Isn’t it great that our kids are stuck with us for a fairly lengthy period of time? If we screw up and say something that perhaps wasn’t the best possible parenting expression, they’re going to be around tomorrow, too. We’re going to get another chance to do better.

This is extremely important in the realm of parenting. Most of us have absorbed the wisdom that our kids will perceive negative comments about themselves so powerfully that it will take from 10 to 20 times the number of positive remarks to create a perception of balance. That’s why we need to hesitate when we tell our kid that maybe they could have tried a little harder on that quiz. Have we already told them on 10 different occasions how great they’ve done something?

I’m feeling the same way about customer service at the moment. Take great care of me (basically just do a good job) and I’ll keep using you. But screw up, especially if it makes me look bad, and it will take a long, long time before I trust you again. Read more…

We all know that the world treats you better if you’re good-looking. Tall is helpful, too. Tall men make more money than short men. They are more likely to become CEOs. They are seen as not only more powerful, but more intelligent.

Do you care if people see you as intelligent? If you do, then you might want to practice a few simple things that can make it more likely that people will grock you as smart. Let’s start with posture. If you occupy your clothes as if they’re still on a hanger, you’ll look as if you’re tired. And if you look tired, people will think you’re generally sleepy-headed. When you’re sitting either at a table or at your desk, you’ll want to practice being compact in your body, legs and arms neatly arranged. Sprawl means disorganized, and unless you’re already certified as a genius, sprawl means you can’t find what you need when you need it, either on your desk or in your head. Read more…

The Genius Machine has gotten more than its fair share of great reviews. I don’t post them since they can be found easily. But one came in today, written by Wayne Hurlbert, that is the very model of conciseness.

“This book is about a third kind of thinking, one that is directed toward improving an existing idea, thinking through a complete issue, or creating something new,” writes Thought Leaders International founder Gerald Sindell, in his powerful guide to creative thinking and idea development The Genius Machine: The 11 Steps That Turn Raw Ideas into Brilliance. The author presents a brilliant eleven step system that creates, develops, and completes the idea building process with simplicity and elegance.

Read more…

We get letters. So far, and it’s only been a few weeks that my book has been out, the letters have been pretty nice. No one, yet, has told me they took my advice and bankrupted their company, disinherited their kids, or run off with the circus. But it’s only Thursday. There’s still time.

A letter arrived last weekend (okay, officially it was an ‘email’ but it was so carefully composed it seemed like an old-fashioned handwritten note from a previous era) that thanked me for having helped the letter-writer achieve an epiphany regarding a thorny problem her consulting company had been working through for a year. It seems that, among other things, what made it possible for my book to be genuinely helpful was that I had taken care to get myself out of the way of the message.

I have helped a lot of smart people become successful authors and leaders, and one of my first rules for my clients is: you must tell your audience as quickly as possible who you are. Say it on the flap. Say it on the back cover. Say it in the intro. Because, if an author tries to keep themselves in the background, the reader will be unable to hear your message until they feel that they know where you’re coming from. Read more…

Is it possible for a book to make you smarter? Most of us recognize that books can teach you something new, give you information about anything and everything. But the part of you that thinks is in you, isn’t it? Can a book change the way your mind works?

Seems highly unlikely. Read more…

On May 1, 2009, you will be able to purchase a copy of The Genius Machine: The Eleven Steps That Turn Raw Ideas Into Brilliance. A few months ago Jason Gardner, my wonderful editor at New World Library, asked me if I thought about processes in the book as being a real machine. That got me thinking. Where is the genius in The Genius Machine? Is it in the book? Or is the genius latent in the user, and the book works to bring it out somehow? Or maybe the genius is to be found in the space in between the user and the book.

In George Soros’s recent book The New Paradigm for Financial Markets, he tries to explain his concept of reflexivity, the idea that there is an interplay between people and the markets that most market analysts can’t even see. (I say “tries” since Soros would have been greatly helped by a Jason Gardner.) Difficult as it may be to understand Soros’s theory, its validity is easily found in the billions that Soros makes in the markets using his insights, and the fact that others, who don’t understand reflexivity, are losing those billions to him. I think reflexivity might also explain how The Genius Machine will work with readers. They will act on the book, and the book will act on them.

The Genius Machine is intended to be a real machine — you take your notion, work it through the eleven steps and, Bingo! — out comes your idea brilliantly thought through and ready for prime time.

But there’s another side to The Genius Machine. And that’s while you’re using the machine to change your ideas into pure brilliance, the machine is doing something to you, too. Read more…

In the Spring Issue of The American Scholar, William Zinsser, author of everyone’s favorite guide to writing style in English — On Writing Well — tells the story of how he came to write the book in the first place, how he found his own voice along the way, and how regular revisions have kept the book continually useful to more than a million writers. Because my own book, (The Genius Machine: The Eleven Steps that Turn Raw Ideas Into Brilliance New World Library May, 2009) in many ways takes off where Zinsser left me hanging some years ago, I was especially intrigued by two surprises in Zinsser’s lengthy new essay.

First off, Zinsser hesitated to write his book because he was in thrall to The Elements of Style, by E.B.White and William Strunk Jr. He feared that they had already said it all, and he would merely be repeating their insights. He took a fresh look at The Elements of Style and discovered, to his great relief,

“But when I analyzed White’s book, its terrors evaporated. The Elements of Style was essentially a book of pointers and admonitions: Do this, don’t do that. As principles they were invaluable, but they were only principles, existing without context or reality.”

What Elements didn’t do was show how to apply these principles to nonfiction writing in all possible forms. Read more…