Author: Scott Berkun

The truth about choosing book titles

Posted on in rant, Writing Wellby Scott Berkun

I’ve published six successful books and in the years it took to write each one I’ve heard every range of opinion on what makes a good book title and how important it is or isn’t. Here’s what I’ve learned, and it applies to fiction, non-fiction and even other kinds of creative works.

#1: Advice is cheap, decisions are hard

Everyone is very happy to tell you how to pick a title, and in particular, that you are doing it wrong.

A special joy comes from people telling you that your title ideas stink, yet who can’t offer a single better alternative. “Gee, thanks” you’ll say, to which they will offer “Hey, you’re the writer.” Both complaints are valid of course, but neither solves the problem.

There is plenty of good advice, but it’s rarely based on good data. Even a skim of the history of popular books or the current top 100 shows dozens of violations of any expert’s advice. Worse, often good sounding advice contradicts other good sounding advice. For example:

#2: This is all very subjective, even among experts

If we rounded up the wisest book editors and the smartest title creators and gave them a list of book titles for soon to be published books, they’d passionately disagree about which ones worked and why. And most of them would be wrong about the results (See #4).

We all suffer tremendous taste bias on titles. We assume our instincts and likes are matched by everyone. There are many kinds of taste, good and bad, which means there is an unbelievable amount of contradictory  advice about titles, almost as much as there is about writing books themselves.

Insiders love to point to previously published books as examples of good titles, but that’s cheating. What would validate their expertise is a record of what they thought of the title before it was released. If you want an honest opinion from an expert ask them to tell you about books with “great” titles that failed, or books with “bad” titles that did well. There are many of both.

#3: Many titles are cliches

Most advice chases past successes. And the popular advice leads towards books that sound the same. Since this advice is well known many books aim for the same crowded bullseye.  The paradox is they will say: “Your idea is a cliche, so take this advice (which will lead to a different cliche)”

Most genres have crowded namespaces with familiar patterns. Aiming here defeats some of the purpose of the title: to uniquely identify the book. If you follow too much of the advice you hear, soon you’ll be in questionable territory:

  • The Art of Blah
  • Transforming Foo
  • Breathing for Dummies
  • How to Blah and Blah
  • Noun + Number of Noun
  • Somebody’s something
  • The Joy of <thing not generally thought of as joyful>
  • The End of <Something people are afraid of ending>
  • Extreme Coughing
  • The <something important> playbook/guidebook/handbook
  • <Invented word you pray will become a meme>
  • Breakthrough Cheese
  • How to <verb> <adjective> (“How to” is so common it’s abbreviated h/t)
  • Short word: long long long long long subtitle filled with keywords (or see: Gladwell Book Title generator)
  • Outrageous Claim: How something or other will do something or other
  • The <insert number> of Sins/Secrets of Something

Remember that for every cliche there is an original idea for a book title that started it. And you can bet when that author pitched that title, they were told mostly why it wouldn’t work.

But know that cliches can be good if you time them right. They fade in and out year to year, being abused, abandoned and then suddenly rise as cool again. Depending on how many book titles you look at a day, your place, and your reader’s place in that timeline is different. What seems played out to you might be on the rise for your audience.

It can sometimes be effective to use a cliche if you’re going after an audience that hasn’t seen a book aimed that way (e.g. Confessions of a Public Speaker), since it won’t seem cliche to them, as the cliche is a shortcut to expressing the style of the book (e.g. 101 Things I learned in Architecture School).

#4: The title serves many functions

The non-book writing majority of our species has no idea how many different functions the title serves in the machinery of selling books. It will be used for any of:

  • To convince someone to be interested in the book  <— this is the one people think about
  • The cover
  • The Amazon listing
  • Advertising, marketing and branding
  • Any  t-shirts, flyers or other promotional material
  • In presentation slides
  • The domain name
  • In book reviews (and in the title of book review blog posts)
  • The thing the author will say 5000 times in interviews, lectures, radio and TV appearances (should they be so lucky)
  • As a one line bio on TV or for magazine articles
  • As the brand name for other ventures (courses, conferences)
  • The thing readers (hopefully) will say to their friends 5000 times

Each of these has slightly different requirements and you can’t nail them all at the same time. Most are improved with brevity.

#5: Titles aren’t predictive of sales

Two facts about books:

  • There are many great books with dubious titles, and awful books with fantastic titles
  • Many popular books suck, and many awesome books are unpopular

Book publishing is not a meritocracy. Even if it were, dozens of decisions influence the outcome. There are many reasons books become popular, or not. Some books become popular in spite of their author’s choices. Other books do everything most things right, and never do very well.

One factor in the overstating of title importance is insecurity and ego. At the time an author and a publisher are deciding on the title they are both at their greatest emotional insecurity: the book is not finished and not released. Their fears only puts more pressure on the decision, not less. Another reason is people other than the writer want to make their mark on the project and the title is the single most prized sentence in the entire book writing enterprise, and it’s easy to express opinions about it (whereas opinions on the text of the book itself requires hours of investment). Many books are chosen by editorial committee and you can guess which ones they are.

Titles of course have an impact on a book’s success. Often its all a potential buyer ever gets to see, and if they can draw interest the book crosses its first of many hurdles in the improbable struggle of getting noticed. But titles only help so much. Most people hear about books the same way they hear about new bands. Or new people to meet. A friend or trusted source tells them it was good and it was called  <NAME HERE>.  The title at that point serves as a moniker.  It’s the thing you need to remember to get the thing you want to get and little more.

#6. We feel differently after we read the books

Many titles are meaningless until after you read them. Consider the day any of these were first published: The Mythical Man Month, Catcher in The Rye, Catch-22, To Kill A Mockingbird, Moby Dick, Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, Eat Pray Love. After these books were successful of course the titles seem great. But you wouldn’t have said that before the book came out. Or go further and ask about REM or Led Zeppelin or RUN DMC. What? Names for things sometimes are just names for things. They let us refer to a thing, and that’s it. If we love the thing we eventually love the name. You didn’t marry your spouse purely because of their name, right? Or what city you live in? Or what company you work for?

It’s entertaining to consider the names of many publishers: HarperCollins, Simon and Schuster, MacMillan. These names mean nothing as names since they are the actual names of their founders. What rule of naming was followed here? Sure, companies are different from books, and these companies have done very well. But consider Random House, which was named because the founders wanted to publish “a few books on the side at random“?  None of them exemplify a strategy based on the importance of a name choice in the success of a venture.

