Tabula rasa
This page has been blank since Friday.
Then, as I was wondering (once again) what to write, a LinkedIn post popped up: The Curse of the Blank Screen.
In it, the author writes about a tabula rasa (which I discovered during my psychology degree). A blank slate.
The blank page can be scary. But there are some simple ways to fill it.
First, put the pen down. And start with the homework.
Some thinking time. Read related texts. Watch a video. Get your headspace right. Spend as long as you need.
Then: verbal diarrhea. Pour your heart out. Don't edit as you go. No quality control. Just fill the page.
Before you know it, you're looking at a bunch of words. And you can do something about those. You can edit and refine.
Sure, a blank page can be scary (cue Halloween music). Slay your demon with words.
Onto the stuff that got a 'rasa' out of me last week ...
Sorry
Fascinating piece, this, from the BBC.
Professor John List had a bad Uber experience, So he called the then-CEO, Travis Kalanick.
As a result, he was engaged to look at the economics of apologies.
Uber riders who experienced a bad ride would spend up to 10% less in the future. A significant loss of income.
He found apologies in any form proved ineffective. But an apology coupled with a $5 coupon kept people loyal.
'What consumers want, it turns out, is for a company to demonstrate its remorse by taking a material financial hit.'
Interesting. Think about that the next time you have to apologise for something. I will.
Google dominance
According to Statista, the US Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against Google.
What for? For 'unlawfully maintaining a monopoly'.
I've been tracking Australian marketshare for a few years, on Clicky. As of yesterday, Google was 92.5% (99.16% for mobile).
In this article, Statista says its US market share is 81.54% on desktop, and 94.92% on mobile. Hmmm.
Hey: 20 years ago, Yahoo! would have dominated. Before that, Ask Jeeves ...
Nice to see DuckDuckGo as number 3 for mobile.
Biden typo
They happen to us all. The dreaded spelling mistake.
My most useful tips for spelling include:
• Turn your grammar checker on (catches words that are spelt correctly, but the wrong word)
• Read it out loud
• Read from the bottom up (stops you skipping ahead)
• Get someone else to check it (a fresh pair of eyes)
• Walk away and come back to it (the 'overnight test').
But even spellcheck should have caught this one. Dementia spelt as 'dimensia'.
On a huge billboard, no less. Just glad it wasn't me ...
QotW
Quote of the week:
'Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good.'
William Faulkner
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