Communication gets streamlined constantly by those who wish to be good at it, and I surely do.
I’ve long been a believer in the “Less is More” doctrine, yet effective communication often proves to be repetitive; it can be wise to repeat your messages. Therefore, I have been thinking about, and investing my attentions in, this quote from “deep work” professor Cal Newport since he posted it on his blog this past March:
“When it comes to the world of work, more connectivity and more communication is not necessarily better. In fact, it often makes things worse.”
—The Obvious Value of Communication is Perhaps Not So Obvious
When is repetition good, and where should it happen?
As a significant, colluding force, March was also the month the weekly newsletter I write for our Ho‘ohana Community hit the 9-month mark, long enough for it to graduate from a communicative experiment to habit, that place where action meets repetition too.
Now, several months later, and with the cumulative content experimentation of 70 weeks of newsletter issues, I’ve made a decision that impacts those of you who subscribe to this blog feed, but not to the newsletter, a related decision I hope you will reconsider.
Thus, I write this particular posting to be sure I communicate my new publishing direction to you, as a very valued member of our Ho‘ohana Community of Managing with Aloha practitioners.
My decision involves changes that will be made both here on the blog and in my newsletter. Most notably, my “Day 1” postings for our bimonthly value immersion will no longer appear here as separate, additional blog entries. The Value Your Month to Value Your Life program will appear in just 2 places (newsletter and Ke Ola archives) instead of 3.
In a word, I’m streamlining, now that the results of my TinyLetter experiment turned good habit have made themselves so apparent to me. For example;
- My weekly newsletter is clearly preferred to the RSS feed of this blog: Both new subscriptions and current-to-the-week readership consistently favors the newsletter by more than 300%.
- Although both subscriptions (newsletter and RSS blog feed) arrive in your email inbox, it is also clear to me that you prefer sharing the newsletter with others, and you much prefer to respond to me directly via email; comments left on the blog have become quite rare.
- When I ask for your feedback, those who are more directly engaged have asked that I write the newsletter in a more ‘letterly’ fashion, i.e. more self-contained at first reading, with links back to the blog primarily furnished for second readings pointing to additional resources.
- A definite influence, are my beliefs in regard to email, and our responsibilities with proactive sending, versus reactive receiving: I do think of email as worthy communication, and as a form of messaging you cannot realistically opt out of, for the world has conspired to keep it despite new habits with texting and social media: Embrace Email—it works.
Now believe me, I am NOT abandoning this Managing with Aloha blog altogether! Never, and no way! This blog is essentially my book’s constantly updated sequel.
I will continue to publish articles here, but with the objective of having them be less time-sensitive, and more resourceful, improving the quality of my archives as a whole. A related decision I’ve made, is that I will further restrict the number of coaching clients I handle at any given time, so I can devote more time to my writing and publishing, and that includes a lot of clean-up work. I will be reediting the archives through an intensive audit of our 9 Key Concept categories.
Another way of looking at this, is that the blog will be revered as our post-book Managing with Aloha destination and evergreen resource; the weekly newsletter will contain our week-to-week journey. My bimonthly Ke Ola Magazine series on the 19 Values of Aloha will continue to be archived on RosaSay.com and the newsletter will continue to point to them there.
Therefore, if you are interested in #VYMTVYL—Value Your Month to Value Your Life—as our bimonthly value immersion practice, please subscribe to the newsletter, for going forward, that is where it will be published.
NOTE: In November and December of 2017, we move on from Lōkahi to Kākou in our value mapping process: You can read my Ke Ola kick-off essay on RosaSay.com as usual, and I will cover it in the newsletter Thursday, November 2nd: Let’s Talk Story with Kākou Invitation.
I will still use the newsletter to point you to resource articles added to the blog as they are published, however the RSS feed will remain active as well; keep it if you wish to!
Ultimately my mission in supporting Alaka‘i Managers has not changed; I want this blog to be the values-centered learning resource you can count on, and I do believe this new approach will help me reshape this blog as the stand-alone, definitive resource it should be, separate from the weekly newsletter coaching opt-ins —timeless while time honored. Now that my book’s 2nd edition is done, and we have triumphed with nearly 18 months of the newsletter’s learning curve, I anticipate publishing more resource articles here than has been my recent habit.
I’m excited, and truly looking forward to the writing and editing work ahead of me as I streamline our communications, so less duplication does deliver more focus. I’m very confident that you will find it becomes better for you as well.
Thank you for reading, and for sticking with me as you do.
Rosa
Click on the image below, to subscribe to the #VYMTVYL newsletter:
Go to the #AlohaIntentions Archives on RosaSay.com for my #VYMTVYL essays:
The top entry will list our current month’s focus.