Excuse me, is that a fake Einstein quote on your blog?

Posted on March 2, 2016 by Jay Morris

Einstein

So many quotations have been falsely attributed to Einstein that they’ve been dubbed “Neinsteins.” Photo by Sophia Delar from Wikimedia Commons.

There’s nothing like a good quote to spice up your prose. That’s why speeches, essays, books and social media are peppered with the sayings of Lincoln, Twain, Edison, Gandhi and other notables. I use quotations in my own writing to emphasize a point or add color, but I’ve learned to be careful about their source. Many of the maxims collected on sites such as Goodreads or BrainyQuote, or that you see on Tumblr or Facebook, have been misattributed—or worse, they’re just plain fake.

For example, one of my favorite Einstein quotes for many years was:

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

Only trouble is Einstein never said it. Sociologist William Bruce Cameron actually first wrote those words in a book published in 1963. There are so many quotes falsely attributed to Einstein that they are known as “Neinsteins,” a play on the German word for “no.”

Here’s another Neinstein that I’ve seen widely circulated:

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.”

There’s no evidence that Einstein ever said that. When you think about it, does it really sound like something he would have said? And that’s the point: you should be skeptical of quotes that seem too good (or glib) to be true.

If you’re suspicious about a quote, take a moment to track down its source. A good starting point for anything that doesn’t seem right is snopes.com. If it’s not covered by Snopes, it may be on one of the quote-buster blogs that have sprung up to stamp out false attributions. One site I like is quoteinvestigator.com, which explores the origins of quotations. But there are any number of specialty sites such as fakebuddhaquotes.com that you can check out as well.

I once used a quote attributed to Lincoln in a post on how to stop procrastinating:

“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”

It was the word “hustle” that made me wonder if Lincoln really said it. So I did a little research. It turns out “hustle” wasn’t used in its current sense until after Lincoln’s death. Commentators also said Lincoln was unlikely to have used the words “things may come.” I decided to keep the quote because I liked it, but I changed my post to say that Lincoln probably never said it.

John Oliver Last Week TonightOf course, I’m not the only one who’s been fooled by fake quotes. Last October, on “Last Week Tonight,” comedian John Oliver showed clips of three presidents—Reagan, Clinton and Obama—misquoting Lincoln. Oliver lambasted politicians for being sloppy with quotations, calling the practice “the karaoke of ideas.” In particular, he lampooned Ben Carson for claiming that Jefferson had spoken against gun control, even though the phrase “gun control” wasn’t used until the 1960s. Like nearly everything he spears, Oliver’s take on bogus quotes was funny and spot on. “Either we care about the accuracy of quotes and where they’re sourced, or we don’t care at all,” he intoned.

Obviously, Oliver thinks we should care, and so do I. We should always strive for accuracy in our writing—and that includes the words we attribute to respected historical figures. As the presidential race heats up, I’m sure we’ll be hearing more mangled quotations out of the mouths of candidates. It’s incumbent upon us to respond with a healthy dose of skepticism and redouble our efforts to be careful in our own writing and speaking.

‘Say it ain’t so!’ 5 famous misquotes

Last year, writer Kali Halloway compiled a list of history’s most famous misquotes. Here are five that might surprise you:

  1. “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Henry Russell “Red” Sanders, the football coach at Vanderbilt and UCLA in the 1940s and 50s, coined this expression—not football legend Vince Lombardi.
  2. “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” It’s a beautiful sentiment, but, no, Gandhi didn’t say it.
  3. “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Maybe Freud thought about it in his subconscious, but there’s no evidence that he ever said it out loud.
  4. “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” Even the U.S. Post Office got this quote wrong when it put it on a stamp honoring Maya Angelou last year. The quote comes from a book of poetry written by Joan Walsh Anglund.
  5. “You can fool all of the people some of the time; you can fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” While much scholarship has been devoted to determining whether Lincoln actually said this, the verdict is he probably didn’t.
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Convergence and the brave new world of PR and marketing

Posted on February 24, 2016 by Jay Morris

Working togetherA few weeks ago, Phil Rabin and Paul Duning of Capitol Communicator spoke at an Independent Public Relations Alliance luncheon about trends they are seeing in the PR business. One development they mentioned is the convergence of public relations and marketing, especially in the digital space.

