Author: Scott Berkun

What are the most annoying platitudes?

Posted on in Cultureby Scott Berkun

Sometimes when people are trying to be helpful, all they can think to say is a platitude. Often this has the effect of making people feel worse, not better. Here’s a list of the most annoying platitudes people say. 

It’s true that technically some of these are cliches, others are aphorisms, but they’re all used for similar reasons and can be equally irritating. It’s interesting to note how many of them conflict with each other.

  • There’s no I in Team (what about healthy teams that appreciate constructive individuality?)
  • Good things come to those who wait
  • It was meant to be (then why did we bother trying to make it not be?)
  • The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results (sometimes you have to do the same exact thing many times to get the result you want – it’s called practice)
  • Time heals all wounds (how about losing a limb?)
  • Such is life
  • Forgive and forget
  • Everything happens for a reason (including suffering and early death?)
  • People are our most important asset
  • It is what it is
  • What the mind can conceive, it can achieve
  • Winners never quit
  • What doesn’t kill me will only make me stronger
  • I don’t want a team of champions, I want a champion team. (Note that there is an I in “champion team”)
  • Teamwork to make the Dream work
  • “C’est la vie”
  • Hard work always pays off
  • God has a plan for you
  • Great minds think alike
  • Money can’t buy happiness
  • Live each moment like it’s your last (not very pleasant)
  • If at first you don’t succeed, try try again (maybe you should try elsewhere)
  • Follow your passion
  • Follow your bliss (what if mine is cocaine?)
  • That’s just my personal opinion
  • Let’s not reinvent the wheel
  • It’s not rocket science
  • It’s all good
  • What goes up, goes down
  • After the storm the sun will shine
  • Don’t assume – it makes an ASS out of U and ME
  • Don’t be sad because it’s over, be glad that it happened
  • Love means never having to say you’re sorry (Then please don’t love me)
  • We are where we are
  • What goes around comes around
  • What’s done is done
  • Waste not want not
  • It has to be somewhere (as if this helps you find something that’s lost)
  • Nice guys finish last
  • Go with the flow
  • Only dead fish go with the flow
  • No offense, but…
  • Rome wasn’t built in a day
  • Work smarter, not harder
  • There’s no I in team
  • Life doesn’t give you things you can’t handle (depends on what life gives you, doesn’t it?)
  • You’re as young as you feel
  • Age is just a number
  • It’s just software
  • We’re all in this together
  • Everything always works out in the end
  • Time heals all wounds
  • We’ll all be laughing about this soon
  • It’s doesn’t matter if you win or lose, only that you try
  • Tomorrow is another day
  • It could be worse
  • You are what you eat
  • It’s neither here nor there
  • Think outside the box
  • It will all look better in the morning
  • Take the lemons and make lemonade
  • The best things in life are free
  • It wasn’t meant to be
  • Better to have loved and lost…
  • That’s for me to know and you to find out
  • Better late than never
  • With all due respect
  • The road to hell is paved with good intentions (so I should have bad intentions then? is that how the road to heaven is paved?)
  • Gossip is the devil’s radio
  • Laugh and the world laughs with you
  • People regret the things they didn’t do
  • Beauty is only skin deep
  • You can’t judge a book by it’s cover
  • Work hard, play hard
  • Only the good die young
  • All’s fair in love and war
  • All men are created equal
  • There are plenty more fish in the sea
  • The more things change, the more they stay the same
  • It’s the darkest just before dawn (have you seen a dawn?)
  • Fail harder
  • Perception is reality (except when your perception is very bad)
  • you can be anything that you want to be
  • Patience is a virtue
  • I’m sorry that’s not what you want to hear
  • This will hurt me more than it hurts you (well lets switch places and find out)
  • The customer is always right
  • If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen (maybe we can make the kitchen better?)
  • Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm
  • Be careful what you wish for
  • With great power comes great responsibility
  • Just think about how much worse other people have it
  • God never gives us more than we can bear (see death, misery, history of suffering)

What comes to mind? Leave a comment (240+ already have below). Thanks.

Toastmasters on Confessions (Podcast)

Posted on in Public Speakingby Scott Berkun

To celebrate the release of the paperback edition of Confessions of a Public Speaker, here’s a kick-off post for a week of posts on public speaking.

