Bits and Pieces 

Diversity Quotas – Do Advocates Really Believe in Them? 

Wokeness: the pathology of believing one can be virtuous by advocating ideas one hasn’t thought about.

Example…

Diversity quotas: the policy of establishing institutional quota systems for groups based on race, ethnicity, or gender.

In this short video clip, college students are asked if they agree with the policy of using racial quota systems to achieve “representative” diversity in colleges, businesses, and other institutions. Without exception, they agree. Then they are asked another question, which lays bare the superficiality of their thinking and makes at least a few of them think about the question for the first time.

Smart Choices, Martha Stewart, and Computer Logic 

“Which car to buy?” “Which restaurant to eat at? “Which clothes to save and which to get rid of?”

“If I had a bit more time to research the alternatives and think about my choices, I could arrive at the best answer,” you might say. “Ain’t necessarily so,” according to Tom Griffiths, a computer logician.

In his TED Talk (below), Griffiths argues that many human problems – even mundane ones – are logically complex. Too complex to arrive at a “right” decision through research and hard thinking. To solve such problems, you must do what computers do, he says. And that means taking logical shortcuts.

One logical shortcut that works for quandaries like the three mentioned above is called the explore/exploit tradeoff. Griffiths explains it here…

By the way, recency of use, as Griffiths points out, is, in most cases, the most important criteria. I think it’s interesting that the two queens of domestic efficiency, Martha Stewart and Marie Kondo, include this as a key question.

Why Old Marketers Don’t Like New Ideas 

“The strategies that made you successful in the past will, at some point, reach their limit. Don’t let your previous choices set your future ceiling. The willingness to try new ideas allows you to keep advancing.”– James Clear

One of the many counterintuitive things I’ve learned in my business career is that senior marketing executives – who should be eager to keep up with and test new advertising trends – tend to be among the most resistant to them.

I believe there are two reasons for this.

1. Being competitive individuals, the best marketers like to promote and defend their own marketing ideas over those of others.
2. The insights and experiences they had early in their careers, which propelled them into senior positions, still feel valid to them, even in the face of contrary indications.

Thus, they are prone to dismissing new ideas as fool’s gold – superficially glittering but fundamentally flawed ideas that are unlikely to work because they don’t fit into their understanding of how things should work, which is based on their 20- and 30-year-old brilliant ideas.

In a recent blog post, James Clear discusses this. New ideas are often dismissed as gimmicks and toys, he says. “The first telephone could only carry voices a mile or two. The leading telco of the time, Western Union, passed on acquiring the phone because they didn’t see how it could possibly be useful to businesses and railroads – their primary customers.”

In our industry – information publishing – social media platforms are evolving at a rapid pace. I can’t keep up with them, but I hope our senior marketers will. Doing so will require them to resist their prejudices and keep an open mind.

A few of us were talking about how quickly information publishing is changing. When we got into it more than 40 years ago, everything was paper and postage stamps. The internet changed all that around the turn of the century. At that time, we paid attention and transitioned into digital publishing. The result was massive growth over the following 20 years, from $100 million to over a billion.

But today the landscape for digital publishing is very different than it was 20, or even 10, years ago. Social media is the name of the game and we’ve not been quick and able adaptors.

Speaking of Counterintuitive… Have You Heard of the Birthday Paradox? 

There were 14 of us at the Cigar Club last Friday. I mentioned that I shared a birthday with one of them, Tony. I mentioned it because I thought it was unusual. Nanie didn’t think so. He said he’d read that any time you have 23 people assembled, there is a better than even chance that two of them will have the same birthday.

I rolled my eyes.

“It’s true,” Louis said. “It’s called the Birthday Paradox.”

I took a sip of my José Cuervo Reserva de la Familia. “Have you ever heard of the Cigar Club Paradox?” I said. “Whenever you have more than 12 people assembled, there is a good chance someone will try to bullshit you.”

It turns out, the Birthday Paradox is a real thing. The next day, I received the following from both Nanie and Louis: two charts that prove it – and below that, a video that explains it. (Hint: It’s not really a paradox.)

(A) Probability of two people not sharing a birthday

(B) Probability of two people sharing a birthday

Click here to watch the video.

Kicking the Social Media Habit 

TD, a friend and colleague, was heavily addicted to social media.

“It got to a point where I was checking my phone 100 times a day… and 95% of the time, I’m not using my phone for anything urgent or important. I just cycle through the same six or seven apps, checking for updates or messages. It’s a form of escapism from boredom and anxiety,” he said. “One consequence of this ‘checking’ compulsion is that I’ve wasted a lot of time hunched over a tiny screen for no reward.”

