Did you ever wonder why you spend so much of your day wading through bullshit? Every worker must consume masses of information, but most of it is poorly written, impenetrable, and frustrating to consume. How did we get here? I’ve actually studied this question. In fact, Chapter 2 of my book explains it in detail. Basically: Reading…
American Airlines’ new ad campaign — “The world’s greatest flyers fly American” — gently praises flyers who are civil and generous. After decades of flyer abuse, that’s a lot to ask. I am a 2-million-mile, Platinum-for-life American Airlines frequent flyer. I’ve been a frequent business traveler for 25 years. I have watched the sad decline…
It’s not enough to find the flaws in a piece of writing. Editors must know why they’re there. Good editors explain how the writer can cure the habits that led to the flaws. Writing Without Bullshit exists to reveal, not just how to write better, but why you don’t write better already. I don’t just want to make writing…
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…
Mylan and its CEO Heather Bresch are under fire. It raised the price of its EpiPen product — an essential protection for people with life threatening allergies — by a factor of five in the last eight years. Mylan’s statement defending itself clarifies what it’s doing — providing rebates — but evades the main issue of…
Breaking rules is necessary, because if you follow all the rules to the letter, you’ll never accomplish anything new and original. Ironically, though, every piece of advice on the Internet — including my book and my blog — is setting up new rules (“Avoid the passive voice! Build your personal brand! Floss!). So should you break the…
The stock market has already priced in anything you read in The Wall Street Journal about stocks. So they fill space with an elaborate passel of theories that’s obscure enough that you might think the market doesn’t understand it yet. That’s fine, so long as you realize it’s for entertainment purposes only. Markets reporters at a paper…
Tuesday, November 8, 2016, NEW YORK, 11:15 PM EST. Thank you. Thank you all. We showed America something, didn’t we? Didn’t we? Let’s acknowledge the hard work of our volunteers and campaign staff. And of Ivanka, and Eric, and Donald Jr. and Melania. And Mike Pence! Let’s hear it for those guys. Look. I set out in…
Friday’s post about the Donald Trump statues got quite a reaction. Surprisingly, it restored my faith in the Internet as a place for discourse. My objective was simple: get people to think twice about whether we’re ready to accept public, naked, exaggerated depictions of our political candidates as part of the dialogue. And I think…