The good folks at Toastmasters published an excerpt of Confessions in the November edition of their newsletter. And to follow it up, they invited me on to their monthly Podcast (MP3), a show called, simply enough, The Toastmasters Podcast.

We talked about hecklers, grandstanders, the dreaded rambling question and other situations most speakers fear – it’s a good 20 minutes of advice.

Download (MP3) or listen from their site.

Confessions now in Paperback

Posted on in Public Speakingby Scott Berkun

Confessions of a Public Speaker has reached the sweet milestone of being republished in Paperback.  It’s now cheaper, smaller, and friendlier. It won’t hurt your foot so much if you drop the book on it, and you can bend the cover in all kinds of creative ways to fit into bags, big pockets or tight corners.

It’s really an amazing little book, garnering nearly 100 reviews on amazon, 96 of them 4 or 5 stars.

If you’ve been waiting for the paperback edition to buy a zillion copies for your co-workers who regularly put you sleep with PowerPoint, or to find a volume slim enough to secretly slip under the office doors of your executive team, the time is now.

And you can of course check out great free excerpts from the book: Attack of the Butterflies and How to make $30,000 an hour.

To celebrate the release of this new edition, I’ll be posting once a day this week on speaking.

Free copies of Myths of Innovation

Posted on in Books, Myths of Innovationby Scott Berkun

O’Reilly Media has started a new blogger review program – If you’re willing to write a review, both on your blog and on amazon.com, you can get free copies of many of their books.

And of course you are free to write positive or negative reviews.

The paperback edition of my bestseller, The Myths of Innovation is, for a limited time, part of the program (They change which books are in or out frequently)

If you want to participate, head here now.  Look forward to your review!

Quote of the week

Posted on in quote of the xby Scott Berkun

A person of good intelligence and of sensitivity cannot exist in this society very long without having some anger about the inequality – and it’s not just a bleeding-heart, knee-jerk, liberal kind of a thing – it is just a normal human reaction to a nonsensical set of values where we have cinnamon flavoured dental floss and there are people sleeping in the street.

– George Carlin (unreliable source)

I find this quote interesting because I’m intensely ambivalent about it.

On the one hand, compassion, or at least empathy, is good. I agree with Carlin there. Anyone of true Christian faith, or most faiths, is compelled to treat the poor well and it’s clear in most scriptures that helping those in need is one of the greatest, and holiest, things a person can do.

But the fact that we make cinnamon flavored dental floss (or not) has no relationship to whether there are poor people in the world, or how we go about handling poor people in our communities.  There’s something naive in assuming one is causing or has any effect on the other.

Carlin himself was fond of explain how unfair and illogical the universe as a whole is, but here he’s equating a surplus in one area with being related to, or causing, a lack in another, which applies a kind of logic that isn’t necessarily inherent in the universe.

If anything, dental floss is cheap. Cinnamon flavoring is cheap. The $50 people spent to see Carlin perform is more of an extravagance than the fanciest dental floss.  People worried about scratches in their $80,000 car, or getting stressed out about their summer vacation plans, as people around them can’t get their basic needs met is a better comparison of inequality that’s hard at times to comprehend.

Innovators, imitators and idiots

Posted on in Innovationby Scott Berkun

Nice little thought from Warren Buffet, quoted in a good piece on Harvard Business about Why smart people do dumb things:

[Charlie] Rose asked the question that scholars, pundits, and plaintiffs attorneys will be debating for years: “Should wise people have known better?” Of course they should have, Buffet replied, but there’s a “natural progression” to how good new ideas go badly wrong. He called this progression the “three Is.”

First come the innovators, who see opportunities that others don’t and champion new ideas that create genuine value. Then come the imitators, who copy what the innovators have done. Sometimes they improve on the original idea, often they tarnish it. Last come the idiots, whose avarice undermines the very innovations they are trying to exploit.

Why Do Arguments Become Hostile?

Posted on in Culture, Philosophyby Scott Berkun

When conversations go wrong, there’s a moment right before it gets bad that something must have changed. What is it? What causes the transition from civil to adversarial?

