Respecting the billable hour

Can I have $500? One of the interesting things about being a consultant or entrepreneur is that people ask you for that kind of money all the time. I was reminded of this recently while catching up with a friend who (unlike me) is still involved in the daily work of...

8 ways to beat the urgency trap in online communications

In a thoughtful post about The Pitfalls of social media, Aleksandr Voinov writes Social Media exerts pressure on us to do things immediately and respond to everything immediately. I’m not sure about you, but sometimes I like to think things through and discuss...

The beauty of baffling

It’s the nature of Twitter that you baffle half the people who follow you & are baffled by half the folks you follow. I wrote this tonight in response to an old friend who was teasing me about finding half my tweets baffling. It’s a comment I get a...

5 ways social media can help you learn to say no (for HBR)

Subject: Join our new working group? Subject: Time to meet for coffee? Subject: Beta invitation for new web app Subject: Sign up for 2010 lecture series? If your January inbox looks like mine, it’s full of requests and invitations. The problem with the New...

When and how to communicate online

Don’t e-mail what you can blog. Don’t blog what you can tweet. Don’t tweet what you can DM. Don’t DM what you wouldn’t publish.