Convergence is not new. And being the gray-haired communications veteran that I am, I began to think about previous encounters with convergence in my career. Back in the 1990s, I was hired by a DC trade association to be its first director of public affairs, a position designed to blend the separate disciplines of government affairs and PR. On paper, it was a wonderful concept. I would work with our lobbyists to tell their story in the press, using earned media, issues advertising, coalitions and community outreach. They, in turn, would get valuable exposure and support for their advocacy on Capitol Hill.

I quickly discovered that there was a gulf between the two departments that was difficult to bridge. Our lobbyists were not inclined to share Hill intelligence. They felt they were most effective when reporters didn’t know what they were doing. My PR colleagues and I, on the other hand, were anxious to promote the association’s positions. Obviously, we couldn’t do that without the lobbyists’ cooperation. It wasn’t until we were engaged in a major legislative battle (healthcare reform) that we really started working together as a team. It was an all-hands situation, with lots of late nights, but in the end I think the broader, public affairs approach proved its mettle.

Fast-forward about 10 or 12 years, and I was at another trade association where convergence took on new meaning. This time I was trying to bring together the marketing and communications departments. Again, a great idea in theory, but there were definitely some cultural differences. Despite opening the lines of communication, holding joint meetings and working hard to more closely align marketing and PR, I never felt we achieved the synergy that I had hoped for. In the end, I think it had more to do with the different objectives each department had than anything else. Marketing focused primarily on promoting membership and conferences, while communications focused primarily on consumer outreach and government affairs. The two did not always intersect.

I hear the words “seamless” and “integrated” used a lot these days, but I am skeptical that marketing and PR will ever be one, big happy family. My advice to anyone trying to combine the two is to study up on change management and be prepared for some silo busting.

Marketing and PR each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Marketing, with its link to sales and consumer buying behavior, has always been revenue-driven and usually better at measuring results. Public relations, with its focus on image, reputation and influence, usually has difficulty measuring its impact—except when something bad happens and everyone agrees, “We need PR!”

The rise of digital media has created new possibilities for these two disciplines that smart organizations are leveraging to their advantage. Using web and social media analytics, both marketers and PR professionals can better measure their efforts and more clearly demonstrate ROI. At the same time, there is room for immense creativity. Storytelling has become the new mantra for brands, an area where PR people should absolutely shine. With new ways to tell your story and better metrics, it’s a great time for both the PR and marketing professions.

As Phil and Paul told us at the IPRA luncheon, these new technologies have also led to significant changes in the PR agency system. The big agencies are downsizing. They’re becoming leaner and more nimble. They’re partnering with marketing firms to get the technology and social media expertise they need to stay competitive.

There’s no doubt that the viability of the traditional agency model is being tested. Is it cost-effective to do everything in-house and maintain offices in multiple cities when you can hire the talent you need on a project basis? According to Phil and Paul, shared office space, virtual teams, consolidated back-end operations and partnerships will be the new normal in this period of flux and change.

As a result, independent practitioners should be in greater demand. That’s assuming they have the skills and technology know-how to meet their clients’ needs.

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‘How will I find you?’ 5 ways to build brand awareness

Posted on February 19, 2016 by Jay Morris

promotion and marketingSuppose you are meeting someone for the first time in a public place. Wouldn’t it make sense to tell this person what you look like? It seems only natural to describe your most identifying features so you can quickly find each other. Yet, it doesn’t always happen, leading to embarrassment (“Are you Dave?”), wasted time and missed opportunities.

Now think about your business. Your success depends on connecting with new customers in your market. Wouldn’t it make sense to describe to them who you are? How they can find you?

It seems like a no-brainer, but so many people fall down when it comes to marketing themselves. Here are five questions you should be asking yourself to build brand awareness:

1. Can you be found on Google?
It’s been said that if Google can’t find you, no one can. Many articles and books have been written about search engine optimization (SEO) and other strategies for popping up near the top of Google searches. Google actually makes it easy to see which keywords your customers might be using to try to find your business or services.

