A review of Seth Godin’s e-book about the search for meaning online.

This e-book is mainly an exposition on using Blogs and RSS to create a new online experience, secondarily it is an “infomercial” for Godin’s Squidoo.com Lens Portal.

Everyone is using the Internets to find something, and “Search” has become a billion-dollar industry. However, when you are searching for something on any of the various engines, you are likely to find thousands (if not millions) of results. In which case you haven’t really “found” anything! Having too much information is only a little better than not having enough. It takes a long time to seft through all of those search results to find a meaningful answer to your query. To quote Godin:

“The engineers who built the Web believed that if they presented the ‘right’ answer, intelligent humans would be pleased. In fact, before you get it, before you discover the meaning, there is not right answer.”

The Unfulfilled Promise of Web 2.0

The promise of Web 2.0 is creating networks of meaning through conversation, a two-way interaction. It is about the construction of user-generated Networks which are easily found, searched, and navigated. The entire purpose of these Networks is to speed up the process of actually finding what you are searching for: a meaningful answer. Godin calls this network “a place where one can go for instant context on their search“, he calls it a Lens. The purpose of a Lens is to answer the question,”What do I need to know?”

“A lens gives context. When it succeeds it delivers meaning. A lens can tell you which books, records, and websites are the best way to appreciate Miles Davis. A lens can show you the ten most important things you need to know about copyright on the web. A lens can highlight the key players in the hospital crib business and give you the confidence that you need to go ahead and buy something - without worrying about whether you missed a key player or didn’t understand a critical choice.”

The Lens Points to Content

The idea of the Lens-driven Network is to make a particular lens your starting point when you are searching for something. Because a lens provides context, rather than content. The lens is an aggregator of “pointers” on a particular subject. The components of a lens: Links, RSS feeds, Adsense Ads, all are things that “point” to content - Blogs, Websites, and even other lenses that contain trusted and meaningful information.

Here is the good news (quoting the Squidoo main page):

• Squidoo is free
• You can earn royalties $$$
• You can generate more traffic to your blog & website
• You can build credibility as a trusted guide
• Improved SEO rankings

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? In fact it is good, and it is working. Affiliate programs have popped up all over the place on the Squidoo servers to drive more traffic and make more money.

It is also not working, in a sense, as there are quite a few people creating lenses that either do not have the time or skills required to invest in making a truly useful lens. I spent some time looking around for a meaningful Getting Things Done lens, and didn’t really find a thorough one. In fact, many of the lenses, on any given topic, do not live up to their potential. My impression from reading Everyone’s an Expert was that the lens would be a tool for creating a more meaningful experience, starting a new conversation and increasing the power of the Internets. Not just another sign that says “Look at me.”

So I built a lens. Yes, it does have a link to this blog, but the main purpose is to give the lens value through context. The information is about Getting Things Done, and for creating your own global microbrand. I have designed it to be a (somewhat) open system, with links to several other blogs that I have found to be interesting and useful.

The Lens is Collaborative

You can go to the GTD System Lens and see the resources that have been assembled, consisting of blogs and sites that I have found, others that were suggested to me, and still more that have volunteered to join the Community. There is a fun feature of the Squidoo system that allows you to create your own Mini-Digg with these site. Visitors may rank them by voting, and add sites to the Plexo that I may have missed (feel free to add your own!). You can even get the Plexo as a widget for your own site (see sidebar) and increase your exposure that way.

The idea of the GTD System Lens is to create a community, and give valuable information. The Ultimate Getting Things Done Index is a lens of sorts, in that it pulls together all of the RSS feeds for every blog that discusses GTD. The GTD System Lens is designed to create value, credibility, and context for the various resources that exist for Getting Things Done.

Go ahead and download Everyone’s an Expert here, and get to work on your own lens. Then come back and tell about it!

Related: Doc Searls is talking about linking and the search for meaning too:

What matters most is relevance, especially if what you want to do is constructive. I don’t know how to bring relevance to the fore, but I think we need to try. To its credit Google Blogsearch defaults to sort by relevance (they also sort by date, the current default at Technorati), but it misses many of the results that Technorati catches, which is why I tend to use Technorati more. Also, I’m not sure what Google means by “relevance” is actually what’s most useful for the reader’s purposes.

We still need that.

One of my very favorite Zen stories is again from “Zen Flesh, Zen Bones”, and relates the story of Tanzan and Ekido who encounter a young woman as they travel:

Muddy Road

Tanzan and Ekido were once travelling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling.
Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection.
“Come on, girl,” said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.

Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself.

“We monks don’t go near females,” he told Tanzan, “especially young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?”

“I left the girl there,” said Tanzan, “Are you still carrying her?”

The Myth of the 21 Days

In an article I posted last week I mentioned that it takes 21 days of consistently performing an action to create a new habit. This piece of advice was questioned by a reader who wanted to know the citation for the research on this subject. As it turns out, my cursory scanning of a few online sources resulted in making a mistake. This mistake is made at hundreds and thousands of other articles on the internet - it is not true that it takes 21 days to create a new habit! The primary source for this research is a single study, by Dr. Maxwell Maltz, that was done in conjunction with amputee therapy.

I have to admit that I fell for the conventional wisdom on this topic, most of which points back to the research of Dr. Maltz. There is an entire industry based on “Changing Your Life” in 3 weeks, and this industry is unsupported by any real science. I have done a lot of surfing and reading over the past few days, tracking down the best information on habits.

I discovered a lot of duplication, and a lot of advice unsupported by any research. The most interesting discovery was that the best articles and columns to be found do not mention a time-limit for setting new habits. In fact, I found a researcher who has dedicated the greater part of her career to studying the brain and the neurological effects of learning new things.

Real Research on Habits

Ann Graybiel and her group at the McGovern Institute at MIT have done extensive laboratory work with rats and measuring the “activity of neurons in the striatum, which is in a key position to be involved in this habit-forming business, because it is the main part of the BG [basal ganglia] that receives the reward-related dopamine input on the one hand, and it gets massive inputs from the neocortex on the other hand.“[1]

Important neural activity patterns in the basal ganglia change when habits are formed, change again when habits are broken, but quickly re-emerge when something rekindles an extinguished habit–which originally took great effort to learn.

“We knew that neurons can change their firing patterns when habits are learned,” Graybiel comments, “but it is startling to find that these patterns reverse when the habit is lost, only to recur again as soon as something kicks off the habit again.”[2]

This research has given Graybiel a great deal of insight into how the physical processes of learning take place. It also shows that habits, or new behaviors, are difficul for the brain to create. Once formed, however, these behaviors and their related neural pathways are easily accessed when the conditions are encountered again:

In the Graybiel experiments, rats learned that there was a chocolate reward at one end of a T-maze. When the rats were learning, the neurons were active throughout the maze run, as if everything might be important.

[…]

Then the researchers removed the reward, making the cues meaningless … The rats eventually stopped running (gave up the habit), and the new habit pattern of the brain cells disappeared. But as soon as the researchers returned the reward, the learned neural pattern, with the beginning and ending spikes, appeared again. [3]

Where do you find the best advice?

This research by Graybiel seems to be the most salient on the topic of learning and habits. It is important to note that not once in any of the articles on these experiments does Graybiel mention a time frame for establishing these neural patterns in humans. In fact, most of the other articles that I found on “medical” information websites were very careful not to mention how long it may take to establish new habits.

I did find a few articles about changing habits that had some tips in common, which one could follow if they were serious about changing their behavior. Here is an example, from the AARP website :

Behavioral change experts generally agree on several tips for habit-changers from 18 to 88:[edited for length, Ed.]

• Figure out why you want to change. An internal motivation is preferable to an external one (my doctor told me to lose weight). But to start with, even cosmetic goals will do.
• Use your life experience to your advantage. Catalog the attempts
  you’ve made at change and why they’ve failed. Then apply what you’ve learned. Don’t plan to work out at six each morning if you haven’t risen before eight for the last five decades.
• Substitute a new behavior for the old one. Exercise is a great replacement for smoking or eating. And even a less-than-virtuous substitute is better than a plainly bad habit.
• Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If the prospect of trying to lose 20 pounds paralyzes you, start small. Walking for 20 minutes a day and consuming just 100 fewer calories daily—that’s one tablespoon of mayonnaise—adds up to a 20-pound weight loss over the course of a year for an average-size person, according to Baylor’s John Foreyt.
• Get support. Having friends and family on board is critical for most
  successful behavior change. Let those close to you know what you’re planning to do and how it might affect your behavior. Conversely, stay away from people (including spouses!) who have an interest in undermining your efforts.
• Anticipate obstacles. Develop a plan for what you’re going to do when the bread basket arrives at the restaurant table. Take a walk, order a veggie plate, or ask the waiter to take it away once others have been served.
• Don’t quit trying. Most people don’t succeed in changing on their first try, says Wilkins of Cedars-Sinai. “You never want to give up because you don’t know if it’s the third time, the fourth time, or the fifth time where you will succeed.”