#7: What really matters


Of all the advice I’ve read, been given, had thrown at me, or pulled out of of more experienced authors, here’s the core of what matters:

  1. Short. Fits anywhere. Easy to type, write, make into a URL, tweet and text. Unless you are Fionna Apple.
  2. Memorable. The more specific, original and short the title, the easier it is to remember. Or write down. Or type into amazon. A title can be both cryptic and easy to recall: Life of Pi means almost nothing to someone who hasn’t read the book. But it’s just 3 one syllable words.
  3. Provocative. One way to be memorable is to be provocative. To achieve this likely means dividing your audience: provided half of that division is very interested, it’s a win. It’s better to split a crowd than to bore everyone. Many books make a provocative promise that’s impossible to deliver on. You need to decide how close to an infomercial you’re willing to be.
  4. Easy and fast to say.  At parties, on TV, on Radio, the name should be easy to say and enunciate. The fewer the syllables the better.
  5. Author wont get sick of saying it 1000 times. Anyone selling the book, including the author, will say the book title thousands of times. Consider what you will think of the title the 5000th time or five years from now. You want something you’ll be excited about each and every time you say it.
  6. Matches the soul of the book. Only people who have read the book can help here. Many novels make the title pay off after you’ve read it and in some ways make the title more potent than other kinds of titles. Organic titles, meaning titles pulled from something in the book itself (a story, a term, a name, such as The Perfect Storm), can work well.

#8: What to do: Make a big list

The best solution to subjective creative challenges with cheap materials (e.g. words) is to make a big list of candidates. As big as possible. Include anything you like, including cliches. Take your time, over days and weeks. Show the list to lots of people with the goal of making the list bigger. Often there are hybrids and variants that you’ll discover only by growing your list.

When you’ve made a big list and don’t find many new ones, make a specific list of your criteria (see above). Then slowly work to winnow down the list.  Here’s good advice on looking at competitive titles and list creation.

#9: Use modern tools like polling and A/B Testing

When you have a small list of titles you like, get some data. Tim Ferris, Eric Reis and others have graciously popularized the methods they used for applying A/B testing methods (Like Pick-Fu) for picking book titles. From experiments with their websites, to using sample google ads for book title candidates to compare how people respond. This is excellent. Data should inform opinions. It can’t answer every question but it can verify or disprove assumptions in ways no amount of debate can.

However, A/B testing can never generate the candidates for you. It also never tells you how to break ties. And it can’t tell you anything about how well the title matches the book. You might find a title that gets a fantastic response, but isn’t a good match for the book you wrote.

 #10:  Remember A title is just a sentence

If you’re a writer you will write hundreds of thousands of sentences in your career. Only your name is going on the book: put some confidence in your own judgement.

Vote for the title of my next book

Posted on in Books, Year Without Pantsby Scott Berkun

I’ve been hard at work on book #5. It’s about the year I spent working at WordPress.com.  I want you readers to be more involved: an easy place to start is helping pick the title for the book.

Book Synopsis: WordPress.com, the planet’s 15th most popular website, has no headquarters: everyone works from wherever they want in the world. They don’t use email and have an open vacation policy. New work ships dozens of times a day to a live website used by millions of users. How is all this possible? What can other companies learn from their radical methods? In this book you’ll learn insights into leadership, management and the nature of work by following Berkun, bestselling author and former Microsoft manager from the early web, as he tells his story of trying to lead a team of young programmers and designers at the heart of this fascinating, brilliant company.

How voting works: This is the first round. There might be a second round. If you have a write-in candidate for title or sub-title, please vote anyway and leave your candidate in the comments. (My general theory on book titles)

And which subtitle?

 

If you want to be notified when the book is out: Leave a comment that says “I want to knooooooow when it’s out! WOOT” or something similarly ridiculous. And you’ll get an email when the time is right. Or just subscribe to the blog via the sidebar on the left.

Thanks folks. I’ll be writing more about the book over the next few weeks – stay tuned.

Do you want a bar in your workplace?

Posted on in Creative Thinkingby Scott Berkun

Taking the question of how much does your workplace affect creativity in a new direction, the folks at Janelia Farm, a biomedical research lab, have a pub in their office. Complete with ping pong, beer and coffee.

You can watch a short interview about the pub and some of the employees opinions about it:

The ideal situation is an office on a street with a few pubs and restaurants close by. Then you get the best of both worlds, as the people running the pubs will do what they do best. Trying to create a pub atmosphere inside the bureaucracy and limitations of a large organization is a tough road. Of course many offices are in remote locations, miles from their nearest pub. They have no choice but to try and create a space for workers to socialize themselves.

Seattle’s own Substantial has a fully stocked bar in their office. And a fair number of rising start-ups in the SF bay area do as well.

Would you want a pub in your office? Why or why not?

Extreme Makeover: Bad Marketing Email

Posted on in Writing Wellby Scott Berkun

In response to my claim Jargon Feeds on Lazy Minds, my friend Kav sent me one of the worst marketing emails he’s seen. Rather than complain, I thought why not try and fix it EXTREME makeover style.

Here’s a brief critique followed by a press release makeover.

First, here’s the message – half way between a press release and a product pitch:

Subject: It’s time for a Revolution…a Commercial RE Revolution.

There is a void in the marketplace. Have you noticed it?

For much of the commercial real estate world, the solution is occasionally pulled out because it looks cool; but they can’t really seem to remember how it works. Hidden underneath the pile of instruments we use every day is a much-needed tool. Have you guessed what it is yet?

It’s Collaboration: a social technology tool. Collaboration without context is merely managed chaos. And it requires trust-based teams to provide a context for successful collaborating. Efficiency increases with the alignment of mindsets, purpose and channeling new tools to fully embrace.

With iCORE, we’ve logged many hours creating a new atmosphere of collaboration and teaming while offering the most advanced technological platform designed to facilitate it seamlessly. Long-standing relationships are revered in our business. That’s why we’re approaching channel business in an innovative way, because we understand where the industry is heading.

If your office is land-locked or more importantly, “business-locked”, how do you expand your reach globally?

iCORE solves your “location” problem by placing the capability of reporting and increased optics available at your fingertips, putting you in the know. As a team member, you can manage responsibilities with automated day-to-day updates and document sharing, enabling real-time snapshots of what’s going on with your client, ensuring the best business possible for both you and them.

After all, you’ve invested time, money and effort to build a trusting relationship with your client. And no one wants that to deteriorate. This successful platform of collaboration inspires our team members to provide their clients with the highest level of professional and personal attention that they expect from industry leaders.

Interested in our revolutionary approach?

Begin connecting with a global team by contacting foo @ foo today and increase your global opportunities

The email had some basic HTML formatting which you can see below.