Google Trends allows you to view the relative popularity of search terms over time (since 2004) and by country. You can compare up to five keywords, which makes it useful for determining the relative strength of terms. For example, suppose you are a heating and air-conditioning contractor. You could type in “heating and air conditioning,” “HVAC,” “air conditioning,” “heating” and “building contractor.” What you’d find is that “heating” is by far the most-used keyword. As you might imagine, you’d see that “heating” spikes during the winter months and “air conditioning” spikes in the summer. Google also gives you a list of related searches and the relative strength of those keywords.

Google AdWords Keyword Planner is available for free, even if you haven’t purchased any Google AdWords for your business. It provides helpful information for selecting keywords and a “suggested bid” price for specific keywords, i.e., what it might cost per click. You can enter keywords that describe your products or services and/or a specific landing page. It gets interesting when you type in your own website or a competitor’s. You can search on date ranges, geographic locations and product categories.

Google My Business is a new tool that puts your business information on Google Maps, Google+ and in Google searches. It’s especially helpful to retailers since it allows you to post photos of your location, business hours, telephone number, driving directions and Google reviews. I have not used it, but I understand that it replaces Google Places and has a dashboard where you can make changes to your profile, view traffic via Insights and Google Analytics and check your reviews.

2. Do you have a social media presence?
Think of Google and other search engines as a wide net that is constantly being cast into the digital sea. Your goal is to be a big enough fish to get caught in a search engine’s net. You can do that by increasing your presence on social media. Keep in mind, getting noticed online requires effort and persistence. I’ve had people say to me, “I need to be on social media”—as if all you have to do is flip a switch, and “voila!” you instantly have 10,000 followers! When I explain to them what it entails—the same careful and steady nurturing of relationships that’s required in the real world—they begin to hem and haw. The advice that I give below for real-world networking applies to virtual networking, too. In order to be known, you have to engage. Choose one or two social media networks to get active on—ones that make sense for your business—and then start to participate. Make comments on other people’s posts, and post your own content. Social media is an excellent way to push out your own content, but it works best when you become part of the conversation. It’s like a virtual cocktail party. You don’t want to be a complete bore by always talking about yourself. Show some interest in what other people are saying and provide value by contributing ideas and suggestions that will be helpful to your target market.

3. Are you building relationships in the real world?
We often call it networking, but a more apt way of putting it is “in-person socializing.” In your quest to add more Facebook friends, LinkedIn contacts and Twitter followers, don’t neglect personal connections and relationships. When it’s time for someone to make a hire or give a recommendation, who’s most likely to come to mind? A Facebook friend or a real friend? Genuine interactions also have many ancillary benefits. You can float new ideas, foster collaboration and form a sense of community that results in the mutual betterment of everyone in your circle. In his best-selling book Never Eat Alone, Keith Ferrazzi distinguishes relationship building from the “crude, desperate glad-handing” usually associated with networking. As he notes, “It’s never simply about getting what you want. It’s about getting what you want and making sure that the people who are important to you get what they want, too.” Make a habit of getting to know people you meet at networking events by suggesting that you have coffee or simply arranging time for a follow-up phone call. You’d be surprised how one thing leads to another and a lasting relationship begins.

4. Are you talking to your customers?
Active listening is a skill that seems in short supply these days, but successful business people have learned the art of paying attention to what their clients are thinking and what they need. A few years ago, I invited veteran DC marketer Bob London to speak to the Independent Public Relations Alliance. “Every client has an ‘elevator rant,’” he told us. “This is what keeps them up at night. It’s the thing they would tell you in the space of an elevator ride that is really bothering them.” London has been able to create added value by translating his clients’ rants into marketing solutions. “Once you’ve talked to customers and better understand their concerns,” he said, “questions about strategy, message and channels just fall into place.” Taking the time to listen to your customers—drilling down to discover their needs—shows that you take a genuine interest in their business and want to help them succeed. It also puts you top of mind with your customers and further strengthens your brand.

