The Friday Thing #751

Coming to you from 30k feet today.

The Friday Thing #751 follows last week’s advice from Sir Paul Smith with advice from Kevin Kelly, the early exec editor or WIRED and Internet sage. I had planned to write a piece about editing vs. writing and an obscure-ish connection to COBOL programming, but that will have to wait. Kevin’s advice really spoke to me this week – and there was a lot of it. For the last few years, Kevin has posted bits of advice each year and this year on the occasion of his 70th birthday he offers 103 of these nuggets. I appreciated his advice that the biggest lie we tell ourselves is “I don’t need to write this down because I will remember it.” That happens to me three of four times a week as it relates to The Friday Thing, and I often get to Friday wishing I had written things down in one of the many notebooks I own. Note to self, write that down.

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A few I appreciated this week in particular as I spent time at an offsite with my leadership team and am thinking a lot about culture and what it takes to not only create a great work culture but how to nurture it were:

Efficiency is highly overrated; Goofing off is highly underrated. Regularly scheduled sabbaths, sabbaticals, vacations, breaks, aimless walks and time off are essential for top performance of any kind. The best work ethic requires a good rest ethic.

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When you lead, your real job is to create more leaders, not more followers.

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You cannot get smart people to work extremely hard just for money.

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I also talked with a friend this week about the skillset of presenting to audiences and some things I have learned along the way. Kevin captured a really good one that I think is a vastly underrated technique in presenting. And in life.

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When public speaking, pause frequently. Pause before you say something in a new way, pause after you have said something you believe is important, and pause as a relief to let listeners absorb details.

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For those with kids, this is a real gem

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To keep young kids behaving on a car road trip, have a bag of their favorite candy and throw a piece out the window each time they misbehave.

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And, as I head in the weekend in a reflective mood, I will close on this one from Kevin.

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A great way to understand yourself is to seriously reflect on everything you find irritating in others.

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He has 96 other pieces of wisdom to share with you so please do check out the link. There is something for everyone in there.

And with that, Happy Friday. Heading towards some sunshine….

Cheers,

Steve