Know your audience.
I took a class once. OK, I've taken MANY classes. But this particular class was about "The Art of Email", or some such fancy title. It was a class teaching people in the corporate world how to properly structure and compose a professional email. I'm certain I don't remember all of it, but a few salient points have stuck with me.
I think the first rule was "know your audience". On the surface, that may seem a tad obvious. An email between close friends would likely be a bit different than an email between, say, a job-seeker and the HR screener at a company where said job-seeker wants to be working.
Had a thought (I know...that NEVER happens. Me, in the middle of a sentence, having my brain go off in a different direction).
A good friend of mine, Mike Wickham, is big on letter writing. You know, pen, paper, envelope, stamp, the whole thing. It has a special meaning to him and his family. When I was growing up, it was a huge deal to get a letter from my uncle in Seattle, or my great-aunt. My uncle was a newspaper columnist, so his letters were always typewritten. My great-aunt was a retired school teacher, and hers were always hand-written. Even into her 80s, with arthritis, she would take the time to write letters. People don't do that much any more.
Anyway, back to the whole "know your audience" thing. So, we were taught to focus our message, our email, on the intended person or group. What I don't remember hearing in that class was to think beyond the addressee. I don't know about you all, but I've had emails that have been forwarded on to other people...people who were not necessarily my originally-intended audience. Sometimes, people I don't even know. So the manner in which I "speak" in an email to my colleague might be quick, casual, and focused, I may not necessarily have one of the Senior VPs of the company in mind as an "audience" when I'm writing. My colleague might have a background or history of the topic that the VP might not have. My colleague might be used to my particular sense of humor. That VP has likely never met me, and might not think a reference to lyrics from an old rock tune is necessarily appropriate in a work email.
I'm sure you've heard it said that once somebody hits "send", there's no taking it back. It's out there in the electronic world, and even if we hit "recall" and "delete"...it's never ever truly "gone".
So, why is Lar talking about this stuff today? Miscommunication, that's why. I don't know if it ever happens to anyone else, but it happens to me. Even sometimes between my wife and myself, and she knows me better than anybody. Yesterday, I blogged about "Progress, not perfection". In the opening paragraph or so, it seemed like I was beating myself up pretty badly for not being "perfect" in my desire to write in my blog every day. One of the problems with a written message is that it's difficult to get "tone" across to the reader. In my blog, I was attempting to be dryly sarcastic. I wasn't actually beating myself up, I was actually chuckling at myself. Now, truth to tell, there was a time when I would have beat myself up over that. But fortunately, I've grown beyond that. But as my wife pointed out, if someone were reading that blog post and didn't know me, they might read those first couple of paragraphs and get the wrong idea. Now, if someone read the whole blog, hopefully they understood that I was poking fun at this concept of "perfection".
Know your audience.
Excellent question. Who IS my audience with this blog? Why am I writing it? Well, as selfish as it may sound, it's really mostly for me. As one friend told me after reading some of this stuff, "You write like you have all this in your head, and if you don't get it out, you'll explode." Well...something like that. I don't know if it's quite that dramatic, but it's something like that. I write because it helps me see things differently. It makes me slow down and think about things at a greater depth. Yeah, my brain is always going a million miles an hour. Or at least, it seems like that to me. By writing, I'm forcing myself to slow down, "see" what I'm thinking, and giving myself time and opportunity to put at least a little focus into it. Therapeutic? Probably. But more importantly to me, it's fun. At least, for now. Who knows? I may find after a month or two that it's more of a "chore" than it is for me today. But for now, I'm enjoying it.
But what about your audience? Well...unlike when I get on stage as a musician, I'm not trying to "perform" here. This is pretty much me. Would it be nice if folks read it and gain something from it? Well, that'd be nice. I'm hoping that somewhere along my path of life that I'm able to be a blessing to at least one or two people. If that blessing happens as a result of me writing, cool beans. But for the most part, my audience is me. This writing helps me take a look at me. And it gives me a chance to reflect on the "wonder" that is me. No, that is not braggadocios, that is truth. God tells me that I am "fearfully and wonderfully made". I wasted a lot of years wishing I was somebody or something other than who I am. Smarter, stronger, faster, more popular, made more money...whatever. But I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I am the only "me" in this whole of existence. God created me, He loves me so much that He sacrificed Himself for me, and He has richly blessed me in more ways than I can possibly enumerate. He calls me his precious child. Yeah...that's pretty awesome.
