Election Day Should Be a Holiday

Find it very strange that we take days off to celebrate past presidents but election day isn't a holiday. As The Atlantic wrote in 1998, we could easily combine Election Day with Veterans Day in order to both symbolically and practically unite defending our freedoms w/ the act of voting.

In a time that seems to becoming more partisan and polarizing, perhaps increasing the voter turnout is the hedge against pandering to your base and the median voter. Perhaps every state would be in-play if we had 100% turnout every election.

Slow Media: Don't Consume for Consumption Sake

There's a "Slow Media" manifesto which attempts to apply the same mindfulness of Slow Food to how we digest media. For me, Slow Media is about *not* reading/watching/listening just to get to the end of something, but rather really enjoying a piece of media. Allowing myself to pause and think critically about what i'm consuming. What are some ways i do this?

1. Evernote/Moleskine - taking notes on a book as i go both increases my cognition and slows down my pace.

2. Slow breathing - seriously, when i'm running through a bunch of feeds or straining to get to the end of an article, i experience a version of email apnea. If you're not breathing - or breathing really quickly - while you consume media, you're likely not Slow Media mode.

3. Post a comment, email the author - by thinking about not just what i'm reading but what is my response or reaction, i'm able to engage the content with a different goal in mind. A goal what thinks about adding to conversation, not just absorbing it.

Connect your YouTube<>Twitter accounts to get more followers

YouTube just launched a new feature that will help video uploaders get more Twitter followers. Basically, when someone tweets your video using our "Share to Twitter" functionality, we'll suggest they follow your twitter account on the confirmation screen.

How can you make this work for you? You need to connect your Twitter account to your YouTube account in the Account Settings (see screenshot below). Note: also see the settings here to opt-in or out of Tweeting your uploads, likes, favorites, etc.

 

Flick me? No, flick you!

Update: comcast found this post and responded in the comments. Impressive social media team!

Comcast wanted me to have a free movie. You'd figure it would just be automatically credited to my account and i could pick one on VOD. Nope - flip over the coupon. You need to send it in w/ your account number AND the name of the movie you bought. Really? They can't even use technology to correlate my account to the (or any) movie i rented? I can only imagine they state of their IT.

Discussion meetings vs Decision meetings

One meeting tip: it can be helpful to tell participants upfront whether this is a discussion meeting or a decision meeting. A discussion meeting can be messy - the goal is to get ideas out on the table, build on them, understand each other's point of view. Discussion meetings can also be used to come up with the criteria and data which will allow you to make a decision. 

A decision meeting means we agree we need to leave here with a resolution. And even if you have different perspectives, the goal of the meeting is to have a clear actionable outcome.

Sometimes meetings can be both, but often, esp on complex topics, rather than having a rolling series of endless discussions, you just need to say "the point of this meeting is not to resolve this issue but rather to make sure that next time we meet, we have everything we need to make a quick decision."