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Changing the world, one life at a time

It’s tempting to want to change the world and do it all at once. But almost all revolutions start small. Martin Luther King didn’t give his first speech at the Lincoln Memorial. Facebook didn’t start as a 3 billion people network. The first iPhone was laughed at by most. But because all of them crafted a message that was beloved by some people and made these people feel special, their message could spread.

When we try to please everyone, we’re forced to make compromises. We’re forced to include more details. We’re forced to leave out the controversial parts of our message. All of this makes it harder for the special someones to truly love our message.

It takes courage, yes. We might miss out on a lot of people at first. But what gets easily overlooked is how we miss out on changing anyone’s life when no-one really gets us because it’s just a generic, everything-for-everyone message that no-one in particular loves and feels the urge to spread.

So, who do you start with?

Saying what you mean

Is actually quite easy: Just say it.

It’s amazing how much time we spend with looking for fancy ways of phrasing what we mean when the most powerful way of saying things is actually to just plainly say it.

Fancy is much overrated. Take one of the most famous advertising slogans of all time: “A thousand songs in your pocket”. There’s really nothing fancy about it. It’s just plain English.

But it’s concrete. It’s specific. It’s the result of asking “But what does it mean?” repeatedly until you’ve arrived at a plain English version of what “An MP3 player with a 5GB hard drive” actually means.

Relevance creates resonance. Fancy often misleads us away from relevance.

About a happy man – Donald Knuth’s approach to email

I have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when I no longer had an email address. I’d used email since about 1975, and it seems to me that 15 years of email is plenty for one lifetime. – Donald Knuth

We’re now 31 years past Jan 1, 1990 and Donald Knuth still is a happy man who has no email address. Knuth is one of the most famous computer scientists (in case you don’t know him). His work includes “The Art of Computer Programming”, a beautiful but at the same time scary multivolume and never finished piece of art about the craft of computer programming.

But why would a computer scientist – of all people – get rid of email? Here’s Knuth’s answer:

Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things.

Thus, he takes roughly one day every six months to answer to mail and he spends the rest of his days digging deep (and continuing to write The Art of Computer Programming).

When have you last dug that deep? When have you last consciously shut down email (and other messaging channels) to focus on a thing that is near and dear to your heart? What could you achieve if you shut down email for just one week?

The lazy designer

So, I’m not a designer. But I design all my visuals myself. I’ve adapted a posture that I call “the posture of the lazy designer” and I thought you might be interested in it.

I think that good designers are – in a way – lazy designers. For three reasons:

1. They will not start a design until they have clarity about what to design. Who is it for? What’s the change? Why do we need that visual? Once you’re clear about what to design the how becomes much easier (and much more efficient).

2. They will let the content make as many decisions as possible. If your piece makes any sense, there will be tons of correlations among the contents. Make use of them. Things that belong together are placed close together, things that don’t are spatially separated. Things that are the same look the same. Things that are different look different (not just a bit but no-doubt-different).

3. They will make effective use of constraints. One color is enough to design almost anything. Two might be useful in many situations. Three? Depends. The same is true for almost anything: fonts, shapes, you name it. A good rule of thumb is this: Stick with the smallest selection unless you have a strong reason not to, i.e. unless you have a strong reason to add to the selection of fonts, colors, shapes etc., avoid it.

The 2nd priority

… is the reason why we don’t accomplish our 1st priority.

Get a good price and get the deal at all cost. Grow your business and spend more time with the family. Few production errors and the cheapest product.

As soon as we have a 2nd priority, the 1st priority isn’t a priority any more. It’s become one of two (or more) constraints. The more constraints we have, the more likely it is that we have to compromise on any of these constraints.

The same is true in communication. As soon as you have two (or more) goals for your presentation, for your meeting, for your speech, you’ll probably have to compromise on either.

Let’s say it straight: The 2nd priority is the reason we don’t go full steam on our 1st priority. Better to focus on one priority and handle any other constraints as exactly that: constraints.

Spread the Word

Picture of Dr. Michael Gerharz

Dr. Michael Gerharz