What's Best Next

You are here: Home / Blog

iPad 3 Likely to Have High Resolution Display

by

From Mike Allen’s Playbook the other day:

TOP TALKER –Supply-chain leak on iPad 3 — WSJ.com (not in print edition!):  “Apple … has ordered … display panels and chips for a new iPad it is aiming to launch in early 2012 … The next generation iPad is expected to feature a high resolution display – 2048 by 1536 compared with 1024 by 768 in the iPad 2 … One component supplier to Apple said the company has already placed orders for parts for about 1.5 million iPad 3s in the fourth quarter.”

This is great news. 2048 x 1536 is a huge improvement. This would make the iPad far more usable, in my view. And it’s great to know, if the WSJ is accurate here, that the iPad 3 will likely be coming in early 2012.

6 Principles for Making Ideas Stick

by

In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath point out that bad ideas often keep circulating, while good ideas often have a hard time succeeding.

Why is that?

That’s the question their book — which most have probably heard of by now — answers.

To make an impact, your idea has to stick. A “sticky” idea is one that is understood and remembered, and has lasting impact. A sticky idea changes the audience’s opinions or behavior.

How do you make your ideas sticky? They give six points. Here they are, from my notes on the book:

  1. Simple. This gets people to understand.
  2. Unexpected. This gets people to pay attention and maintain interest.
  3. Concrete. This gets people to understand so they remember.
  4. Credible. This helps show that your idea is true.
  5. Emotions. This gets people to care.
  6. Stories. This gets people to act.

The rest of the book unpacks each of those ideas. It is well worth a read if you haven’t already.

9 Core Principles of Writing

by

Last summer, in preparation for writing my book, I read 15 or so books on writing and publishing. I then went back through the books and typed up the most important points from them into a single document (which came to 66 pages).

Out of all of this — and based also just on what I already knew about writing from classes (especially from two incredible English and composition teachers in high school) and just plain writing a lot — I pulled together what I take to be the top 9 core principles for effective writing.

Here they are:

  1. Omit needless words
  2. Use the active voice
  3. Be clear
  4. Be concrete and specific, permeating the work with details. For non-fiction, interviews are a helpful way to do this.
  5. Build your work around a key question
  6. Create tension
  7. Be yourself
  8. Write with nouns and verbs, not adjectives and adverbs
  9. Give the reader room to play their role (for example, when you state an amazing fact, don’t then say “that’s really amazing.” Let readers do their own marveling)

If you have other core principles that you think should be included in this list, I’d love to hear them.

Tom Brady on Leadership

by

This was an enjoyable and insightful read.

Key point:

But I really enjoyed the second half, and focused on Brady using every spare moment to mentor and teach. For almost the entire third quarter, he sat with his top three receivers, Deion Branch, Wes Welker and Chad Ochocinco, newly acquired from the Cincinnati Bungles (see photo below). Brady was talking non-stop, gesturing, getting up and demonstrating, etc. Ochocinco was asking questions, and Welker would get in on the reply. Crass and disparaging as it is to compare football to mission, I have to admit that the exchange really reminded me of a missionary teaching his men how to run with the ball entrusted to us by our Coach. We are to do and teach. Show and tell. Find a “Peter, James and John” and help our disciples to be successful (in God’s eyes) …

5 Points on Sustaining Interest in Your Presentations

by

Also from my notes on Chip and Dan Heath’s article:

  1. Before the audience will value the info you’re giving, they have to want it. Demand has to come before supply.
  2. Therefore tease, don’t simply tell, by opening knowledge gaps and filling them.
  3. “Great presentations are mysteries, not encyclopedic entries.”
  4. “Curiosity must come before content.”
  5. Don’t structure your presentation by asking “what’s the next point I should make” but “what’s the next question I want them to wrestle with.”

And, here are a few great points on using data well:

  1. Don’t lead with the data — that leaves it abstract, and doesn’t move people emotionally. Tell a story about an individual first, and then say “our research suggests that there are 900,000 stories like this, in Mumbai alone.”
  2. “Data are just summaries of thousands of stories — tell a few of those stories to help make the data meaningful.”