The Critique

The big problem is: what is being sold? A product? A service? You can read the whole thing several times and never know. All of the jargon and fuzzy language makes it worse. In a world of full inboxes this will be deleted as soon as its skimmed. In needs to be clearer, simpler and shorter.

It’s time for a Revolution…a Commercial RE Revolution.

Revolution should almost never be used. It’s used twice in the first sentence. I don’t know what a RE revolution is. Is that a revolution that you do twice?

There is a void in the marketplace. Have you noticed it? For much of the commercial real estate world, the solution is occasionally pulled out because it looks cool; but they can’t really seem to remember how it works

I can’t explain what this means. Are these people with brain damage?

Hidden underneath the pile of instruments we use every day is a much-needed tool. Have you guessed what it is yet? It’s Collaboration: a social technology tool.

Collaboration is not a tool nor a product. Its an activity people do with other people.

With iCORE, we’ve logged many hours creating a new atmosphere of collaboration and teaming while offering the most advanced technological platform designed to facilitate it seamlessly.

Using a i before the name of things makes everyone think of Apple. I’m not sure if this was an intentional association or not, but its distracting.  Seamless and facilitate are jargon and should be avoided. An “atmosphere of collaboration” is nice but it refers to something you experience with other people. Does the tool enable this? Or do folks at iCORE simply gotten along well with each other? It’s unclear.

 iCORE solves your “location” problem by placing the capability of reporting and increased optics available at your fingertips, putting you in the know.

Why is location in quotes? What are increased optics? Does that mean bi-focals?

Overall its not clear what is being pitched. A product? A service? My best guess is its software for real estate agents to use.

 EXTREME MAKEOVER: The Revised Version

Here is a revised and improved version. It’s shorter by nearly half and is much clearer on the pitch and the payoff.

Subject: How to solve your toughest client challenges

In commercial real estate the challenge is to stay ahead of competitors and in touch with your clients. At iCORE we’ve been working hard for years developing a new tool that solves these problems and more.

Our software provides simple reports that answer your toughest questions. You can automate many of your daily chores and get instant snapshots of what your clients need from you.You should consider the iCore product because:

  • It automates the toughest parts of your work
  • Its simple to learn, powerful to use
  • Industry leaders you respect have endorsed it

You’ve invested your career in building trust with clients.Why not finally use software worthy of your hard work?

You can try it for free for 30 days without obligation.Contact us for more information at foo@foo.foo

Of course whatever is offered now has to backup some of those claims, but there are some things PR alone can’t do for you.

If you were hired to make this over what would you do differently? Leave a comment

99 second presentations

Posted on in Public Speakingby Scott Berkun

A running joke in the world of presentations is: how short can they be? They used to be an hour. Then TED went to 20 minutes, Pecha Kucha to 6, and Ignite to 5. The trend of short presentations has been on the rise for years and one wonders where it will stop.

But then consider TV advertisements: they’re 30 seconds long. The good ones communicate many ideas well in a very short amount of time.

Years ago I ran an event at Microsoft called Design Day. Each year we’d experiment with different formats and one year we tried 99 second presentations. It went well and we did it the next year too. Unlike most speaking events it gives the audience a real chance to participate.

How it works:

  1. There’s a stage and a microphone
  2. You hand pick 5 or 6 speakers to be in line by the wall
  3. The first speaker gets 99 seconds to speak (they can have a single slide if they want)
  4. When they’re done, they hand the microphone to the next speaker
  5. Anyone in the audience can get in line: either to speak on a new topic, or to respond to something they heard.
  6. Speakers can speak more than once
  7. When you run out of time, or speakers, the session ends

What happens:

Before the session starts, explain how it works. Make sure the audience knows they can get in line and get a turn.

At first everyone is nervous, but paying attention. How does this work? they wonder. The format itself creates drama, which is good. If you choose good speakers to start the line, and invite them to speak about provocative or important topics, soon someone in the audience will stand up. When this happens, everyone starts listening differently, realizing they too can can get in line.

On finding and coaching speakers

It’s a small commitment to get someone to speak for less than 2 minutes. They can practice their material 10 times in half an hour. The surprise of short format speaking is it forces speakers to get to the good stuff. One year we let the hand picked speakers have a single slide if they wanted. This adds to your logistics, but if they want to give the audience a URL or twitter handle, having it on a slide makes this easier.

Speakers who volunteer can and will use less than 99 seconds, since they won’t have prepared. This is good. You’ll be impressed  by the different, clever ways people choose to use their time.

Logistics

You need to have:

  1. A hand held microphone
  2. A gong or buzzer to cut people off when they hit 99 seconds (you have to be militant about this). A warning sound at 80 seconds is wise.
  3. 5 or 10 invited speakers to be the first to go and help set the tone you want. Choose good, provocative speakers that will inspire responses. If you want to play it safe, have a large number of people in the original line. If the session is going to be 30 minutes long, plan for 20 minutes of hand picked speakers. Then even if you fail to get volunteers, worst case you’ll just end 10 minutes early.
  4. Plant a seed in the audience for someone you know will get in line after things start to break the ice.
  5. A time limit for when the session ends.
  6. Afterwards write up a blog post listing all the people who spoke and their contact info – helps people follow up and make connections.

References:

The Art of Explanation (book)

Posted on in Booksby Scott Berkun

Explaining things is my job. A living hero of explanations is Lee Lefever, one of the founders of CommonCraft. They popularized the style of hand-drawn explainer videos, including ones about Twitter in Plain English, Wikis in Plain English and the entertaining Understanding Zombies.

He’s put together everything he’s learned about explaining things to people in a new book called The Art of Explanation. Serendipitously his cover design matches the cover for Mindfire.

I have a promotional copy and while I haven’t read it yet, I’m intrigued by the practical approach he’s taken with chapters like Why Explanations Fail, Stories vs. Facts and Simplification. It’s in my reading pile and when I get to I’ll be writing a review. Here’s the explainer video for the book itself:

You can buy The Art of Explanation or grab the sample chapter and more.

 

Why Jargon Feeds on Lazy Minds

Posted on in Businessby Scott Berkun

[Note: this post was first published at Harvard Business Review and has been edited]

If I could give every single business writer, guru or executive one thing to read every morning before work, it’d be this essay by George Orwell: Politics and the English Language.

Not only is this essay short, brilliant, thought-provoking and memorable, it calls bullshit on most of what passes today as speech and written language in management circles.

