When I was a kid, I remember my father, exasperated with traffic while we were driving somewhere, saying people who are polite in person are rude when driving because they have the anonymity of the car. Someone who would never cut in front of you in line at the bank, he argued, would cut you off in traffic without batting an eye because of this anonymity. I think about his comment when confronted with rude drivers, but also when confronted with email marketing. At times, it seems as if email marketers take the car approach, doing...
I hurt. My whole left arm aches as does my left shoulder. The back of my left hand twinges when I use it and my left pinkie tingles. Why? Because I disregarded one of the fundamental rules about working with horses: Don’t be in a hurry. And I ended up with these aches and pains but—thankfully–that was all. It could have been worse. So…what happened? My iPhone wasn’t working. I took Chase and the dogs for a ride up the logging road thinking I’d get service once away from home, but I didn’t. That’s when I knew I’d have to go...
I can help you with your New Year’s resolutions by helping you get back some of your most precious resource: time. Now, why on earth am I bringing up New Year’s Resolutions in late January? Because this is about the time of the month when we start to go from ambitious enthusiasm to wondering if setting those goals were such a good idea in the first place (as the gym parking lot meme shows). But we do set them! Millions of us set goals for the new year, and then most of us fail at them within the first week or month. I’m no...
We waste too much time writing and reading confusing communications at work. The four Rs can save us from ourselves. Once upon a time, we referred to the three Rs that kids learned in school: reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic. Today as adults in the 21st century who write at work, we need to focus on the four Rs: Re-read Remove Replace Rewrite And we need to starting now. Because time’s a wastin’ and we have better things to do. Why You Need the Four Rs As I’ve written about elsewhere, we are wasting $400 billion every single year...
Seek to understand. It sounds a bit like advice you’d get from a karate kid movie or Yoda, right? (Wait. Did I just date myself?) But it’s sound advice for anyone trying to communicate—especially when writing at work. It takes longer to make the effort to understand as opposed to knee-jerk reactions, but it saves time in the end. Not only that, seeking to understand can improve workplace communications. In his article titled How do you improve workplace communication? Ask questions, writer Michael Bungay Stanier explains that we shy...
