Quiz #50. 63
Why you should never text someone, "Hi!"--and other advice to help you navigate life with other people like me. Steve's Stay-at-Home Coronavirus Quiz for May 10, 2020
50 Steve’s Stay-at-Home Coronavirus Quizzes.
200 things that did happen during the pandemic--50 that did NOT.
Beginning Week 10 of Working from Home.
To mark these milestones, I’ve been working on something special--inspired, in part, by “68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice” from KK.org and 68-year-old Kevin Kelly.
I read KK’s 68 and thought, I’m 63--I have some important lessons, advice and observations to impart. Maybe I should do something like that?
And yet, when I started to gather my list of 63 bits of unsolicited advice, I realized something. Most of my things are about what NOT to do. That says a lot about me, of course, but it doesn’t make my advice any less valuable. Learning how NOT to do something that might hurt, annoy or offend another person can actually make you a better person. (Trust me on this one, OK?) With apologies to Aristotle, the unscrewed-up life IS worth living.
What’s more, as I have said, this list says a lot about me. I’m tightly wound--and maybe telling you about what bothers me, for example, will actually help me not be so, well, bothered.
Here, then, 63 Things from Steve:
1. Want to really get to know someone? Don’t ask them what they like. Find out what bothers them.
Our pet peeves often define us.
The sound of someone slurping. (Unidentified family member)
The sight of a couple sharing an ice cream cone. (Unidentified coworker)
Someone confusing “its” with “it’s. (Guilty as charged)
So, as I get started with my list of 63 things, I begin with 11 pet peeves (#2-#12) that help define me. By telling you about them, maybe you’ll deal with me differently--maybe not--but I hope you’ll at least be able to see why they bother me.
2. DON’T ask, “Can I ask you a question?”
You already did.
3. DON’T ask, “Can I ask another one?”
Again, you already did.
4. DON’T send a text that says simply “Hi!”
“Hi!” is something you say when you see someone walking down the street or passing in the elevator. (Remember riding with people in elevators?) “Hi!” as an opening text, however, is simply a message to the void--and it requires you to respond. If your message back is “Hi!” you’re tossing it back to the other person in what’s now really 2 wasted texts. It’s almost like the other person is asking you to respond, “Hi. What’s up?”--as if you’re the one who started the inquiry in the first place.
Don’t stop at “Hi!” Include the inquiry in the greeting, “Hi! Let me know when you’re free to talk.”
“Hi!” OK on the sidewalk in a pandemic—but never alone in a text.
5. DON’T say “No problem.”
When someone thanks you for going out of their way for you, for thinking of you, for doing something special for you, “No problem” says it was nothing--and that makes you feel less grateful. Maybe they didn’t go out of their way, they really weren’t thinking about you, it wasn’t so special.
6. DON’T say “If I die, I want you to…”
It’s “When I die, I want you to…”
7. DON’T say “that may have been the best meal/song/movie/play ever.”
This is actually part of a Jonathan Schwartz (Remember him?) rant on announcer Dick Stockton. Saying something “may” have been the best, said Schwartz, says nothing. In your opinion, it either was the best--or it wasn’t.
8. DON’T ask a tall person if they play basketball.
Tom Cruise is 5’7”. If you’re that height, does anyone ask you if you’re an actor?
9. DON’T call someone a “spelling freak.”
Really? The point of writing down something into words is to spell them correctly.
If someone mispronounces words, do you call them a “speaking freak?”
10. DON’T say “That being said..”
You’re really saying, “Fuck that.”
11. DON’T use the word “Indeed.”
A nod of the head will do. Even “Yup.”
“Indeed” makes it sound like you’re adding something--when you’re really not.
12. DON’T bring your boss a dead kitten.
Faced with a problem, ask for help before it’s too late to fix the problem.
13. DON’T make the same mistake twice.
Here’s some “DON’T” advice that’s not a pet peeve—and it’s actually positive.
I say this to people to encourage them to take a risk. To try something they haven’t done before. To not be afraid to make a mistake.
For me, this is forgiveness to make every mistake once--just stop there.
Make no mistake twice—but don’t be afraid to make every mistake once.
14. DON’T make a negative remark about a dish at a potluck dinner.
(Remember potluck dinners?)
15. One bird, one state.
Did you know the Cardinal is the state bird for 7 states?
The Western Meadowlark. State bird for 6 states.
Didn’t you always think each state had its own state bird?