And if you are too lazy to read the article, all you need to remember is this: never use a fancy word when a simpler one will do. If your idea is good, no hype is necessary. Explain it clearly and people will get it, if there truly is something notable to get. If your idea is bad: keep working before you share it with others. And if you don’t have time for that, you might as well be honest. Because when you throw jargon around, most of us know you’re probably lying about something anyway.

The people who use the most jargon have the least confidence in their ideas. The people who use the least jargon have the most confidence.

In honor of Orwell here’s a list of jargon I often hear that should be banned rarely used. Flat out, these words are never used for good reason.

Words that should be banned:

These are the lazy words of our time and whenever I see them used I feel justified in challenging the claims. To use these words with a straight face is to assume the listener is an idiot. They are intellectual insults. They are shortcuts away from good marketing and strong thinking since they try to sneak by with claims they know they cannot prove or do not make any sense.

Marketers and managers use jargon because it’s safe. No one stops them to ask: exactly what is it you are breaking through? What precisely are you transforming, and how are you certain the new thing will be better than the old (e.g. New Coke)? If no one, especially no one in power, challenges its use, jargon spreads, choking the life out of conversations and meetings forever.

Pay attention to who uses the most jargon: it’s never the brightest. It’s those who want to be perceived as the best and the brightest, something they know they are not. They use cheap language tricks to intimidate, distract, and confuse, hoping to sneak past those afraid to ask what they really mean.

I’m going to do my best for the rest of the year to question people who use these lazy, deceptive, and inflated terms. Maybe then they’ll use their real marketing talents and tell me a story so powerful that I believe, all on my own, will transform this, or revolutionize that.

What jargon do you hear these days that you’d like to add to the list above? Let me know.

 

Idea beginnings and endings

Posted on in Creative Thinkingby Scott Berkun

The beginning of a very bad idea often feels very good. And the beginning of a very good idea can feel very bad. Even the sharpest intuition is wrong much of the time about where an idea will lead. Sometimes what seems like a great idea at first falls apart as you develop it, but then eventually you find your way through to making it work. Sometimes you don’t.

We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.  -Neils Bohr

Many creativity exercises force you to spend time with ideas, or problems, that seem absurd or uninteresting. Often with enough persistence an idea can transform, invert, pivot, or crystalize into something very different from what you thought it was. That transformation may never happen if you don’t spend enough time getting to know the idea to see where it can go.

But as is always the case with ideas there are no guarantees. Your best idea may lead you for years in a direction that, in the end, is impossible. Other times what seems your worst idea, given enough attention, might be the best idea you’ve ever had.

The only true mark of a creative is someone willing to entertain any idea for a time, to play with it and kick it around, for they know you never know at first glance what an idea really is.

Hat tip: Jessen suggested the vice-versa second sentence

Lessons from 24 hours offline

Posted on in lifehack, Philosophyby Scott Berkun

On a whim I decided to spend all of yesterday offline. No email, no Facebook, nothing. I used to have a habit of doing food (and other) fasts, but it has been a long time since I’ve done a fast of any kind.

Here’s what I learned:

  • I was twitchy and cranky for the first 2 hours.  I continually had the sense there was something I needed to check. But with everything off I was forced to ask “wait – why do I need to check that? And if I need to do it, why do I need to do it now?” I never had a good answer. NEVER. Email,Facebook, Twitter, looking up some obscure fact, could all wait until tomorrow, or whenever. There was no reason to be online, other than the habit of being online. It was fascinating to confront this same loop of logic again and again in my mind. Slowly my mind fell into a calmer loop of behavior.
  • By three hours I’d forgotten about the internet completely. I was more relaxed and noticeably better at concentrating on things. I went to the gym, to the supermarket, and not once felt at a loss for not having something in my palm to fiddle with. I did notice how rare anyone makes eye contact with anyone else anymore.
  • The Web didn’t notice I was gone. My ego might have silently believed I was missed (“Wait, I have to post/tweet/status about this! If I don’t the world will explode!”), but it was clear I wasn’t. There was no organized search party on twitter looking for me. No one even noticed.
  • I had more attention to spend which made things more interesting. While watching the NFL I just watched the game, instead of frequently fiddling with the web while watching, and it was better. I didn’t feel the compulsive need to have a second thing to do. I noticed more things and enjoyed it more (I wrote about this phenomenon in Attention and Sex).
  • My  concentration improved. Without the availability of instant distraction my brain eventually settled down into a state of mind where I was more patient with my own thoughts. By the afternoon I had improved peace of mind and clarity.
  • I am a calmer person today. I don’t know how long it will last, but I’d say I am 35% calmer and more relaxed simply from this Internet fast.

How I did it:

As dumb as this sounds, I’ve been asked this already. Its as if we forget everything has an off switch:
  • The night before I turned the wi-fi off on my Mac.
  • The morning of I turned my phone’s web connection off.
  • The only cheating I did was to look up a recipe on an iPad.
  • I told my wife I was doing it, which helped keep me honest.

It’s easier to do if your family and friends do it with you. The idea of a sabbath makes much sense, as its good for people to separate from daily things, and having social rituals around those fasts increases the ease and value of doing them. Thanksgiving was a good day to try this as there were people around (social) and activities like cooking and cleaning that required my full attention (concentration).

What’s next:

I highly recommend doing an Internet fast sometime this holiday season. It will help you sort out what’s important and why. You’ll be surprised. Even if you continue your current habits you’ll do so with intention, not addiction.

Eight ways to avoid killing your family over the holidays

Posted on in lifehackby Scott Berkun

We love and hate our families. We want to be with some of them, but after a few hours can’t stand others. Going home for the holidays means confronting an intense mix of pleasures and fears that we never figure out until its time to leave. Here’s some advice for surviving your family this holiday season:

How to avoid killing your family over the holidays:

  1. Put a tack in your shoe: you’ll be distracted by a different kind of pain.
  2. Pretend you’re visiting an insane asylum on another planet. Your mission is to survive and report back.
  3. Invite your most abrasive friend/family member along to draw fire as a decoy (e.g. Home for the Holidays).
  4. Play hide and seek with your entire family where you are the seeker. Once they’re hiding, take a nap.
  5. Have a competition offering $10 to whoever can hold their breath the longest. This is a cheap way to buy silence.
  6. Two words: gin & tonic (Two more words: often & early).
  7. Make a list every family member’s deepest secret. Write each secret on a piece of paper with no names. Jumble in a hat. Give one to every family member and ask them to guess whose is whose. Stand back and watch.
  8. Put a tack in your most annoying family member’s shoe.

Those were for fun. Here’s some real advice.

