In This Edition:
1.
Thanks for the Turkey
2.
Carpet Bombed by Ads
3.
More Choices, More Complexity
4.
Hacking Your Way Through
5.
Reflection is Difficult
Thanks for the Turkey
Here in the South, unlike my native Connecticut, the warm days of Autumn can
easily extend deep into November. Having a balmy Thanksgiving is not
unusual. Wherever you may be, if snow drifts up to your waist, or if you
are still sporting t-shirt, have the most wonderful of Thanksgiving, as the
year
draws to a close.
Carpet Bombed by Ads
Did you know that the typical fall fashion magazine requires readers to flip
through 128 pages before finding the first feature article? How about this:
In 1965, the typical news sound bite lasted 45 seconds. By the year 2,000
it had dropped to 8 seconds. Ad clutter has increased annually since 1985
and has now exceeded the over-whelming level for many viewers.
By 2002, every hour of daytime network TV offered nearly 21 minutes of
commercials, up from 10 to 12 minutes in previous decades. Some cable
networks feature 60 seconds of ads for every 140 seconds of programming, in
other words 30% of the total broadcast. While the typical TV advertisement
was 53
seconds in 1965, by 2000 it had dropped to 25 seconds with 15 second ads as
well as 3 second ads peppering viewers at every turn. There is competition
for every single moment you have to spare and for those you don't have to
spare.
More Choices, More Complexity
Choices abound in all directions. Your everyday supermarket now carries
roughly 40,000 items, twice as many as a decade ago. There are so many
products, so many brands and sub-species of those brands that no consumer is
safe from the bombardment of choice overload.
The manufacturers plead mea culpa -- they are trying to differentiate their
products to reach selected niches, a vital and necessary component of
survival in the hyper-intense capitalistic jungle. For example, there are
more than
16 varieties just of Colgate toothpaste, 75 types of Pantene hair care
treatments, 110 varieties of Hallmark greeting cards, and untold numbers
of other products just from the same vendor in the same product line are
available.
A huge variety of product offering doesn't aid consumers. It is insanity.
>From the vast array of athletic shoes to bagels to portable CD players to
bottled water, there quickly becomes a point at which mega-choices like
mega-information do not serve the consumer, they abuse him.
Hacking Your Way Through
You buck up and decide to get lean and mean. You're gonna hack your way
through the tangle of information and communication overload at home or at
work. You strip away anything that smells of excess or encroaches upon your
ability to stay on the straight and narrow path to high productivity.
You reflexively speed up your routine so that you can get through the day's
deluge of emails, open the mail and address it, handle the memos, tend to
the faxes, return the phone calls, and still come up smiling. In this
world, minutes and even seconds count. Money is not the key currency of life
anymore, it's time.
In deftly speeding through all that comes your way however, a new kind of
problem arises. In your quest to get one thing done after another, your
creativity, spontaneity, and joie de vive diminish. You're firmly caught in
a trap without realizing it. Like everyone else, you're adopting
the same survival mechanisms, galloping along on the same treadmill, and
defaulting into the same operational cycles.
Reflection is Difficult
If new insights or fresh perspectives spring forth, will you, can you,
actually act upon them? Do you have any chance of thinking new thoughts or
are you simply generating permeations of all your previous thoughts? Here,
right now, resolve that clarity and focus will be the watchwords for you in
the coming year. Honoring your consciously chosen prioroties has never
been more vital.
