#52 Words

Three years ago, I conceived the idea of writing a LinkedIn post every week for 52 weeks, centring each post around one key word.

The word would have a specific and unique relevance in a professional or personal context. It’d have a story associated with it, a moment of deep learning of value, an insight from a book or a quotation, or an ethical allegory to be shared.

I tested the idea with a couple of my most trusted allies.

Their responses were under-whelmingly cool. My father’s response was “Why would you do that?”. My wife’s response was largely non-verbal and reminded me of the suffering a time-poor, overworking professional can create for their partner.

Convinced it would be an adventure to feed my soul and provide a new life experience from which I would grow, I set about testing the idea further.

Step 1

I set about building a list of words that were meaningful to me. The concept would founder if I could only muster 27.

Over the period of a month, I had built a list of over 60 words that were diverse and meaningful enough for me to link to topics and events from my experiences, weaving a wide collection of posts, and perhaps even interesting some readers.

I sat on that list for over a year, occasionally dropping some below the 52-word tide mark or bringing a new one into the list. I toyed with the while toiling my way through the end of 2022 and well into 2023. And then, as the summer of 2023 approached and the new year drew closer, I committed: 2024 would be the year.

My expectations were modest and confidence low, with a view that I’d be lucky if my readership numbered greater than zero. Perhaps a few LinkedIn strangers might stumble across my mumblings. What if my unconscious biases jarred with anyone who chose to read my posts? What if my writing was ridiculed, my professionalism challenged, critical feedback provided by those wiser and more experienced writers and professionals than me? It required a degree of trust (in myself) that my purpose was sound, I could commit and succeed, and that the risks were worth taking.

My motivation was not to write to be praised, challenged or vilified but to capture my thoughts and professional reflections with obliquity and creativity, which might generate some innovation of thought (for me and any reader). While loathe to use the I-word, I do enjoy provoking and stimulating reflections for others. In this series, I was aiming to write in a professional context about concepts that are both professional and personal, hoping that some posts may be experienced as new and novel (at least for LinkedIn content). That’s innovation!

My goals were to challenge my writing skills and to complete the mission to which I’d committed: Fifty-two posts over 52 weeks of 2024.

Step 2

With the vision firmly developed (I had my ‘Why?’) and a candidate list of over 70 keywords (an outline of ‘What?’), it was time to discover the ‘How?’.

Like with any task or odyssey, the how proved to be quite straight-forward: Get into a routine of writing a post each weekend from the very first (7 January 2024) to the very last (29 December 2024).

Mission complete.

But Why Words?

As a late-onset reader, I discover a true joy of reading in my 4th decade. The joy came from not only learning new things and stimulating thought, but I enjoyed how reading developed my vocabulary and allowed me to find new and more engaging ways to express ideas.

In parallel, I also discovered a joy of writing, with corporate blogging being my main channel of expression. I used this channel to explore writing and to use it to challenge and provoke thoughts and reflections. Something that many busy professionals struggle to do.

The reading expanded my thinking and my vocab, while my writing allowed me to exercise both.

Long before I conceived #52professonalreflections, I found myself preparing to address a group of youth at a careers fair on the topic “Hard Facts about Soft Skills”. It was my choice of topic and concept to create a list of 26 words, each with a story and a meaning, which I hoped would provide great engagement for the audience. An ‘A-to-Z’ of personality traits that play into vital soft skills.

Settled on the A to P and R to Z words, I was stumped by the letter Q. How could I find a word linked to a vital soft skill that started with ‘Q’?

There was quixotic, of course, but the idea of that being my Q-word generated some internal dissonance. It’s a term linked to, possibly, the worlds most recognised fool – Don Quixote – after all.

A quick google of the word told me it meant ‘Equal parts of impractical and unrealistic”. Hardly a vital soft skill you might think.

With curiosity and quite quixotically, I made the decision to get a better understanding of the meaning of the word, not relying upon the dictionary to define what was (like all contemporary words) a derivative of another, older source with long lost roots.

It was a six month peregrination through Don Quixote, but I concluded that far from a waste of time, it marked an important moment in my reading, writing and learning journey.

Not only had I completed the first modern novel and discovered the deeper meaning behind the word, I had also learnt 80 new words from the 500+ pages.

Yes, this is true. From ‘Admixture’ (A mixture i.e. “he felt that his work was an admixture of aggression and creativity”) through to ‘Whoreson’ (An unpleasant or greatly disliked person). And it would be sagacious of me to pause a minute on a favourite, ‘Perspicacity’ (The quality of having a ready insight into things; shrewdness).

