Michael Bungay Stanier is the founder and Senior Partner of Box of Crayons, a company that “works with organizations around the world to help them do less Good Work and more Great Work.”  In addition to his Box of Crayons work, Michael blogs regularly and he has created an excellent series of podcast interviews with interesting and creative achievers called the Great Work Interview series (here is an example).  He has recently published Do More Great Work, a book to help people achieve their own great work.  We at Broadcasting Brain are great fans of Michael’s work, so it’s a pleasure to do a Thoughts From interview with him.

Let’s start with a two-part question about your own series of interviews. What prompted you to start a podcast series of interviews with people about their own great work? Second, how do you select the various individuals that you’ll be interviewing?
I’m not quite sure what prompted me to start this series. It’s been about two years now. I think it was simply because I was curious and wanted to chat to people. And I have a pretty simple criteria: I’m looking for people who make me think and/or make me laugh and that have something interesting to say. I’m also conscious that a number of these good people are also influencers within their worlds – and that’s an added bonus for me.

Does any interview material wind up on the “cutting room floor” i.e. are there any unused bits that don’t appear in the podcast?
Actually, no. In part that’s because I’m lazy and don’t want to spend a lot of time editing and polishing the interviews. In part it’s because I like the organic flow of the conversation. Probably equal parts of both…

Which fictional character would you most enjoy interviewing to ask them about their great work? Why?
Gosh – that’s hard to narrow down to one. It would most likely be a person from the world of literature, because I’ve got a BA and an M.Phil in literature. Maybe someone like Sherlock Holmes. Or David Malouf’s Ovid (from the book, An Imaginary Life.)

Which deceased individual would you most enjoy interviewing to ask them about their great work? Why?
Mmm… another tough question. Probably one of the big scientists like Marie Curie or Crick. I do admire their pursuit of the unknown – it requires both imagination and discipline, not to mention resilience.

What part of your work gives you the most joy? Why?
There’s not one single part. I really enjoy creating and shaping new material, love performing in front of a group, love seeing something finished like a short movie or a book appear. I heard the term ‘portfolio career’ a number of years ago, and really liked it – building up a ‘portfolio’ of different tasks that all fulfil you in different ways

What part of your work gives you the least joy? Why?
I’m much less excited about travel than I used to be, particularly crossing from Canada to the United States. It’s misery crossing the border.

What was the biggest surprise for you when you wrote your first book (i.e. something that you didn’t expect at all)?
In truth, the joy of holding something beautiful in my hands that I’d largely shaped. I wasn’t expecting to feel so happy about it all.

What simple tip would you recommend that could help anyone to do better work today?
Figure out what you want to say No to. Once you’re clear on that, the Yes’s – the really important Yes’s – will be more obvious.

Pretend the Internet is destroyed over night. What do you do when you wake up the next morning?
Go “woo hoo!” – no more email to check. Then, take a big big breath, and start re-imagining ways to reconnect with people.

Any final thoughts for our readers?
Time’s a ticking. I’ve figured out my “death date”: Sept 15 2043. When’s yours? And what do you want to do, who do you want to be between then and now?

A couple of my posts are featured in the March 5, 2010 edition of the Just Write Blog Carnival at Incurable Disease of Writing:

• Thoughts from Seth Godin
• The struggles of writing and publishing using the Free Model

You should check out the other great posts at Just Write Blog Carnival: March 5, 2010 Edition.  There’s some interesting stuff there for fiction and non-fiction writers.

For more information about the Just Write Blog Carnival, click on this link.

For more information about the main Blog Carnival website, which is a way to get some links and traffic back to your posts, click on this link.

Have a great day!

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I’ve created a new resource for bloggers.  It’s pretty simple, but I hope it helps.

For several years I have literally kept three or four binders of printed copies of the blog posts that I have found to be helpful, useful, and inspiring to my work as a blogger and a writer.  I regularly refer back to them for ideas.  They are my most important resource.  I wanted easy Web access to them, though.

If these resources were valuable to me, they might be valuable to other people.

