Myth #1: Multitasking is critical in a world of infinite demand.

This myth is based on the assumption that human beings are capable of doing two cognitive tasks at the same time. We're not. Instead, we learn to move rapidly between tasks. When we're doing one, we're actually not even aware of the other.

If you're on a conference call, for example, and you turn your attention to an incoming email, you're missing what's happening on the call as long as you're checking your email. Equally important, you're incurring something called "switching time." That's the time it takes to shift from one cognitive activity to another.

On average, according to researcher David Meyer, switching time increases the amount of time it takes to finish the primary task you were working on by an average of 25 percent. In short, juggling activities is incredibly inefficient.

Difficult as it is to focus in the face of the endless distractions we all now face, it's far and away the most effective way to get work done. The worst thing you can do as a boss is to insist that your people constantly check their email.

Myth #2: A little bit of anxiety helps us perform better.

Think for a moment about how you feel when you're performing at your best. What adjectives come to mind? Almost invariably they're positive ones. Anxiety may be a source of energy, and even motivation, but it comes with significant costs.

The more anxious we feel, the less clearly and imaginatively we think, and the more reactive and impulsive we become. That's not good for you, and it also has huge implications if you're in a supervisory role.

As a boss, your energy has a disproportionate impact on those you lead, by virtue of your authority. Put bluntly, any time your behavior increases someone's anxiety — or prompts any negative emotions, for that matter — they're less likely to perform effectively.

The more positive your energy is, the more positive their energy is likely to be, and the better the likely outcome.

Myth #3: Creativity is genetically inherited, and it's impossible to teach.

In a global economy characterized by unprecedented competitiveness and constant change, nearly every CEO hungers for ways to drive more innovation. Unfortunately, most CEOs don't think of themselves as creative, and they share with the rest of us a deeply ingrained belief that creativity is mostly inborn and magical.

Ironically, researchers have developed a surprising degree of consensus about the stages of creativity and how to approach them. Our educational system and most company cultures favor reward the rational, analytic, deductive left hemisphere thinking. We pay scant attention to intentionally cultivating the more visual, intuitive, big picture capacities of the right hemisphere.

As it turns out, the creative process moves back and forth between left and right hemisphere dominance. Creativity is actually about using the whole brain more flexibly. This process unfolds in a far more systematic — and teachable — way than we ordinarily imagine. People can quickly learn to access the hemisphere of the brain that serves them best at each stage of the creative process — and to generate truly original ideas.

Myth #4: The best way to get more work done is to work longer hours.

No single myth is more destructive to employers and employees than this one. The reason is that we're not designed to operate like computers — at high speeds, continuously, for long periods of time.

Instead, human beings are designed to pulse intermittently between spending and renewing energy. Great performers — and enlightened leaders — recognize that it's not the number of hours people work that determines the value they create, but rather the energy they bring to whatever hours they work.

Rather than systematically burning down our reservoir of energy as the day wears on, as most of us do, intermittent renewal makes it possible to keep our energy steady all day long. Strategically alternating periods of intense focus with intermittent renewal, at least every 90 minutes, makes it possible to get more done, in less time, more sustainably.

Want to test the assumption? Choose the most challenging task on your agenda before you go to sleep each night over the next week. Set aside 60 to 90 minutes at the start of the following day to focus on the activity you've chosen.

Choose a designated start and stop time, and do your best to allow no interruptions. (It helps to turn off your email.) Succeed and it will almost surely be your most productive period of the day. When you're done, reward yourself by taking a true renewal break.

Just Stop.

As in stop being in stealth mode.  Stop asking for advice.  Stop doing your start-up.  You're not ready.

You're a naive-bullshiter.

I would know.  Been there...

I started my first internet company while getting my MBA.  I remember calling up my best friend to tell her I was starting a company but refused to tell her how the product would work.   I had taken classes on IP, first-mover advantage, etc.  I knew that I needed to protect my ideas from people that could steal them.  And while I knew she wouldn't steal it, I needed to be very careful.  You see Apple is very secretive and that's why they're so successful.  So I should be very secretive.  I hired a lawyer, and he gave us an NDA template and told us that anyone that had knowledge of our proprietary data had to sign it.  If we weren't careful about this, our IP claims would be worthless.

At first, I did this because the lawyer had told me to.  But what was really going on?  I was obsessed with my brilliance.  For a little self psycho-evaluation, I thought that my idea was world changing, and it helped validate how I wanted to think of myself.  It felt good to take myself so seriously.

