Several months ago I left Alaska returning to the lower 48. I flew through Seattle, and the plane was empty. The airport was empty. The city was empty. It's been surreal, living in this era of ghost towns, where rather than sundown, it's the closeness that people fear. I can take a walk, and people will cross the street rather than walk close by. I find myself holding my breath as I come across people, whether grocery shopping or getting the mail. Ed Buryn once wrote, "If you view the world as a predominantly hostile place, it will be." And while in past travels that would be true, right now it's more a matter of uncertainty. No one knows. We all think, and hope, and wait. But the certainty has been escaping us. I don't know when travel will be possible, and when meeting with people in celebration of life will again be safe. But I do know that, no matter when it gets here, it can't be soon enough.
Blog
The persuasion
For two days now I’ve written about the importance of messaging when getting your point across. Whether to convince a client, make a sale, or help a friend, the message is important.
The downside of this effect is that we are programmed to be receptive to messaging. A skilled practitioner of the art of persuasion can often make us do things we’ll regret in the end. That couch you didn’t really love? The knives that you didn’t really need – even if the scissors can cut through coins…
That vacuum cleaner the guy at the door promised would revolutionize how you clean house.
There are numerous examples of salespeople selling. Prominent social scientist Robert Cialdini has a set of books on the topic (Influence, Pre-Suasion, and Yes!).
There are courses that tell how to get your way in business, at home, in picking up prospective partners at bars. It’s a world of persuading and being persuaded.
While it’s not possible to completely insulate yourself from the onslaught of marketers, salespeople, talking heads, and con artists, it is important to be prudent. Forewarned is forearmed.
Messages are important
As I wrote yesterday, messaging is critical when trying to make a sale. What that means, also, is that messaging is important in noncommercial selling. What is noncommercial selling?
Every interaction we have on a day-to-day basis with anyone we would like to convince of something is a sales situation. It’s apparent in the political races around the country, but also in health policy, self-help, therapy, and family relations. You may want your spouse to take out the trash. That spouse has to know the usefulness of that action (happy partner), and the value is more than the price (a walk to the dumpster).
It’s a crude example, but it highlights the point of messaging. When communication is concerned, it’s on us to ensure the recipient of the message receives it clearly and as intended. If not, we’ve failed to deliver the message. This results in us being unhappy with the outcome, potentially making the other’s life worse as a result.
We have that onus to do all we can to make sure our messages our articulate, in a medium that is easily understood, and received as intended.
Finding your message
It’s important to have a clear, concise message when attempting to sell. Selling is two parts – first convincing a prospect that the product or service is of use to them (has value). A change to their way of. thinking. Then, making them realize that the value is equal to or more valuable than the price being charged. Any break down in these two parts will result in a lost sale.
And both are reliant on the viability of your message.
When a break is necessary
Took some time off from writing, hence the absence of posts over the past week. I’ve mostly been working to catch up on some projects that I’ve let slide, brainstorming, and even helped a friend move.
Breaks are often necessary to recharge drained batteries, to give new perspectives on lingering issues, or just to remind yourself that you are important and valuable. On the one hand, there are aspects of this pandemic that are similar to breaks – not being able to go to many places, working on projects from the comfort of your own home, or just being. The problem is, the act of just being right now is much more stressful than it usually would be. Coupled with social unrest and the looming financial crunch of expiring pandemic aid, it seems that we’re more unsure now of what will happen than we were back in March.
But, I’m back to writing every day now. I’ve established a solid routine and practice, and I have some other exciting possible projects cresting the horizon. While the break could have been so much more restful and relaxing, it was still enough to jolt loose some of the thoughts that have been stirring behind the curtain. It’s good to work. It’s good to create.
At the end of this crisis, it’s going to be whatever we made that we feel represents the zeitgeist of this endeavor, and not the crisis itself, that we return to in order to heal.
Need vs. merit
When considering funding an organization – nonprofit, arts group, etc. – there’s a question of whether fiscal solvency necessitates further individual support. Is your donation better served going to a group that may be struggling to stay in the black each year, or an organization that consistently shows surpluses?
While a surplus may indicate that your money will have less impact, a smaller nonprofit could potentially not be around next year.
It’s a question I keep hearing, and one I ask myself as I work on reviewing grants. I guess my thought is, if money is available to invest in nonprofits, it’s good practice to make that investment, large and small.
Joy
Joy isn’t necessarily happiness. One can be joyful without being happy all the time.
Happiness is a temporary emotion. “That is because happiness is an emotion in which we experience feelings ranging from contentment and satisfaction to bliss and intense pleasure, whereas joy is a stronger, less common feeling than happiness. We experience joy when we achieve selflessness to the point of personal sacrifice.” (Island Packet)
While this perspective encourages us to self-sacrifice, I contend that joyfulness can be attained without necessarily requiring self-sacrifice. Joy is an understanding of one’s own wants and desires, and knowing how to achieve that which is most important in your life. Joyfully moving through this world is one of the most important things we could do, if we only allowed ourselves to do it.