I thought about publishing a blog post on Broadcasting Brain with the links to this information.  That’s great as a one time project, but in order to have lasting value, this should be a dynamic resource that can be added to, changed, and reorganized as needed.   I decided to use Squidoo.  This allows me to create and maintain that list within a lens, which is a type of web page.  There are two main reasons why I choose Squidoo:

1. I’ve used the tool before and I’m comfortable with it.
2. Squidoo allows the lens creator to receive royalty payments based on traffic to the lens and activity on the page like ad clicks.    You can donate your royalties to a charity.  In my case, I like the idea of Room to Read – I think illiteracy is a horrible setback to anyone’s quality of life and this is a way to help more people learn how to read.  Disclosure:  I maintain a few lenses which make enough income to buy a bag of potato chips during a good month.

So, yes, it’s a Squidoo lens.  And… 100% of the royalties from this lens will go to Room to Read.  Why not do some good while providing information to bloggers?

Go check out The Blogging Lens.  I want it to be the best central resource out there with links to the best content about blogging.  And remember, you can help raise money for Room to Read by visiting and supporting The Blogging Lens.

If you have any links that you think should be added to The Blogging Lens, let me know and I’ll include the best, top notch content on the lens.  It should contain all of the good information about blogging that we all would want to refer to.

Thanks for your support!

The image in this post was created by John Cox & Allen Forkum. See the original: http://www.coxandforkum.com/archives/000478.html

Image by johndal

Thought wrestling (different from the action that you see above, yet oddly similar) is one of the skills that you can develop as a blogger.  Here are some thoughts on that.

Yesterday’s question was why do you blog if not for money?  More than a dozen readers responded with their reasons for blogging and there were a few common themes in the responses.  I want to focus on one of those themes today:   developing your thoughts via writing.

Here are some examples of what some of you wrote concerning creating and refining ideas (or wrestling them into shape):

Susan Murphy (Suzemuse)

I started blogging in 2006 because I was interested in improving my writing. I thought that putting my thoughts online would be a good way to do this…  I blog mostly because I love to write. I am the type of person that will wake up in the morning with an idea in my head, sit down at the computer and crank out 1000 barely-edited words in 20 minutes, and hit Publish before I have a chance to think about it too much…  Blogging helps me sort things out in my head.

Rob Diana (Regular Geek)

I started blogging as a way to get things off my chest and to get some thoughts on “paper”…  Another side of this is that I have found the blog being a way for me to explore ideas. I always thought I would give opinions on tech news, but that quickly gets boring. For example, when everyone was writing about the (Google Buzz) launch I waited until I had a good feel for what it was. I realized that it felt incomplete, like it was meant for something bigger. So, almost two weeks after the launch I finally wrote something that was not a review or comparison to Twitter and Friendfeed, but more of a “why did Google release this” and “where is Buzz really going”.

Rob Patrob (Robert Paterson’s Weblog):

I blog because I think best aloud. It is a way of working out ideas – like an artist’s sketch book.

Ian M Rountree

But part of why I blog is to leave a permanent record… having a record of how my thoughts progress from one month to the next really helps me make sure I’m going the direction I want to be going.

Bill Wren (he linked to one of his own posts and I’m posting an excerpt of that here):

A friend of mine asks, Why should I blog? For me the quick and easy answer is because I like it. More specifically, I like writing. And if I look at everything I’ve posted on this blog and my other blog (Piddleville) I realize that what I’m really doing is thinking out loud online. I tend to work out ideas on my blogs.

AnneMieke (Mindstructures)

But if you would ask why I love to (blog), then I could not answer that so easy. The closest I could say, is that it is a way to get my thoughts in some form that is understandable…  Going straight to words is not possible for me, so writing is not an option. But with blogging I can (easily) use graphics that I can adjust all the time to make myself clear.

Ilinap

Blogging is therapy, but a whole lot cheaper… Blogging forces me to dig deeper than I would otherwise let myself go. I come face to face with some buried emotions and experiences. I reflect on my own brand DNA, my shortcomings of motherhood, my worries, my celebrations, my fears. Some things I’ve seen crop up in my head are still too painful or controversial to manifest into words. But thanks to blogging, they’re there, off the so called back burner and poised for capture and introspection.

