I’m obsessed with helping people. I’m not a doctor, therapist, convenience store clerk, park ranger, or general contractor, however – so I can’t help you with your foot fungus, daddy issues, lotto habit, insatiable botanical curiosity, or basement renovation. What I am is a writer, editor, and natural-born teacher with a tremendous work ethic and an innate desire to help the world be as lovely and humane a place as possible. So my blog is focused on sharing small lessons I’ve learned: small ways to be a better writer, a better worker, and a better human.
Change happens incrementally. Start small.
New blog posted weekly in either Small Ways, Red Pencil Scribbles, or Nice Thing o' the Week. To receive updates, find me on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter.
“Be the labor great or small, do it right or not at all." It is to this aphorism — in particular, to the persistence, commitment, and insistence on quality that it has ingrained in me — that I owe a great deal of my success in life.
Read MoreTo succeed in business relationships, “do unto others as you would have done unto you” needs to become “do unto others… as others would have done unto them.” I've started to think of this practice as “The Rule of You.”
Read MoreFolks, I'm taking two weeks off from blogging to celebrate the wedding of my cousin Christopher and otherwise spend time with these fine folk back in my home state of MN. I'll be back October 11th.
Read MoreIn last week's blog, I made an argument for never ending your presentation on Q&A. This week, I promised to explain more fully what I propose you do instead: serve the audience "dessert."
Read MoreIf you end your presentation with Q&A, you're choosing to give up a very important thing: control. You're giving up the right to decide what the audience's final impression of you will be — what they'll feel, and what they'll remember.
Read MoreNobody likes having their time wasted. And when you're paying someone for their time, you would hope that they're not wasting any of THEIR time — because if they are, you're paying for it, both literally and figuratively.
Read MoreIdioms — phrases that have come to have certain meanings that can't be deduced from the individual words used — are something we ALL learn over time. But they’re doubly hard for non-native English speakers trying to navigate our idiom-laden world.
Read MoreOver time, I’ve discovered a handful of websites that I use on a fairly regular basis for writing or work. In the event you haven't experienced the particular joys of some of these, I thought I'd share them with you today.
Read MoreWe all enjoy looking smarter than we are. Sadly, however, there’s no avoiding the fact that people make judgments about other people's intelligence based on the smallest bits of data. It's not fair, but it happens.
Read MoreWelcome to our FINAL blog installment focused on sorting out some of the most commonly confused words in the English language.
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