I admire this instructor’s self-control. I might have slapped the little twit. I have no regrets about my English major. Indeed, I’m proud of it and have actually found it helpful in my career. It helped with my writing, but mostly it sharpened my analytical skills. When you’re picking apart every phrase or even every … Read more
Seven months ago I acted in a corporate video that was creative, evocative and inspiring. Six months ago I acted in a second version of the video based on a revised script. Yesterday I acted in version three. Not surprisingly, the video did not get better with each iteration. It got more wordy, more specific, … Read more
We put together an index and I consider it as much a part of the marketing as the cover. I think thumbing through it reveals a potentially very different, pretty fun book. Here is a condensed version of the 200 or so entries: Allen, Woody approval process audience: connecting with Austin Powers Bachelor, The body … Read more
I swear I learned a concept in high school psychology called “spatial filling.” I can’t find it on the Internet (or at least not in the way I thought I knew it), but here’s how I recall it. Spatial filling is the tendency for our mind to fill in missing details that we expect to … Read more
I used to do crosswords all the time. Then I got a smartphone. Now I just kill time browsing the Internet. But I always take one or two aboard a plane, because there are long stretches where you can’t use electronic devices, and everything, including my books, are on electronic devices. Anyway, I was on … Read more
I hadn’t heard of the “logical punctuation” movement. I’m not really disturbed so much by the continued evolution of language to a looser, more informal style. But to learn that there has long been debate over where to put punctuation marks in relation to quotation marks? I’ve always thought that was ironclad. Periods, commas, question … Read more
I came across this great article recently about scheduling and time/project management. It divides the workplace into two types of people: “makers” and “managers.” There are two types of schedule, which I’ll call the manager’s schedule and the maker’s schedule. The manager’s schedule is for bosses. It’s embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each … Read more