Paul Merrill
Parade magazine is not where I usually look for visual inspiration. However, this article’s headline was visually very interesting! (Also, note the creative treatment of the writer’s byline.)
Some takeaways:
1. Look all over to get inspiration.
2. Don’t consider any source of ideas to be unworthy of your attention.
When was the last time you got frustrated with a call center operator? It’s easy to do. First, it probably took you ten minutes to reach an actual human. The person at the other end of the line may have an accent that is hard to understand. They may not be trained to know the exact answer to the question you asked. They may not have the authority to refund your purchase price.
So give them a break. Remember:
1. They probably have little influence over the setup of their company’s phone maze.
2. They may be having a bad day too.
3. They breathe air and eat food just like you do.
4. They might actually enjoy sharing a cup of tea with you, given the opportunity.
Lists keep me sane. Putting something on a list allows me to stop worrying about it. I love knowing that I’m keeping track of most of my to-do items on various lists. I enjoy being able to easily find those lists.
Evernote is a tool that helps me keep track of my lists. It’s free and also cloud-based, so I can access those lists from my mobile device. (Like every cloud-based tool I’ve used, that aspect is not perfect… syncing may or may not happen as fast as I want it to. However, it does work most of the time.)
There is tons of functionality that Evernote offers. I am barely scratching the surface. Only using it for lists works well for me.
Give it a try! This is not a paid ad. I use Evernote and think you should too.
The great thing about being a kid is that many times you just don’t care what other people think.
We went skiing a few weeks ago, and this kid fell asleep on a very busy staircase in the main ski lodge. He didn’t care about what other people thought. He was so exhausted that he had to collapse right then and there.
I was jealous of his strong filters. What a cool thing to be able to sleep there!
I was not jealous of the kid’s parents. Their filters were a bit underdeveloped. I feared a skier who had one too many beers at the bar would stomp on the kid’s head on their way down the staircase. At least the kid had a helmet on. (But in all fairness to his unseen parents, maybe they were so tired they collapsed on a different staircase.)
