20160207 Ice Cream Sundae #19 Time and Typos

Hi , Last week I re-read the Sundae about wine after it was sent and I noticed a few typos. This is something that was mentioned to me a couple of times by other readers. I was disappointed to see typos that seemed so obvious after the fact. Thank you for your patience with this email newsletter, putting up with bad proofreading. If you’ve been reading for a few Sundaes you might remember I wrote about typing and keyboards before. I just re-read that one and again the first thing I noticed were my typos and glaring mistakes. I was going to begin with another comment about how I’ll be putting off my writing about procrastination for another week while I keep thinking about it, though now I believe there’s a potentially interesting link to explore about both topics. I’m pretty happy to be keeping up this newsletter format, it’s the 19th week I write and send it at the same time every Sunday. It’s the first time I do anything like it. I don’t have that many subscribers but the feedback is generally positive and I enjoy writing them. From the start, I’ve been working from very good intentions to prepare newsletter topics and writing them in advance. In practice, I’ve got a lot of other stuff going on and have been putting off writing more than one newsletter every week. I prioritise other work and leisure activities over writing them in advance. I’ve often found myself writing part or most of the newsletters on Saturday evenings to send out on Sunday. I am getting a kick out of finding inspiration on the fly with what’s going on week after week, a trend you may have noticed. I talked about this briefly with a friend this afternoon. I’m enjoying this aspect of reporting of what’s going on with my life, at least to use it as writing inspiration into wider topics. Of course it generates more tension because I keep thinking I’ve got to write my newsletter every week. There’s a kind of exciting bubbling of ideas coming from the need to respect my (self imposed) send-out deadline. On the other hand, some of the consequences are more typos and mistakes as I finish everything in a rush. I finish editing late on Saturday or early Sunday morning before emailing it to you. My editing is minimal and my proofreading even less so. I proofread my newsletters at least 4 or 5 times before saving and sending them. I just miss typos and mistakes. I read a few articles about typos and I’d like to highlight this quote from an article in Wired: â€œThe reason typos get through isn’t because we’re stupid or careless, it’s because what we’re doing is actually very smart, explains psychologist Tom Stafford, who studies typos of the University of Sheffield in the UK. â€œWhen you’re writing, you’re trying to convey meaning. It’s a very high level task,†he said. I’ve mainly copied the quote so I could give myself a pat on the back for doing smart and high level tasks. The following isn’t necessarily that smart, I’m only paraphrasing. What they’re explaining in the article is that our brains tend to simplify and generalize bite-size components of tasks so it can focus on more complex ones. As an example, what’s happening right now apparently is that while I’m making sense of what I’m writing for you in this newsletter, organising ideas into a meaningful flow, the individual words or sentences lose a little importance for the brain. As I’m writing, I’ve already caught several words that I meant to write and missed out in a sentence. I’m not even mentioning simple typos. According to research from Microsoft, the backspace is the 3rd most used key on any keyboard. In my case I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the 2nd or 1st. These mistakes happen for the simple typo switching or missing out letters in words, as much as completely forgetting entire paragraphs that change the entire meaning of an article. As the writer, I have a harder time noticing them because I’ve been working on whether the whole piece is imparting the meaning and tone I’m looking for. My brain can easily persuade me it’s there because I’ve been thinking about it and working on it so much it takes automatic shortcuts. To use an analogy that I’ve heard quite a few times around coaching and personal development, it’s like being a fish in water: the most difficult thing for the fish to see is the water it’s swimming in. Like the fish, your personal environment is so tied with yourself as to be invisible. This isn’t from me; you may have heard it before. I first heard this analogy participating in programs with Landmark Worldwide – I might write about that one of these days. The best way for the fish to see the water they evolve in is to be out of it. Then they have a whole new perspective about their environment, which was hidden from view beforehand. In the case of typos and editing, the best way is probably to have my newsletters proofread, or at least leave more time between the moment I write and send them. This way the text isn’t so familiar and the typos are easier