August 1,2005

Such great comments.

Claire's idea of making use of holding time on phones is brilliant. The longest waits are for tech help. Imagine how that time could be used.

And the comments about thinking time were terrific.

There is a real problem with the media trying to get things first, rather than get them right. They are responding to the rush to beat their competitors and the need to fill so much air time. We live in an Acting Culture instead of a Thinking Culture.

The irony, to me, is that thinking is the most valuable asset of all. It should be most honored, most revered, most cherished.

But no....we live in a "shoot first, ask questions later" culture. The Iraq War comes to mind. So does the poor fellow on the London subway.

If It's Superfluous, Can It Help Sales?

Yes.

People like choices. Not too many choices. (Too many choices can be confusing and lead to not buying anything.)

But people like to be able to compare the products they're buying.

I've just read a research paper on superfluous products. These are products that are often placed next to another product to make that product look more appealing. For example, you see a vacuum cleaner that does everything next to one that does nothing much and costs half as much...and one that does only a little bit more but costs twice as much.

Your choice is clear. And you're a happy customer.

This article said, for example, that Cherry Coke was a superfluous product...only there to encourage greater sales of Classic Coke.

Well, gee, I always liked Cherry Coke.

Blink!...Even Then

There's a fabulous article on Matisse in the New York Review of Books.

This episode could have been right out of Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink!"

In 1911, Matisse told the surgeon Rene Leriche that he dashed down his first impressions of any given subject in rapid sketches, "like flashes of revelation - the result of an analysis made initially without fully grasping the nature of the subject to be treated: a sort of meditation."

He never forgot the surgeon's response, which was that he made his own diagnoses in just the same way ("If anyone askes why I say that, I have to admit that I have no idea - but I'm certain of it, and I stick by it.")

Much later in Matisse's life, Dr. Leriche saved his life in an emergency operation.

Instincts work. Trust them.

The Best News of All...

...is that Melissa is home with her twin baby boys. Yippee!