Thursday, January 21, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Moment of Truth
For the people of Haiti and all people who have been hurt by a natural disaster over the past several years, I dedicate a little prayer/song that always humbles me:
let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears
while we all sup sorrow with the poor
there's a song that will linger forever in our ears
"oh, hard times come again no more"
'tis a song, a sigh of the weary
"hard times, hard times come again no more"
many days you have lingered around my cabin door
oh, hard times come again no more
while we seek mirth and beauty
and music light and gay
there are frail ones fainting at the door
though their voices are silent
their pleading looks will say
"oh, hard times come again no more"
Let's take a moment to remember there were estimates of 230,000 killed in the Indonesian quake and tsunami in 2004, 86,000 in Pakistan in 2005, and 70,000 in China in 2008, all of whom did not benefit from the same level of generosity in the American media. Thank goodness Haiti has been a great example of our generous hearts and charitable behavior, and I hope it only gets better from here.
Sadly, it often takes something as catastrophic as the earthquake in Haiti to make those of us in economic "hard times" realize our definition of hard is nothing relative to theirs.
let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears
while we all sup sorrow with the poor
there's a song that will linger forever in our ears
"oh, hard times come again no more"
'tis a song, a sigh of the weary
"hard times, hard times come again no more"
many days you have lingered around my cabin door
oh, hard times come again no more
while we seek mirth and beauty
and music light and gay
there are frail ones fainting at the door
though their voices are silent
their pleading looks will say
"oh, hard times come again no more"
Let's take a moment to remember there were estimates of 230,000 killed in the Indonesian quake and tsunami in 2004, 86,000 in Pakistan in 2005, and 70,000 in China in 2008, all of whom did not benefit from the same level of generosity in the American media. Thank goodness Haiti has been a great example of our generous hearts and charitable behavior, and I hope it only gets better from here.
Sadly, it often takes something as catastrophic as the earthquake in Haiti to make those of us in economic "hard times" realize our definition of hard is nothing relative to theirs.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Why People Email So Badly
I just finished an incredible (yet so simple) book that I wish was required reading for anyone who uses email. Take note! It's called:
Send: Why People Email So Badly and How to Do It Better by David Shipley (deputy editorial editor for New York Times) and Will Schwalbe (former editor in chief of Hyperion Books)
I thought I would excerpt (paraphrased at times) my 10 favorite epiphanies which hopefully will convince you to pick up the book. I guarantee it's a fast read, and there's lots more explained than what's here.
In brief
"Email has a tendency to encourage the lesser angels of our nature. There’s a reason for this. In a face-to-face (or voice-to-voice) conversation, our emotional brains are constantly monitoring the reactions o the person to whom we’re speaking. We discern what they like and what they don’t like. Email, by contrast, doesn’t provide a speedy real-time channel for feedback. Yet the technology somehow lulls us into thinking that such a channel exists. As Daniel Goleman, author of Social Intelligence, observed, emailing puts people in a state of disinhibition. The inhibiting circuits in our brain—which help us monitor and adapt to our audience’s responses—have checked out. Several psychological studies have shown that email generally increases the likelihood of conflict and miscommunication. One reason for this is we tend to misinterpret positive email messages as more neutral, and neutral messages as more negative than the sender intended."
1. Email is ruthlessly democratic. It’s hard to tell what’s important and what isn’t. Your subject line is one of the few cues you can offer. Subject line should always be used and inform the reader of the contents of the email. And asking people to not read the email you just sent them—Subject: Recall Last Message—is an invitation for them to read it and then to disseminate its contents as widely as possible.
2. Avoid hyperbole. There are few things as deflating as a message that does not live up to its billing. The Subject line “Great News” should be great. Example of what not to do:
Subject line: Great news
Email content: I finally remembered the name of that cereal I loved as a kid.
3. In a recent [2005] survey, many employers said they would not interview a candidate if they didn’t like the font on his application or cover letter.
4. Email tends toward informality. However the greeting is your first and probably most important opportunity to show your correspondents what you think your relationship is to them. An inappropriate salutation colors all that follows. When in doubt, Dear is always acceptable and always correct.
5. Don't appear to have to always have the last word. Any email string that comes your way with the words “Done”, “Great”, “Agreed”, “See you then”, is a signal you do not need to respond again.