He implemented a 3-part solution:

1. He replaced his smartphone with a flip phone.
2. He limited his use of the internet to one hour a day.
3. He limited his reading to books and other paper products.

He’s been at this for two months, but admits, “Frankly, I haven’t made a lot of progress.”

I became aware of the problem of email when I first began to use it regularly about 20 years ago. I was writing a daily blog back then called Early to Rise. Among other topics, I wrote about personal productivity.

“It’s becoming clear to me,” I wrote, “that email is going to be a major problem for me unless I get control of it. I find myself opening my email first thing in the morning and then spending several hours on it, but without much to show for it when I’m done. I think that’s because two-thirds of the nearly 100 emails I get each day are either (a) unrelated to my goals (and therefore distracting), (b) related to my goals, but trivial, or (c) messages from others asking me for favors.

“I don’t consider myself to be a morning person, but I’ve found I have the best focus and energy in the first three hours of the day. If I devote those precious hours to email, I’m not only wasting my best hours, I’m putting myself in the unfortunate position of having to do my important work when I’m tired and unfocused.”

The solution, which I recommended to my readers, was to do the important work first and save the email for later. “Break the habit of looking at your email first thing in the morning. Try to put off your email for as long as you possibly can.”

That one trick was a game-changer for me in terms of personal productivity. In the 21 years since I put that rule into practice, I’ve done all sorts of things I would never have done otherwise, including writing and publishing more than two dozen books, producing two movies, developing a non-profit community development center in Nicaragua, developing a 25-acre palm tree botanical garden in Florida, and a current project – building a museum of Central American art.

Social media wasn’t a distraction 20 years ago, but it is now. And to deal with it, I’ve added social media to my don’t-do-in-the-morning list.

After my important work is completed (which is usually in the mid-to-late afternoon, I open my email and sort it by urgency: (1) do today, (2) do this week, and (3) do this month. I do not respond to – in fact, I delete – anything I don’t have to do. Then I deal with my “do today” email, allowing myself no more than 2 hours. If I get it done in less than 2 hours, I work on some of my “do this week” email.

By the time I’m finished with email, it’s usually close to dinner time. I’ve done several hours of important work, and I’ve done all the less-important-but-still-necessary business work that comes via email. I have, in effect, finished working for the day. I am sometimes tempted to go on social media then, but I don’t. I go home and do my best to be sociable.

After dinner, I usually grab a cognac and cigar and sit outside. I spend an hour or on what I call “brain games” – i.e., the NYT crossword puzzle, Sudoku, and various quizzes, the sort of quizzes I sometimes pass along to you.

After that, I hit social media. I have a half-dozen “News & Views” sites that I go to first. I make notes and save some of them for future use. Then I move on to various “Entertainment” sites. These include odd and indefensible rabbit holes such as Karens in the Wild, The Professor (an amazing B-ball player), videos of bungling criminals, etc. A half-hour of this sort of low-brow fun is more than enough. Then I reward myself by reading a good book or watching a good movie.

I can’t say this system will work for everyone, but it works for me. It works for me because it is designed around my nature. I am not good at NOT doing things that I like to do, but I’m quite good at doing things that I think are good for me. By giving myself permission to partake in social media, I don’t feel like I’m depriving myself. But by doing a range of more important things first, I don’t have to worry that I’m wasting too much of my time on junk.

3 Words I’m Trying to Work Into My Conversations 

 * zaftig (Yiddish): Referring to a woman – having a full rounded figure; pleasingly plump; Example: “The actress playing the lead role was a zaftig blonde.”

 * quinary: Of the fifth order of rank. Example: “She discusses other mixtures, including those of the secondary through quinary colors.”

* gigil: A Filipino word describing that sudden urge to pinch or squeeze an unbearably cute object or a person. Example: “The baby was so adorable I had the gigil to squeeze its cheeks.”

Worth Quoting: Obituaries 

 Obituary notices are not usually a source of great fun…

“If one should not speak ill of the recently dead, unless they were utter monsters such as Pol Pot,” said Theodore Dalrymple, writing in Taki’s Magazine, “one should not speak facetiously of them, either.”

The temptation is nevertheless great…

“You should never say anything bad about the dead, only good,” said Bette Davis upon learning of Joan Crawford’s death. “Joan Crawford is dead. Good.”