5. Are you taking advantage of earned media?
The old adage that earned media is better than paid media still holds true today. Being quoted in a publication is one of the most credible ways of building your brand. News outlets are always looking for story ideas. If you have an interesting client project or news item, send an email to the appropriate reporter. You might just find yourself being interviewed. With the proliferation of online media, there are many ways to get exposure for your business—most of them free if you are willing to provide the content. It’s not that hard to approach bloggers, website editors or e-publishers to see if you can write a guest blog or occasionally submit an article. You’ll be creating awareness for your brand, plus you’ll have some great content that you can link to your own website and social media accounts. Social media also has the power to “amplify” your content many times through sharing and likes. I have found blogging to be a wonderful way of communicating my views, engaging in conversations and demonstrating my skills as a producer of digital content. Find the medium that works best for you, then set out to make yourself known so that no one ever has to say, “How will I find you?” They will already know.

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Leadership advice from the remarkable Frances Hesselbein

Posted on February 9, 2016 by Jay Morris

Frances Hesselbein

Frances Hesselbein transformed the Girl Scouts and redefined leadership.

It’s Girl Scout cookie season, which means that soon I’ll be enjoying one of my favorite cookies—Do-si-dos. (In case you’re wondering, those are the ones with oatmeal on the outside and peanut butter on the inside.) The sale of millions of Girl Scout cookies brings to mind the remarkable Frances Hesselbein, CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA from 1976 to 1990. It was Hesselbein who rescued Girl Scouts from near-irrelevance and transformed it into a modern organization dedicated to empowering young women. Under her guidance, the organization grew to serve 2.25 million girls.

Hesselbein reportedly doesn’t like to talk about her age, but according to Google she’ll be celebrating her 100th birthday in November. Still working, she’s a living legend in the field of leadership development. Early on, she teamed up with Peter Drucker to reinvigorate the Girl Scouts by making the organization more professional and increasing its focus on leadership, science, technology and math.

She turned the Girl Scouts into a world-class organization, tripled the number of minority girls it served (at a time when Girl Scouts were predominantly white and middle class), developed a contemporary curriculum and gave girls hands-on experience in addressing the challenges in their communities.

After she left the Girl Scouts, she became the founding president of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, a group dedicated to fostering innovation and excellence among nonprofits. It was renamed the Leader to Leader Institute after Drucker’s death in 2005 and became the Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute in 2012. Hesselbein still serves as the institute’s president.

You can learn more about Hesselbein and her work on the institute’s website. I recommend her “Moments of Insight” interviews, three short videos that won’t take you long to watch.

Here are some of pearls of wisdom from Hesselbein on leadership:

“Leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do.”

“The character and quality of the leader determines the results.”

“We never compromise our principles—who we are—because once we’ve done that, we cannot go back to the level we have struggled to maintain.”

“All of us have a defining moment, whether we are conscious of it or not, that determines the person we are—the leader we are today.”

“Leadership is a journey, not a destination.”

“As long as we are breathing, we can be leading.”

And here, reduced to three key points, is the essence of Hesselbein’s formula for leadership:

Be mission-focused

  • Begin with a short, powerful, compelling mission statement that is based solely on…
    • Why do we do what we do?
    • What is our reason for being?
  • Distill the language until you have a powerful mission statement. (“Peter Drucker says it has to fit on a t-shirt.”)

Be values-based

  • Define the values and bring them to life so they are more than a plaque on the wall.
  • Talk about the values often, and live them.
  • Your people will watch you.
  • If you’re living your values, everyone else will try to live them, too.

Be demographics-driven

  • Reach out and bring into the organization remarkable leaders at every level from every racial and ethnic group.
  • Ask yourself this question: “When the people we want to bring into our organization look at us, can they find themselves?” If the answer is a resounding “yes,” you’re the organization of the future. If the answer is “We’re not very diverse, but that’s what we’re going to do in the future,” then, sorry, you’re already part of the past.

We can learn a lot from Hesselbein. At 99, she possesses more passion and purpose than most people half her age!