I can think of five six reasons, but I’m sure there are more:

  1. Someone feels they are not being heard. When we feel we’re not being listened to, most of us get louder. And if that doesn’t work, we get louder or more hostile, since we are seeking recognition more than anything. A negative feedback loop ensues, where each person tries to be heard by getting louder, causing the other person to do the same.
  2. We confuse our identity with our point of view. An attack on an idea is not an attack on a person, unless that person can’t separate the two. Even if someone makes fun of another person’s point of view, is that necessarily an attack on their person? It is if they can’t separate themselves from their ideas. If I like blue, and you like green, who cares? Is there a name for the line in each of us between opinions we defend personally (abortion), and we don’t (favorite color)?
  3. Cultures where walking away, being polite in the face of idiocy, is seen as weak. Arguing with someone who isn’t listening doesn’t make much sense. The wise thing to do would be to politely leave, but that’s often seen as giving in. The result is people won’t relent.
  4. There is an unspoken argument. A previous debate has left unexpressed feelings in one party who insists on trying to vent those feelings from some other exchange during the current conversation. This inevitably makes the other person feel like they’re not being heard (#1).
  5. There is no trusted mediator. There is always a third party that can be found that is trusted by everyone, who can step in and restore decorum. Without that third party, negative feedback loops can start and there’s no one who can step in to end them.
  6. It’s on purpose. One party is deliberately trying to upset the other, and will use nearly any means to do it. Although this is uncommon, often part of the problem is that getting the other side upset is seen as a kind of victory, where the goal ceases to be to educate or convince, but instead to hurt, ridicule and violate. Many skills of rhetoric and debate hinge on manipulating language to ones own advantage even if it’s clearly unfair, or untrue, and when a person loses their self-respect they’re willing to take cheap shots.

What are other causes? Leave a comment.

Also see How to discuss politics with friends for practical advice.

[Note: #6 added 2/20/2014]

Quote of the week

Posted on in Creative Thinking, quote of the xby Scott Berkun

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration of fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams random conversation, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul.

If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery- celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: ‘it’s not where you take from, it’s where you take them to.”

– Jim Jarmusch’s golden rule #5

(Hat tip Darren Geraghty)

Why today is not the future

Posted on in history, Philosophyby Scott Berkun

In The First Decade of the Future is Behind Us by Kyle Munkitrick for Discover magazine, he ask the question, are we in the future yet? He makes some good arguments:

Can we finally admit we live in the future?…Thanks to a combination of 3G internet, a touch-screen interface, and Wikipedia, the smartphone in my front pocket is pretty much the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I can communicate with anyone anywhere at anytime…and then use the same touch-screen device to take a picture, deposit a check, and navigate the subway system. We live in the future, ladies and gentleman.

Having studied the idea of the future, I had two responses:

1. The future is a safe place we never want to believe is now.  Something in our psychology likes to long for things. This includes the afterlife, the faith that the next raise will make us happy, or that when we lose 10lbs we’ll feel good about ourselves. The better future is a form of projection we need. In the present we need to believe something better awaits. You don’t need an iPhone to recognize how amazing the present is. Study the history of civil rights, personal wealth, or opportunity in America, and you’ll find much to be amazed about. We take most progress  for granted.

2.  Technological progress is not social progress. Are there fewer assholes in the world? Is there less greed? Do more people follow the Golden Rule? Technologies focus on a narrow aspect of progress, one we are good at. It’s the other kinds of progress that are harder to develop. If the only elements of a better future are improved technologies, prepare to be disappointed. Many things do not change with technology.

All ideas are made of other ideas

Posted on in Creative Thinkingby Scott Berkun

If you want to find new ideas, start by breaking existing ideas down into smaller ones. Only then can you see how to build your own.

It’s a little mantra you can say: Ideas are made of other ideas.

No genius in history invented their parents. No legendary artist created the idea of art. Mozart didn’t invent the piano and Picasso didn’t invent paint. We have always borrowed, reused, and remade, standing on the shoulders of ideas that came before us and we always will.

It’s impossible to find any idea that can’t be broken down into smaller ideas. Pick a song, an invention, a philosophy… they are all recombinations of other ideas. Sometimes the grandest ideas, once you ditch the romance, are the easiest to dissect.  Until you can see the fact that all ideas are made of other ideas as an immutable law, you’re unlikely to create, since you see ideas in the world as fixed when in truth they are always in motion.

I wrote about this at length in the book The Myths of Innovation, and it’s also in my Creative Thinking Hacks essay:

[use] the following simple definition: an idea is a combination of other ideas. Say it five times out loud. Say it to your cat. Yell it out you car window at strangers waiting for the bus. Every amazing creative thing you’ve ever seen, or idea you’ve ever heard can be broken down into smaller ideas that existed before.

