Cause-Effect mapping to diagnose the effectiveness of a daily planner

Source: funnytimes.com

Every tool, device, machine is structured/designed to deliver something based on certain hypotheses. The structure itself gives us clues about causes and effects which formed the bases for creating the tool in the first place.

Daily Planners are tools. And the most popular planner called the Franklin Planner is based on a certain thinking. And so is Cockpit AIT Planner, which is going to be launched pretty soon.

Here's a cause-effect mapping of both. For you to judge how it works better.

Franklin Planner
You have 9 working hours every day. You divide them every day into hourly or half-hourly time slots so that you can schedule your tasks, and do them one after another according to the schedule.

Cockpit AIT Planner
You have many important tasks, but they are difficult to recall from your memory day after day after day. You refer to certain prompts every day so that you can easily recall and note down the important tasks, and do them during the day, according to a schedule or according to your convenience.

Recalling from memory is a necessary condition. Strict scheduling, not necessarily so. If you can recall, you can schedule. If you can't recall, there's no question of scheduling.

Our take: Time's always there. You have to recall all that you've to do, before you schedule some things that you've to do. 

Origins, two and a half years back

That's how my day planner based on Franklin Planner format looked like at one point in time. Here the day is Friday, 25th Feb, 2011! Yes, about 2 years and 4 months back!

Those who are particular about getting things done might be scribbling such things down in their planners on many days. And yet, just a little laxity or lapse in attentiveness (or foraging into one's memory) would mean a lot of important little stuff/steps just wouldn't happen. That surely happened with me on many many occasions.

Though the format didn't quite facilitate it, to plan to be able to execute well day after day, I made a simple distinction between scheduled tasks and fluid tasks (the ones which could be done anytime during the day). I also noted down the habits/skills I wished to develop right on top. And below that, the projects that needed attention every day.

While setting up my own venture, as I sensed the issues of execution and the nature of activities we all do day after day, I came to identify and name the universal prompts that helped develop the Cockpit AIT Planner.

Making music out of a workday

Image Source: www.wired.com

We can wish that our day turns out like music. Though, like in the picture, the orchestra isn't arranged so beautifully. And the notes aren't written in advance to weave the baton and conduct the making of soul-stirring music.

Actually the scene has changed a bit. A few days' worth of time sitting in the Cockpit and you'll write the notes, weave the baton, orchestrate, beat the drums, make music and inspire some dancing around. Wanna try?

A Perfect Mess

Franklin Planner, the scheduler which sells in millions across the world (but which doesn't necessarily benefits its users), finds its nemesis in A PERFECT MESS. Or maybe not, because the two products are different. One's a planning diary (more a scheduler, I'd say), while the other's a book on the benefits of disorder. In spirit of course they seem inimical but in material, there's been no option to the Franklin Planner.

As seen on the cover above, the book's premise is 'a little disorder helps more than perfect order'. In the context of planning, in general, perfect scheduling might not be a great way to stay effective at work. Franklin Planner, the way it is structured, tends to impose strict perfect scheduling.

Moreover, Franklin Planner, though calls itself a planner, surely doesn't help in planning all the necessary tasks because, like we've said earlier, it doesn't go beyond offering scheduling slots. It certainly doesn't aid in recalling stuff that needs to be done.

Converting the criticism into material form, here's an alternative to Franklin Planner. Something that introduces flexibility and that little 'disorder' without foregoing or forgetting the essential tasks needed to be accomplished during a typical workday.

Formula for relationship building?

Image Source: michellelaurie.com

Formula is that have no formula but do all that has good chances of building one.

Since we are talking about a phenomenon between two individuals, it involves interaction. If you initiate a conversation, you would require a response or an acknowledgement, right? If the other person initiates, in all likelihood, it would move further only if you respond or acknowledge.

If you initiate but there's no response, you can't forget. Following up might be necessary. Or even meeting up.

In different situations, Cockpit will aid in keeping that important conversation going.

The Scoop Method

Image Source: lovedecor dot com

It's easy to scoop out the material things you hold in containers. How easy has it been to scoop out the important things that you need to do daily? How easy has it been to scoop out that response to an important person you met the other day? When was the last time you consciously connected with someone important - for work or without work? When was the last time you searched for details of that little important curiosity ringing in your head? Why not scoop out the important tasks without a lot of sweat and get going, every single day?

Sure, but that's not a plan

How could I not reblog this entire post from Seth Godin? Talks about what's a plan. Highlight in red, mine.

Sure, but that's not a plan

The most common thing people ask me about is how to get picked, a shortcut to success, a way to spread an idea or build a platform without doing a particularly large amount of hard work.

Getting picked is fine if it happens to you. But it's not a plan. It's a version of waiting and hoping.

We're quick to claim credit for the good fortune fairy when she randomly shows up and picks us. The thing is, the good fortune fairy has to pick someone, and this time, (if you were lucky) it was you. But that's not a plan.

We can't help but amplify the stories of Hollywood and Vine, of being plucked out of obscurity, of the seventeen-year-old with talent who yes, indeed, got picked and cashed out. We blog about and talk about the one in a million YouTube viral sensation, the breakthrough that came out of nowhere overnight. But that's not a plan.