to notice. I just re-read a couple of my previous newsletters and the mistakes were glaring at me immediately. I hate typos as much as anyone and they raise feelings of being stupid or embarrassed, thinking to myself I should know better. The typos are as natural as these berating thoughts though. One obvious way to avoid more mistakes is to write my newsletters with more advance and perhaps stick to a calendar. With more advance time, I’d catch my own mistakes and I could ask friends to proofread them as well. Of course that way I could also spend more time editing and improving my writing for every newsletter. This is actually what I did for the first three weeks or so. By now you’ve probably figured we’re back in the procrastination territory. I’ve just read a couple of articles about the phenomenon. I’m pretty sure we can all relate to a few of things mentioned, such as avoiding something we don’t really feel like doing by pretending to ourselves we deserve something else, or because it’s just not comfortable to do now. Once I finish writing one newsletter, I feel I’ve deserved to vegetate in front of a TV show or waste some time online looking at photos of cats, silly gifs or whatever is popular. I don’t generally consider myself that much of a procrastinator, though it’s relative to what I’ve got going on. In 2014 I started talking about my intention to write a novel. Something I’d forgotten about for a long time. Last year I started my own business, playing more tabletop games again, this newsletter, regularly contributing to a friend’s audio podcast, started my own podcast and more. Some of my objectives are falling by the wayside. I’d planned to write about marketing in my blog every week and while I’ve been focusing on the newsletter and podcast I haven’t been writing in my blog. The last post was about marketing is over a month old, about applying the 80-20 Pareto Principle to writing creative briefs. I haven’t been writing for my novel either. The progress was marginal last year and saying that is being generous. The podcast has been steady though, and I’ve just published the second part of the interview with tabletop roleplaying game designer Ed Jowett, about his crowdfunding project and his science-fiction game “Era: The Consortiumâ€. You can find the first part here if you’d like to check it out. Of course you can also listen and subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or Stitcher. Theses are all recent challenges and I’m noticing that to keep up with these is requiring another level of operations than I was used to. I might have been spending more hours every week watching TV shows before. I don’t mean one is better than the other. It’s only because I’ve said I was going to do these new things that of course it’s noticeable if I don’t. This newsletter is both a device to improve my writing and a mechanism to keep doing it because you are expecting it in your inbox every Sunday. It’s also a way to promote myself, show you a little bit of how I think, and learn about interesting new topics in the process. Just one person who told me they expect and enjoy reading it is enough encouragement. I’m not as good as keeping promises I’ve only made to myself. I’m pretty certain I’m not the only one. It’s a very human thing to do. I’m not going to beat myself up for doing something human though, I hope you don’t either. I’m going to start writing another newsletter instead. Maybe I’ll take a short break first. It’s almost time for dinner. It’s not even like a real break, it’s just dinner. I’ve been working hard all week too. I definitely deserve a break for dinner. All right so dinnertime. Dinner, and then maybe like one episode of a TV show or something. It is Saturday night after all. And then I’ll write some more. I also have to prepare for a podcast interview recording tomorrow morning though. I can always write tomorrow afternoon. Sure. Mañana, mañana. Thank you for reading. I know there’s a lot of stuff to read out there and I appreciate you spending a few minutes of your time with me. If you know someone who will enjoy reading too, please forward the email, or share it on your social networks. If you have any questions or need marketing or branding advice for your business, I’d be glad to talk. I’m thinking of trialling a “buy me lunch†option as a starting consulting session, an idea stolen from games designer and consultant James Wallis. I also interviewed him on my podcast. Enjoy the rest of your weekend and have a fantastic week ahead. Till’ next Sunday!Willem PS: The newsletter used to be sent at 12pm CET. Given I’ve moved to London and am on GMT now I’m going to move it to 12pm (1pm CET). Starting next week you will receive this newsletter an hour later.

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I'm a marketing & communication strategy consultant. If you're looking for new ideas for your business, marketing, strategy, branding, training, a speaker for an event, or have any questions, please get in touch: [email protected].