6. Please and thank you do not always make your message more polite as they can be misread as your annoyance. Rhetorical questions can be even worse and the suggestive tone instantly may make someone enraged. Consider if the intent behind a rhetorical question could be seen as: “I’m asking this question because the answer will humiliate you”.
7. Thanking and asking (for a favor) don't mix. Also an email thank you is often perceived as insincere because it took very little effort (and people who have been wounded have their BS meters set at a very sensitive level). If you're thanking someone, be as sincere as possible, and strongly consider following it with in-person praise or a hand-written thank you note.
8. Of all the tonal choices you can make in correspondence, the decision to use sarcasm should be carefully considered, and almost always abandoned.
9. Don’t email when you are right about something.
10. You may have heard this simple advice many times before, but it can’t be overstated: Think before you send. And send email you would like to receive.
Send: Why People Email So Badly and How to Do It Better by David Shipley (deputy editorial editor for New York Times) and Will Schwalbe (former editor in chief of Hyperion Books)
I thought I would excerpt (paraphrased at times) my 10 favorite epiphanies which hopefully will convince you to pick up the book. I guarantee it's a fast read, and there's lots more explained than what's here.
In brief
"Email has a tendency to encourage the lesser angels of our nature. There’s a reason for this. In a face-to-face (or voice-to-voice) conversation, our emotional brains are constantly monitoring the reactions o the person to whom we’re speaking. We discern what they like and what they don’t like. Email, by contrast, doesn’t provide a speedy real-time channel for feedback. Yet the technology somehow lulls us into thinking that such a channel exists. As Daniel Goleman, author of Social Intelligence, observed, emailing puts people in a state of disinhibition. The inhibiting circuits in our brain—which help us monitor and adapt to our audience’s responses—have checked out. Several psychological studies have shown that email generally increases the likelihood of conflict and miscommunication. One reason for this is we tend to misinterpret positive email messages as more neutral, and neutral messages as more negative than the sender intended."
1. Email is ruthlessly democratic. It’s hard to tell what’s important and what isn’t. Your subject line is one of the few cues you can offer. Subject line should always be used and inform the reader of the contents of the email. And asking people to not read the email you just sent them—Subject: Recall Last Message—is an invitation for them to read it and then to disseminate its contents as widely as possible.
2. Avoid hyperbole. There are few things as deflating as a message that does not live up to its billing. The Subject line “Great News” should be great. Example of what not to do:
Subject line: Great news
Email content: I finally remembered the name of that cereal I loved as a kid.
3. In a recent [2005] survey, many employers said they would not interview a candidate if they didn’t like the font on his application or cover letter.
4. Email tends toward informality. However the greeting is your first and probably most important opportunity to show your correspondents what you think your relationship is to them. An inappropriate salutation colors all that follows. When in doubt, Dear is always acceptable and always correct.
5. Don't appear to have to always have the last word. Any email string that comes your way with the words “Done”, “Great”, “Agreed”, “See you then”, is a signal you do not need to respond again.
6. Please and thank you do not always make your message more polite as they can be misread as your annoyance. Rhetorical questions can be even worse and the suggestive tone instantly may make someone enraged. Consider if the intent behind a rhetorical question could be seen as: “I’m asking this question because the answer will humiliate you”.
7. Thanking and asking (for a favor) don't mix. Also an email thank you is often perceived as insincere because it took very little effort (and people who have been wounded have their BS meters set at a very sensitive level). If you're thanking someone, be as sincere as possible, and strongly consider following it with in-person praise or a hand-written thank you note.
8. Of all the tonal choices you can make in correspondence, the decision to use sarcasm should be carefully considered, and almost always abandoned.
9. Don’t email when you are right about something.
10. You may have heard this simple advice many times before, but it can’t be overstated: Think before you send. And send email you would like to receive.
An Optimistic Thought
"When I think back to what came out of the Depression, why would I be pessimistic about now? Maybe we have an opportunity in these hard times to learn those same lessons. Children growing up today [may] have an advantage: They have an opportunity to learn something that no generation since the generations that grew up in the 30’s had a chance to learn, and that is self-reliance, and perseverance, and a certain amount of toughness."
- Malcolm Gladwell
(interview with Katie Couric, January 2010)
- Malcolm Gladwell
(interview with Katie Couric, January 2010)
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