A productivity method is both an effective way to get things done and a strategy for planning your day. After the pandemic, there was a large shift in the corporate workforce. Many people who used to work in office buildings are now working from home. While this has a variety of benefits, it can also prevent some challenges. One of these challenges is how to plan your day when your work and play are happening under the same roof. It’s amazing how often clients happily commit huge sums of money with no clear objectives. Even when objectives are specified, they’re often incredibly vague. One company recently spent millions of pounds without defining their objectives any more clearly than to ‘sell a shedload of X’. As a balm against hectic days that pass without progress, they introduce the concept of the “Highlight”:

We thought we might run to a couple of years’ worth of articles. Six years later, we were still going strong… We don’t know why. Perhaps it reflects more pressure in global companies to deliver impressive numbers. Or a greater distance between global management and the practical realities of delivering those results.A final word – art and not science SETTING OBJECTIVES ‘If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there’ Lewis Carroll ONE

This is something we seem to be coming across more nowadays: marketing objectives that have lost their grip on reality. Interestingly, the bigger the client, the worse this syndrome appears to be. Dr. Michael Greger, the internationally-renowned nutrition expert, physician, founder of NutritionFacts.org, and author of the New York Times mega-bestselling How Not to Die, now turns his attention to the latest scientific research on the leading causes—and remedies—of obesity. Dr. Greger homes in on the optimal criteria to enable weight loss and considers how different foods affect our health and longevity. He lays out the key ingredients of the ideal weight-loss diet and explains how factors such as calorie density, the insulin index, and the impact of foods on our gut microbiome can help us add or drop pounds. Dr. Greger shows us how evidence-based eating is crucial to our success. (For all of How Not to Diet’s thousands of scientific sources, see How Not to Diet Citations.) Building the Optimal Diet for Not Dieting

The ‘forgotten fiasco’ of Norway, 1940

A couple of years ago, we reviewed an ice cream brand. It had dominated its category for decades, but had recently lost the top spot to a similar rival. What had gone wrong? The How Not to Plan of 2018 is a manageably sized handbook which leaves room for your scribbles and notes and can be read as a guide or used as a constant helpful reference point. All based on empirical knowledge and hard-earned experience, rather than wishful thinking, received wisdom or guesswork. HOW NOT TO MAKE A PLAN

The original inspiration for the book was a set of articles that they wrote for Admap over 6 years. In these they set out to bust a lot of myths and nonsense that swirl around marketing and communications by using evidence-based approaches and interesting examples to make their points. Management consultants tell us that objectives should always be ‘SMART’: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timed. In our experience, they rarely are. How Not to Diet goes beyond food and identifies 21 weight-loss accelerators. Dr. Greger uncovers the latest discoveries in cutting-edge areas like chronobiology to reveal ways to maximize our natural fat-burning capabilities. He builds the ultimate weight-loss strategy from the ground up, taking a timeless, proactive approach that can stand up to any new trend. Start by setting an alarm for your daily planning session at the same time every day — either during a work shutdown ritual or first thing in the morning. To make building the habit easier, bundle your new daily planning session with an existing habit like drinking your morning coffee or listening to music.

Table of contents

The eagle-eyed among you will already have observed the contrarian title. We like a bit of contrary thinking, but there is nothing irrelevant or out of place about the contents of this book. It’s meticulously researched and incredibly detailed about what to do, and what not to do, at the different stages of the planning process. It’s written with a lightness of touch and a sense of humour, and embellished with lots of relevant and interesting examples and charts. Or, there might be defined objectives, but they’re totally unrealistic. It’s actually very rare for brands to make big gains in market share, penetration or anything else. Yet, when did you last see a brand plan not stating this as an aim?