Since I was a new entrepreneur, I knew needed a lot of advice.  As I reached out to successful investors and entrepreneurs, I made each of them signed my nifty NDA.  Some wouldn't, so I just asked them for general advice.

Oh, and what was the company?  It was yet another Web 2.0 flavor of a question-and-answer, poll-your-friends site with a distant revenue model and no user acquisition strategy.  Ran if for two years before we shut it down with almost no revenue achieved.  Shocking, I know.

I wish just one of those experienced advisors from early-on had slapped me in the face and called me on my delusions.  They were all so encouraging, so proud of my entrepreneurial drive.  What I really needed was for someone to tell me in no uncertain terms that I was acting naive.  That my foolishness would contribute to my failure, which was almost inevitable.

Funny, how we always have to learn lessons the hard way.  When I started FlightCaster, I immediately told everyone I could about the concept.  I learned an incredible amount in those early days, and it worked out pretty well in the end.

I'm now getting a lot of phone calls from friends of friends, MBA students, etc--all wanting some advice on their brilliant idea.  I love talking to all them--it's so much fun to help someone that is on mile .3 of the marathon.  I'll do just about anything for an entreprenuer that reaches out for help.  I'll help with product development ideas, offer feedback, make intros to investors (if I would myself invest...)--anything to help someone succeed.  About once a month, I get a call from someone that won't tell me the idea, but still wants advice and even introductions.  Yikes!  I just tell them to stop.  They're not ready yet.  

If you're one of those guys, this post if for you.  

Please stop.  You're wasting your time.  At least give yourself a fighting chance to succeed.  This might be a bit cruel, but so is failure, which is where you're headed. 

Let me a share a few reasons why you don't need to be in stealth mode:

1.) Execution is more important than the idea

This is the easiest lesson.  Your ability to create a product is far more important than your ability to think up a product.  This is a hard lesson if you're not the one that will do the building, because it means that your contribution is not as valuable as you thought.

2.) Someone else has the exact same idea.

The adage is that if you have a good idea, there are 5 other people already doing it.  If you have a great idea, there are 15 other people already doing it.  One of the reasons you're foolishly in stealth mode is probably because you haven't done enough market research to realize that people are already working on this.

3.) Totally unique ideas generally don't make it

If you have a 100% totally unique idea, you're either too far ahead of the market or you've picked a market so small that no one cares.  Either way, you're in for trouble.

4.) The most likely cause of failure is your incompetence, not losing to the competition

Start-ups are really hard on so many levels.  The likelihood that you execute beautifully but then lose out to someone that stole your idea is so incredibly low, you shouldn't think about it.  The likelihood that you build a product that missed the mark, is an almost certainty.  Optimize around the problems most likely to shut you down.  Paul Graham always told us to focus on the one enemy that matters: the back button.

5.) You desperately need real feedback

Perhaps the biggest reason not to be in stealth is that you're robbing yourself of great feedback.  Most companies miss the mark on the first product.  The great companies learn quickly and iterate.  Skipping the learning part by being secretive just reduces the time you'll have to iterate before running out of money.

6.) First mover advantage is just silliness

The obit has been written on first mover advantage.  It rarely helps.  Facebook wasn't the first to social networking, Google wasn't the first to search, YouTube wasn't the first to video, yada yada.  First mover advantage was a flawed theory that helped pre-product internet companies raise billions of dollars in the 90s.

I could go on, but this is a fool's errand.  If you're reading this and don't agree, you're probably just not ready to do a startup and all the rationalizing in the world won't help.  Of course, it's incredibly pompous of me to make that judgement, and I do hope you prove me wrong.  I understand that you have your reasons and that there are certainly valid exceptions that my rash over-generalizations are not capturing.  

But you approached me for advice.  Please stop.

Find discussion of this post on Hacker News

 

******************

I'm Jason Freedman.  I co-founded FlightCaster.  

You should follow me on Twitter: @JasonFreedman.

You can send me a Linkedin request or become my bff on Facebook

Thank you Appsumo!

As hard as this advice may be to hear for entrepreneurs, it is worth listening to.

Quite why Middle Eastern airlines have become the whipping boys in the latest Qantas dispute is a mystery to me – as an Australian who is not afraid of a little competition, and as a global airline chief executive who understands that every airline juggles with a grab bag of advantages and disadvantages.

The stream of wrong assertions about the amazing benefits Middle Eastern airlines have that somehow make Qantas unable to compete badly needs some balance.

