15 Years of Silliness

The planner that we have typically received as gift, and sometimes bought, and most often used over the years is called the Franklin Planner. It entered the market in 1997 (details here). Safely, it has been more than 15 years. And very safely, and sillily, we have also used it for years together.

The other day, 5th Oct, I called an old friend on his birthday. He asked me what have I been upto and I shared some details about launching this planner called Cockpit.

His immediate response on hearing the word 'planner', "Annual diary na! Woh joh gift mein milti hai... Woh toh rough-pad ki tarah use karta hoon!"

I couldn't agree more. Personally, while I could never plan with it, I never used it as a rough-pad either. But I've seen a lot of people in my family, and among friends, use such 'planners' as rough-pads. Sometimes, going well beyond the year that it's meant for.

And yet, one has to wonder that, for years, businesses have continued to gift the same thing over and over again. Not their fault, there really was nothing available. The word 'Planner' sounded good. Leather covers looked good. The binding technology has improved. So calling the 'leather-bound papers' a 'planner' seemed perfect, irrespective of the fact that it didn't work like it needed to.

So here's CELEBRATING 15 YEARS OF SILLINESS. Cheers!

If you relate to what I have written, you might want to check Cockpit Planner. If you receive planners as gifts you might want to inform your gifter about Cockpit :). And if you buy one every year, like I used to, you've got an option which will do the job for you, every single day.

"I just use it like a notepad."

Source: quovadisplanners.com

I see a lot of people around use this kind of 'planner'. Not for planning. For note-taking.

So, the other day when I happened to see a friend write something in one such thing, I asked him casually, "You use this for note-taking?!"

Not aware of my undertaking to launch Cockpit AIT Planner, he responded, "Yeah! Why (do you ask)?!"

"No, I thought this is a planning diary, that's why."

"Naaah! What to plan! The pages go waste. So why not use it."

Out of this little bit of conversation I can draw some inferences.

Genuinely, this friend is so well on top of everything naturally day after day that there's no need to 'plan'.

A kind of extension of the above-made inference could be that the plan's in his head. He doesn't find it necessary to plan in writing.

Third inference could be that while he does want to plan every day but is unable to do so with the 'planner' he has. This last inference isn't very difficult to fathom.

The Italians surely have a Cockpit-like mechanism in place

Here's a piece of a letter (which forms a part of their book HERE & NOW) J.M. Coetzee wrote to Paul Auster:

I've been to enough cultural events in Italy by now not to be unnerved by the chaos that seems to envelop them. No one is sure exactly where the session is to take place, the man who looks after the sound system cannot be located, the interpreter is up in arms because no one has informed her of the running order, etcetera, etcetera. Yet when the hour arrives, everything goes off smoothly: the audience miraculously knows where to come, the sound system works, the interpreter does a first-class job. The chaos turns out to have been spurious: we can run an event perfectly efficiently, the Italians seem to be saying, without fetishizing efficiency - in fact, we can turn the running of an event into a diverting little comic drama of its own.

Guess, this sounds familiar for a lot of events that we ourselves have arranged or have been a part of.

Strict scheduling format like that of a Franklin Planner for day to day work is over-rated. And we know efficiency resulting out of that scheduling effort surely is way way over-rated. Guess, we've observed and experienced that too.

Before any effort at scheduling for the purposes of efficiency, one ought to recall what exactly it is that needs to be undertaken. One will notice that as compared to Franklin Planner, the Cockpit AIT Planner is far far better at scooping out of our heads what needs to be done.

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.

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.