There are several studies out that show that, all other things being equal, those people who keep food diaries lose about twice as much weight as those who don’t. That is, those who wrote down every single thing they ate ate less and lost weight. It seems to work best when the diary was shown to someone else as well–like showing your spouse/partner every day.

So what does this have to do with marketing? Accountability. 

You can use this same technique to be better with your marketing. In a food diary, maybe your goal every day is 1800 calories. In your marketing diary, it could be to accomplish at least three marketing-related tasks every (work) day. Call up some targets to try and get meetings, that’s one; research a few new potential targets, that’s two; update your blog, that’s three. 

When we write things down, they become more real in our monkey brains. Over time, we can see all that we have accomplished, and that helps to remind us about how much we actually can do (on those days when we feel like slugs). That is motivating. It can help us to remember that we can and actually do get things done, which is often a big problem for creatives (esp. those with ADD). And it can help to remind us that no matter how much we have to do, breaking it up into small bits and doing some every day will (usually) be more effective than trying to get it all done NOW.

On the other side, when you write down what you are doing every day (eating or marketing) you can begin to see problems before they become big problems. You can “catch yourself” after you make one or two missteps, rather than after you’ve really made a big error, and that makes corrections much easier.

So why not try a “marketing diary” to keep track of what you do every day for your marketing?