For example – the claims that Gulf carriers are funded by generous and unlimited government subsidies. Etihad doesn’t receive a cent in subsidies.

Or that it doesn’t matter if we make a profit. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are very clearly focused on profitability.

Then there is the furphy that we get our fuel for free. In 2010 we fixed the price of 75 per cent of our jet fuel needs in a hedging portfolio with 17 global financial institutions. The fact is we pay more to refuel our jets in Abu Dhabi than we do in Singapore or Chicago.

We also pay for airport and landing charges at our hub in Abu Dhabi. The airport has the same profitability mandate as Etihad – why would they waive fees and charges for us? We pay market rates – the same rates as the other 34 airlines that fly to our home base.

And the no-tax refrain. Etihad operates in the same tax-free regime as all companies in the United Arab Emirates – including our airline competitors. But, we have tax obligations in the 43 other countries to which we fly.

And then of course, the claim about slave labour. Not only do we pay well, but we pay you the same for the job you do whether you are Australian or Thai or Congolese or any one of the other 120 nationalities we employ. On top of that we provide a host of other benefits such as housing, schooling for your children, health care, and even fitness centres.

It is not sovereign guarantees, government protection and cheap labour that underpin the success of airlines from the Middle East – and, as falsely claimed, are helping to nobble the Flying Kangaroo.

What is driving the increasing number of Australian travellers seeking a better alternative for their overseas travel?

There is one basic factor: choice. That is what we have offered following the exit of a raft of European airlines over an extended period – before Etihad was even born, I should point out.

And informing that choice are four things: network, product, service and dedicated staff.

Customers want access to modern and dynamic networks, with as few stops along the way as they can get. Middle Eastern airlines offer this.

Customers want new aircraft, with fresh products and innovative service. Middle Eastern airlines offer this.

Middle Eastern airlines have the right to take people to and from – and through – the Middle East. Certainly Qantas isn’t willing to fly through the Middle East, although it could it if chose.

It has chosen instead to focus on a different part of the world. Quite rightly, they are taking advantage of their own geography, and their other multiple benefits, which include consistent profitability, a strong brand and a long history.

It may be uncomfortable for established national carriers to face new competition. But that has been shown time and time again to be good for the consumer and – over the long term – good for the market.

So please don’t blame Middle Eastern airlines for doing what they have a right to do: compete.

Have you ever had a to-do list that was so long it felt like you'd never get to the end of it? Or have you ever started the day with a manageable list, but by the end of the afternoon it was longer than when you began – because of all the things that got added during the day? Too many days like this, and your to-do list starts to look like a wish list.

This was a familiar scenario to me a few years ago. It was compounded when I started using digital to-do list managers, which enabled me to create a literally endless to-do list. However much I prioritized, however hard I worked, I always seemed to end the day with a longer list than I started with.

The solution turned out to be counterintuitive: I got more done by making my to-do list shorter.

One of my most valuable productivity tools is a stack of Post-It notes. Not the smallest size, but the 3" x 3" squares. The top Post-It contains my to-do list for today, and today only. Because my day is a limited size, I figure it makes sense to limit the size of my to-do list. If I can't fit the day's tasks on the Post-It, I'm not likely to fit them into the day.

Because my day is a limited size, I figure it makes sense to limit the size of my to-do list.

The top left corner is reserved for the “One Big Task” I need to accomplish today. It could be an article, a presentation, a training plan, a client proposal, or the draft of a poem. As I wrote in The Key to Creating Remarkable Things, I start the day by devoting my full creative energy to the most important task on my list. The rest of the Post-It is taken up with everything else I have to do today, roughly in order of priority.

And once I've finished the to-do list, I've finished work for the day. As a self-employed creative workaholic, after years of feeling there was always something else to do at the end of the day, I can assure you this is a magical feeling.

But what about all the rest? All the phone calls, emails, and requests that come in during the day? Not to mention all the new ideas that pop into my head as I work? Good question. There's a place for all of these things, and that place is the second Post-It on the stack, a.k.a. my to-do list for tomorrow. Unless something is seriously urgent AND important (e.g. an emergency request from a client) then I never add anything to today's list once I've finalized it first thing in the morning.

This is a variation on the Do It Tomorrow approach to productivity advocated by Mark Forster in his book of the same name. Mark draws a distinction between “open” and “closed” lists. The endless to-do list I described at the beginning of this article is an open list, because new items can always be added to it. The to-do list on my Post-It is a closed list, because it's finite in size and I don't add anything new to it.