A plan involves steps that are largely under your influence and control. A plan involves the hard and dreary and difficult work of a thousand brave steps, of doing things that might not work, of connecting and caring and bringing generosity when we don't think we have any more to bring.

When your plan works, take a bow. You earned it.

Look at the Cockpit AIT Planner screenshot of the app. Check those steps as represented by the button in the Task Control Panel.

Depending on the profession, service or product, there might be some more specific steps necessary to make a difference. Or perhaps the above universal steps might become yet more specific given the context. But the essence is captured in these prompt-buttons of Cockpit. Repeat these and you get the thousand brave steps.

Planning doesn't mean scheduling

I read this problem description in a mail this morning:

When I plan perfectly for the day ahead, I sometimes find that I am not able to implement all that I had planned for. Things seem to be coming up unexpectedly spoiling everything for me. I am then not able to be happy with what is happening and so find it difficult to do my best in the particular situation.

A solution was given in the same mail:

It is as important to be flexible in my thoughts as it is to be particular about my daily schedule. Flexibility allows me to accommodate the unforeseen situations that come up my way and enables me to make the best use of everything. And so I enjoy everything that comes my way.

The solution might sound simplistic but I sense they are right in emphasizing the importance of flexibility in any schedule. Forget the long term planning, planning 'precisely' on a daily basis like the time-table of classes in a school or an assembly line factory doesn't work for most individuals.

An important aspect of this planner, Cockpit, is that it doesn't make you do precise slotting and scheduling (though the option is always open) but it does aid immensely in listing just the important things you would like to accomplish/execute in a day's time.

Franklin Planner, Frankly Fails

So the usual planner that I happened to use through a big part of my professional and that I still see a lot of people around using is called the Franklin Planner.

It could look somewhat like this:

Image Source: itisamatteroftime.com

Or may be like this:

Image Source: urbanlittlehouse.blogspot.com

Two things about this kind of planner. It assumes perfect memory. That is, you can recall all the tasks at will. And it assumes that you can exactly slot each of the tasks to a particular time.

If recalling at will from memory could be relied upon so well, school exams would be real fun. And besides, whether the time-hours are explicitly mentioned or not, you would slot the tasks anyway during the workday as you deem fit. Human behavior defies time-slotting except when it's vacation time.

It is the assumption of perfect memory that proves a detriment to great execution. More often than not, recalling all the tasks isn't easy. Though something resides in the memory, we don't necessarily retrieve it easily, as and when desired. And without good retrieval from memory, there can be no planning.

Retrieval from memory requires appropriate tools. Which is what Cockpit AIT Planner offers in the form of universal prompts classified under Action, Interaction and Transaction. These prompts aid one to recall easily the necessary tasks and note them down early in the morning. If planning is what your execution is dependent on, here's the right thing to start with.

This is not the end of the book;

On the backside of the jacket of This is Not the End of the Book, is a quote from Umberto Eco:

The book is like the spoon: once invented, it cannot be bettered.

It struck me like lightening and I just picked it up.

Am halfway through the book and, needless to say, it mesmerizes me by the way it surprises me every second page.

A notable thing is the book is in the shape of a deep deep conversation between Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carriere curated by Jean Philippe de Tonnac. And the most notable thing is, a thought by Eco is followed by/responded to by a thought from Jean-Claude and then followed by another thought from Eco and so on. It feels like once Eco speaks, Jean-Claude naturally responds. Once Jean-Claude speaks, Eco naturally responds. The conversation unfolds like the feet of a walker. After one foot lands, another foot naturally takes a step accordingly.

Isn't it how you would love to respond? Isn't it how you would like others to respond to you? Wouldn't you want to remember to respond, so that you respond in the way you would love to respond?

Individual Resource Planning

Type these words in Google and you can see what you get. Practically nothing.

Effectively what that reflects is perhaps the (lack of) respect that an individual gives to the most important resource he has every single day - his time. Or it reflects how important an individual is considered by those who can so readily deploy ERP and include the individual as a part of the resource to be managed by ERP.

Fact is an individual's got life - a certain amount of time to live out every single day. A certain amount of time after spending which he might feel productive and satisfied, every single day. And this kind of life's bigger than any ERP deployed for whatever purposes.

When the individual's resources are taken care of, enterprise is taken care of.

Let them not SAP you

Huge businesses, huge complexities, huge stakes! So they made a huge product called ERP and charged a huge amount from every huge business that deployed the huge product. Coz deployment itself is such a huge project involving huge coordination.

Since employees key in all the data at every point, this ERP works or so it seems. And, seemingly, the businesses work too.

I am worried about the individual, the one who's an employee somewhere, an independent professional or an entrepreneur. I am worried about that little team of individuals for whom SAP just doesn't work. What only works is the time they have on every single work-day and the energy they have to make the most out of that work-day.

Cockpit AIT Planner is for that individual. While it takes care of the stakes at the individual level there's nothing huge about it - the product, the price, the deployment et al. There's a huge intention surely. And there's a good amount of intuition too. Try it.

Image source: http://online.wsj.com/