If you know, you know. If you don’t, feel free to read Don Quixote or my layman’s analysis of the great novel.

Words are wonderful. Words have always intrigued me. There are at least 170,000 active English words and nearly 50,000 no longer in use.

The Tom Tom Club wrote a song about words in the early 80s titled Wordy Rappinghood. The lyrics are fun and insightful at the same time, and the song can be quite the ear-worm (there’s a reason it’s been sampled over 12 times since 1981).

The words we use at work speak volumes to the culture of the workplace. We have a chance to exercise some leadership at work on a daily basis by choosing the words we use to communicate carefully in alignment with the culture we want to foster. The words we use to communicate in the workplace speak to our integrity as people and can be used to foster feelings of belonging and team, and build loyalty between colleagues.

From Don Quixote, written in the 1600s, through The Tom Tom Club in the 80s and on into the present, I’m a word sponge and expect this passion to continue well into the future.

Existential Threats

There are several existential threats that words face, that have subtly inspired this series.

The first is my lightly-held dislike of, if not grievance with the use of clichés. While wanting to avoid appearing haughty, or worse, grandiloquent (thanks Don!), I fear the non-nuanced use of buzzwords and bullshit bingo words risks two key things:

1.?????? A loss of deeper intentions or meaning in favour of striking low-hanging fruit while the iron’s hot and our kimono is open.

2.?????? A haste that justifies a brevity of thought and speech over clarity.

There’s also an assumption that everyone in the audience knows and understands the shorthand code. This isn’t always the case.

The second is a mild resistance to hype. Words are a key weapon in those who seek to hype something or someone up. Whether it be in marketing, sales, or mis- and dis-information, hype is often a goal, and words are almost always the method of execution.

This is not to say ‘new’ words are bad. I’m all for change, modernisation and advancement of humanity and its tools, including language.

I hold great optimism that more people will use words ‘for good’ as opposed to ‘for bad’. Words are powerful no matter how they’re used. Regardless of whose ‘side’ you’re on, choosing to use your words in a positive and constructive way can have a radically different outcome to using them in a negative, destructive way. And it really is just a choice. You can make a point either way, but ultimately, it’s the same point.

The third is possibly the greatest threat to words, and that is the commoditisation of words.

We’ve commoditised electricity, petrol, animals (think meat and wool), every FMCG you wish to think of, labour, broadband, telephony, and now we’re moving towards commoditising communication.

Echo chambers are a well-established concept thanks to socials such as Facebook and the platform formerly known as Twitter. Now with the mass adoption of Generative AI, we at risk of echoing from large language model chambers.

In the GenAI age, words have been reduced to tokens. The LLM changes words into unique identifiers, establishing relationships of varying strengths with other identifiers in a massively mapped and weighted network of noise.

The noise is modelled on the content that the LLM is trained on. That input will also contain noise.

Point enough computing power at the network of noise and it’s possible to create a randomly generated string of words that a) makes sense and b) can be called a sentence.

But the range is constrained. Those randomly formed sentences are ultimately limited to a finite number of combinations. The LLMs will create new content, but it’ll be homogeneous, and lacking the creative human streak. Synthetic.

Those who enjoy and value words have an accountability to the future to preserve, enhance and promote the use of words and the use of words for good.

Existential Value

Ultimately, words provide existential value in the method and art of communication.

Whether it’s the stories we tell ourselves or each other, the values we express in conversations with others who hold differing values, or whether it’s expressing a strategy of global growth or your next tramping expedition.

Words provide us with our primary medium to express how we feel in times of darkest grief and in times of exquisite joy.

Words enable our life stories to be told in a way aligning to the hero’s journey, lifting our spirits and mental health.

Words can help us express, accept and ultimately survive our own impermanence.

Thank You

If you’ve got this far, you’ve probably enjoyed this and some other posts in the series.

While I’ve not been actively networking while creating my posts, I have enjoyed, cherished and highly valued the engagement I’ve had from you.

You’ve been kind, encouraging and stimulating in your responses and ‘likes’.

My goal was to bring a T-shaped approach to the keywords I’ve chosen. To stimulate and challenge. To reflect and provoke. Taking complete ownership of the task and completing the mission.

I hope my reflections have allowed you to reflect and grow as much as it has for me.

Thank you for your support and companionship on this peregrination.