Posted by cpbotha on May 23rd, 2008 in life ·
At work, a large part of my day is taken up by speaking. I spend a significant amount of time in meetings of some sort, both where other people are primarily talking and also where I have to talk most of the time. Because I started noticing that many of these hundreds of thousands of words were being applied less effectively than they could have, I began trying to derive some rules of thumb for effective verbal communication. These rules of course do not apply to your run-of-the-mill pleasant social conversation, and they shouldn’t. They’re there for meetings and for advising people. Here we go:
Whilst you are talking, continously monitor your own words. After every sentence, mentally double-check whether that sentence had a purpose. Did you transfer some applicable advice? Did you make a sensible suggestion? Did you point out a next concrete action? What is the actual contribution of your sentence to the person that you are talking to? If you have difficulty determining this, stop talking immediately…
Posted by cpbotha on May 18th, 2008 in food and life ·
While it’s true that Dutch cuisine is the brunt of far too many less-than-flattering jokes, it definitely has its highlights…
Posted by cpbotha on March 10th, 2008 in life ·
… with Vienna.
As mentioned elsewhere, I’m in Vienna at the moment for ECR 2008. Tonight started with a heavenly dinner at the Vital Images party in the Sky Bar…
Posted by cpbotha on January 8th, 2008 in entertainment and life ·
Last year I acquired this:
So I could go here:
… with some exceptionally cool individuals…
Posted by cpbotha on December 31st, 2007 in life, meta and tech ·
Dear readers, although you remain anonymous, I now know quite reliably that there are slightly more than two of you. This knowledge makes me insanely happy…
Posted by cpbotha on October 7th, 2007 in life ·
HI THERE GANG! If you don’t like long-winded introductions, skip to the bit starting with “THE NITTY GRITTY”…
Posted by cpbotha on April 19th, 2007 in life ·
Err, I don’t usually link to the same weblog again in such a short time, but I just had to make an exception…
Posted by cpbotha on April 17th, 2007 in life ·
Good friend (and fellow traveller) Dave finally gets his weblog online. I like to think that my incessant whining played a small role in this event.
Go here to read his stuff.
Posted by cpbotha on April 4th, 2007 in food and life ·
My good friend, mentor and fellow alternative universe explorer (teehee) Dave bought me some of this whilst visiting two weeks ago:
This is beautiful stuff…
Posted by cpbotha on March 28th, 2007 in life ·
Kids.
You’re at work having a productive day, and you’re just about to start with a meeting that you really need to take part in…
