RecomMONDAYtions ~ 2024.09.30

Recommended Reading

How to Write Faster (Ann Handley)

I love Ann Handley’s blog and emails. Here’s a good one she wrote recently about how to write faster — with greater confidence and consistency. Hint: AI can help, but it’s not the answer.

Recommended Book

 The Checklist Manifesto

A book about the power of checklists may seem boring. But this book is anything but.

Atul Gawande tells riveting stories to deliver the idea that we work better, minimize mistakes, and achieve more when we work with checklists.

Recommended Viewing

💡Want to Get Something Done? Get a Coach

Speaking of Atul Gawande, here’s a great TED talk he delivered in 2018. Here’s the video description from YouTube:

“How do we improve in the face of complexity? Atul Gawande has studied this question with a surgeon’s precision. He shares what he’s found to be the key: having a good coach to provide a more accurate picture of our reality, to instill positive habits of thinking, and to break our actions down and then help us build them back up again.”

Recommended Listening

🎶“Sunday Morning Comin’ Down”

Kris Kristofferson was disowned by his parents when he told them he turned down an offer to teach English at West Point so he could move to Nashville and become a songwriter.

He struggled at first. To make ends meet, he worked as a janitor. He was at Columbia Studios in Nashville, emptying ashtrays and trash cans, during Bob Dylan’s “Blonde on Blonde” recording sessions.

He finally broke through as a songwriter, performer, and big-screen actor. And he’ll go down as one of the greats.

Kristofferson died on Saturday at 88. May he rest in peace.

Here’s “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down.” Of all the great songs he wrote, this one’s my favorite.

Recommended Resource

❓Videoask by Typeform

Here’s a cool tool I’m using to collect video testimonials from clients: Videoask.

You can create online surveys/conversations/forms that start with a video from you and give respondents the opportunity to reply by text or video. Great for customer feedback, interviews, onboarding, or other conversations that can be enhanced by video’s human touch.

I decided to create a quick Videoask sample this morning to show you how it works. This was truly spur-of-the-moment (you can tell from my gravelly voice and bed-head ). It took me about five minutes to create this. Go ahead and click. And if you’re inspired, please reply!

Words to Ponder

“Just remember that William Blake wasn’t even published in his lifetime. Ya gotta keep creating.”

― Kris Kristofferson