Here’s some practical advice:

  1. Get exercise every day. Everyone abandons their routines, exercise and otherwise, when they travel, amplifying their stress and anxiety. A day of holiday travel puts everyone on edge before they even arrive. This makes you, and your family, like caged animals. Go for a walk every day or every evening. Even 20 minutes of light exercise will reduce your stress and restore your tolerance for annoyances. Get as many people up and outside for a game of touch football, tag, or just a walk around the block. Fresh air can do wonders.
  2. Read how to discuss politics with friends. Some basic ground rules make it easier to stay civilized in the face of ideas you don’t want to hear.
  3. Ask your partner for help. Who are your favorite family members? Enlist their help as an oasis of serenity (“Can you help me calm down when Dad’s driving me crazy?”). Offer to reciprocate with whoever it is that drives them crazy.
  4. Participate. Helping in the kitchen, raking leaves, or doing chores are all ways for you to choose participation with people you get along with best (Volunteer yourself and them for a specific task). It’s a mild form of #1 and gives you a useful distraction and preferred company while you do it.
  5. Read How to keep your mouth shut. Keep in mind your real goals and it will help you pick your battles, or get past the need to engage in any battle at all.
  6. Look at old photos. The past can be a safe place to go to spend time with family you don’t see often. Bring old photos of good times to reminisce in ways palatable to you. Bring a memory for each family member that’s positive and mention it to them.
  7.  Play games. Board and card games are an age old tradition for sharing time with people you love but who also drive you crazy. Games have rules and the rules eliminate many frustrations of interacting with certain people. The better the game the more positive that experience is. If you bring a game you like, you get to take a lead role in teaching it to others (I highly recommend Apples to Apples, Carcasonne or  Settlers of Catan).
  8. Last resort: movies. It’s an odd American tradition, but movies do create a passive and non confrontational shared experience. Everyone is a nicer person after watching Finding Nemo. Bring a movie on your iPad with the proper cables, and if all else fails fire it up.

If you have a comical or serious suggestion, leave it in the comments.

What I learned from Powerpoint Karaoke

Posted on in Public Speakingby Scott Berkun

Everyone has fears about regular public speaking, but what if you have to present someone else’s slides? And see them for the first time as the audience does? And only have 5 minutes? And the slides auto-advance?

I believe in the theory of trying something insanely hard to make normal work feel easier. As a public speaking expert, I had to try this at least to see what I could learn for you readers.

So what is Powerpoint Karaoke? Despite the name, there is no singing. Instead, a bunch of people are asked to present in front of a live audience but with (Powerpoint) slides they have never seen before.

In 2012 I participated in a Powerpoint-Karaoke (also know as BattleDecks) at the Makers co-working Space in Seattle (part of Seattle Creative Mornings). It’s as crazy as it sounds. I participated precisely because it’s crazy. Other space monkeys willing to try were Adam Tratt, Hillel Cooperman, Jon Culver (the winner) and  Michelle Mazur.

The rules were simple:

  1. We get five minutes to speak
  2. The slide decks are made by the organizers
  3. The slides auto advance every 15 seconds
  4. There are no other rules
  5. Audience votes on the winner

Here’s what I learned in preparing:

  • There was no effective way to prepare. Surprise! Good advice for presentations hinges on having good material and practicing it. Neither is possible in this format. This was both terrifying and liberating.
  • I tried to prepare anyway. I found videos of others doing PowerPoint Karaoke. They were strange to watch since the presentations are unavoidably bad in any formal sense, but the live audiences have unusual responses. They expect it to be bad and have an unusual set of expectations for what they’re going to experience. Some of the best-received presenters disregarded the slides, which was effective but felt like cheating. Although there were no official rules, I decided if I did this I should buy into the spirit of it, at least the first time
  • It’s a crash course in improvisation. A decade ago I took a course in improvisational theater. I reviewed the lessons, including a refresher on “Yes, and…” which is shorthand for the mindset of faithfully committing to whatever happens.Powerpoint Karaoke is at its heart an exercise in improvisational theater.

Here’s what I learned after I presented:

  • You play for comedy. There is no way to take the slides seriously since by design they are ridiculous. I didn’t realize the full extent of this, as obvious as it seems now, until later. At best you are making the audience laugh, at worst they watch in silence as you struggle on stage. It’s purely stunt presenting. No one is there to learn or be inspired, at least not directly.
  • The audience wants spectacle. Mid-way through Hillel’s talk he abandoned his slides, and the format. In what was one of the most interesting experiences I’ve seen at an event like this he politely, but firmly, confronted the audience about why they were there. As awkward as it was he was entirely accurate – it is a weird kind of theater that wants to see speakers work against, and likely fail because of, the unfair challenges. There’s  an element of wanting to watch cars crash in this event. It’s all in good fun, but also schadenfreudian.
  • The energy is weird. Good speakers (and comedians) build a rhythm with the audience through their material. The pacing of jokes, how certain facts are revealed, all build to something. But here since the speakers don’t know the slides the energy is weird – sometimes very funny things happen, but often there are complete misfires. Sometimes the audience laughs but the speakers don’t know why. Sometimes the speakers think the audience should be laughing, but doesn’t know why they aren’t.
  • Michelle Mazur is brave.  There were only 4 speakers on the agenda, with an extra battle deck for a volunteer from the audience. Michelle volunteered after seeing the four of us perform. I thought for sure no one would be brave enough, but she proved me wrong.

Advice:

  • There is no way to be good at this. This is liberating. It was very hard for me to say who of the five speakers did the best job. They were all weird, funny, awkward, and interesting in different ways. It really is more like experimental theater than anything like a public speech.
  • Make sure you trust the hosts. Luz Bratcher made the slides for this event and did a great job. If the person making the slides wants to screw all the speakers it’s easy to do, as if the slides are thoughtless speakers won’t have much to work with. You want the hosts to make it a challenge, but to give you well crafted slides that are funny all on their own and give the speakers plenty to work with (You can see the slides Luz made below).
  • I would have preferred to use an actual deck from a random event. By this I mean, give me a slide deck from a brain surgery conference, or a law accounting event. Then even though I have to make things up, there is a sane structure in there somewhere, and the audience can enjoy the attempt to follow an actual expert’s intention. By having a designer make original slides, it’s far too random and (I think) less interesting in several ways.

