morning boy's letters on serious matters and commentary on funny things aplenty
This book explains my uneasiness in plenty of ‘work’ and ‘professional’ environments. And am pretty sure there are quite a few like me out there.
Am still not done reading it. Haven’t been able to put it down since yesterday. It explains what you understand deep down but for which you yourself didn’t have all the words till now.
Check this equation. It is not mathematics, and not tough to understand.
LIFE = TIME
Is that fair to equate? 😊
Now consider this statement:
“I want to lead a happy life.”
Familiar sort of statement. Often heard from others or spoken within oneself?
Now replace ‘life’ with ‘time’. That statement becomes:
“I want to lead a happy time.”
But this sounds a little strange. I want to lead a happy time. Not familiar at all.
Now, consider this equation and contrast it with the statement above. Time is measured in hours, so…
TIME = HOURS
You’ve come across the expression HAPPY HOURS? Am sure you have. 🍻
Life is Time. A certain amount of time. How do you spend time? Actually, you have no control over time. So you really can’t spend it. It flows and it gets spent anyway, with or without your wish.
In the flow of time, how are you swimming? Breathing well?
There are good repetitions (often called habits) and there are bad repetitions (also called habits).
Repetitions, if bad, need to be replaced. Replaced by what? Replaced by repetitions that prove good.
Now, finding replacements is not always easy or convenient. And can take time. Yes, you have to practice the movements that become good repetitions and that can replace bad repetitions.
Attend conferences.
Deploy AI so that you do not have to attend to customers.
That’s where they are attempting to move the businesses to, in the name of innovation.
And then also write essays and hold conferences on Consumer Insights.
Why?
There are so many emails, especially the subscription or newsletter type, that come with images. The way Gmail renders almost such an email, it feels broken and ugly, as if something has gone wrong or you’ve received something like malware.
Sure, Gmail offers options to display the pictures upon tapping a certain tab at the top of the email but how many times does one have to do that!
There needs to be a different way. This doesn’t feel right.
~
I just looked into some settings and I turned on the option of ‘always display images’. And now it works. Now it shows images when an email is opened. That makes me curious: how many Gmail users actively make such changes by going into the settings? How often?
The expression ‘BRAND BUILDING’ obfuscates.
Obfuscates what? Obfuscates whatever it is that results in ‘branding’.
~
From Wikipedia (you can try other sources):
The word “brand” originates from the Old Norse word brandr, meaning “to burn,” dating back to before 950 A.D.. It originally referred to a burning piece of wood, a torch, or a sword. By the 1500s, it evolved to mean marking livestock, criminals, or goods with a hot iron to signify ownership or quality.
~
Think about this. Burn and Build are sort of opposites. Like, burning bridges or building bridges.
~
“Soni, what’s the alternative to ‘building’ in ‘brand building’?”
“Look, ‘branding’ was enough. You wanted to convey that you’ll do something humungous that’ll take a lot of space and time. You added ‘building’ to convey that, as if you’re an architect, as if you’re an engineer.”
“But look Soni, in a way, we do a bigger job than them.”
“Sure! You are into building, right? Builder! I get it.”
The easiest way to lose my interest in your amazingness as a marketer is call yourself a ‘story-teller’.
By calling yourself a ‘story-teller’, I take it that you are going to go astray as a marketer. And distract me too in the process.
Marketer, first and foremost, has to be a word-weigher. WORD-WEIGHER.
“But Soni, I can’t pronounce that as well as story-teller!”
“Soni, I choose to be a story-teller. That’s the in-thing. You can be whatever!”
“Story is huuuuuuuuuge. Word? That’s just so small! Soni, you don’t get it.”
Consider the word ‘satisfaction’.
Insert ‘r’ somewhere in that word.
My version: SATISFRACTION.
Sounds good, no?
What would it mean if we used SATISFRACTION in our speech or writing?
All the necessary repetitions are very much in place. Adding more should be a lot of stress any way.
FOMO, fear of missing out, begs the question ‘missing out on what’. On what? Entertainment? My sense is missing out on the STIMULUS.
But one STIMULUS is sufficient to set one on track for years. Once the stimulus does its job, time to step into repetitions…
I buy a fountain pen that’s been on my mind but not in my collection yet.
But times change. On some other occasions, I call my partner up and that is that.
You can port yourself out of one pair of trousers into another. Easy as anything.
You cannot port your data out of Facebook into another kind of Facebook-like thing.
Any organization that has recorded and organized its data using some ERP, can it easily port that data out into another ERP?
This expression has been thrown around for ages now.
BE YOURSELF.
And often the shorter word BE is understood to be the more difficult one. It occurs to me that BE is rather simple. One of the rare verbs that is simple.
YOURSELF? Determining that is a task. Mighty task.
Do you pack the thing you want to keep preserved? Then take the pain to place an elaborately written label on the packing.
The amount of data getting accumulated for every single person cannot be revisited by that person or by any person at all. Except the bots.
But yes, something may have to be retrieved from such data. At what time, what date? 5 years from now? 2 years from now? Who even knows!
All the storage in the world is created for such data.
But if you attempt to store in your own individual capacity, you would lose most of it. Why? Digital storage media, at least the popular ones, are not durable.
And so you pay for digital data storage that is un-revisitable. And you keep paying. Only bots can revisit. You can retrieve something essential only if you remember that it is in storage and if you know what to ask to the machine to retrieve such data.
Incredible phenomenon!
That’s right. There are sellers (who stock and trade in branded goods) and there are brand-owners, and then there are platforms.
The three entities are different. I see that mistakes made by platforms and sellers often put the brand down.
Take this for example. I search for a product on Amazon. I see the star-reviews. I notice low-star-reviews too. I am curious why the product has gotten such bad reviews. I check the reviews out. Turns out the seller or the delivery partner with whom the seller has partnered is at fault.
The first look of those low-star-reviews is misleading. Works against the brand-owners.
What is something others do that sparks your admiration?
The grind that one chooses to undergo to make something happen, that which can only be seen by very few who are around when one is going through it.
Why do we see messiness in all sorts of businesses, teams and organizations?
Here’s one reason. Language skills, communication skills are treated as ‘Soft Skills’.
To make matters more messy, HR guys arrange training programs for ‘Soft Skills’.
Parents make youngsters join ‘Soft Skills’ training institutes.
There are other names too under which you are expected to softly absorb the Soft Skills. We know those names, no? New, more inventive names can be expected as we witness the softness envelop the world.
And the Linkedinite who has undergone such ‘Soft Skills’ training and who tom-toms ‘Soft Skills’ as her mighty strength in her CV, will argue, “What do you know huh! It is so so hard to master Soft Skills; you can write here whatever. And so it is Soft Skills after all. Sofffft sofffft sofffft! You don’t know anything, Soni. Work happens because there is a softness in the words we utter, the manner in which we utter. Be soffft!”
Do you smile? Do you smile when you talk? Isn’t it soffft then? Smile makes work happen.
In your fight against Dust, dust wins.
You have to find a protocol to enjoy Dust, to live with it and make it beautiful.
This is a difficult one many Indian women.
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