Unless something is seriously urgent AND important then I never add anything to today's list.

Mark points out that we are more motivated to work on a closed list than an open one. If I know that I have 20 things to do today, and I do the first one, then I only have 19 left, and I feel like I'm making progress. But if I work through five items and then another six are added to the list, then I feel like I'm going backwards. And it's hard to muster much enthusiasm for going backwards.

Two great things about my Post-It system are that, firstly, it forces me to think hard about my priorities at the beginning of each day. Every item has to earn its place on that list, so it keeps me disciplined about doing the most important things. And secondly, when I start work I know - barring emergencies - exactly what I need to get through today. If it's a full day, I can see that at once, and it spurs me on to do more and waste less time. And if it's a relatively quiet day, then I get to use the extra time creatively.

Obviously your mileage will vary depending on the nature of your job and working situation. If you're working in a fast-moving agency and it's part of your core role to handle incoming requests and turn them round immediately, then you'll need to be more flexible than me. Although having consulted with a few agencies like that, I'd say that if everything is urgent, nothing is urgent: you can't do everything at once, so you still need to prioritize. And a short to-do list with very strict criteria about what gets on it is a great way to do that.

--

How Big Is Your Day?

How do you manage your daily to-do list?

Could you get more done with a shorter list?
--

Mark McGuinness is a poet and a coach for artists and creatives. For a free 6-month education in how to succeed as a creative professional, sign up for Mark’s course The Creative Pathfinder.

This seems to be a great idea - a closed-loop to do list! It works in terms of creating the feeling of making progress and, thus, promoting productivity. However, for now, I will stick with GTD because I know it works for me.

One feature of GTD that is lacking with this "Post-It" method is the "waiting for/delegated" list. A lot of things I do depend on other people's input of data/paperwork, and my "waiting for" list helps me keep on top of what I need from everyone else. Without the "waiting for" list, I'll have a bunch of things "to do" that I can't do anything about because I'll still have to wait for other things to come in!

Peter Baskerville, Set prices for 1,000's of products.

31 votes by Gregory Farber, Ramit Sethi, Xander Pollock, (more)

The following are examples of attributes that allow products to be priced according to their perceived customer value, rather than having their price determined only by calculations relating to their production/accounting cost. Customers purchasing products with these attributes are totally focused on satisfying a need and push the price attribute well down the list of considerations. Customers value and will pay more for these product attributes:

• Urgency - example ... Fedex "When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight" or the 1hr photo processing being twice the price of the 24hour processing.
• Self-esteem - example ... brand name bags like Prada and Louis Vuitton or products aligned with the latest fashion, the latest social cause or the latest tech. innovation.
• Pain relief - example ... road side vehicle breakdown service like RACQ in Queensland Australia or the locksmith that opens the door for a person that has locked themselves out of their apartment at 11:00pm at night.
• Fear mitigation - example ... every insurance product and the 'stock in trade' product for most legal services.
• Scarcity - example ... Hot chips or beer at the football where there is only one outlet selling inside the stadium and it would be too inconvenient to leave the stadium to find something cheaper.
• Quality sounding name - example ... "Royal Reserve" in wine, "Gold Class" in movie tickets, "Platinum service" for online subscription or any product name that sounds expensive or luxurious.
• High emotional experiences - example ... all wedding products, special anniversary products like 'top-end' restaurant meals, exotic travel or adrenalin-rush products.
• One shots - example ... services relating to 'openings' or product/business launches like Mercedes latest car launch, this year's sport final, a one-off entertainer appearance, a famous band's last tour.
• Vital small cogs - example ... ENZED rubber hose replacement on expensive machinery in Australia or any small vital product that maintains the operation or function of a larger more expensive machine or operation.
• Sentimental value - example ... photos of your daughter's graduation or photos from a memorable cruise or any products that provide great sentimental value for the customer.
• Indulgence - example ... a shop called 'Death by chocolate' that sells products that fully honor its name or a pampering day-spar for women.

Products that fit in the categories above should not be priced according to their accounting' costs but should rather be priced according to the perceived value that they deliver to the customer - I call these additional margins "subjective margins" because the margins are achieved with a minimal increase in the underlying costs. I believe at least one of these product attributes should be included in every entrepreneur's startup business model.

Want to make a better-than-healthy margin? Sell products with these attributes.