You’re busy, I’m busy. So I try to keep these thoughts, based loosely on the life of a journalist, to a few pithy paragraphs. Thanks for reading!
My laptop’s been sick this week. Trying to synch it up with a brand new desktop Imac that I bought last month seems to have been too much for both of them. For the past 48 hours, they’ve been in the software hospital that is Brighton’s Apple store.
After the initial rising panic — “just how DO you run a business without a computer?”— I’ve calmed down, and offer these suggestions.
1. Read a business book. Use the time to actually pick the thing up and turn its pages, just like you did when you were a kid. I’m mulling over Antoinette Dale Henderson’s thoughtful Leading With Gravitas at the moment, and revving up Martin Riley’s Business Jet Engine. Turning pages may not send a thrill through everyone, but I find the absence of a screen intensifies my thoughts. Speaking of which …
2. Think. Maybe go for a walk in the December drizzle, or just watch it through a window. It reminds me of when I spent a year taking the railway up to London each day to train BBC journalists. It was 2009 — just before the Iphone revolution changed what we all did on trains. I think I got my best ideas gazing out over the beautiful Ouse Valley Viaduct just north of Haywards Heath.
3. Write Christmas cards to some business contacts (if it’s December, natch.) There’s something about a 60p card with a 56p stamp that took a couple of minutes to write and address by hand that says “I value our relationship”. I’m just not convinced a Mailchimped greeting quite does that, even if it does have 60 animated Santas.
On which note — let me thank you for reading my musings this year, wish you the best of business fortune for 2018, and hope Santa delivers what you dream of this Christmas. For me, for now, it’s an IMac and laptop that actually work together … though it’s nice to know my business won’t fold immediately if they don’t …