Shelle Rose Charvet points out that most people already know the method. Now, when they hear positive feedback, they simply bypass it and wait fo the shoe to drop (then they ignore the final piece of positive feedback, which is obviously just there to soften the negative feedback). She advocates giving feedback in a way that avoids direct negative statements yet still accomplishes the goal, to stimulate behavior change. You can read Shelle Rose Charvet’s “The Feedback Sandwich is Out to Lunch.”

What do you think? If I were to include a “giving feedback” method in the Get-it-Done Guy book, which do you think would be best to include?

An 80,000-word book is different, though…

No matter how hard I try, 80,000 words just won’t fit in my head at once. Furthermore, this isn’t a “high concept” book. I don’t have three quick rules, or seven habits. I have a bazillion practical tips that need to be organized. I could do a “101 Tips” type book that would be pretty easy, but wouldn’t necessarily keep people coming back for more.

And remember, I have a goal out of all this, too! I want to build a paying media career with this book and podcast as my platform. A good, theoretical framework or set of principles is great for the public speaking circuit. “Let me tell you, Ellen, about my Five Great Rules.” It’s easy for people to remember, and makes it easy to have a consistent message.

My show format is quick tips. The book wants a bigger message. How do I reconcile the two? How do I even think about it, when there’s no inherent Grand Concept to hang everything on? I can micro-focus on the different tips, but that doesn’t tell me how to organize them.

So far, here’s been my process:

I’ve used a Wiki at http://www.TiddlySpot.com to type in topics and notes on text as they come up. I’ve tagged each entry as a topic, a tip, an insight, or a problem the book solves. As more and more text has accumulated, the concepts have started naturally filtering into content-oriented themes: dealing with people, dealing with space, dealing with time, etc.

To play with the higher-level flow, I’ve created a Mind Map with http://www.MindJet.com’s “Mind Manager” program. The mind map contains just the title of each tip, concept, etc. The neat thing about the mind map is that I can drag and drop and change the structure very easily.

Now, when I have a new idea, I create a “Tiddler” in the wiki and a branch of the mind map. The detailed text and notes on the section go into the wiki. Just the title goes into the mind map, so I can fit it into my current concept of how the topics all flow together.

The wiki gives me the details. The mindmap give me the high-level overview.

My current concept of the book

• A strong framing chapter that discusses the relationship between happiness, success, and personal productivity. This chapter lays the groundwork for why I chose the tips I chose, and how the tips all fit together.
• 101 Tips organized by problem area. Each tip will be brief and actionable, and many will be on topics you’ve hopefully never before seen in a tips book.
• A reference section that calls out the specific tools that are used repeatedly throughout the specific tips, in case you want more detail about a specific tool.

At the end of the day, the bulk of the book will be of the tips variety. The narrative tying it together will have a conceptual framework about the relationship of productivity to life goals, etc. It’s essentially a high-concept book interleaved with very tactical examples of applying the high-concepts. You’ll be able to read it as a how-to reference (“Gee, my files are a mess. How can I straighten them up?”) or as a Big Picture book (“One of the keys to success is consistent alignment of goals and tactics. Tips 5, 18, and 26 will show you how.”).

What do you think?

My intent is to provide tips that cover a wide range of emotionally-powerful issues that have simple, behavioral solutions that impact people’s feelings of happiness and success. To me, the point is to live a happy life, and my tips are oriented around the elements of productivity that contribute to happiness, not simply to making your boss richer.

Yet even this positioning isn’t exactly unique. Covey’s Seven Habits does life-success disguised as business productivity as well.

What I know is unique is that (a) my tips sometimes take a perspective that no one else has, and (b) my literary “voice” is a lot more fun than most of the business books out there.

Is that enough? Any thoughts on what could make this book unique, given the podcasts of mine you’ve heard?

• A chapter discussing and framing the problem/opportunity of productivity.
• A chapter introducing several high-level tools and concepts.
• Then several chapters that take a large problem and give tips to address different aspects. For example: beating procrastination, keeping on top of e-mail, building stronger relationships at home/work, etc.

1. Casual browsers should be able to pick up and find something useful.
2. Keep people reading.
3. Be intriguing enough that Ellen, Oprah, John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Larry King, the Today Show, etc. are fighting over who gets to interview me first.

Organize by bio

Come meet Stever. My background is a tad unusual (grew up in a traveling New Age commune). Organize the tips around my personal bio, similar to Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi. People love people stories…

Organize by tip: 101 tips

Chapter 1: Tips about organizing your office
Chapter 2: Tips about housecleaning
Chapter 3: Tips about handling mail

Organize by tool

Chapter 1: Here are the 10 Magic Productivity tools
Chapter 2: Tool #1 in depth, Tying the Goal to Daily Action, applied to work, home, etc.
Chapter 3: Tool #2 in depth, The 80/20 principle applied …

Organize by problem (framed as “eliminate problems”)

Chapter 1: Here are the 10 Magic Productivity tools
Chapter 2: Handling overload using tools #1, #5, and #9.
Chapter 3: Don’t be forgotten at a party, using tools #3, #7, #10

Organize by solution (framed as “create solutions”)

Chapter 1: Here are the 10 Magic Productivity tools
Chapter 2: Staying on top of all your work, using tools #1, #5, and #9.
Chapter 3: Be the most memorable person at the party, using tools #3, #7, #10

Organize by story (kind of Chicken Soup for the Get-it-Done Soul)

Chapter 1: Sue the Lawyer with no time
Chapter 2: Jim the Nurse who couldn’t say No
Chapter 3: Eloise the porpoise trainer who made the same mistakes over and over