 What I’d change about the format:

  • Let speakers control the slides. If you kept the 5 minute limit, but let the speakers control when a slide advanced, they’d have slightly more power over delivery. That adjustment would dramatically improve their ability to make the slides work. It would still be very hard, but the auto-advance works against everyone’s interests in this case.
  • Do it at night, after drinks. We did ours as part of Creative Mornings, which means IT’S THE MORNING. People are going to work right after. It’s not the right time for crazy and absurd. Crazy works better after work, or at night, or following a happy hour where everyone is midway through letting off steam after a long day. Mornings mean people are going to work afterwards, they’re charging up, not winding down.
  • Use real presentation slides.  I’ve always wanted to get the slide deck from a medical conference, or a corporate retreat for a company  I’ve never heard of, and make up a presentation in real time for that. Real slide decks have a continuity built in to them that fabricated battledecks never do.

Here are the slides Luz made for each speaker:

John Cleese on Creativity

Posted on in Creative Thinkingby Scott Berkun

I recently re-watched this excellent talk by John Cleese (of Monty Python) on creativity. The best parts are after the 10 minute mark, and I suspect many people give up before then. His ideas reminded me of Edward De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats, since they both emphasize modes and frames of mind.

Here’s the video with my notes and choice excerpts below:

Five factors:

  1. Space to be undisturbed
  2. Time (for play to take place in space)
  3. Time (persisting in uncertainty)
  4. Confidence (to be truly serendipitous)
  5. Humor (to aid moving from closed to open)

These are his main points, influenced heavily by the work of his friend Dr. Donald W. Mackinnon. Cleese specifically advocates taking 90 minutes to create space and time. It takes him about 30 minutes to calm down and open his mind, leaving an hour of creative time working on something.

The (flawed) romantic view of creativity is it’s a thing, but really it’s a process:

“Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating.”

The quote below evolves into a  funny riff at 14:50 that’s worth watching:

“It’s easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent, like thinking, It’s also easier to do little things we know we can do, than  to start on big things we’re not so sure about”

He reflects on the counterintuitive ‘work’ element of creativity. The myth of epiphany makes this seem wrong, since it assumes creativity is a thing and not a process. Persistence is something involved in how to be good at anything:

“One of my Monty Python colleagues who seemed to be more talented than I was never produced scripts as original as mine. And I watched for some time and then I began to see why. If he was faced with a problem and saw a solution he was inclined to take it even if he knew it was not very original.  Whereas if I was in the same situation, while I was sorely tempted to take the easy way out, and finish by 5 o’clock, I just couldn’t. I’d sit there with the problem for another hour and a quarter and by sticking at it, would in the end, almost always come up with something more original. It was that simple.

My work was more creative than his simply because I was prepared to stick with the problem longer. So imagine my excitement when I found this was exactly what MacKinnon found in his research. He discovered the most creative professionals always played with the problem for much longer before they tried to resolve it. Because they were prepared to tolerate that slight discomfort, as anxiety, that we all experience when we haven’t solved it.”

In the talk he explains closed vs open modes of thinking. Most work cultures are (necessarily) dominated by  closed thinking. It’s no surprise most people in power are fond of displaying decisive powers:

“The most creative people have learned to tolerate (that) discomfort for much longer. Just because they put in more pondering time there solutions are more creative.”

Most work cultures are political and repressive with fear of offending people. Despite the rhetoric for “be creative” if there are penalties and instant judgements creativity is impossible:

“The people I find it hardest to be creative with are the people who need, all the time, to project an image of themselves as decisive. And who feel to create this image they need to decide everything very quickly with a great show of confidence. Well this behavior I suggest sincerely is the most effective way to strangle creativity at birth.”

 “You cannot be spontaneous within reason [-Alan Watts]. You have to risk saying things that are silly, illogical or wrong… any drivel may lead to the breakthrough”

This last quote is pure awesome:

“There is a confusion between serious and solemn..  Solemnity, I don’t know what it’s for. What is the point of it? The two most beautiful memorial services I’ve ever attended both had a lot of humor. And it somehow freed us all and made the services inspiring and cathartic. But solemnity serves pomposity. And the self important always know at some level of their consciousness that their egotism is going to be punctured by humor, and that’s why they see it as a threat. And so dishonestly pretend that their deficiencies makes their views more substantial, when it only makes them feel bigger… ptttttth.

Humor is an essential part of spontaneity, an essential part of playfulness, an essential part of the creativity we need to solve problems no matter how serious they may be. “

The hypocrisy of bosses asking for ideas

Posted on in Creative Thinking, Managementby Scott Berkun

I discovered the CBC Comedy The Newsroom a decade ago, while watching PBS late one night. I didn’t know what it was, but found the first season of this well written, darkly funny show thoroughly entertaining.

One favorite scene captures the hypocrisy of claiming you want ideas. Acerbic self-obsessed news director Finkleman asks his staff for new ideas, but rejects everything anyway.

Hasn’t everyone had a boss that has done this to them?

How To Find Your Voice

Posted on in Creative Thinking, Writing Wellby Scott Berkun

You have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself – Miles Davis

There is a paradox you must accept if you want to find your voice: it takes work. This is counterintuitive because all of the great voices we admire, whether we find them in reading John Updike or Ray Bradbury, or see it in a Georgia Okeefe painting, seem as if they were always present in those creators. This is a falsehood. If you asked any of them, or any master of any craft, they’d tell you in painful detail how many years of work it took to develop the thing we, as consumers of their work, take for granted. It took them a long time to learn how to create like themselves.

We find this hard to believe because our view of other creators is inverted. We know them after they were famous. The works we know best are rarely an artist’s early works. We don’t see their many experiments, their uncertain output during the long years they developed the craft they’d become famous for. All makers require long, disciplined hours to develop their talents, hours they will never be shown at a museum or on a postcard. Go find the early works of Jackson Pollock: it took him years before he discovered the all-over style he’d become most famous for. Who knows how many plays Shakespeare wrote that he burned, or poems Emily Dickinson tore apart and buried in the dust.

“The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.” — Steve Furtick

We are all born with a gap between our ambitions and our abilities, and ambitions rise much faster than abilities can. Ira Glass, host of This American Life, explained the gap this way:

“What nobody tells people who are beginners, and I really wish someone had told this to me… all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste…. there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff what you are making isn’t so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell why what you are making is a disappointment to you. You can tell that it’s still sort of crappy. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit.

And the thing I would say to you with all my heart is that most of the creative people I know when through years of this… Everyone goes through this… the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work… it’s only by doing a huge volume of work that you will close that gap and the work you make will be as good as your ambitions.”

Many very talented people never develop their skills only because they can’t stand the feeling of this gap. They’re embarrassed and tortured by it. They expect to be great quickly and when they’re not they feel they’re a failure, despite their foolish comparisons to ghosts of their own invention.

