Editing is a step you can’t afford to skip with ANY of your communication! Everyone’s an editor. If you’ve ever rewritten a sentence in a memo or rephraseda paragraph in an important letter, you were editing. And if you’ve ever been so fed up with the way a letter was sounding that youtossed the draft…
Pandora is one of my favorite “tools” for taking mini-breaks throughout the day. This app on my Android phone (which I downloaded from Google Play Store) is an internet radio service that allows me to listen to music whenever and wherever I am. Listening to music while I work makes it easier for me to…
Taking mini-breaks can lower stress AND increase productivity. Taking a break when we were kids was easy. Most of us probably had long stretches of time with “nothing to do” in the summer or on weekends. And if you’re like me, you learned early on that if you had too much free time and complained…
Years ago, while attending California State University, Chico (CSUC) for a degree in Mass Communications, I took a class in Technical Problem Analysis (aka “Creative Problem Solving”). Our textbook was The Universal Traveler: A Soft-Systems Guide to Creativity, Problem-Solving and the Process of Reaching Goals, by Don Koberg and Jim Bagnall. (The latest edition of this book was published in 2003.)…
hab·it – a recurrent, often unconscious pattern of behavior that is acquired through frequent repetition. We all know what habits are, and probably take them for granted most of the time. But bad ones can hold us back in our careers and personal lives, and good ones can propel us forward almost effortlessly. Take exercise, for…
Canva is something I’d heard a lot about, but had never actually tried USING until over a year ago. I was starting to create social media posts for a client each week, and I knew Canva would be the best way to do that. I had no idea what a treat I was in for!…
White space and subheads are just two examples of good graphic design. WORDS vs. IMAGES If someone were to hold a contest and these two were the competitors, who do you think would win? If you agree with the phrase “a picture’s worth a thousand words,” you’d probably side with “images.” But if you’re a…
This post focuses on something most of us, I’m sure, take for granted. TREES. I think I first “fell in love with” trees during one of my family’s many visits to Muir Woods in Marin County – just north of San Francisco. To get there, we first had to cross the Golden Gate Bridge, then…
Starting a journal is easy. Just pick up a pen and notebook … and write! Not all clutter is visible. Mental clutter is a challenge for many of us, and a major hindrance to creativity. That’s why journaling is so important. Keeping a journal may not sound like something serious business owners do, but not…
I first became familiar with The Elements of Style in junior college, in an English class. It was one of the few books I did NOT return to the used book store at the end of the semester. In fact, I still have that edition. But it was years before I realized that the person whose name stood out…