Archive for February, 2008
February 29th
Store Owners - our new 2009 catalog is ready!
It includes “Horizon 7″ a weekly plannner featuring an 8 am - 9 am schedule each day of the week.   We revised this format because many customers wrote to us saying they needed more room for weekend activities and plans.
There are new cover designs for our Robert le Heros limited editions; new colors in Club and Vinyl; a brand new spiral-bound polypro cover called “Rain Forest;” and “Habana”, a bound, soft imitation leather with an elastic closure. Sleek and compact, Habana is offered black, red and orange.
The 2009 cover styles will be posted on our website in the next few weeks.Â
Please contact us to order a catalog.Â
February 28th
Here’s further proof from The Economist that financial incentives are effective in helping people stick to resolutions:
Dean Karlan promised to pay John Romalis $10,000 if he did not lose 38lb (17kg) by an agreed date. Mr Romalis made a similar pledge. If both failed, the one who failed by least would get $5,000. Happily, both succeeded in shedding pounds not dollars, and the initial deal was replaced with a “maintenance contract” which allowed either economist to show up unannounced to check the weight of the other and collect $5,000 for each pound over an agreed weight.
Now Mr. Karlan has launched a company to help others use the profit motive to reach their personal goals. At stickK.com, people can design their own “commitment contracts,” which impose a cost of their own choosing if they fail to achieve their goals. As part of the typical contract, you appoint an independent referee to monitor and report on your progress. Penalties range in severity from having your failure publicized on the website to having to cough up a certain amount of money (which then goes to charity).
“The Commitment Contract,” says the website, “Is grounded on two well-known principles of behavioural economics: (1) people don’t always do what they claim they want to do, and (2) incentives get people to do things.”
February 27th
We have a growing number of ABP1 fans out there.
A forest ranger wrote to tell us how much she likes the format to record field notes and daily tasks. We also spotted a February 21 mention of this particular planner on the blog, New Kid on the Hallway. Another blogger, Jeri Dansky, cited it in her “Agendas for a Mom” post.
The ABP1 has lots of room for notes and lists. One thing the “New Kid” blogger said that particularly resonated with me is that her paper planner is “one of my last refuges from the digital world…There’s something really satisfying about crossing out by hand a task that I’ve completed - it’s more more tactile than clicking a check-box and seeing strikethrough text appear.”
February 25th
Every once in a while, people write in and ask us to create virtual editions of our planners that are accessible online.
It’s something we’ve definitely considered over the past few years, but there are a couple of reasons we’ve never moved forward:
1. The layout of a paper planner wouldn’t translate well to a Blackberry or a PDA.
2. There are already plenty of low- or no-cost virtual planners out there.
3. Software design is obviously not our expertise in the first place.
The way we see it, there are still plenty of people out there who appreciate using paper planners—the smooth feel of the paper underhand, the physical pleasures of writing, the convenience of being able to flip through actual pages and see what lies ahead… As long as they’re around, we’ll continue to do what we do. Which is not to say we’re not constantly trying to think up more efficient layouts to help people organize their days!
Personally, I use a combination of paper and virtual methods: my Outlook calendar, with its automatic appointment reminders, is perfect for an absent-minded writer who sits at her desk for hours and loses track of time. On the other hand, I have no interest in owning a PDA (I’m already too addicted to email), and my paper planner is perfectly portable. Do I sometimes wish I didn’t have to record my appointments twice, or was able to look them up online? Sure. But there are plenty of practical chores I’d rather not have to do, either, and doing them hardly kills me…
February 21st
Did anyone else see the lunar eclipse last night? I had completely forgotten about it until my father called and reminded me to step outside. It was beautiful: the moon a deep, rusty red. Fortunately, if you missed it, there are plenty of pictures online.
(The photo above is by rickz.)
February 21st
My February 2008 newsletter from the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals featured an interview with Mark J. Penn, the CEO of Bur-Marsteller and president of Penn, Schoen & Berland. PSB provides market research and communications strategies for political figures, corporations and crisis situations.
Mark Penn was the man who identified “Soccer Moms” as a crucial constituency in President Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign. He is known for his ability to detect relatively small patterns of behavior in our culture that are wielding large influence on business, politics and our personal lives.