Some legendary writers and makers struggled with their own opinion of their work even after their success  No matter how popular they became they felt their work was flawed, inferior and immature, never reaching the standards invented in their own minds. Even the great ones felt doubts and held themselves in judgement. They failed to see how much value they’d brought to their readers in spite of their own criticisms. Some very successful artists never close the gap and you might not either.

Have patience. Be willing to experiment and try different things. Realize you might need to wait a week, a month, or a year to see something you’ve made with eyes objective enough to learn from it. Enjoy making things for the sake of making: what a gift to have the time to make at all! If you were born 100 years ago, or to different parents in a different country, you wouldn’t have the time to feel bad about your work, because you wouldn’t have the resources to make it at all. If you feel love for your craft honor it with the discipline of showing up, even when it’s hard. Take pleasure in small progressions when you see them, and know those hard won gains are the only way anyone in history has ever achieved anything noteworthy, for themselves or for the world.

How to be a great host (at Ignite)

Posted on in Ignite / Pecha-Kucha, Public Speakingby Scott Berkun

Ignite Seattle, an evening of fast presentations, runs like clockwork. We think of the evening as a show, and each of the 16 speakers we have at each events are the stars. We do all that we can to set the stage, the audience and the format to make it as easy as possible for them to do a great job. One key role is the host or emcee (MC). They are the first and last person on stage, tying all the pieces together for the audience. I’ve hosted many Ignite events and here’s my advice on how to do it well.

Before the event

  1. Go watch someone else host. You will watch events differently if you are deliberately paying attention to the host. There are many little things good ones do that normally you won’t notice. Go watch your local Ignite and pay attention: what seems to help the audience and speakers? What doesn’t? How are they helping the audience stay engaged?
  2. Point speakers at good advice for how to prepare. The speakers are the talent – you’re a fool if you don’t do everything you can to help them prepare well and to be comfortable and relaxed when they arrive. There are many good posts and books about public speaking: find advice you like on common mistakes and how to avoid them and share it. Here is the checklist I give to speakers, as well as a list of  common mistakes I see speakers make. Ignite Seattle  now even does live coaching with speakers a week before the event where we give them feedback on practice runs.
  3. Get a slide wrangler. Since the event is a series of talks, you need to have all the slides on one machine, in one deck, with one person who runs them during the show. This eliminates the need to switch slide decks, or computers, which kills audience energy and wastes time. If you have 10 speakers, that’s 10 transitions, and even if each one takes 60 seconds, that’s two Ignite talks worth of dead time.
  4. Confirm the speaker order with the Slide Wrangler. Since the slide order wins any debates with you as the MC, you don’t want a speaker up there when someone else’s slides are showing.
  5. Know the seating plan. Speakers need to be lined up, in order, near the stage. This speeds transitions between talks. Make sure whoever controls the layout of the room is reserving enough chairs for all the speakers.

At the event

  1. Get there early and say HI to all volunteers. Often Ignite’s have volunteers who help run the event. Be friendly to them. If anything goes wrong they’re the ones who will know about it first and respond, and you want to know who and where they are. As the host, you will be the person who has to explain, or respond to, anything that goes wrong in front of the crowd.
  2. Speakers are depending on you. Most of them will be nervous. They need someone to tell them where to be and what to do. That is your job as host. You are not just host for the audience, you are also the host for the performers. Make sure they have what they need. A nice touch is to have a box of bottled water in the speaker waiting area – it’s a common pre-speaking request.
  3. 30 minutes before start, assemble all the speakers. Use the PA to ask all speakers to come to the stage. Introduce yourself and have a short meeting that covers: a) the order they’ll be speaking b) where they are supposed to sit c) letting them walk on stage to get their bodies comfortable with what it feels like d) a reminder of how awesome they are and how supportive the audience will be (lie if necessary).
  4. Make sure you ask speakers how to pronounce their names. Have a pad of paper listing the speaker order, and when you ask them how to pronounce, write it down. You won’t remember otherwise. Plan to take that paper with you up on stage.
  5. Make sure to give them a tour of the stage. By letting them walk on the stage you calm their nerves. Their bodies get to see what it will actually be like when they speak. if you don’t do this, they have to deal with the sensory surprise of what the lights, audience, etc. feel like. You don’t want to surprise your speakers.
  6. If there are special instructions for where to stand, tell them. If the event is videotaped, wise videographers put a X, or other marker on the stage to let speakers know where to be. Speakers won’t know what it’s for if you don’t tell them.
  7. If there is a confidence monitor for them to use, tell them what it is. It helps speakers if they can see their own slides as they are talking. Most speakers will never have seen a confidence monitor before, so you’ll need to explain that it will indicate the current slide the audience sees, but will be too small to read (see image).

During the event

  1. Have intro slides that explain the format. Many people will never have been to an Ignite before. Have an opening talk (preferably done as an ignite talk) that covers the basics. Here’s the slide deck I used at Seattle Ignite #17.
  2. Your job is similiar to being a game show host. Your primary function is to add positive consistency to the event. You don’t need to do much, other than be happy, energetic, and enthusiastic for the speakers.
  3. Make the transitions as smooth as possible. The reason for having speakers sit in order, near the stage, is to accelerate the transitions. Ask for a round of applause before, and after, each speaker. The audience will almost always oblige, and the speakers will perform better.
  4. Be prepared to introduce people’s names and topics. On your host sheet that you bring on stage, list their name, pronunciation guide, and their topic. You should be able to say something brief and positive about each speaker. Have some variety of intros prepared as they can get repetitive: “I’m so excited”, “This should be a great talk on”, “this might be my favorite”, etc.
  5. Milk the audience for applause. It’s fair for each speaker to get some applause as they take the stage and when they leave. Some audiences are lazy – it’s up to you to remind them.
  6. If there is a break, let people know how long. It’s wise to break the event into two parts, with half the speakers in each part. If you do break, remind people how much time they have, where the restrooms or snacks are, etc. If you break, you should repeat the call for speakers 15 minutes before the 2nd half, to make sure they are all there and seated in the right place.

After the event

  1.  Thank your speakers. Ignite events often create community and you can help this by emailing your speakers to thank them for participating. Remind them if any videos or slides will be posted online so they can help spread the word. Create a ignite-speakers mailing list, so alumni can stay in touch. This can be helpful in finding future speakers or doing other events.
  2. Have a debrief dinner with the other volunteers. Get together a few days later to review what went well and what could have gone better. Use this info in planning your next ignite.
  3. Come back here and add your own tips. What other tricks do you learn that other hosts should know? Come back here and leave a comment.
  (Photo by Shawn Murphy)

Seven Problems with American Elections

Posted on in politicsby Scott Berkun

America is one of the greatest countries the world and is often heralded as the best example of democracy (or republic if you want to be a stickler) in the world. Yet there are issues with how voting works in the U.S. worthy of examination. There are better ways to handle some of the details.