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I see dead people…on Facebook 

Posted on February 4, 2016 by Jay Morris

Facebook is very good about reminding me of my friends’ birthdays. Its notification feature automatically prompts me to post a birthday greeting, and I can do it without even visiting the friend’s page. All I have to do is type a message in Notification and press “post.” It’s easy. Too easy, as I recently discovered.

Facebook login

Who controls your Facebook account after you die?

I was about to wish happy birthday to someone I hadn’t heard from in a long time. Something made me think to visit her page first, just to see what she was up to. I’m glad I did because she hasn’t been doing much lately. That’s because she’s been dead for over a year. To think that I was about to make some blithe comment about having “a great day” or “hope it’s a good one” left me feeling sheepish but also very relieved that I had caught myself in the nick of time.

It got me to thinking about “seeing dead people” on Facebook. How many are there? Do their pages stay up forever? It’s a creepy thought, I know, but I found out it’s pretty common. In fact, I have at least three Facebook friends who are dead, and I don’t have that many FB friends to begin with!

They may be dead, but their profiles live on—remembrances frozen in time. Visiting their pages is like entering a vault. Everything is the way they left it—before they slipped from the real world into the ether world. You wouldn’t even know they had passed on unless you took the time to study the comments.

Here are a few interesting “facts” about dead people on Facebook, courtesy of a post by Michael Hiscock on The Loop website:

Believe it or not, 30 million Facebook users died in the first eight years of its existence. In fact, 428 of them die every hour, so they’re practically dropping like flies. And every day, these dormant accounts receive friend requests, get tagged in photos, and sometimes, they’re even wished a happy birthday.

Randall Monroe, in his “What If?” blog, takes this to its logical extreme. Monroe speculates that by the year 2065, the dead on Facebook could outnumber the living—assuming FB begins to decline in popularity and loses its market share (like Friendster, for example).

If FB can hold its ground well into the future, the crossover date might not come until 2130 or later, he writes. “Nothing lasts forever,” he observes, “and rapid change has been the norm for anything built on computer technology. The ground is littered with the bones of websites and technologies that seemed like permanent institutions 10 years ago.”

For those worried about what will happen to their Facebook page after they die, there is a way to memorialize your page. You can also request ahead of time that it be taken down. Here is the pertinent section from Facebook’s Help Center:

What will happen to my account if I pass away?

You can tell us in advance whether you’d like to have your account memorialized or permanently deleted from Facebook.

Memorialized Accounts

Memorialized accounts are a place for friends and family to gather and share memories after a person has passed away. Memorialized accounts have the following key features:

  • The word Remembering will be shown next to the person’s name on their profile
  • Depending on the privacy settings of the account, friends can share memories on the memorialized Timeline
  • Content the person shared (ex: photos, posts) stays on Facebook and is visible to the audience it was shared with
  • Memorialized profiles don’t appear in public spaces such as in suggestions for People You May Know, ads or birthday reminders
  • No one can log into a memorialized account
  • Memorialized accounts that don’t have a legacy contact can’t be changed
  • Groups with an admin whose account was memorialized will be able to select new admins
  • Pages with a sole admin whose account was memorialized will be removed from Facebook if we receive a valid request

But what if notifying Facebook prior to your death isn’t (or wasn’t) at the top of your estate-planning to-do list? Family members and friends can contact Facebook and request that your page be memorialized or removed. However, they must be able to demonstrate that you really are dead (submit a death certificate, etc.) and provide some proof of their authority. Also, Facebook will not provide login information for your account.

It’s not just Facebook. You could also live in perpetuity on LinkedIn, Twitter or any number of other social media sites. All of this has spawned discussions about developing policies for handling deaths on social media.

This infographic from WebpageFX gives you some things to ponder. Unless you want to be like Bruce Willis in “The Sixth Sense,” haunting Haley Joel Osment who can “see dead people,” think about your social media legacy. Don’t make us wish you a happy birthday long after you’re gone!

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How to make book reading a daily habit

Posted on February 2, 2016 by Jay Morris

Girl reading bookI recently wrote about the importance of reading books (‘I cannot live without books’). In this follow-up post, I discuss how to make book reading a daily habit and how to get the most out of what you read.