An automobile? An engine + wheels. A telephone? Electricity and sound. Reese’s peanut butter cups? Peanut butter and chocolate. All great creative ideas, inventions, and theories are comprised of other ideas.

Why should you care? Here’s why: if you want to be a creator instead of a mere consumer you must see ideas currently in the world as fuel for your mind. You must stop seeing them as objects or functional things: they are combinations of ingredients waiting for reuse.

Of course there is more to know to improve your creative skills. Check out the Dance of The Possible: An Irreverent, and mostly honest, guide to Creativity for solo advice, and The Myths of Innovation if you’re trying to create inside an organization.

Book review: Creative workshop

Posted on in Booksby Scott Berkun

I’ve been around for awhile, and have stacks of books claiming to spark design skills and creative thinking. Most end up in the back corner of the shelf, never living up to their promise. I’m impressed, and happy to say, Creative Workshop: 80 challenges to sharpen your design skills, book is a different breed.   It’s authored by David Sherwin, who runs the Change Order design blog.

  1. It’s a beautiful book. There is design love and care on every page.
  2. It’s designed for reading and use. It’s not a coffee-table book or pretty play thing.
  3. There’s a free teacher’s guide, to help instructors and managers use the book.
  4. The inspirations aren’t just in the book’s design (a common failing in design books), but the stories, and challenging exercises even experienced designers can benefit from. It’s an easy book to use for team challenges, offsites and to teach old dogs some new things.
  5. It includes exercises from a wide range of kinds of design, which is fun and challenging. Some are print based, others are interactive, or involve urban wayfinding, advertising, web apps, dishware, clothing, you name it. It fulfills the idea of forcing you to stretch your creative muscles.

Highly recommended for people who want to learn by making, and who have some design experience but want to grow and stretch their creative abilities. It’d make for a great team building book, where the entire team picks a challenge and does them together, doing a show and tell of their work each week.

The first 24 pages are available for free on scribd.

And it’s listed on amazon.com here.

Passive/Aggressive management and the Lakers

Posted on in Uncategorizedby Scott Berkun

There’s something familiar about Kobe Bryant’s description about the style his coach, Phil Jackson uses. As this article explains, his teamates sometimes get upset when Jackson zings players in the media, but Bryant says:

“…when you’ve been around Phil for as many years as I have, we all understand that he likes coaching publicly,” Bryant said. “I think it’s important for the new guys to understand that. Ron, Pau, guys that kind of have issues with that, that’s how he coaches. It’s fine. Just let him do his job and go about your business.”

When someone you trust conveys private messages in public, you are being abused. They are enlisting the shame and shock of hearing feedback for the first time in public as  a way to to intimidate you into behaving the way they want. It’s both insecure and immature. It happens every day in some workplaces and families, where people with less power are constantly surprised and belittled in front of their peers.

It’s a weak way for people in power to abuse their influence. They are confusing the fear it creates in other people with respect. Victimizing those around you only makes everyone weaker.

A stronger way for someone in power to communicate is to speak directly and privately. Giving the other person a chance to consider and respond, things denied when messages are expressed for the first time in front of strangers.

See how to survive a bad manager.

An open letter to Amazon.com

Posted on in Making things happenby Scott Berkun

(Update 1/13: Problem fixed – thanks to everyone who forwarded, helped and empathized)

Greetings people of Amazon.com:

We’ve gotten along well. I write books and you help me sell them. Generally I’m fond of you and all you do.

Recently you’ve done something that makes it hard to sell one of my most popular books, Making Things Happen. You’ve put the cover for the out of print edition of the book, which had a different name, where the new edition should be.

This looks bad and is confusing for our customers.

It has happen before, and I’ve complained through my publisher, O’Reilly Media. It was fixed, but returned. Twice. And here we are again. Can we fix this please? I’m embarrassed by it. I assume you are too. It’s just an image file, and it can’t be hard fix.

And while you are there: I’ve asked previously for the 46 reviews from the old edition to be moved to the new, as it’s the same book, but was told no. If you can move the cover over by accident, can we move those reviews over on purpose, for my and everyone’s benefit?

Thanks,

Signed, One of your customers

Does information overload matter?

