-| understanding is hard work |-


Sometimes, we're so eager to have an opinion that we skip the step of working to understand. Why is it the way it is? Why do they believe what they believe?

We skip reading the whole thing, because it's easier to jump to what we assume the writer meant.

We skip engaging with clients and stakeholders because it's quicker to assert we know what they want.

We skip doing the math, examining the footnotes, recreating the experiment, because it might not turn out the way we need it to.

We better hurry, because the firstest, loudest, angriest opinion might sway the crowd.

And of course, it's so much easier now, because we all own our own media companies.

-| Last Impressions |- 


Forget what you’ve heard about first impressions; it’s the last impressions that count. Last impressions — whether they’re with customer service or a date — are the ones we remember. They’re the ones that keep us coming back. But there’s one kind of final impression that people seem to forget.

Were this 1904, according to A Dictionary Of Etiquette: A Guide to Polite Usage For All Social Functions, standard conclusions were: I remain sincerely yours, or, Believe me faithfully yours.

The email signoff — that line that you write before you type your name — has been all but forgotten. Go take a look at your inbox: you might be astonished at how little attention people pay to the closing lines when writing email. This underrated rhetorical device is so frequently disregarded that many people have the gall to simply attach an automatic one to their email or mobile signature.

Closing lines vary from the possibly self-conscious (“My warmest regards,”) to the often charmless (”Best,“). They, at least in my inbox, revealed the following:


Tnx

Best

Later

Laters

Thanks

Cheers

Cheery

Take care

Feel better

All the best

Safe travels

Love you all

Super great

Best regards

Get well soon

With gratitude

Your weary friend

Thanks in advance

Thanks, all the best

Don’t work too hard

Hope to see you Thursday

Hope to hear from you soon

Warm regards right back at ya


It seems there are patterns in closing line types. If ordered another way, they look like this:

Expressing gratitude:

• Tnx
• Thanks
• Thanks family
• Thanks in advance
• Thanks, all the best

Expressing general sentiment :

• Best
• All the best
• Best regards
• Word
• Later
• Laters
• Cheers
• Cheery

Expressing affection :

• Love
• Love you
• Love you all

Expressing state :

• Your weary friend
• With gratitude

Imperatives

• Feel better
• Take care
• Safe travels
• Get well soon
• Don’t work too hard

Wishes :

• Hope to see you Thursday
• Hope to hear from you soon!
• Warm regards right back at ya

With all of these, the intensity and — dare I say — sincerity varies depending on punctuation. A warm “Thanks!” can have quite a different sentiment than a flat “Thanks,”. We can’t be expected to neatly tie up every email every time. But once in a while, it would be delightful if we applied the same sincerity to the last impression that we do to the first.


Yours.

-| Random thoughts on a Thursday |- 

1. The best thing about writing journals is you can write anyway you want. All the tools and rules are yours to use at will or to ignore with abandon.

2. No kid dreams of selling credit cards for a living.

3. Everything on this earth is self-centered, the difference is the radius. 

4.  Theory: our desire to use the buzzwords of the day keeps us from talking about the things that matter. We use these buzzwords innocently enough in the beginning. But then, they become the litmus test for evaluating others. If they do not like those buzzwords, we judge them based on this. And then we find ourselves not able to talk about the things that matter.

5. My favorite items of the last week were reading on my bed on a rainy weekday afternoon and making breakfast for the family on Saturday morning. 

6. We are paying a lot of money for entertainment when the night sky is free. 

- | Silence in workplace |- 

In worklife, we earn to equate silence with doing nothing, and doing nothing is rarely valued as an effective application of professional skill. Since silence is not widely valued, it is not widely developed. Worse, it's sometimes knocked out of those to whom it comes naturally. I have seen in the best people - be it lawyers, architects (or family members), the ability to sit back, observe carefully and listen intently. Whether applied to yourself or to others, the rare skill of creating and holding silence is worth developing. 

The 'Aha' moments that spark brilliant unexpected solutions tend to crop up when our minds are quiet. If neuroscience is now showing the value of silence for delivering creative solutions and for integrating the neural circuits linked to goal focus and social focus, then every organisation that seeks to collaborate and innovate should prioritize the development of this skill.  

At another level, silence is a gift - a luxury service. The pace of the corporate world doesn’t typically allow time for a walk around the park, for introspection, for mind-wandering. Focused, deliberate silence permits us to stop for long enough to remember what’s important—and to prioritize and pursue that. In a world where so many are overwhelmed with everything there is to do, that silent pause is critical for real efficiency.     

When you turn off the noise, the quiet, unassuming, obvious answer has the space to say, “Here I am”. 

-| Write first, think later |- 

Woody Allen recently:

What people who don’t write don’t understand is that they think you make up the line consciously — but you don’t. It proceeds from your unconscious. So it’s the same surprise to you when it emerges as it is to the audience when the comic says it. I don’t think of the joke and then say it. I say it and then realize what I’ve said. And I laugh at it, because I’m hearing it for the first time myself.

Whenever I find myself in a bout of non-writing (not writer’s block per se, but an extended period of non-writingness), I know it’s this. Not a lack of ideas, not a lack of the right space to write, the right drink, the right order, the right methods, the proper instrument, not a deficit of time. It’s simply my conscious getting in the way. I would be better off saying things more wildly, then looking at what I’d said. Do first, think later; many things can benefit from this method — falling in love, taking your first job, speaking up for what you believe in. Write first, think later. Repeat.

-| Friendship theory |- 


I read an interesting piece on friendship recently : 

No matter who you are, you need two kinds of friends in your life. The first kind is one you can call when something good happens, and you need someone who will be excited for you. Not a fake excitement veiling envy, but a real excitement. You need someone who will actually be more excited for you than he would be if it had happened to him. The second kind of friend is somebody you can call when things go horribly wrong—when your life is on the line and you only have one phone call. 

Years ago, a friend said she keeps a short list of emergency contacts in her head—a trust of three people she can count on, day or night, no matter the circumstance. This week, I’m especially grateful for both types of friends in my life. Who is it for you?

-| For the love of books| - 

In his unending wisdom, author Umberto Eco reminds us that there is wisdom in what is not done, wisdom in what is not finished.

Eco is allegedly the owner of a large personal library of 30,000 books, and separates visitors to his library into two categories: 1) the large majority who visit asking “how many of these have you read!?” — the impressed — and 2) those — a very small minority — who get that books are not for show, but for research. And that unread books are far more valuable to us than read ones.

As such, our personal libraries should contain as much of what we don’t know as what we do. They should contain the possible. The aspirational. They should contain the future.

In other words, the unfinished is far more valuable than the finished. The "un-figured out" far more valuable than the "figured out".

Eco called this concept the anti-library.

People don’t walk around calling themselves anti-entrepreneurs or promoting their anti-CVs. We don’t promote our anti-knowledge and our anti-degrees. But maybe we should.

The love of books is much celebrated; the love of reading too. Yet the love of not reading — the letting of books pile up around us — is a quiet pursuit.

Let’s celebrate the stories of people we thought we’d once be; stories of languages we thought we’d once learn; places we thought we’d once visit; hobbies never learned; pursuits never pursued. These need not be stories of what wasn’t, but stories of what was instead.

Let’s celebrate books owned, but never read. Pages unfolded. Chapters unfinished. Marginalia unwritten.

And celebrate lives lived.