Most of us spend a lot of time reading (especially for work or on social media), but few of us read critically. Our comprehension isn’t particularly deep. We don’t question or examine very carefully what we’ve read. We absorb bits and pieces of text as quickly as possible and then move on.

There’s so much information to process that we’ve gotten into the habit of skimming everything. Posts, tweets, emails, web content—it all runs together, and soon we’re overwhelmed.

That’s the beauty of reading a book. You put your smartphone away. You turn off the TV. You remove all distractions. You pick up a book and focus on just the book. So that is step one: Learn to focus.

Start by setting aside a time each day to read without interruption. I like to read with my first cup of coffee in the morning. Other people read during lunch or during their daily commute. Bill Gates reportedly reads for an hour each night before going to bed.

Sam Thomas Davies, the author of Unhooked: How to Break Bad Habits and Form Good Ones That Stick, describes how he reads a book a week by turning reading into a habit. “Instead of only reading when you’re ‘in the mood’ (which is unpredictable), habitualise when you do it. Identify a constant trigger for when to read (like an existing habit) and commit to it.”

Davies schedules 30 minutes of reading each morning after his wife leaves for work. Joan Fallon, CEO of Curemark, says in a Fast Company article by Stephanie Vozza that she reads during her downtime while traveling. “If those gaps are long, I can read a book,” she says. “If they are shorter, I read an article.”

Davies suggests reading about 10 percent of a book each day, and he notes that you don’t have to read the entire book. (More on that in a moment.) Unless it’s a thick tome, your goal should be to finish a book in seven to 10 days.

It also helps to pick books that you’re interested in reading. While books on your profession or industry are always good to have on your reading list, you should also read books that feed your imagination and broaden your perspective. Learning new things and expanding your horizon will cement your habit of reading and spur you to read more.

Keep a running list of books you’d like to read. You can get recommendations from friends or from the articles and blogs you read. One of my favorite activities is browsing the shelves at the library or a bookstore. I always see something interesting. Have a couple of new books on your nightstand so that when you finish one, you’ve got a new one ready to go.

How to read

How you read is important, too. Many of us were told growing up that we should never write in a book. As consequence, we’re fairly passive readers. We’re not used to underlining or taking notes. We need to teach ourselves to be active and critical readers.

So before you plunge into your next book, ask yourself a few questions: Why am I reading this book? What do I hope to gain from it? How will it help my career, business or personal life? When you start a book, have a goal in mind. Then, as you read, make sure you are getting what you intended out of the book.

Man reading bookSkim through a book’s table of contents and chapter headings when you first pick it up. Read the preface or introduction before you decide to buy it. It’s there that you learn the author’s intentions, discover any biases and get a sense of the writing style. You can often tell based on those first pages if the book is a good choice or not.

Before you begin a nonfiction work, spend some time considering the way the author organizes his material, read the chapter summaries (if provided), study the table of contents to get a sense of structure. Then jot down the sections you care about the most. These are the chapters where you will want to spend the most time and take notes.

There are a number of guides to reading, and many universities offer primers for students new to the rigors of academic life. Often they suggest that you divide your reading into three parts: skimming, scanning and detailed reading.

  • Skimming is a quick read of the text once you’ve done your initial survey. Read as quickly and efficiently as possible. Don’t worry about details or taking notes. Your goal is get a general sense of the text.
  • Scanning is a closer reading of a few pages or sections. These might be chapters you’ve selected because they address specific concerns or questions you have. Try not to scan more than 20 percent of the book.
  • Reading for detail is the last step. This is where you read the text in a methodical and close manner. Taking notes is important at this stage, although I admit I don’t always do it. If you use some type of e-reader, take advantage of the tools provided—highlighting and annotating the text as you go. If you’ve purchased a book, don’t be afraid to underline or write notes in the margin. Or use a notebook or computer to take notes. (To learn more, download this pdf on “Effective Reading” from the University of Kent.)

