Kevin Rothermel

No Spoilers.

Brand Strategist
Professor, VCU Brandcenter

No Spoilers.

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Facebook Reduction

I have a lot of friends who have recently hung up their Facebook boots. It sounds wonderful to be free of that nightmare.

I can’t just get rid of it though. I need it professionally, and there’s a lot of people on there that I really like but would probably never talk to again if I left.

Deleting my account just isn’t an option.

What I need is less Facebook.

Maybe a couple minutes of Facebook a day.

So yesterday, on a whim, while I was waiting for someone to grab some pretzels from the AV group’s snack stash, I deleted Facebook from my phone.

Just to see what happens.

And let me tell you brother, what I found out about myself was horrific and embarassing. I have seen the face of addiction, and I had no idea how out of hand it had become until it wasn’t there anymore.

I must have compulsively unlocked my phone 4 or 5 times while getting ready this morning. Momemtarily confused when I came to my senses, realizing what had just happened.

I felt the urge at every stoplight on the drive in. That surge of domamine gets going and the phone is in your hands before you know it. When you catch yourself, the happy chemicals in your brain are shut off with an abrubt harumph. Like it hits a wall.

That wall is sanity, my friends.

It’s amazing. And I’m more convinced than ever that life would be better with less of it.

iPad is next.

Then I’ll just need to figure out how to remove it from the Internet.

Why leaders should shut up sometimes and what it means for agencies

But if you want a leader to unlock the potential of their people, to encourage them to use their imagination, their initiative and be original and, well, creative, you’re best looking for an introvert.

Someone who likes to listen more than talk, someone who likes IDEAS, not MY idea.

Someone who isn’t intimidating, who thinks before they speak and doesn’t want to win arguments, they want the right answer.

Yet the model for agency leaders and heads of departments seem to be fancy pants model.

Sure it’s a business that rewards ideas, but it’s also a business that rewards sociopathic tendencies. 

 

Willpower and cognitive processing draw from the same pool of resources.

Proof that leaving baked goods in the office kitchen is treachery:

Spend hours at work on a tricky design problem? You’re more likely to stop at Burger King on the drive home. Hold back from saying what you really think during one of those long-ass, painful meetings? You’ll struggle with the code you write later that day.

Since both willpower/self-control and cognitive tasks drain the same tank, deplete it over here, pay the price over there. One pool. One pool of scarce, precious, easily-depleted resources. If you spend the day exercising self-control (angry customers, clueless co-workers), by the time you get home your cog resource tank is flashing E.

From: Serious Pony

Applause is a contagion

New research at Uppsala University in Sweden has revealed that applause spreads through a crowd more like a contagion than a reaction to a performer…

…And they found there’s little relation between the quality of a performance and the amount of applause that follows it. It’s more a question of what everyone around you is doing.”

And A Capella is the cure.

Via NPR

David Sederis on Q&A Microphones

Sometimes they want to put microphones in the audience, and I don’t like that … because there’s a certain kind of person who goes up to the microphone. And I don’t like that person. Because they want the microphone…

No one likes the guy that wants the microphone…