February 2012
1 post
Working the Left Brain
Creative people hate left brain activities. We hate accounting, law, coding, proofreading. As a result the left brain gets atrophied. We fumble around with our calculators when we have to split the restaurant bill. To prevent this, I’ve started some left brain exercises. Since this is the year of code, I decided to learn Ruby.
Most of the code tutorials assume that you have rudimentary...
November 2011
1 post
How I beat procrastination
The Task: Finish this essay and upload it to my blog within 24 hours.
The hard part about doing stuff is getting started. So for this task I make it as easy as possible to get started. One night prior, I login to my Tumblr account and start a new draft. But I only write the title ‘How I Beat Procrastination’ and stop. I DO NOT shut down the laptop before going to bed. Simply flip ...
October 2011
1 post
“I’ve noticed sometimes people like to talk circles around a problem so...”
June 2011
1 post
5 tags
Help tame email
“F*ck! My email is outta control!
We love to blame email for all our time management screw ups.
We even tried shutting it off for a few hours a day. But that just antagonized the beast even more. And we had to keep checking up on it to make sure things weren’t REALLY getting out of control.
But lets think about what escalated email’s negative energy in the first place. When...
April 2011
2 posts
Are advertising spaces losing their creative edge?...
An employee at Google was frustrated with meeting rooms getting double booked. So he hacked together a device that hung outside meeting rooms and displayed the name and times of meetings througout the day. It updated wirelessly through the online meeting software. Another employee designed and modded a cover for the device.
Cool product launched! A couple of nerds at Skype This creative...
5 tags
Do ad people make less than educators?
Shira (a fictitious art director) works in advertising. She makes 100k a year. That’s a good chunk of money.
100K
But let’s calculate her salary in terms of amount of HOURS worked compared to an educator. Let’s say Shira, like educators, didn’t have to work for the spring, summer and winter breaks. That’s 3 months of no work and no pay. Which amounts to three months of no salary. Her...
February 2011
1 post
Just how manipulative is advertising?
We’ve heard this before: “Advertising makes people buy stuff they don’t want”
Really?
I guess I must have skipped manipulation 101 in adschool. Because I would love to have some of those superpowers. I would manipulate my boss to give me the best assignments. Maybe I would manipulate clients to buy more work instead of faffing around.
Based on my experience, advertising does one of two...
January 2011
3 posts
What is inactionable?
Inactionable We need to push our space program to the next level
Actionable We need to send a man to the moon in 10 years Goal: The Moon Timeframe: 10 years
If you are a creative director and hear yourself say “We need to improve the quality of our creative product” STOP and make it actionable.
4 tags
How to use twitter: The 10 sec tutorial
No one cares about what you’re doing (unless you’re insanely famous)
People care if you can impart useful knowledge. Any knowledge.
Three kinds of people work for you
Freelancer mindset I will work x hrs at x rate. I will deliver on the assignment and move on to the next project. Either here or somewhere else. Employee mindset I will work so I can learn from my job, get good performance reviews, get a raise and hopefully get promoted. Entreprenuer mindset I will make you more money than you invest in me. I will help you recruit more people and make...
December 2010
0 posts
5 tags
What us folks in advertising can learn from guns
After spending years perfecting their swordsmanship, the Samurais got their heads blown off by tiny bits of lead. That’s innovation.
Guns made all of the Samurai discipline, training, craftsmanship irrelevant.
The same amount of time the samurais could have spent inventing a gun were spent doing the same useless training over and over again.
And now, decades later, gun warfare is...
November 2010
2 posts
What is donkey work?
Hauling dirt is donkey work. Labor intensive but inefficient. And at the end of the day there’s very little to show for all that effort. Here’s an example of an experienced project manager (PM) generating donkey work: PM: I’ve scheduled a scrum every morning at 10am. Me: What’s a scrum? PM: It’s a status meeting. I get to keep track of where everyone is at. Me: So can we not tell you...