He shared some of his interviews before his death in Strategy and Business, on the topic of thought leadership and the source of new ideas.  Not surprisingly, it echoed some of the 2Time Labs discoveries around building competence slowly, via deliberate practice.  He also says:

I was very keen to write. I found writing was the best way to clarify my own thinking. When you talk you can be vague, and the English language can be delightfully vague. When you sit down to write, you see whether you can express your ideas clearly or not. That habit has stayed with me. When I think I have an interesting idea, I try to write it down for myself first.

…it takes time to develop a new idea. If you are a writer, like me, then what you write on any given day may be only a fragment of what you know or what you believe, because you may not be ready to write down everything you have to say. There are breakthroughs, but they happen over a long period of time.

To me, the problems of greatest interest are things that you cannot explain with the current prevailing theory.

In developing all of these ideas, I learned not to start with the methodology, but with the problem. A lot of times, research tends to start with the methodology. I prefer to start with a problem that’s of interest and apply whatever methodology is appropriate.

Every one of my research projects started the same way: recognizing that the established theory did not explain a certain phenomenon. We had to stay constantly focused on weak signals. Each weak signal was a contradictory phenomenon that was not happening across the board. You could very easily say, “Dismiss it, this is an outlier, so we don’t have to worry about it.” But the outliers and weak signals were the places to find a different way to think about the problem.

If you look historically at the strategy literature, starting with Alfred D. Chandler Jr.’s Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise [MIT Press, 1962], the most powerful ideas did not come out of multiple examples. They came out of single-industry studies and single case studies. Big impactful ideas are conceptual breakthroughs, not descriptions of common patterns. You can’t define the “next practice” with lots of examples. Because, by definition, it is not yet happening.

For example, with the “Twenty Hubs and No HQ” article [which described a proposed structure for multinational companies], we didn’t prove the value of this system through examples, because we didn’t have examples. But we laid out a logic about how it might work, connecting the dots, showing a new pattern. I believe that conceptual breakthroughs come when you see a new pattern. And you use stories or companies’ work as examples and illustrations of the concept, not as proof of good practice. In The New Age of Innovation, for instance, I write about Aravind’s remarkable cataract surgery practice, but I use it as an example, not as proof. I never say, “Because of Aravind’s example, we know this should work.” Current practices, however successful they are, may not be robust enough to stand the test of time.

Of course, we all invented our own terms. Indeed, the biggest impediment in the growth and strategy literature is that, unlike in the financial literature, there are no standardized terms. There is no organizing thesis and principle. My bottom of the pyramid becomes someone else’s “base of the pyramid.” What’s the difference? There’s not even agreement about appropriate units of analysis. Is it one person? A team? A division? What is the fundamental building block of HR?

Over the next year, I came to the conclusion that it would be very easy to stay on course and keep mining these ideas and writing more about them — but then I was likely to write a mediocre next book. I think many writers fall into that trap. So in the late 1990s I started looking for the next big idea.

This perfectly encapsulates the reason why I share ideas here at 2Time Labs.  When I worked at AT&T Bell Labs, we published Technical Memorandums and Internal Memorandums in order to disseminate ideas, get feedback and bring some order to jumbles of ideas.  That’s apparently what Prahalad used to do also.

What he says about “weak signals” is quite important to the work we do also.  There’s not a whole lot of evidence for many of the popular theories in time management, but there are certain patterns that can be seen, and they go well beyond today’s cliches.  Time Management 2.0 is made up of such patterns, and there is scant evidence of their truth… at the moment.  Emerging research by experts such as Dezhi Wu is confirming these patterns, but it might be a while before they are accepted as everyday, obvious truth.

I love the warning at the end, and in fact, the article revived an idea I have had for some time that connects the dots between strategic planning and time management.  In our firm, we have been showing our clients how to craft 30 year strategies and it’s something I haven’t written much about since Amie Devero, a former partner of Framework Consulting, made note of the technique in her book, Powered by Principle.

All in all, I was deeply inspired by his example — and his passing was a great loss.

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To be honest, when I developed the page I thought no0one would read it.  Apparently, I was quite wrong about that so I have updated the page, added some pictures to my bio and put in some new information that reflects the latest happenings in my life, and the 2Time Labs website.  It’s a little slice of what makes me “tick.”

Click this link to be taken to the About page, or Click here to be taken to my updated bio.

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It struck me a few days ago as I was looking around for resources to recommend for a class I’m teaching, that I had nowhere on the Internet to point them to better than my own site.  I don’t mean to brag, but the fact is I seem to be aggressively hunting down, processing and writing about the topic of time management at a pretty hot pace, perhaps as fast as any PhD student might do in the early phases of their research.

It’s not that I have all the ideas, even though I do have a long list of items that I want to address in new posts.  Instead, in the past few months I have found myself delving into the academic research and finding some good/bad news.  There’s some good thinking, but the bad news is that there has been little or no momentum or continuity of thought in the field.  It’s as if one or two papers are written by an author in a 3 year period, only to have them go off to do something completely different and unrelated immediately after publication.

It’s too bad, but I am determined to have this site become the single best source of time management research, wherever and whenever it’s been done in the world.

But I just don’t want a lot of depth for it’s own sake.  My eye is actually on the conversion of good ideas into upgraded habits that better the lives of working professionals around the world.  My mission is to solve the problem of unnecessary time-stress once and for all, and to bring the kind of peace of mind that we all want, in spite of having full lives, busy jobs and active families.  Fully committed, but balanced.

