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Sometimes simple statistics stun me into submission.
Take, for example, my iPod.
I’ve owned it for about six months now and it regularly plays both my music collection and the business podcasts I download:
FIR, CommsCafe, Diary of A Shameless Self-Promoter, Trafcom News, American Copywriter, Blue Box, Inside PR, Forward, Managing the Grecian 2000 & Just for Men, Marketing Martini, On the Record…Online, Second Life, Secrets of Second Life, Across the Sound, Six Pixels of Big Bad Black Baldness, The M Show, The Money Clip, New Comm Road …
Just for fun I selected, for the first time, the ‘Top 25 Most Played’ playlist this morning as I drove from the post office back to home.
What struck me was the songs I had most played — I don’t remember playing them as much as I obviously have.
The number one album from which I have taken material was David Sylvian’s first album “Brilliant Trees” — seven tracks. But the number one most played piece of all from my collection is the infamous “Finklestein Shit Kid” speech from Cheech & Chong’s “Up In Smoke” soundtrack. My stepkids love it, along with the song “I Was Framed” from the same movie.
All of which is to make a point! (yes, really)
What do YOU take for granted? What activity or communication practice do YOU regularly perform without even realising how many times you do it or rely on it?
It could be a speech mannerism (such as relying on “You know”, or “Going forward” [urg!!] to give yourself time to think); it could be a pet phrase you use in your writing that adds an extra few words to the word count; it could be that email you send out that bores the pants off everyone else but you think they are interested to receive…
If you stopped and counted (or even better had someone close and honest count for you) how many times you perform or say something, or rely on some sort of prop — either physical or mental — without realising it you would, I hazard a guess, be very surprised.
It’s kind of like when you see yourself on video presenting something — the first time you cringe with embarrassment as you see all of the ‘props’ you use to get over your nervousness. But next time you subliminally work hard to reduce at least one of those props out of your performance.
If you don’t know, you can’t improve.
Ask someone today, someone who will be honest and trustworthy (yeah, I know, not easy to find) about your ‘pet’ habits and ‘props’. Much like teddy bears at a picnic, you could be in for a big surprise.
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