These comments suggest to me that people are getting value from describing things that matter to them.  The blog becomes a tool to develop ideas, to gather thoughts and force them into sentences and paragraphs of meaning.

One of my first posts of 2010 was a collaboration with a lot of smart people who were giving tips on how to do better work.  Seth Godin chimed in with the following tip:

#1 thing: start a blog and write every day.

I wasn’t sure what to make of that tip, but after reviewing it in light of the comments above, I think I have a better understand of what Seth was trying to communicate with his tip.  He was talking about developing ideas.

The practice of regular writing and sorting through the thousands of pieces of information that we process daily helps us to get better at analyzing and using information.  Putting structure around data and wrestling thoughts into order helps us to exercise our reasoning and creative thinking muscles.  This is a critical skill that anyone can use to do better work.  The other comments that I’ve quoted in this post also support this concept.

What do you think?  Is blogging really thought wrestling, the new king of mental sports?

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Image via Wikipedia

Blogging is just one form of content creation and creative expression available to us all on the Web.  The term blog, or weblog, has been around for twelve years.  People were journaling and posting articles and other content on the Web long before that.  People have been self-publishing in other media for hundreds of years.

Plenty of people have advice on the best ways to write a post, getting traffic to your blog, making money from your blog, and so on.

Some people will give you lots of advice on the topic(s) that you should focus your blog on.

It seems like we’ve got this whole blogging thing covered.

But then there’s one other little question that’s the most interesting of all…

WHY?

Why do we blog?  Why do we write? Why do we spend hours upon hours slaving in front of computers?  Why do we wring our brains madly on a regular basis trying to think of new and interesting things to say?  Why do we get frustrated when the words won’t come?

Some people create content in order to make money directly off their blogs by selling advertising, using affiliate links to sell stuff (I do this through my book reviews but I try not to be a PITA about it), selling their own products, etc.  That’s fine.  It’s pretty obvious that some people are trying to make their living directly through selling stuff on their blog and that’s cool.

Then there are tons of us who aren’t focusing on direct monetization, including a huge group of people who aren’t in it for the money at all.

That is what I’m interested in learning about.

Why do we blog?  More specifically, why do YOU blog?

Yes, it’s reader participation time and I’m writing this specifically for YOU. I’m being nosy today and I want to know why you do it.  What are your goals, dreams, aspirations, hopes, and wishes from this powerful medium:

• Are you burning with the desire to get things off your chest?
• Are you trying to change the world?
• Are you bored and in need of something to occupy your mind?
• Are you communicating for someone who can’t speak for themselves?
• Are you using your blog as a platform or stepping stone for bigger and better things?
• Are you using the blog as a way to connect with like-minded people?
• Are you channeling an alien intelligence?
• Etc.

Many of the items in this list apply to me (although I can’t prove that I’m channeling an alien intelligence… yet…)

I’m really curious about this.  I think introspection is a powerful tool and we can learn a lot by examining why we want to do things.  I think we all learn from seeing these ideas in print.

Please share your thoughts in the comment section so we can all learn from this.  If you write your own post about this, link back to this post and I’ll create a link back to you in this post.

Note:  I guess Ian M Rountree and I are tapped into the same hive mind because he’s written a post about blogging as well.

Bill Wren wrote on this topic some time ago in a post called Does blogging need a reason?

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Wikipedia

This edition of Thoughts From features one of my favorite broadcasters. Nora Young is the host of CBC Radio’s Spark, a weekly radio program, blog and podcast about technology and society. Nora started with CBC as the founding host and a producer of Definitely Not the Opera, where she was a frequent commenter on technology and popular culture. She creates miniseries and documentaries for shows such as Ideas , and is the technology columnist for CBC Radio afternoon shows.  Here’s Nora!

1.   Three years in, what is it about Spark, your CBC radio program/podcast/blog, that you are most proud of?

I think it’s that we’ve managed to carve out a space for an open-ended conversation about the cultural nature of technology. To me, it’s only when we come across new technologies that we’re aware of the cultural impact they’re having. Soon, the effects, like the technology itself, becomes invisible to us.

