A Note From The President

Avil Beckford, President

Readers of Ambeck Edge know that I am a voracious reader, but what some of you may not know is that I often integrate what I have read into my personal and professional life. Reading is a way for me to expand my body of knowledge. In How to Read a Book, the authors Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren suggest that there are three reasons for reading - for entertainment, information and for understanding. I read for all three reasons.

However, when I read, I do not read in a vacuum, I build on what I already know, so I am continuously furthering my knowledge. This has served me well as a researcher because I am able to question things that do not look right to me. This has also served me well when working on projects. For instance, I recently worked on a project for an association where I had to write 15 stories for an Anniversary Booklet. Because I read extensively and broadly I had a large pool of knowledge to draw so I was able to do a good job and make the stories very different.

Recently, I have found myself writing many articles, and studies have shown that over 80 percent of people read an article because of the title or headline. So how can you increase the chances that your information gets read?

To answer this question, I will demonstrate how reading has helped me tremendously with writing good headlines. I am not a master headline writer, but the more I practice writing headlines, the better my headlines, and the more they grab attention.

In the 1926 book The Art of Thought, Graham Wallas, an American psychologist, adopted and expanded, Hermann von Helmholtz's process to develop an idea. In the book, Wallas describes a four-stage process for generating great ideas - preparation, incubation, illumination and verification.

In the preparation stage, a period of study and fact-finding, you gather information to resolve any issues, challenges or problems that you may be facing. This phase includes activities such as reading about the subject matter to identify what's been done before, interviewing subject experts and any other means of collecting opinions or ideas on the subject. When you become stressed, bored, overwhelmed, or distracted, or feel that it's futile to gather more information, it's time to take a break. Stop thinking about the problem(s) and let all the information incubate. Mull it over for a while. Though you are not consciously working on your issues, challenges or problems, your subconscious or other than conscious is busy working at connecting the different pieces of information to form ideas, creating something different and new.

When you least expect it, you have a sudden flash of insight, an "aha" moment where the new ideas to resolve your issues, challenges or problems surface to your conscious mind and you suddenly become illumined - the light bulb goes on. The great ideas that surface could be implemented the way you conceived them, or you may have to refine them so that they're workable.

So, even though The Art of Thought was written to help people generate new ideas, I have expanded that concept to help me generate better titles and headlines. I prepare myself by knowing the material that I am writing about inside out. I also have a list of 52 headline archetypes and a headline file I have been building with some of the most successful headlines over the past 100 years. I practice using the archetypes to write my headline. Sometimes I will write at least 100 headlines as practice for coming up with the right one. When I feel as if I have done enough, I forget about it and move to another task. Incubation is a very important stage for the appropriate headline to form. Suddenly the light bulb goes on and I have the right headline. The time it takes to move through this four-stage process varies. For me, it has taken as little as under an hour to as long as two months. One thing is sure is that the process works.

If you think that you don't have time to read, THINK AGAIN!

Until next time! Avil

P.S. Like this newsletter? Will customize for medium-sized firms that want to distribute it to their staff. Contact me at avil.beckford@ambeck.com and let's talk!

Book Review

Wake Up And Live By Dorothea Brand

Wake Up And Live, first published in 1936 is a result of its author's experience. Dorothea Brand after evaluating her life realized that, like so many others, she was not living up to her true potential. She came across a formula for success - act as if it were impossible to fail - which transformed her life. A writer by trade, Brand's output soared after her eureka moment.

In Wake Up And Live, Brand talks extensively about failure devoting four of the twelve chapters to it. Though so much time and emphasis is placed on failure, you do not feel overwhelmed while reading the book, but you get a better sense of what failure is – its many different faces - how it manifests in your life, and what to do to transform failure into success.

Brand presents her point of view by identifying the common denominators for those of us who are under the grip of the Will to Fail. She also provides three very different real life case studies to support her premise. " There are still more obscure and unnoticeable ways of falling victim to the Will to Fail, ways to which introverts and extroverts are almost equally susceptible. Consider the innumerable persons, for instance, who deliberately undertake work which calls for only a small part of their abilities and training, and who then drive themselves over useless details."

Her remedy for preventing failure and implementing the formula for success is for individuals to visualize or vision a past success, and get into that feeling state, so that when they are ready to undertake any endeavour, they can go back to that former state and experience success. When you get to the heart of what she is saying, a lot of what Brand says isn't new, however, she presents the information differently, and as an added treat she provides us with 12 disciplines to help us to make our minds both keener and flexible and live successfully. Her 12 disciples include: spend an hour everyday without saying anything except in answer to direct questions, learn to think for 30 minutes a day exclusively on one subject, talk for 15 minutes each day without using I, me, mine and my, before you enter a crowded room, pause at the door, and consider for a moment your relation to those who are in it, and plan two hours of a day and live according to the plan. If we take the discipline of pausing before entering a room, the author's intent is to train us to see all the possibilities in front of us and the aim of the discipline pertaining to planning our day is to "give ourselves the experience of being under orders again, and second, to demonstrate how badly we lose our sense of time necessary to accomplish any stipulated activity." When we master sticking to our plan for two hours, increase it to three and so on until we can stick to our plan for an entire day.

Five Great Ideas

1. Know thyself!
2. When undertaking any endeavour, act as if it were impossible to fail
3. Those who reach success are likely to be constant workers
4. No one can dictate another's personal definition for success. Success may or may not include recognition from your peers, and greater financial rewards. Someone who is living responsibly, usefully, effectively, happily, and taking advantage of opportunities and natural gifts is a success
5. It is the sum of small things successfully done that lifts a life out of bondage to the humdrum
   

This book is worth reading to get yet another perspective on living a fulfilled life. Just practicing the 12 disciplines will allow us to wake up and live a more purposeful life. A small book at 182 pages of large print, Wake Up And Live is an easy read. At the very least, ask yourself, "What would I be doing in life if it were impossible for me to fail"?

February's Book List

Wake Up And Live, Dorothea Brand

Survey Results

According to Dr. Charles Gerba - the world's leading expert on workplace germs - of the University of Arizona:

• The average office desk plays host to 400 times more germs than a lavatory seat
• When it comes to computer mice and keyboards, those belonging to women have three to four times more germs than those used by men
• When it came to examining the dark recesses of the desk drawer, lurking among the long-forgotten snacks, mouldy bananas and stale make-up, the scientists found a bacterial paradise, with seven times more germs hiding out in women's desks than in men's
  

Source: http://www.management-issues.com/2007/2/16/research/womens-desks-are-dirtier.asp

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