The story of how my wife and I nearly divorced over her teaching job at a Chicago public school.
Cloudy days and Tuesdays don’t bring my productivity down
It's one shade of gray outside, my buddy Steve is at "grape camp," and I'm not in a good enough mood to sneak out for golf even if I could afford the time, which I don't.
I wrote once that a key to being a productive writer and editor is being aware of one's moods and organized enough to find useful activities that suit each.
When manic, write.
When regular, edit what you wrote when manic.
When grouchy, do the rest of the shit—invoicing, cleaning desk, clearing out old e-mails, and crossing items off the list.
I find some kinds of social media work can be done on a cloudy day. Like going on Facebook and trying to Friend powerful people in your field—as editor of Vital Speeches of the Day, I'm trying to connect with every top speechwriter and political reporter in Washington—and then when they Friend you back, sift through their friends to find even more powerful people to Friend.
What do you do on cloudy days and Tuesdays?
(Thanks to McMurry mood mate Amy Wimmer for supplying the poster, from Britain, 1939.)
Yes, the copy matters
Communication colleague Kare Anderson gets us off to a good start this Monday morning by alerting us to a nice visual representation of an old ad-industry yarn about the difference good copy can make.
(In the version my dad always used to tell, the ad-man changed the sign to, "I am blind and it is spring.")