We were talking about email.

I asked what his approach is to managing his inbox.

He said, “My goal is to delete everything that arrives.”

In other words, with each email he receives, he hopes not to find a reason to open it, let alone read it.

I don’t think he’s unusual in that regard.

Which means as the senders of email, our goal is to provide that reason. Every time.

Anything less, and the Dave’s of the world (there are many of us) will happily reach for that delete key.

Leaving my job was the best decision I have ever made (other than marrying you know who).

Here’s what I would tell myself, if I could go back to June 23, 2000, when I walked out the front door on that last day:

“Buy Apple stock.”

And then I would say:

Success isn’t a place you’ll arrive at. You’re successful as soon as you start doing what you want every day with people you want to work with. The rest is just details.

P.S. Thanks to that same you know who for encouraging me all along the way.

I was doing a spell-check and grammar-check on a client newsletter before sending (I recommend doing this as a final step on anything you pubblish). Grammarly suggested a correction to a sentence.

Since the sentence was a direct quote from The Great Gatsby, I decided not to change it.

I have no doubt Grammarly is correct (that F. Scott Fitzgerald guy, whoever he is, is going nowhere).

But it’s a good example of how, in writing, correctness and effectiveness don’t perfectly overlap. 

To me, the North Star never changes: Write the way you speak.

It’s the surest way to rid your writing of marketing blah blah and AI-generated nothingness.

I’ve been a customer of SignNow – an online service that lets you download, digitally sign, and upload docs – for more than a decade.

The cost? Twelve dollars a year.

But today, on what was apparently my annual renewal date, they charged my credit card a whopping $180. 

Excuse me? I used to work for the cable company, and even I spit out my coffee.

It seems the old rate is no longer available. So they bumped me up –  with no notice and no notification. I emailed immediately to cancel my service and get the charge removed.

But this isn’t about their tone-deaf approach to customer retention. It’s about how I knew, immediately, about the charge.

The answer? I have signed up with my credit card companies to receive a text anytime our cards are charged.

It’s free (I think most card companies offer this option); it happens within seconds (I get a text before I even leave the supermarket); it helps prevent fraud; it reminds you about those monthly subscriptions you no longer want; and it keeps certain companies from instituting 15x rate increases in the hope nobody notices.

You’re welcome, America.

It was in my local newspaper. It was about popular places to visit around the world.

The problem? It was in a column written by a financial planner.

Of course, you could make the case that being financially stable allows you to travel. But that’s a pretty long walk from what you might call the center of the writer’s area of expertise.

A better approach for all of us, I think, is to write about things that reflect your professional knowledge.

That’s what people hire you for. Your newspaper column, newsletter, podcast, or whatever, is your chance to showcase that.

Give readers/listeners a taste of what they’ll get if they hire you.