outrank 10 other occupational groups in overall well-being, based on the landmark survey of 100,826 working adults set for release today. Defined as self-employed store or factory owners, plumbers and so on, business owners surpassed 10 other occupational groups on a composite measure of six criteria of contentment, including emotional and physical health, job satisfaction, healthy behavior, access to basic needs and self-reports of overall life quality.

This puts Roger the Plumber well ahead of movers and shakers typically regarded as the top of the heap in society—professionals such as doctors or lawyers, who ranked second, and executives and managers in corporations or government, who came in third—according to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, a collaboration between Gallup and Healthways, a Franklin, Tenn., health-management concern. This is despite business owners ranking below those more-prestigious occupations in physical health and access to basic needs, such as health care.

The findings, psychologists say, reflect the importance of being free to choose the work you do and how you do it, the way you manage your time, and the way you respond to adversity. Regardless of occupational field, the survey suggests that seeking out enjoyable work and finding a way to do it on your own terms, with some control over both the process and the outcome, is likely for most people to fuel satisfaction and contentment.

"Despite the recession, it still pays to be your own boss," says Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll. The survey, adds John Howard, director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, "reaffirms my view that the more control you have over your work, the happier you are."

WSJ on converting web traffic

The WSJ offers "the three best ways to convert Web traffic into sales" for small businesses:

1. Install a click-to-call feature
2. Chat with customers online
3. Offer a try-before-you-buy program
   

These certainly aren't the 3 best ways for most small businesses, in my opinion. Most are better off focusing on more static approaches, like making their website copy more persuasive, add calls to action, and increasing credibility. But for more advanced players who have the resources, these are 3 features worth considering.

Boosting Byblos

I'm excited to share a new case study on my experience building and marketing the website for Byblos Deli, a small DC restaurant.

Byblos was my first website, and it's been great to watch its traffic grow over the last year -- and to see that paying attention to marketing and SEO best practices really works.

Please share the article, especially with any small business owners you know.

Seth on naming

I'm trying to come up with names for a couple new companies and this blog post from Seth is the best advice I've come across. It's a few years old and I think the one tool he recommends has shifted its focus to selling domain names and is a lot less useful. Guy has some name advice as well.

Seth on crossing the chasm

Any talk of chasm crossing, early adopters, and the like gets me fired up. Especially when it's coming from Seth ...

Claim your Facebook username tonight

Earlier this week Facebook announced that users will be able to claim usernames starting at tonight at midnight. If you're a company with registered name, however, you can claim your Facebook now using this form. Why is this potentially important? Your FB username will serve as the last half of your FB URL, e.g. http://www.facebook.com/john.doe.

It’s in Facebook’s interest to have these URLs appear high in the results for Google name searches, and for many of you, it’s in your interest to have your URL appear high when someone is searching for you. More from CNET here.

WSJ on Web 2.0 marketing

If you're venturing into social media, this article from the Wall Street Journal has a few good points to keep in mind.

Nielsen on Twitter

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen discusses Twitter in this week's BusinessWeek. Most interesting parts:

Do you think it's a good idea for CEOs to tweet to their customers?

Mostly no. Posting on the Web is the modern PR, and the CEO's job is to articulate the company's vision and direction, which requires more than 140 characters. Being perceived as a wise guy or a shallow thinker is not going to do your stock price much good. We have just completed a usability study of investor relations info on corporate Web sites, and one of the big reasons individual investors turn to companies' Web sites is to find the CEO's vision and take on the company's and industry's direction.

Because users don't want to read very much online, this information should be addressed concisely, but not as concisely as in a tweet. Better to write something deeper (or post a video clip, since investors also want to assess the CEO's personality by watching him or her speak), and then announce that, with a link, from the company's general Twitter update, as opposed to in the CEO's personal tweet.

Do you think the growth of Twitter is a threat to individuals' ability to concentrate?

If you care about productivity, don't check your Twitter feed while you're trying to get work done. Disruptions are deadly for productivity because it takes several minutes to reorient the brain every time you go off track looking at something else. Stick to checking updates once per day—for example, during lunch. All the tweets will still be there.

Dos and don'ts of web design

Some good basic tips on Web design from The New York Times recently. My favorites:

- Don't get Flash drunk
- Don't eliminate all white space
- Don't make the user wait

NY Times: 10 ways to build traffic to your site

This article from today's New York Times has some good online marketing tips that small businesses can use. Like most top 10 type lists in this space, it does not do a good job of prioritizing the options -- and it includes some tactics that are too advanced or time-consuming for most small businesses. But if you've done all the basics and want more traffic, there are some good ideas in here.