  1. Voting is not in the constitution. Of the hundreds of democratic countries in the world, only a handful fail to mention voting rights in their Constitution. Even Iran and Lybia at least promise all citizens voting rights. The U.S.Constitution does not. Voting rights have been touched on in 15th, 19th and 26th amendments (race, gender and age) but many core elements of voting rights are left to the states to decide. States of course deserve their own rights, but national elections are worthy of consideration for national rules.
  2. Our ballots are hard to use. Every state controls it’s own ballots. In the 2000 election the butterfy ballot was so poorly designed that many people voted for the wrong person. Some of our current ballots are not much better. Well written guides do exist for designing easy to use ballots, but every state has to choose to follow them (as opposed to Canada, where there is one voting ballot design for national elections).
  3. The Electoral College is unnecessary. Few Americans understand how it works or why it exists. It mostly comes up in close elections where the popular vote won’t decide the winner. The electoral college was created in the 1800s as a compromise between two factions, one wanting the popular vote to decide, and the other wanting Congress to decide. The rules for how electoral representatives are chosen and if they can vote for someone other than who their state’s citizens voted for vary state to state.
  4. It’s hard for some citizens to vote. People who have the hardest lives, including those working multiple jobs, the disabled, and single parents, struggle to make it to voting booths before they close. Many states allow absentee ballots to help citizens participate, but many do not. While we don’t want to make it too easy to do something this important, some efforts should be made to simplify the process (see lines in Florida and Ohio). Why not move a vague federal holiday like President’s day to be on election day, so citizens can honor past president’s by voting for the next one.
  5. Confusing standards for qualifying to vote. As a result of no federal rules for who can vote, each state has their own standard for what ID is acceptable or what qualifies. For example some states allow convicted criminals to participate, others do not.
  6. Presidential debates are privately organized. Question: Who decides who gets to participate in presidential debates and what the format is? The public? The Senate? U.S. Citizens? The answer is none of these. It’s a group of unelected officials, chosen largely by the Republican and Democratic parties called the the Commission on Presidential Debates. The debates themselves are sponsored by corporations (though what this sponsorship means is unclear). The debates are the only public discorse between candidates and should be protected from partisan and other influences.
  7. It’s impossible for most citizens to run for office. Obama and Romney spent $933 million and $841 million respectively in their 2012 campaigns. While never an option for most citizens, the costs of running for office, including senate races, have increased, narrowing the demographics for who can participate. The test of who runs and wins increasingly has more to do with their bank account rather than their merits as a political leader.

While I don’t have specific proposals for solving these problems, and do recognize attempting to solve them might create more problems, you have to notice the problems before you can do anything about them.

What other problems do you see? What solutions do you have? Leave a comment.

How to make a good book from a blog

Posted on in Writing Wellby Scott Berkun

RR from the Reluctant Runner blog read my post on how to turn a blog into a book and asked:

Over the past two years I have written a light-hearted fitness blog specific to running. I am going to start turning it into a book. I am beginning the process of going back through my posts and searching in a “Table of Contents” type of manner, seeing what would fit…what won’t. My question is: How do you do to fill holes? I assume a book can’t just be post after post…but rather expand upon these posts as ideas and write and fill in around them?

Writing a book is one thing, writing a good book is something else. There’s no easy answer to your question as it’s very subjective.

It turns out you can just have the book be post after post. There are no laws against it. The Diary of Anne Frank, is effectively just post and after post and it’s one of the most popular books in the world. Montaigne, the dude who invented the essay, wrote  a book on intentionally unrelated topics, yet he’s quite popular.Then again, many books from blogs are heavily criticized for having the exact same format as Frank or Montaigne. The difference then is:

  • The quality of the writing in the posts
  • The order you put them in
  • How interested a reader is in subject you’ve written about

The best advice then is to go look at other books made from blogs and see how they deal with the problem. Some examples:

Another wise approach is to make a draft version of your book and ask friends or readers of your blog to read the draft. Ask specifically for feedback on discontinuity between sections, and suggestions for other topics they expected to see to help close the gaps.

When you find a gap, you have four choices:

  • Add a new post/chapter to fill the gap
  • Change the order of posts in the book
  • Remove a post from the book
  • Rewrite one or more of the posts to better fit together

Good books apply these four choices better than the bad ones. But with books there are no rules to follow. You as the author have to decide for yourself what you want your book to be. Good luck.

How much vacation would you take if you could?

Posted on in Management, Year Without Pantsby Scott Berkun

The Wall Street Journal recently ran a poll asking “If you had unlimited vacation, how much would you take? The results are shown below.

It’s a question of interest, since my next book is about WordPress.com where employees enjoy an open vacation policy.

Surprisingly almost half the respondents (46.4%) said 4-6 weeks. 17% said more than six weeks.

 

Read my related post exploring the question: Should Americans get more vacation?

Bob Ross, Picasso and Creativity

Posted on in art, Creative Thinkingby Scott Berkun

Growing up in NYC in the 1970s, with a mere 4 TV stations, any show in regular rotation on PBS was seen by millions. One show on PBS was called The Joy of Painting, staring Bob Ross, who was born 70 years ago today (and died in 1995 at 53).

I had no interest in painting or the arts, yet I’d seen his show many times. There was something about his goofy looks and quiet voice that made him easy to make fun of as a kid, and we did. But watching him now there was always an intensity about him. As silly as he seemed to me then, beneath the soft exterior he was deeply serious about the power of painting. He believed what he was doing had meaning and could be learned by others.

I see him now as an unexpected inspiration (Rick Steves is another one). Ross was the first person I’d ever seen paint. Few working artists let cameras watch them over their shoulder as they work. And although Ross’s work was often rote and predictable, he was open about his methods.  He believed in what he did enough to share what he knew and to teach as many people as he could. I don’t know many people who do or have done that.

Today as someone who writes about creativity I spend time studying how creatives do their work – until now I didn’t realize I’d seen countless examples of it as a child, thanks to Bob Ross, well before I’d even started looking.

One of his most popular sayings was ‘Beat the devil’ and here you can see him gleefully, and with just a hint of joyful madness, prep to do some work:

Later on I’d discover and be inspired by Picasso’s film, The Mystery of Picasso, where he lets the camera watch him work. Few artists have ever done anything like this:

Which would help inspire me to capture time-lapsed video of myself writing an essay: