One day, about 40 years ago, I found myself in a group of people doing something that scared the crap out of me. As I look around me now, I feel the same way I felt then. I went to college at Penn State, a burgeoning mass of 30,000 students sequestered in the heart of the mountains…
If you are spending time with family over the holidays, as I am, here’s an idea for something fun to do together (that won’t generate political arguments). It’s a game that requires nothing more than a dictionary, some slips of paper, and a desire to play with words, meanings, and people’s minds and prejudices. We…
Just after Fidel Castro died, The New York Times revealed that 16 different journalists had been working on his obituary . . . since 1959. (They keep these things on file, just in case a famous person dies.) It made me wonder about my own obituary and how it would have changed over the years. If…
My book publishes tomorrow. This is the first book I’ve written without coauthors and a company behind me. How did I get here? Why a book on this topic? I received 10,000 press releases in my 20 years at Forrester. I estimate that 2% of those had any relevance at all. In the ones that…
Today, I’ll share some insight into how I do outreach to influencers . . . and the power and courtesy of the answer “No.” I am going to reveal how I’m doing publicity and how it feels. I’m doing most of my own publicity outreach for the new book. The publisher has a list, but…
I’ve got a long history in the print business. I’ve got detailed knowledge of an obsolescing technology. I can’t help but wonder what that means. Ink is in my blood. My grandfather was a linotype operator for the long-gone Philadelphia Bulletin (an afternoon paper); he worked with hot lead and his hands were so tough he could pick…
When I was young, I was certain I would be a mathematician. I still think like one. You should, too — and you don’t have to learn math to do it. A little background: I was an outstanding math student in high school and college, won an NSF Fellowship, and entered the math Ph.D. program at…
When you go back, you notice things. Habits you never thought about, you think about. You go back to that place you used to work, meet an old colleague, talk about work. Your brain snaps right into the old habits. The reflex of hitting those quarterly goals and buying into the company strategy. The fear-response…
I am now a writer and a writing coach. I wanted to reflect on the relationship between those two activities. Is writing unconscious? Does deconstructing it for coaching purposes make you self-conscious? Or does coaching help, not just the person coached, but the person doing the coaching? When people are good at something — standup comedy, tennis,…