So for today, the audience is me. And that's enough.
My two cents worth.
I think the first rule was "know your audience". On the surface, that may seem a tad obvious. An email between close friends would likely be a bit different than an email between, say, a job-seeker and the HR screener at a company where said job-seeker wants to be working.
Had a thought (I know...that NEVER happens. Me, in the middle of a sentence, having my brain go off in a different direction).
A good friend of mine, Mike Wickham, is big on letter writing. You know, pen, paper, envelope, stamp, the whole thing. It has a special meaning to him and his family. When I was growing up, it was a huge deal to get a letter from my uncle in Seattle, or my great-aunt. My uncle was a newspaper columnist, so his letters were always typewritten. My great-aunt was a retired school teacher, and hers were always hand-written. Even into her 80s, with arthritis, she would take the time to write letters. People don't do that much any more.
Anyway, back to the whole "know your audience" thing. So, we were taught to focus our message, our email, on the intended person or group. What I don't remember hearing in that class was to think beyond the addressee. I don't know about you all, but I've had emails that have been forwarded on to other people...people who were not necessarily my originally-intended audience. Sometimes, people I don't even know. So the manner in which I "speak" in an email to my colleague might be quick, casual, and focused, I may not necessarily have one of the Senior VPs of the company in mind as an "audience" when I'm writing. My colleague might have a background or history of the topic that the VP might not have. My colleague might be used to my particular sense of humor. That VP has likely never met me, and might not think a reference to lyrics from an old rock tune is necessarily appropriate in a work email.
I'm sure you've heard it said that once somebody hits "send", there's no taking it back. It's out there in the electronic world, and even if we hit "recall" and "delete"...it's never ever truly "gone".
So, why is Lar talking about this stuff today? Miscommunication, that's why. I don't know if it ever happens to anyone else, but it happens to me. Even sometimes between my wife and myself, and she knows me better than anybody. Yesterday, I blogged about "Progress, not perfection". In the opening paragraph or so, it seemed like I was beating myself up pretty badly for not being "perfect" in my desire to write in my blog every day. One of the problems with a written message is that it's difficult to get "tone" across to the reader. In my blog, I was attempting to be dryly sarcastic. I wasn't actually beating myself up, I was actually chuckling at myself. Now, truth to tell, there was a time when I would have beat myself up over that. But fortunately, I've grown beyond that. But as my wife pointed out, if someone were reading that blog post and didn't know me, they might read those first couple of paragraphs and get the wrong idea. Now, if someone read the whole blog, hopefully they understood that I was poking fun at this concept of "perfection".
Know your audience.
Excellent question. Who IS my audience with this blog? Why am I writing it? Well, as selfish as it may sound, it's really mostly for me. As one friend told me after reading some of this stuff, "You write like you have all this in your head, and if you don't get it out, you'll explode." Well...something like that. I don't know if it's quite that dramatic, but it's something like that. I write because it helps me see things differently. It makes me slow down and think about things at a greater depth. Yeah, my brain is always going a million miles an hour. Or at least, it seems like that to me. By writing, I'm forcing myself to slow down, "see" what I'm thinking, and giving myself time and opportunity to put at least a little focus into it. Therapeutic? Probably. But more importantly to me, it's fun. At least, for now. Who knows? I may find after a month or two that it's more of a "chore" than it is for me today. But for now, I'm enjoying it.
But what about your audience? Well...unlike when I get on stage as a musician, I'm not trying to "perform" here. This is pretty much me. Would it be nice if folks read it and gain something from it? Well, that'd be nice. I'm hoping that somewhere along my path of life that I'm able to be a blessing to at least one or two people. If that blessing happens as a result of me writing, cool beans. But for the most part, my audience is me. This writing helps me take a look at me. And it gives me a chance to reflect on the "wonder" that is me. No, that is not braggadocios, that is truth. God tells me that I am "fearfully and wonderfully made". I wasted a lot of years wishing I was somebody or something other than who I am. Smarter, stronger, faster, more popular, made more money...whatever. But I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I am the only "me" in this whole of existence. God created me, He loves me so much that He sacrificed Himself for me, and He has richly blessed me in more ways than I can possibly enumerate. He calls me his precious child. Yeah...that's pretty awesome.
So for today, the audience is me. And that's enough.
My two cents worth.
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