Posted on in Philosophyby Scott Berkun

Recently I’ve been involved in quantity vs. quality arguments related to the web.  I have a half-baked thought I wanted to share, in hopes someone else already has baked it. Or can now.

In this simple chart, we see someone’s information consumption. At some point, they are aware of so many websites, blogs, tv shows, etc. that they feel personally overwhelmed.

The amount of content in the world is always growing, as is our awareness of information made before we were born. Therefore the possible information a person could consume continues to increase over time and is well beyond a person’s individual capacity to ever read, see, think or even know about it all.

The question then is this: Does the space beyond a person’s point of information overload matter? Since it’s beyond their threshold (they are already overloaded), does it matter if there are 5, 10, 100 or 1000 other blogs or books to read? Or if 5, 10, or 10,000 new blogs or books are made?

If information overload is a constant, we’re indifferent to whatever is beyond that constant since we don’t experience it any differently than the overload we already have.

There is a notion the world is polluted with information. And that reckless publishing or creation is bad. This might be true, but that ship has sailed. We won’t be eliminating information from the world. Therefore:

Hypothesis: It doesn’t make the world any worse to add more information to it, since we can’t be/feel more overloaded than we already do.

What do you think? Opinions? Flaws? Improvements? Has someone else written about this before?

Munich advice?

Posted on in Travelby Scott Berkun

I’ll be speaking at OOP 2011 in Munich, Germany late this month. I’ve never been to Munich before, or Germany for that matter.

Any advice or recommendations, dear readers? I’d be grateful for suggestions.

If you’re a local, or a fan in town for the conference, let me know – maybe we can meet for a beer (or 6).

I’ve never been asked to do that before. Are you having a hard time finding speakers?

Great talk: How to Solve a song

Posted on in Public Speakingby Scott Berkun

Here’s my favorite talk from last month’s Seattle Ignite 12 – How to Solve a Song, by Karen Cheng.

The video doesn’t do it justice – which happens sometimes (any theories? leave in the comments).

Not sure if it’s that the audience energy isn’t picked up well in her microphone, or what, but this was awesome to see live. If you get bored, jump to the medley around the 3 minute mark:

(Btw: submissions now open for Seattle ignite 13)

Twitter vs. Deep reading?

Posted on in Web 2.0 / social softwareby Scott Berkun

Clive Thompson wrote in Wired about how he thinks twitter fuels in-depth analysis. I have doubts about his argument, but perhaps agree with his main point. Here’s an excerpt:

I think something much more complex and interesting is happening: The torrent of short-form thinking is actually a catalyst for more long-form meditation…

When something newsworthy happens today—Brett Favre losing to the Jets, news of a new iPhone, a Brazilian election runoff—you get a sudden blizzard of status updates. These are just short takes, and they’re often half-baked or gossipy and may not even be entirely true. But that’s OK; they’re not intended to be carefully constructed…

…It used to be that only traditional media, like magazines or documentaries or books, delivered the long take. But now, some of the most in-depth stuff I read comes from academics or businesspeople penning big blog essays…

Here’s my opinion:

  • Most people are still not on twitter, so twitter has had no effect on their reading behavior.
  • Facebook might be a better place to study, as status updates are the mainstream (can we call Facebook mainstream yet?) equivalent of tweets.
  • There will always be a wide variety of different writing forms and lengths that succeed simultaneously.
  • Media trends are not universal. For some people twitter has crushed interest in long form, but in others it’s helped them find long things to read. The broad stroke is too abstract to have a meaningful argument about.
  • Twitter has replaced newsreaders for many early-adopters (most people on earth don’t use newsreaders either) and it serves the same purpose. It’s how they find longer things to read.
  • Twitter doesn’t persist well. It’s very hard to link to a twitter conversation and have it be readable.
  • Email is still a huge source of reading material discovery and consumption, but is consistently glossed over, despite it being nearly 30 years old.

I agree with Thompson’s last point. The Kindle and iPad have improved long form reading, in our attention deficit culture. It’s a dedicated, read-only designed experience.  I now read longer articles found online via Kindle, and find I’m reading more of them, but often days or weeks after they were published (Instapaper is the magic bridge, compiling and emailing articles I mark to my kindle).

If you use twitter, has twitter changed your reading habits? And if you don’t use twitter, has it’s existence changed how the people you read do their writing?