I don’t know why this bothers me so much—but it does.
16. “Bird-by-bird.”
Anne Lamott’s great book, subtitled, “Some Instructions on Writing and Life.”
Faced with a complex task, break it down into its smallest components--and do them one at a time.
Also, for use in promoting change in an organization. One person at a time.
17. If you want to have meetings that start on time, have on-time meetings.
18. When dealing with too many emails, sort by author, delete accordingly.
19. “These things happen.”
A nicer way of saying “Shit happens”--because it does. Every day.
The key to life is learning to get over the bad things--and not letting them ruin each day.
20. “Sorry about that.”
I will listen, I will try to help, but in the end, how you live your life is up to you
Again, see Quiz #29. “These Things Happen.”
21. “Know your audience.”
Great advice for TV, quiz-writing and going out to dinner with another couple. (Remember going out to dinner?)
22. “Lead, follow or get out of the way.”
The perfect way to approach work. If you can’t (or won’t) fix a problem, don’t stop those who are trying to fix it.
23. “Who’s driving the bus?”
When contemplating your options and a plan for action, find out who’s in charge and know who’s doing what.
24. “We’ll jump off that bridge when we get to it.”
Worry about one thing at a time.
For now, just get through the working from home phase.
If your office opens up, how will you commute?
That’s a problem for the day after tomorrow.
25. “Here’s the deal.”
Beyond all the noise, confusion and diversion, it’s important to figure out and understand what’s really going on.
26. “Tuesday is the worst day of the week.”
Always.
On Monday, you grin and bear it, but Tuesday, the unrelenting demands seem to hit their peak--with no end in sight.
Chart your moods. You’ll see.
27. “Tomorrow today is yesterday.”
Look ahead--especially when working in morning TV when the work for the next day is done the night before.
28. Intern (Remember interns?) rules for TV news.
Have a firm handshake (Remember handshakes?).
Eat all free food.
Get out of the business.
29. “Cooperate with the inevitable.”
Taken straight from Dale Carnegie his and his 1944 book “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living: Time-Tested Methods for Conquering Worry.” Carneqgie writes,
We must accept and cooperate with the inevitable. If we rail and kick against it and grow bitter, we won’t change the inevitable; but we will change ourselves.
States are reopening but there’s no vaccine for what turns out to be a highly contagious coronavirus that can infect people and make them carriers without them--or you--even knowing until it’s too late. That’s the inevitable part. Cooperate with it--and try to live your life. Plan for the duration. Get ready to make your own decisions on what’s safe--and what’s not. Make peace with your people. This isn’t going away for a while.
30. “You can’t save people from themselves.”
We are our own worst enemies--always.
31. When writing for TV news, avoid words longer than 2 syllables.
Long words are good for writing--TV News, not so much. It’s just not how people talk when they want to tell you something quickly.
32. Know how to start any story--and how to end it. The rest takes care of itself.
This works for any story, joke or essay.
It’s always important to show that how you ended is connected to how you started.
33. “Credibility is like virginity--you can only lose it once.”
There’s a great back story to this saying--and I will tell it to you down the line. It’s incredible.
34. If everything is “Breaking News,” then nothing is “Breaking News.”
35.“Teases promise--they never deliver.”
I heard this early on in my career from a consultant. It stayed with me.
Even withholding a tiny bit of information can make people want to come back for the answer.
36. If you write things down (Remember writing things down?) and take notes at work (Remember being “at work?), use a legal pad and a clipboard.
Start with the very last page of the legal pad and put the date in the upper left-hand corner.
Each day, turn the page to a new page--and your notes from the day before will always be there, ready and accessible.
37. Odd numbers are more appealing than even.
In making up lists, picking an odd number for that list somehow makes it seem more precise. That you picked the odd number for a reason.
Using three words or phrases in a set is better than two--the third always bringing its extra flavor and enriching the others.
See Quiz #35. Odd.
38. I love to fart, but I hate to get fart cards.
39. “Elope with an orphan.”
This is my marriage advice. I’ve been married twice--and have had great in-laws both times so I want to make sure you take this the right way.
First, the worst thing about marriage is getting married. It’s almost like weddings are a test to make sure you can get through the first year of marriage. The logistics of getting married can swallow up the love and you need to work to make sure what you want doesn’t get lost in making other people happy.