One thing you won’t find here… tired ideas that are repeated on hundreds of sites, buttressed by worn out cliches and superficial thinking.  There are lots of “top 10 tips for time management” floating around that say nothing new, leading many to think that they have already heard every useful message on the topic, and that there’s no need to continue listening.

All I can say is “stay tuned,” as there’s a great deal of work for us all to do to stay ahead of the increasing demands on our time, new technology and inevitable life changes.  It’s a time to pay more attention, not less, to this important aspect of our lives.

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Where did that particular name come from?

I have been scratching my head for a few weeks thinking about this as I work on it, trying to imagine what the ultimate and ideal result might be for someone who reads the book.

I finally decided that a user who takes the steps to design their own system would design one that is “perfect.”

It can’t be bought off the shelf and be copied from others, any more than a dream home or a custom hot-rod can come from anywhere else other than the mind of the creator.

However, like a home or a car, it must follow certain design principles or it just might not work.  Hence the need for a certain kind of guidance, but not a prescription on what the system should look like.

It would be “perfect” because  it would match the lives that they live, versus someone else’ life.

My goal is to give readers a way of thinking about their time management systems that will provide a new level of empowering awareness.  The ultimate result I want is that a lot more professionals take charge of this important part of their lives, using the advice of many, but never relinquishing the ultimate responsibility.

Once published, this book will provide the help I was looking for when I started writing about time management 3 years ago, after I was dumbstruck at the books and blogs I read that made the implicit assumption that systems designed in Denver or Cambridge could work here in Kingston.

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I have two ideas in mind for the book. The first is in the form of a how-to, written as an abstract set of concepts with lots of examples.  The other idea is to write the book as a fable, in which a single person meets up on some kind of guru who teaches him/her how to use the principles in order to bring more peace of mind to his/her life.

As I am writing this I can see a third option, in which the first book is in the form of a fable, and takes a user though Principles 1-7, and the second is an abstract book that takes them through Principles 8-11.

If you have an opinion on which way I should go, please let me know, and be my partner through this process that will hopefully produce a publishable product by early 2010.  I’d love to see an example of a book that I could follow that others have found useful.

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Up until now, I have used the word “system” to describe the 2Time approach, but am starting to think that I have it all wrong.

I have never wanted 2Time to replace GTD®, Covey or any other particular system, but instead to support them and act as an umbrella framework or as an approach that could be used by a user to evaluate every other system that exists, but most importantly their own.  The 2Time approach is looking more like a tool for people who are developing their own time management systems,and my experience tells me that there are very few who are following a system that anyone else designed with anything close to perfection.

The only system they are following perfectly is their own.

2Time is also a way to evolve their time management system from wherever their starting point is, to any point in the future they wish to be.  I see this as a natural next step for someone who wants to create their own system.

In the same way that web 2.0 has come to be about user generated content, I see the next step in time management systems being the creation of user generated systems.  In other words, there is a revolution on the way to what I might call  “Time Management 2.0.”  In much the same way that Web 2.0 has been about user-developed content, I think that the same level of user-determination is coming to personal productivity.

My only surprise is that no-one else is seeing and saying the same message, as it seem obvious to me that it only acknowledges what people are already doing.  They take classes, and read books, and go off to do their own thing.  Sometimes it works out, and sometime it doesn’t, but I plan to keep spreading this message until a light bulb goes off, and becoming the designer of your own system is realized as an obvious thing to do.

Which brings me back to the name of my blog.  Should I call it:
The 2Time Management Approach  (no more claiming to be a system)
2Time Management  (a shorter more spiffy title)
2.0Time Management  (Hmm… maybe I can ditch the zero)

Time Management 2.0  (self-explanatory, and catchy)

The Time Management 2.0 Revolution  (dashing and a bit dangerous)
The 2Time Management Framework (my company is called Framework Consulting so this may be confusing.)

I’d love to hear your opinions on this issue of a new name.  I think the clearer the name, the more easily someone will spend 30 seconds on the site and immediately realize that they need to log off and go design their own time management system  (That might not be a good thing…  )

But it would be a great experience, and if I could leave this work I have started in capable hands, I’d feel on top of the world!

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I’d like to do something similar, and to invite readers to make suggestions and ask questions that I will answer on Fridays, and if I don’t get any questions during the week, I’ll just post up a regular submission.

I believe that  I will also add a form here on the blog with a simple response form so that someone can send me a question or suggestion directly.  In my prior post I introduced a FAQ file that I hope will answer some of the more general questions, so you might want to check that file before sending me your questions.

Thanks in advance!

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In prior posts, including this one, I mentioned that I had written a proposal to write a manifesto for the website.

My proposal, which is described here, did quite well, receiving some 460 votes, more than twice the second-place proposal, and more than any other proposal since.

That was back in October, and I have been waiting and wondering… what next? A few emails weren’t returned, until finally the word came back that the invitation was being extended, and that a typical manifesto could expect to be downloaded some 20,000 to 50,000 times.

Well.

That got my attention!

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Or better yet, how can such a person be found? Would they be willing to work on commission?

Do let me know of any ideas you might have in this regard.

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What I have neglected to mention is that it’s the most popular proposal of the 11 being offered up this month.

I have no idea what the threshold is to be asked to take the next step and “write a manifesto” but… if you haven’t voted, please do so.

The final date is Friday Oct 19th.

The title is “On Time Management: Toss Away the Tips, Focus on the Fundamentals”

Click here to be taken to the proposal.

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