emonome

Saturdays, you know. Productivity-wise it’s perhaps the best day of the week for me. Spent the morning at Starbucks, as usual, catching up on reading, writing, and - sue me for this - thinking. I wrote a future blog post long-hand; it’s titled, as of now, “How To Say ‘No’”. Wrote it in the middle of reading the excellent Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini; he has a section on ‘how to say no’ but mine is more twisted. I’m not sure but I think I learned of the book when someone mentioned it on Twitter. Gotta love Twitter! Outlined two more episodes of my movie series. Consumed two Ventis - red eye! Hands shook for a long time.

A thing I do usually when I go to the library is walk over to the CD shelf and scan the whole fucking thing to randomly pick music. I hadn’t planned to yesterday…but something told me I should. It was me! If I hadn’t…these are what I’d have missed.

Soundtrack: ROME, Straight Outta Compton: NWA, Memory Almost Full: Paul McCartney, Alright Still: Lily Allen, Hotel: Moby, and Magic: Bruce Springsteen.

Moral of the story: Listen to yourself, even if your voice sounds like a 11-yr old kid.

Stuff on hold for me yesterday:

The Wisdom of Crowds: James Surowiecki, Execution: Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, and - I’m not kidding - Pour Your Heart Into It: Howard Schultz and Dori Jones Yang, and The Kite Runner soundtrack: Alberto Iglesias.

You, the manager, have to understand, what you’re trying to improve about your organization, as Rob has. But not before you take the time to know who the people are you plan this improvement with. Without understanding those two, how would you manage efficiency - let alone time? How much time and effort does it really take to know who your colleagues are as professionals?

Stay out of asking about their personal lives, though, because, as human nature is, they will use your knowledge of their personal problems as excuses for underrated performance. Don’t open that door.

I wasn’t the only one worried about Microsoft fucking with Flickr.

I’d first read about Patrick and Amina in Event DV. Interested me enough to check out their work and I was amazed at what they’ve done, shattering my perception of wedding documentation. So good was Patrick and Amina’s work that Canon used their work to create a commercial and invite them to give talks. Here’s that video.

The wedding videos are produced as if sequences from film and television movies. That’s how good they look. That’s mostly Patrick who’s, virtually no training, picked up the camera a few years ago and is now creating something like this. I must admit that watching that video inspired me to just pick up the camera - the little one I have - and simply tell stories and quit making fucking excuses for not having time.

Some stories are best told in stills. And Amina tells them extremely well.

Why wouldn’t clients love you and want you if you make them look like royalty, and their ceremony a million dollar event.

The annual Fortune list also provides a breakdown for each company. Google is #1 in that list but #25 in the top paying companies list, maybe because they wouldn’t make their average total pay information available. But if it’s just the money you care about in regards to a job, without any personal or spiritual (why not) growth, you might want to consult this chart.