You can design attractive visuals by following simple guidelines. One of these simple guidelines is the Rule of Thirds a composition technique borrowed from photography and other visual arts that works wonderfully in PowerPoint.In this article, you will learn: What is the Rule of Thirds? How do photographers use the Rule of Thirds? How can […]
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Year: 2018
We are not the enemy (if we try)…..
Fewer than 1% of our population works hard to divide us. To pit people against one another for their selfish aims. These are the pundits, divisive politicians, media companies and short-term trolls who have decided that schisms and fights are a good way to achieve their aims. But if everyone is demonizing the other, then […]
Why even bother to think about strategy?
Theres confusion between tactics and strategy. Its easy to get tied up in semantic knots as you work to figure out the distinction. Its worth it, though, because strategy can save you when tactics fail. If a tactic fails, you should consider abandoning it. But that doesnt mean that theres something wrong with your strategy. […]
The moment of maximum leverage…
It’s the moment before it tips, that split second where a little effort can make a big difference. We wait for this. For the day when participating will truly pay off, for the mechanical advantage that gives us the most impact for our effort. It’s a myth. Maximum leverage is the result of commitment, of […]
Marketing Defined…
I think that any time reality doesn’t match your expectations, it means that marketing was involved. Perhaps it was advertising, or perhaps deliberate story telling by an industry. Or perhaps it was just the stories we tell one another in our daily lives. It’s sort of amazing, even to me, how much marketing colors the […]
Bigger may feel safer but is it ?
Creative institutions get bigger so that they can avoid doing things that feel risky. They may rationalize this as leverage, as creating more impact. But it’s a coin with two sides, and the other side is that they do proportionally more things that are reliable and fewer things that feel like they might fail. In […]
Maybe this year…
Your knowledge will reach critical mass.. Your boss will give you the go ahead.. Your family situation will be stable.. The competition will stop innovating.. The traffic jam will cease.. There won’t be any computer viruses to deal with, and Then… You can act, you can launch your project, you can make the […]
But are you doing your work?
Here is a hint: your work might not be what you think it is. A doctor might think her job is to cure diseases. But in fact, thats not what gets and keeps patients. The cure is a goal, and its important, but its not sufficient. The technical tasks are important, but the work involves […]
The great untold story of our time…
The decline of our personal momentum. The motor, Heres a simple hierarchy: The self-driving car, Cruise control, Manual driving, Hitchhiking, Bicycling, Walking The arc? As you move down the list, it gets harder and harder to coast. It moves from set it once and forget it to one step at at time. The growth of […]
Price and satisfaction
You dont need to read many reviews to realize that the correlation between price and satisfaction isnt what you might have guessed. Its super rare for someone to write, 5 stars. The product wasnt perfect, it wasnt exactly what I needed, but it was really cheap, so, good job! In fact, things that are free […]
How do you do it ?? Bad sorts (and the ...
Bad sorts (and the useful ones) We sort people all the time. Society prefers easy, useless ones. Sorts like: Skin color. Gender. Disability status. Nationality. Religious background. Height. While these are easy to do and the result of long, long traditions, they’re useless. The alternatives? Kindness. Expertise. Attitude. Skill. Emotional intelligence. Honesty. Generous persistence. […]
Don’t go to the supermarket when you’re
Looking for seekers (who are looking for you) “Don’t go to the supermarket when you’re hungry.” The reason is obvious–when you’re hungry, you’re likely to buy things. The risk is that you’ll buy something you don’t need, because, of course, all that buying isn’t actually making you less hungry. The same thing is true […]
Do not take industry conditions as given...
As Steve Jobs put it, You tend to get told that the world is the way it is.. But thats a very limited {View}. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact. And that is everything around you that we call life was made up by people that were no smarter than […]
Two kinds of practice
The first is quite common. Learn to play the notes as written. Move asymptotically toward perfection. Practice your technique and your process to get yourself ever more skilled at doing it (whatever ‘it’ is) to spec. This is the practice of grand slalom, of arithmetic, of learning your lines or c++. The other kind of […]
Your soft skills inventory
The annual review is a waste. It’s not particularly useful for employee or boss, it’s stressful and it doesn’t happen often enough to make much of an impact. If you choose to, though, you can do your own review. Weekly or monthly, you can sit down with yourself (or, more powerfully, with a small circle […]
Are you hiding from the mission ?
We do this in two ways: The first is refusing to be clear and precise about what the mission is. Avoiding specifics about what we hope to accomplish and for whom. Being vague about success and (thus about failure). After all, if no one knows exactly what the mission is, it’s hard feel like a […]
Start small, start now…..
This is much better than, “start big, start later.” One advantage is that you don’t have to start perfect. You can merely start.