I’ve published a blog post for over 300 days in a row now, but I’ve got to admit something; sitting in front of a blank page is a killer for me. If the page is blank, so is my mind. The solution is pretty easy, though — I don’t sit in front of a blank page.
When it’s time for me to sit down and write, I always have a list of ideas to work from. As I mentioned back in May, I try to capture every single idea that I have. They all go into my note system, so…
Despite the tremendous growth of Zoom and other video conferencing platforms over the last few years, the vast majority of our communication remains in text form, primarily email.
There are big advantages to both types of communication, which Seth Godin broke down right near the beginning of the pandemic.
Real-time communication, like Zoom or in-person meetings, tends to offer greater clarity. Being face-to-face helps with tone and intention, and can greatly speed up the chase to a resolution.
Asynchronous communication, like email, gives two different advantages; time and recollection. Because it’s not real-time, you can have a text-based communication with…
Over at GreenMellen, we don’t host websites. We help people choose hosting, and we take care of all of the technical work, but we want our clients to have ownership of their sites. We do this for their long-term benefit (owning your own stuff is a good thing), but recently I’ve noticed a great side benefit of doing this.
Because we don’t host sites, we have no financial incentive to ask clients to move. If we see a situation where a client should move to a different web hosting company to help with the performance of their site, our suggestions…
Seth Godin gave an interesting challenge in his podcast last week, where he encouraged people to announce what they were going to say before they say it. For example, if you’re getting frustrated on the phone with a customer service rep, you’d say “ Next I’m going to get riled up a bit more and threaten to leave, then I’ll tell you that I know the CEO and I’ll have you fired, and then I’ll start really screaming. Ready? Let’s begin.”
It’d be ridiculous to actually go through with it that way, but taking a moment to think through it…
I’ve talked a good bit about smartwatches on here over the years, from my first Google-vs-Apple post back in 2015, to recurring posts about how Pebble stuck around longer than we thought it might.
I recently picked up a Galaxy Watch4, and it’s excellent. As I’ve been getting things set up, though, it’s helped me rethink how I manage my phone.
For me, the best thing about a smartwatch is notifications. The other apps on the watch can be helpful at times, but I want to quickly glance down and see who is calling or texting without having to get…
It’s tempting to try to have the answer for every question, and it’s admittedly something I fall into myself. It’s kind of like the idea of “ proving versus improving “, and trying to be an expert on everything. You don’t need to try to do that.
It can take a degree of humility to know you don’t have all of the answers, but it can lead to two great outcomes.
First, as the title states, it can give you the push to learn something new. …
There is a good chance you found this post through an online community that you’re a part of, possibly Facebook or Twitter. While having a community on sites like that is a great thing, it’s also incredibly fragile.
Social media accounts get shut down constantly; mostly for good reasons (spammers, etc), but normal accounts can get caught in the crossfire and it can be very difficult to get them back. Your account (or mine!) could be taken down tomorrow, for no good reason and with no recourse.
In many cases, it’s more of an annoyance than anything. Most social media…
There are two types of people in the world: those that set out to prove their competence, and those that work to improve their competence.
A great example was Donald Trump. He was clearly a smart enough man to get elected, but he very much focused on proving how smart he thought he was, rather than working to improve his knowledge (or trust those that were smarter in a given niche). This video is a great example of him working hard to try to prove how smart he was:
That said, it can be kind of tricky. If you…
A challenge with blogging every day is that it’s hard to remember everything that I’ve said. While the main goal is to help sharpen my thinking in broad strokes, remembering some of the details I share can be a useful thing and I’ve been finding it somewhat elusive.
The issue is similar to my “ who is that person we had lunch with last week? “ post, in that I’m not doing anything to actually try to help myself remember this content. I post it and move on, and often quickly forget what I wrote.
Posts from quotes
Since I’ve started blogging regularly again, the way I share my posts each day has been slightly adjusted a number of times. I recently was asked for some details on that, so here you go.
Before I tackle that, though, there are two important things to frame this with. First, you need to understand why I’m writing every day, as that impacts how I choose to share these posts. In short, these posts are primarily for me, and I’m not looking to necessarily force people back to my website to get “better numbers”. …
