Newsletter 59. Why rules without reasons are dumb. Plus, how now to support journalism, tips for book titles, three people to follow, and three books to read. Never impose a rule without sharing a reason All experts become familiar with the rules that apply in their area of expertise. Typically, they try to teach others…
I’ve been talking with several highly skilled professionals who are preparing to leave their companies at the end of their careers. Some are ready to retire. Others aren’t sure. My advice is: keep your options open. If you’re done working for a company but still feel like you have something to offer, it’s easy to…
Each of us must do things we don’t like in our jobs. Effectively doing things that you like is pretty easy. But if you’re going to be successful, you’ll need to do unpleasant things well, too. So: here are some thoughts on doing unpleasant things well, from a person who had done thousands of unpleasant…
Honest-to-freaking-God, I don’t want to stop working. There’s no reason to retire. Working is rewarding, and I’m still capable of being creative and useful. Why would I let all that experience and creativity go to waste? I’ll tell you what I’m letting go of. Multitasking. My workload now is set up so that I can…
There are lots of reasons that people write books. One is to get business — speeches, workshops, consulting, or leads. Once you understand how that works, you’ll know how much effort to put into your book, and what kind of book it should be. Five ways books generate business Consider the marketing funnel — and…
Newsletter 58: The five ways brilliant people are different, why St. Martin’s press isn’t doomed, and Kamala Harris’ — er Harris’s — er, hmm. Plus three books to read and three people to follow. Five-fold brilliance In our work, we sometimes encounter individuals who inspire us. They seem to have such creativity and clarity about…
I recently saw a Substack post from a technology analyst titled “Crowdstrike publicly confirms AI Caused worldwide computer outage.” Since none of the other coverage I’ve seen suggested that AI was the cause of the outage, I looked into it. My conclusion: AI did not cause the outage, and it’s irresponsible to suggest that it…
At my previous employer, Forrester, there was a dedicated commitment to both quality of analysis and quality of writing. This meant that your editor took what you wrote and critiqued the crap out of it, and you had to learn to make it better to meet that high bar. My boss at the time, Emily,…
I recently got a request on my site’s contact form to help an author with a book. Something about the request seemed to not match up to my usual clients, so I asked the author,”What kind of book are you writing?” “The genre is adult fiction, erotica thriller and dark romance,” the client responded. “Sorry,…