Archive for the ‘Communication’ Category

Deirdre McCloskey on Writing

One of the best books for writers in the social sciences is Deirdre McCloskey’s Economical Writing, a very short, very small book that offers a number of important principles for writing. McCloskey is an economist by training, but she has written across a wide variety of fields. Economical Writing is a must-have and a must-read for any serious writer. Here are five of her points from… » Continue

October 10 2008 | By Art | Tagged: college, efficiency, persuasion, social-science, student, university, writing | 7 comments»

Just Keep Writing!

I get to write a lot. Fortunately, I like it because it is an important part of my job. I also find that writing helps me organize jumbled messes of thought. Here are notes on writing, which you should do daily no matter your occupation.

1. “Writing is research” (James Buchanan). This is the wisdom of 1986 Nobel Laureate James Buchanan, one of the most prolific

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October 1 2008 | By Art | Tagged: language, motivation, research, student, writing | 6 comments»

Break Through Writer’s Block

It’s a simple fact of life if you put enough words on paper: the day will come when you can’t think of any sentence worth the effort to write down. You’ll have the dreaded writer’s block. Symptoms can vary, but the disease itself is simple. You won’t be able to think of anything to write — and anything that you do think of won’t meet your standards. It can… » Continue

September 30 2008 | By Thursday | Tagged: writers block, writing | 12 comments»

4 Useful Tools No Inspirational Blogger Should Be Without

Photo by Steph L.

Tools. We all have ‘em. We all use ‘em — or at least try to. It’s one thing to read a glossy list of “44 hot WordPress plugins!” or “25 ways to look for stock photos”, another thing to actually try them all. The best tools are delved into very deeply, and like Thor and his hammer, can at times be… » Continue

September 30 2008 | By Torley | Tagged: blogger, compfight, inspiration, popurls, quotation, tool, useful, utility, windows-live-writer | 14 comments»

How to Build Credibility on the Web

There are literally millions of voices on the Internet. Blogs, Social networks, micromessaging services like Twitter, instant messaging services, email, wikis, forums, and dozens of technologies I haven’t even heard of – and dozens more to come – give us all an unprecedented ability to be heard.

But with all those voices clamoring for attention, how do you stand out from the crowd? More importantly, once you get someone’s attention, how… » Continue

September 22 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: blogging, credibility, internet, self-promotion, twitter, website | 12 comments»

6 Tips on Critiquing Without Melting Down

I had a senior-level writing course when I was in college. The first thing the professor told the class was that if any of us didn’t think we could handle honest critiques of our work, we should leave. Nobody did, of course, but over the course of the semester a few of my classmates wished they had. It wasn’t that the professor went out of his way to be… » Continue

September 18 2008 | By Thursday | Tagged: critique, feedback | 12 comments»

Mastering the Short Email

“I apologize that this letter is so long. I did not have the time to make it short”

— BLAISE PASCAL

Good writers know that lean, vibrant language is almost always preferable to verbose, rambling writing. There is virtually no writing in the world so good that it can’t be made better by making it shorter. There are exceptions, of course – a contract needs to cover every possible potentiality, as… » Continue

September 17 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: attention, brevity, business, concision, email, writing | 12 comments»

3 Ways To Be Memorable By Breaking People’s Patterns

Life is full of little situations that you encounter regularly. Some people don’t see these for the opportunities that they are: a chance to stand out, be different, and be memorable.

They’re a way to quickly built rapport with someone so they can think back later and say “Brian…hmm, yeah he was the guy who does [BLANK]” or “Barbara, oh yeah she is the gal who said [BLANK]“. You stood out… » Continue

September 12 2008 | By Brian | Tagged: connections, expectation, greeting, interaction, meet, pattern, people, rapport, surprise | 29 comments»

Handling Mail Overload: The Hard Copy Edition

Checking my mail is part of my daily routine, rain or shine. I’m not talking about all those messages on my computer, either. I’m talking about the paper stuff that the mailman brings by every day but Sunday.

I don’t know about you, but I still get plenty of the paper stuff. I keep wondering why all these catalogs keep showing up in my mailbox when emailing me about new… » Continue

September 11 2008 | By Thursday | Tagged: junk mail, letter, mail | 15 comments»

6 Ways to Attend Awesome Conferences for Free

Everyday, I see an awesome conference or convention I want to attend. While some, like the various PodCamps are free or fairly inexpensive, big conferences like CTIA can cost well over $1,000 to attend.

Paying for every conference you want to attend is a fast way to go broke, even if you manage to grab early bird rates and other discounts. But there are a few ways to… » Continue

September 9 2008 | By Thursday | Tagged: conference, convention, free, ticket | 8 comments»

Expand Your Verbal Intelligence

The most common method of thinking in the Western world is verbal thinking. Although we have a range of intelligences including numerical, musical, spatial, emotional, verbal and kinaesthetic intelligences, it is verbal intelligence that we depend on most. We tend to think and express ourselves in words.

It can be argued that mastery of the use of words and verbal intelligence is the most important skill we develop… » Continue

September 8 2008 | By Paul | Tagged: dictionary, intelligence, language, speech, thinking, verbal, vocabulary, word, writing | 7 comments»

5 Hacks Just For Writers

It seems like all of us have intensive writing projects going on at any given time. Considering how much creative power such a project can require, it just makes sense to minimize the efforts we have to make for any part of our projects other than the actual writing. In that spirit, these hacks can help you keep your writing on track, and I’ve included a few of the… » Continue

September 2 2008 | By Thursday | Tagged: writing | 8 comments»

Help a Reporter (and Yourself) Out

Ever wonder where journalists and other writers find the experts they quote in their stories? In the past, reporters counted on their own networking, and on a service called ProfNet. ProfNet lets journalists search their database of experts and contact them individually to see if they’d be interested in being interviewed.

Until recently, ProfNet has been about the only game in town, as far as finding real experts is concerned… » Continue

September 1 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: expert, expertise, journalism, networking, promotion, reporter, writing | 9 comments»

Getting Lifehack Done: Global Collaboration

Somewhere around 3 dozen people, scattered across the globe from Hong Kong across the US to the UK, Europe, and beyond work together to bring you the collection of useful tips, thought pieces, and inspiration known as Lifehack. I thought it might be interesting to our readers to learn a little bit about what goes on “behind the scenes” at a big site like this – the… » Continue

August 29 2008 | By Dustin | Tagged: collaboration, Lifehack, project, team, website, work | 5 comments»

Contact Management Solutions Aren’t Just For Corporations

Whether you run your own business or you’re trying to keep your extended family organized — or maybe even both — having a robust system able to keep your contacts organized is important.

Organization isn’t enough, though. An electronic Rolodex isn’t really enough, though that’s pretty much what most of us rely on these days. Instead, we need to be able to tell when we last talked to a given… » Continue

August 28 2008 | By Thursday | Tagged: contact managment, CRM | 12 comments»

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