Historian Joseph Ellis writes in American Sphinx that Thomas Jefferson was an inveterate note-taker. Jefferson would copy passages that he felt were important, but not word for word. Instead, he blended his own thoughts and observations into the selections he copied. You can easily do the same. Only when you write the key concepts in your own words will you begin to understand and absorb what you’ve read.

As you take notes, consider the author’s arguments and interpretations. Are they well-developed? Does he present evidence to support his points? Do you agree with what he says? What’s missing? What other sources are needed to better understand the subject?

Whenever I’m reading, I keep a dictionary handy to look up words, and I use the Internet to check sources or look up references I’m not familiar with.

One of the myths about book reading is that you have to read every word, from beginning to end. Actually, it’s okay to jump around or skip chapters that aren’t relevant to your purpose. Remember, it’s your reading program. You get to decide what you read and what you don’t.

Sir Francis Bacon wisely said, “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”

Happy reading!

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‘Shoveling Snow with Buddha’

Posted on January 23, 2016 by Jay Morris

Shoveling snowSnowzilla may be one of the DC area’s biggest snowstorms ever before it’s all over. This poem by former Poet Laureate Billy Collins just about nails it on the head for my day with the shovel.

Shoveling Snow with Buddha

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over a mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,
his hair tied in a knot,
a model of concentration.

Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word
for what he does, or does not do.

Even the season is wrong for him.
In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid? 
Is this not implied by his serene expression,
that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe? 

But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.
We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,
these fountain-bursts of snow.

This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.

He has thrown himself into shoveling snow
as if it were the purpose of existence,
as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway
you could back the car down easily
and drive off into the vanities of the world
with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.

All morning long we work side by side,
me with my commentary
and he inside his generous pocket of silence,
until the hour is nearly noon
and the snow is piled high all around us; 
then, I hear him speak.

After this, he asks,
can we go inside and play cards? 

Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk
and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table
while you shuffle the deck.
and our boots stand dripping by the door.

Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes
and leaning for a moment on his shovel
before he drives the thin blade again
deep into the glittering white snow.

Billy Collins

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‘I cannot live without books’

Posted on January 15, 2016 by Jay Morris

BooksOne of my earliest memories of my Grandfather Pollard is a figure sitting in an armchair in the living room of my grandparents’ house in Columbia, MO, reading. My grandfather was a prodigious reader, and his bookshelves held a veritable pantheon of great authors: Cooper, Dickens, Dumas, Eliot, Emerson, Hawthorne, Hugo, Irving, Scott and Stevenson, to name a few.

When he died, I inherited most of his books. I felt honored, and I felt a connection that I think influences me to this day. In the front of many of the books, along with his signature, are a series of dates. I once asked my grandmother what they meant. She said that each time he read a book he would record the date. So if there were four dates, it meant he read the book four times.

I wish he had written notes in the margins so that I could benefit from his many dips in the well of the likes of Emerson, but he didn’t. I think I can understand why. It’s the same reason why I’ve always been reluctant to write in a hardcover book. It seems almost sacrilegious. I wish, too, that he would have talked to me about what he read, but he wasn’t much of a talker. I think for him, as it is often for me, reading was a private avocation.

We develop a love for reading at an early age, or at least we do if we are lucky. And we’re lucky, too, if that love lasts a lifetime—in quiet moments, stealing away to discover new worlds through books or reconnecting with the literary companions of our youth.

Nothing can compare to a good book. For the better part of a year, I read daily from Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “The Bully Pulpit,” a large and well-written history of the Progressive Era and the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. When I finally finished the book, I felt a loss that was palpable. I really didn’t want it to end.

New York Times writer Frank Bruni, in a column last fall about “The Gift of Reading,” said “reading fuels the fires of intelligence and imagination,” and he described how reading is transformative for children, especially those who come from disadvantaged homes.

We know that successful people read a lot. Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey and George W. Bush are some who come to mind. Bush wrote in his memoirs that he and Karl Rove competed to see who could read the most history books in one year. He read 95, and Rove read 110.

