A mash-up idea

Last week there was a great post by the always enlightening Mitch Joel on his blog - Six Pixels of Separation. (I think you would enjoy his musings).

In this post he shared a TED Talk by James Howard Kunstler on Sense of Place. James speaks to how urban design has mutated into something awful and basically - designers and planners don't give a damn. It's a great rant, and a passionate viewpoint.

Mitch equates the talk to how online advertising sucks. You may get even more out of it, if you are willing to stretch the thinking beyond simply urban design. For instance, I was impressed with the idea of caring. Caring about our work. There are times every week where I know I want to say, "screw it", and just grin and bill it. I'm sure you do to. But truly caring about the work, your clients and the folks who look at your advertising means not saying screw it. It means being very thoughtful about everything we put out.

Now the mash-up.

I am reading (and I'm a bit embarrassed to say) for the first time, How to Win Friends and Influence People. What a great book! Read it - or read it again. You will find so much valuable information in it for working with people.

In the opening of the book Dale Carnegie illustrates an important idea - conducting a weekly review. In the case of the illustration, he tells the story of a banker who at the end of the week would go to his calendar and think through all the engagements, discussions and meetings that had taken place during the week and he would ask himself what mistakes he had made. What did he do right? What could he have done better.

The reviews often made him upset at himself for the mistakes he made, but as time passed the mistakes became fewer. Wouldn't it be a great idea to go back and review your work for the week and see where you just said "screw it"?

Then ask yourself what could I have done better? How could I have avoided that?

I'm going to try it - for my meetings and discussions but also for the work we put out.