2.  What is the geekiest, most cutting edge of technology that you own and use regularly?

My perfect, compact, Muji notebook and pen. I say that only partly facetiously.

3.  What is the most unusual use of technology that you’ve encountered over the years?

Sorry; nothing is leaping to mind on this one.  [ED:  to help Nora out with this question, we sent her a loaner TARDIS to play around with for a week.  Unfortunately, we have no idea WHEN it will arrive...]

4.  Should laws against cell phone and wireless device use apply to pedestrians and cyclists as well?

As a non-driver, who travels mostly on foot or by bike, I would say yes for cyclists, no for pedestrians. That said, I was struck by a recent Spark interview with a researcher into multi-tasking. His point was that the problem in cell phone use and driving is with switching tasks mentally, not with the physical manipulation of the phone. This is a problem that is not at all addressed by laws that permit ‘hands free’ devices.

5.  Are you a “first draft” writer or do you have to tinker, edit, and cajole your written work into its final form?

Oh, tinker, tinker, tinker. There’s that story, probably apocryphal, about an artist who was caught in a gallery touching up one of his own paintings hanging on the wall. If I could go back into old podcasts and change them, I probably would.

6.  As a Toastmaster, one thing I’ve been taught is to eliminate “crutch words” from my public speaking:the aahs, the ums, and so on.  One thing I’ve noticed with a number of radio personalities (including you on a few occasions) is that there are occasionally some prominent “crutch words”, as well as pauses, used in some of the interviews and some of the other on-air segments.  I’ve often wondered if those are done on purpose as part of a vocal style.  Can you confirm if this is the case and why on air personalities would use these “crutch words” in recorded audio segments?

As far as I know, people don’t do it on purpose. I cringe when I hear myself say ‘you know’ so much. On the other hand, I do it in interviews when I’m thinking, and trying to formulate my thoughts, so hopefully it’s a sign that the interviewer is doing more than just reading off a list of questions.

7.  Looking at your international competition for a moment, are there any particular PRI, NPR, BBC, etc. radio shows or podcasts that you particularly enjoy?If so, can you elaborate on what makes those programs special to you?

My favourite podcast is actually not made by a conventional broadcaster. It’s Philosophy Bites, which is an independent podcast about philosophy, (made by people with experience at the BBC). It’s about philosophy, obviously, but delivered in bite-sized formats, and designed for non-specialists. It’s a perfect podcast in that you’d likely never consider *broad*casting such a niche interest, but it appeals to an international niche audience. Beyond that, the usual suspects: Planet Money and Radio Lab. What they all share is an unabashed enthusiasm for the subject, and a belief that intelligent, even arcane, topics can be entertaining and stimulating if they’re properly produced.

8.  In Cult of the Amateur, Andrew Keen seems quite concerned about the long term negative effects of amateur media , like blogs, podcasts, videos, etc.Does the amateur podcaster present a significant threat to the professional broadcaster?Or are there any benefits to the proliferation of free, amateur media (like, say, getting these great interview questions by E-mail)?

I think that after years of feeling threatened by “amateur media,” smart broadcasters understand that there can be a more productive dialogue amongst amateurs, semi-professionals and professionals. I say that partly as an amateur podcaster myself (I have a goofy, trendwatching podcast called thesniffer, with Cathi Bond), but also as a broadcaster observing the benefits of a more inclusive, open conversation.

9.  Pretend that the Internet has been destroyed overnight.What do you do when you wake up the next day?

Relearn how to be a journalist without it, for starters. Consider the benefits of staying unplugged.

10.  Any final thoughts for our readers?

I guess I would just encourage all of us, me included, to question technology, to move beyond the pro/anti, Luddite/technophile dichotomy. It’s the only way we’re going to get the technology we deserve.

Super secret bonus question:is there ever going to be a Spark blooper reel or deleted segments podcast?

Ha! You’d have to ask Dan (Misener, my colleague who mixes the show). I don’t know if he’s been saving any of the bloopers. It would be a long reel, I can tell you that much!

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