A few years ago, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos asked his top executives to read three books and join him in a day-long “book club” discussion of each one. He used the books as frameworks for charting the future of Amazon. The books he chose were:

  • “The Effective Executive” by Peter Drucker
  • “The Innovator’s Solution” by Clayton Christensen
  • “The Goal” by Eliyahu Goldratt

You often see the Thomas Jefferson quotation, “I cannot live without books,” inscribed on bookmarks. The quote comes from a letter to his friend John Adams. During the 1780s, Jefferson began building the largest collection of books in America at Monticello. When the British burned the Library of Congress during the War of 1812, Jefferson offered to sell his collection to Congress to replace what had been destroyed. Congress purchased 6,487 books from Jefferson in 1815 for $23,950. Jefferson then went on to acquire several thousand more books, since, as he told Adams, “I cannot live without [them].” *

In the digital age, we don’t need to acquire books like Jefferson did, but we do need to take the time to read. Studies have shown that reading increases intelligence and brain power, it helps you relax and sleep better, and it even can help fight Alzheimer’s disease.

So why don’t we read more, at least for pleasure and not work? Often it’s because we don’t make the time. In my next post, I’ll talk about reading techniques and give suggestions on how to make reading a part of your daily routine.

* Unfortunately, nearly two-thirds of the volumes Congress purchased from Jefferson were destroyed in a second fire on Christmas Eve in 1851.

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‘I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in’

Posted on January 5, 2016 by Jay Morris

Time to improveBefore he became a country music star, Kenny Rogers recorded a song with the First Edition called “Just Dropped In.” It’s a relic from the counterculture ‘60s with lyrics that don’t make a lot of sense, but I’ve always liked the refrain: “I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in.” Seeing what condition your condition is in is a good way to begin a new year. Assessing where you are and where you’re headed, in fact, is essential to growth and self-improvement.

There are lots of resources out there to help you conduct a self-inventory, from assessment tools and checklists to formal instruments that require administration and interpretation by a licensed or trained professional. Riley Guide’s Self-Assessment Resources lists quite a few tools, depending on whether you are interested in learning more about your personality type (as in the Myers-Brigg Type Indicator), measuring your interests, surveying your career skills or better understanding what motivates you and is important to you (values inventories).

The goal of self-assessment is to learn more about yourself or your business so you can improve your “condition,” whether that’s learning new skills, becoming a better manager, expanding into new markets, or deciding that you want to devote more time to family, hobbies or volunteer service.

Those familiar with the classic self-help guide Think and Grow Rich, written by Napoleon Hill in 1937, know that self-analysis is an important aspect of growth and change—whether it’s in business or your personal life.

“Your annual self-analysis should be made at the end of each year, so you can include in your New Year’s Resolutions any improvements which the analysis indicates should be made,” Hill writes. “Take this inventory by asking yourself the following questions, and by checking your answers with the aid of someone who will not permit you to deceive yourself as to their accuracy.”

Hill’s “self-analysis questionnaire for personal inventory” is just as relevant today as it was nearly 80 years ago. There are 28 questions altogether, but I’m listing 10 here for your consideration:

  1. Have I attained the goal which I established as my objective for this year? (You should work with a definite yearly objective to be attained as a part of your major life objective).

  2. Have I permitted the habit of PROCRASTINATION to decrease my efficiency, and if so, to what extent?

  3. Have I been PERSISTENT in following my plans through to completion?

  4. Have I dissipated any of my energy through lack of CONCENTRATION of effort?

  5. In what way have I improved my ability to render service?

  6. Have my opinions and DECISIONS been based upon guesswork, or accuracy of analysis and THOUGHT?

  7. How much time have I devoted to UNPROFITABLE effort which I might have used to better advantage?

  8. In what ways have I rendered MORE SERVICE AND BETTER SERVICE than I was paid to render?

  9. If I had been the purchaser of my own services for the year, would I be satisfied with my purchase?

  10. Am I in the right vocation, and if not, why not?

How much progress would you say that you made on your goals this past year? What fears or habits are holding you back? What do you need to do to make 2016 a banner year so that the next time you “drop in to see what condition your condition is in,” you can report that everything is A-OK?

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