Schedule regular check-ins with your direct reports, so that giving feedback — both negative and positive — becomes a normal part of the weekly routine.
Everything You Need to Know About Giving Negative Feedback by Sarah Green for HBR
Before you begin to write, do you have any pre-game rituals or practices?
Given I write several thousand words each day, there’s no room for “pre-gaming.”
The “game” IS the ritual.
Here’s How Maria Popova of Brain Pickings Writes, interview by Kelton Reid for Copyblogger
Most jobs are mediocre. Most people’s work is mediocre. Most products and experiences are mediocre. Most lives drift to mediocre. When you rise above the mediocrity, people will notice.
Thirty Things I’ve Learned by Nick Crocker
Lois wholly or partially created some of the most exceptional and memorable ads in history. For better or worse, behemoths of consumerism such as Tommy Hilfiger, Jiffy Lube, ESPN, MTV, and many others have ingrained themselves in American culture because of his indelible campaigns. The qualities that set Lois’s work apart from that of today’s advertising industry are a) his stuff was unapologetic and transparent about the fact that it was selling a product, and b) he used ideas to hawk products rather than the other way around.
Geoge Lois, interview by Rocco Castoro for Vice
ex·trap·o·late me 