In his new book, “Microtrends: The small forces behind tomorrow’s big changes,” Mark Penn shows the most important trends in the world today are the smallest ones. The largest driver behind microtrends is personal choice, and how people adapt product usage to personal preference.
Another large driver is the power and influence of small groups. “In today’s mass societies, its takes only one percent of people making a dedicated choice–contrary to the mainstream’s choice–to create a movement that can change the world.”
Penn manages to unearth a few unforeseen gems. The New Luddites, more cynical and lonelier than their counterparts with a Facebook following, are much more numerous than imagined, and are striking back at technology “with their pens, legal pads, index cards and scraps of paper in pockets containing all their to-do lists.”
February 20th
Here’s another great environmental resource: Slate’s Green Lantern series, which debuted last fall and answers one very concrete, practical question each week. (Are manual transmissions really better for the environment? What kind of tree should you plant in your backyard to soak up the most carbon?)
The answers are typically fair, balanced, and—as I realized when I read this week’s piece on the environmental merits of fresh vs. frozen orange juice—they almost always illuminate the real difficulty of pinning down just how “eco-friendly” something is: it’s not just the transportation but the production that counts. (It’s for this reason, in a well-publicized example, that environmentally sensitive Britons are better off buying imported lamb from New Zealand than they are consuming the home-grown variety.) And then, of course, there’s the matter of packaging and waste disposal, which further complicates things…
Of course, as this week’s article points out, “changing your mode of orange juice intake isn’t going to save the planet.” But it’s still nice to understand the many factors that go into these small, daily choices.
February 19th
Arts & Letters Daily is one of my favorite websites. Edited by Denis Dutton, a professor of philosophy at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, it brings together an eccentric selection of articles, book reviews, and essays from all across the Internet—from a meditation on creating fictional characters to an examination of the explosive growth of the Chinese and Indian economies.
Now Dutton and his colleague Douglas Campbell have started a new resource devoted exclusively to making sense of the science behind global warming. Climate Debate Daily links to scientific articles, news stories, economic studies, polemics, editorials, and more, and gives equal voice to dissenting views as it does to calls to action. The objective: “to allow readers to form their own judgments based on the best available information.”
A timely idea, indeed…
February 18th
Human brains aren’t designed for extreme multitasking.
That is the conclusion reached by a research team lead by Dr. Edward Awh, a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon. The team found the average person can only focus on four things at once. Some people can do more, some less. The study found that despite claims to the contrary, young people can’t do more things at once than anyone else.
The study also found the complexity of things people try to remember doesn’t matter. The subjects fared the same when asked something simple, like the colors of tiles; or something intricate, like the design of Chinese characters.
In real life this means you can most likely only focus on four things, regardless ofwhether they are things that don’t require much thought–like following the car in front of you–or complicated things, like reading a book.
The influx of new technologies and entertainment devices into the workplace encourages multitasking. But if you can’t crunch numbers on a spreadsheet, listen to an iPod, answer email or a text message and check your cell phone don’t blame yourself - evolution hasn’t caught up to the times.
February 16th
“Elm Farm Ollie Day” celebrates the first flight in an airplane by a cow on February 18, 1930. Ollie was also the first cow milked in flight. Not satisfied with these feats, the milkers put milk into cartons and parachuted them down to fans waiting below at the St. Louis International Air Exposition. In the early days of aviation, the flight of “Elm Farm Ollie” was one of many “firsts.”
This event is commemorated every February 18th at the Mount Horeb Mustard Museum. Around 200 people gather to eat cheese, drink milk and sing cow songs.
The Museum began when its founder, Barry Levenson, started collecting mustard on October 27, 1986. His beloved Red Sox had lost the World Series to the New York Mets that night and Barry was very depressed. He went to an all-night supermarket to wander the aisles. He turned down the condiment aisle and heard a deep resonant voice as he passed the mustards: “If you collect us, they will come.”
From those few jars of mustard that Barry found in 1986, the Museum collection has grown to more than 4,400 mustards and hundreds of items of mustard memorabilia. The online store includes a “Celebrity Cow Mustard Gift Set” including Elm Farm Ollie, Ophelia O’Leary (Mrs. O’Leary’s cow), and Miss Lunabelle (the cow that jumped over the moon.)