A brief history of blogs
Believed to be the first blog, Justin Hall’s links.net began in 1994. For Hall, it was a chance to combine his love of the internet (then mostly a fledgling technology) and his other interests. His first draft had “links to HTML information, some stuff about [Hall’s] college, a photo of [him] and Oliver North, a sound clip of Jane’s Addiction’s lead singer saying ‘Well I’m on acid too, and I ain’t throwin’ shoes at you,’ and a list of [his] favorite web sites.”
The early adopters called their pages online journals or diaries, personal pages, and similar titles. In 1997, the term “weblog” was coined by Jorn Barger to describe these sites.
Early blogs were mostly for the technologically-savvy, requiring some knowledge of HTML and its requisite coding. Eventually, platforms begin cropping up, allowing ease-of-use for non-technical bloggers.
In 2003, both WordPress (where my site is hosted) and TypePad (who I’m familiar with for Seth Godin‘s using) were founded.
Over the past fifteen years, the prevalence and persistence of blogs has increased. Internet visibility is important not only to companies but also to individuals. Beyond the social media spectrum, where what you produce is comingled with everyone else’s content, your own website allows you the freedom to create what you will, with the security that, should you choose, it will only be your content seen.
Politizing a pandemic
“The White House is taking aim at the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci. In a statement Saturday, a White House official told CNN that ‘several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things.'” (CNN)
When the first confirmed case of COVID appeared in America, President Trump said in an interview that, “We have it totally under control.” At the time, there was no reason to doubt that. China was facing the brunt of the disease, and here in the US, there wasn’t even a push to truly begin testing.
Nearly six months later, we’re looking at nearly 3.5 million cases and nearly 150,000 deaths. But how are we addressing it? Sadly, it seems to depend on how you vote.
While we should all be in agreement over handling this crisis, we can’t come to terms with even wearing masks to reduce the possibility of spreading a potentially deadly disease.
Around the world, the politics of countries are shaping how the nations are responding to the virus. Some are doing a better job than others. While we can’t be certain about the reporting across the board, we should accept that the virus has caused a much larger, and longer-lasting problem than we would have hoped.
Now, with the president and the CDC clashing over the best course moving forward, the nation’s hopes of unity in facing this crisis seem more unlikely.
Make better choices
Most of our days are segments into small chunks of choices. To wake up with the alarm or to hit snooze. To have coffee or tea. Eat breakfast or don’t. Healthy or sugary. A morning workout, or prayer, or meditation.
Not even ten minutes into the day, and already a dozen or more choices assail pout mental processors.
If we consider the ability to make decisions as a commodity – a resource that is finite within the scope of one twenty-four hour period – then it makes sense to spend our decision-making currency os frugally and responsibly as possible.
Budgeting for decision-making isn’t much different than budgeting for personal finance. There are some key differences, however, the primary one being that we may be aware of how much decision-making capital that we will have to allocate for a given day.
This “choice capital” isn’t a constant. It is subject to variations based on mood, day, and numerous other factors. Mental strain, restlessness, outside factors weighing upon our mental faculties, and carried-over excess from previous days can also reduce the quality and quantity of our ability to adequately make decisions.
Something our education system does well is showing us how to stagger our usage of choice capital while we’re children. It’s an excellent primer for how to partition our days into chunks of time to allow us to focus on an individual subject. All of our decision-making and attention in the school system are maintained in one course at a time, usually in a block not exceeding ninety minutes.
Not only are we shown how to set aside time to work on one thing, but we’re also taught that overworking one subject won’t produce better results – only mental strain.
That the modern workday isn’t divided as such shows that, while we were once carefully taught, we’ve abdicated the opportunity to segment our own assignments into a system that prioritizes mental clarity and task optimization.
Another factor in the improvement of spending choice-capital is to factor in routines, thereby limiting the need for daily decision-making in unimportant tasks. For instance, meal planning, scheduling exercise blocks, and setting up a general wardrobe scheme are all examples. Rather than waking up and thinking, “What will I eat?”, already knowing let’s you push your brain into its next steps.
Imagine a whole morning where you:
- Wake up
- Eat (the same thing as yesterday, and you’ll have the same thing tomorrow)
- Do your morning practice (work out, make the bed, meditate, write, etc.)
- Put on your clothes (Maybe you’ll have Mon-Fri outfits, or a set weekend go-to. Steve Jobs liked jeans and turtlenecks. President Obama had two suit colors, and would alternate each working day)
And there you have it. Two hours of your morning, and not a single ounce of choice capital expended.
Michael's Musings 
![photo of [him] and Oliver North](http://links.net/vita/pix/OlliePrev.gif){kind=link}