Nobody asked me but …

A rut is just a grave with the ends kicked out.

In a time of digital communication, handwritten notes are especially powerful.

If you want people to do something make it easy and safe.

The most powerful form of leadership communication is example.

A whole lot of success boils down to doing the basics day after day, with unremitting diligence.

You can be so efficient that you’re ineffective.

Context always matters.

After my father-in-law died, not one of the many letters we received mentioned his business success. Almost every one mentioned a kindness he had done.

Growth is not necessarily progress.

Anybody can be busy. The challenge is to be productive.

Excellence isn’t a competition.

No one is a leader all the time and in every situation.

-o0o-

Jimmy Cannon and Me

If there was one writer who inspired me to want to be a writer, it was Jimmy Cannon. I discovered him because I liked to read the paper while I ate my dinner before starting work after school. That meant I read an afternoon paper in the early 1960s. So, I’d come up out of the subway, grab the Journal-American at the newsstand, then stop at the deli for the sandwich I ate for dinner. Every night I ate the sandwich and read the paper, starting with Jimmy Cannon’s column.

I loved the way he wrote. It was clean and sharp, full of insight and opinion. Jimmy Cannon was a sportswriter, but he wrote about everything, especially in his occasional columns, “Nobody asked me but.”  I wanted to write like Jimmy Cannon. I wanted to write as well as Jimmy Cannon. I’m still trying.

This post uses the title Cannon used for his most interesting occasional column. It is a pale imitation of the originals.