Anandra George is a life coach who advocates a similar list of tips for making changes:

How Change Happens:

• Self-examination, then Pre-cognition. When you begin to look at the pattern differently, you have the opportunity to recognize more positive ways to interact. In time, you also begin to recognize what you’re thinking about right before you step into the pattern again. Here you can see where your thinking is incorrect, and seek to correct it with more positive beliefs.
• Cessation, then more Self-realization. Next time, you recognize the thoughts that precede the pattern, and you begin to stop just before you repeat your pattern. When you’re stopped, you have the opportunity to truly choose differently. You recognize more positive ways think about the problem and better ways to interact. At this stage, you attempt to do it better, though it’s often clumsy at first.
• New Patterning and Practice. As you find the beliefs and actions that work much better for you, you establish a new pattern by practicing it every time the situation presents itself.
• More Practice, then True Change. By practicing your positive response over and over again, you transform yourself from within.

Being mindful of making real changes

Here are my suggestions for changing your habits:

• Making important changes in your life is not to be undertaken lightly. Once you make the decision, commit yourself to it.
• Find a partner in change to help you through the tough spots.
• The research that you do before starting is important and needs to be thorough. Don’t believe everything that you find on the Internets!
• Expect it to be difficult, and prepare rewards for yourself when you make real progress.
• Do not be afraid to ask for help! We have an excellent resource in our community, as many of the “Productivity Bloggers” have other expertise as well. (For example, both Rob and Ariane have both pitched in to contribute on this subject.)

Please share your own experiences with changing habits in the Comments.

Kate from Blog to Discovery has been kind enough to take on the beta-test of my GTD calendar project with me. She has posted her review at her blog, and has kindly allowed me to cross-post it here. Thank you, Kate, for your excellent suggestions.

I agree, by the way, the @Projects section is going away in the next iteration- because I am not using it either! It has actually moved to my TiddlyWiki…

Review of HDBizblog’s Calendar Page Project

Stephen at HDBizblog has developed a weekly calendar and overview on one page. One of the things I have found most interesting is the layout design because it follows the concepts of the F pattern as used in web design. The F pattern suggests when you look at a webpage your eyes tend to register more information on the left hand side than the rest of the page, therefore in the left hand column Stephen has positioned a column to capture big rocks to ensure they receive maximum attention during the week.

Here are my thoughts (and pictures of my usage) having trialled the template for a week (you can also read Stephen’s thoughts).

Initial impressions

My organiser is A5 size so I downloaded the picture and printed it to fit one A5 sheet. Unfortunately something went wrong and I managed to crop off the top of the form, but I’m not sure I would have used the weekly labelling anyway.

I am very attached to my yellow highlighter pen and use it to cross out completed tasks on both my task list and day planner. However due to the high proportion of yellow on this calendar I had to try an alternative colour, blue. However perhaps this is a healthy move for me!

Big rocks

I think this is a great idea because it really highlights those key tasks to be completed that week. As I haven’t yet identified my goals, I used this space for the tasks that had deadlines that week with work tasks listed at the top and home tasks at the bottom.

I think this section would work really effectively by linking this table to my goals such as allocating several slots to goals, acting as a reminder to have at least one task each week for each goal (perhaps by adding pale text in the background e.g. goal 1).

Appointments

I am currently not using a paper calendar for appointments as I have recently been given a blackberry. I have therefore used this section for my day specific tasks and repeating tasks; I would like to be able to distinguish between these tasks more easily perhaps by adding an an additional pale column so I can indent repeating tasks so they appear as lower priority. Again I positioned work related tasks at the top and home tasks at the bottom.

@ projects and weekly review

These two sections are the ones I used the least because I haven’t introduced contexts into my system and because I didn’t undertake a weekly review that week (it is somewhere on my to do list). I like the idea of including a weekly review checklist, but I’m not sure the project section adds much for me, partly because it is unlikely I would fit my projects in the table. I think it would be much more useful for me to include my routine checklists from my day planner in this space.

Conclusion

I think it is a great idea to summarise the week on one page because it easily provides an overview (and uses less paper). However I found I was continuing to use my day planner during the week so obviously there are components I like that are missing from this calendar. Although I would not use the calendar as it stands in my organisation system there are several ideas I really like and which I am planning to incorporate into my system. I’ll let you know how it goes.