Second, when you get married, you’re not just joining your partner--your partner’s family is part of the package. You have a whole new family--and they now have you. Same for your partner. It’s complicated, but the outsider’s new perspective can actually be helpful. When you get upset about something or someone from your family, your partner is there to help you separate the past from the present, to realize you’re all just trying to get along and get past the past.
40. Sometimes what you don’t say speaks louder than what you do.
41. “Brief Strong Language” is my favorite warning on movie trailers.
I always want to know, “What is it ‘Fuck?’ or ‘Shit?’”
When I see “Brief Strong Language” on a movie trailer, I’m always tempted to shout out an obscenity in the movie theater. (Remember movie theaters?)
42. Expectations are important to how you feel, in the end, about any movie.
This one comes from Joe Posnanski’s “World Famous Movie Plus-Minus System” which says you should have a 1-to-5 scale of what you expect a movie to be that gets combined with a 1-5 scale of how you rate the movie after you’ve seen it. Going into a movie and expecting a 5-star movie but coming out thinking it was a 3-star movie is a lot less satisfying than going into a movie and expecting a 1-star movie (you went to make your partner or kids happy) but coming out thinking it was a 3-star movie. Different reactions: one good, one bad--and yet, you feel that both movies are 3-star movies.
43. When leaving a “missage,” just stop and hang up.
This one is also inspired by Posnanski (though I could not find the link on Google). Posnanski, as I recall, coined the term “missage” to refer to that phone message you start to leave for someone when you call them and think you’ve missed them--only to realize mid-message that they’re now calling you back. In the awkward few seconds when you realize you’ve gone from message to missage, you may find yourself trying to explain to the person calling you back that you were just leaving them a message but now see they’re actually there so there’s no need to leave a message so they can just ignore this because we’ll just talk now.
Just stop the missage. Maybe just add a “Woops!” No need for a before-the fact prologue that, by definition, will come as an after-the-fact epilogue.
44. The whole objective of fantasy sports is to prove that you’re smarter than everyone else.
The more complicated the rules, the better. The only thing that matters is winning--and only the smartest person wins.
45. Spring Training (Remember Spring Training?) is the blind date of sports.
Every year, after a long winter, you think to yourself, “Maybe this year is the one…” (I remember reading this one year in the New York Times. I can’t remember who wrote it.)
46. The best thing about baseball is that it’s a sport without a clock.
Everyone has an equal opportunity. 9 innings. 27 outs.
Never never never give up.
47. When a sports team--or company--comes out to give a manager, coach or boss a “vote of confidence,” it’s a sure sign that person is about to be fired.
If people don’t have confidence in their leader, it can’t be bestowed on them by anyone’s “vote of confidence.”
48. Be wary of politicians who urge you to “Call your Congressman/woman.”
Don’t get me wrong. I am all for calling Congress. Indeed, Will worked last year logging and answering such phone calls.
My point is that if you aren’t upset enough to take action on your own, being urged to do so might not help.
49. There is a yin and yang to life and death that’s captured by the StoryPeople poster, Bittersweet.
She said she usually cried at least once each day not because she was sad, but because the world was so beautiful and life was so short.
50. Start every eulogy with a joke or funny story.
You want to make people laugh at the beginning, it puts everyone at ease and lets them know that you’re OK--even if you’re not.
51. You’re going to die. Make a plan for the people you will leave behind.
Write notes for your loved ones. Why do you love them? What did you do wrong in your relationship with them? What do you want them to know?
Print them out, seal them in an envelope and put them in a safe place--then, live your life. It’s a relief knowing you haven’t left anything unsaid.
52. Leave instructions for your funeral.
Mine are detailed--with overall guidance for all decisions, “What would Steve do?”
53. “My Data Don’t Matter”
Privacy experts are rightly concerned about all the information that’s gathered about each of us every day--especially with so much of what we do recorded on iPhones that follow and track our every purchase and movement as we shop and navigate the world.
It's important to remember, however, that most companies actually don’t care about you, per se. They want your information so they can figure out how to predict what you--and the people like you--will want.
8 years ago in “How Companies Learn Your Secrets,” Charles Duhigg told the story of how Target wanted to figure out in advance which of its shippers were going to have babies so they could market infant items and baby accessories to them from the very beginning. Target tracked purchases going back in time and figured out a matrix of products which, if purchased, were a true marker that a woman was pregnant. It worked with surprising accuracy.
My observation is that such predictions only work if we’re predictable. I like to thwart artificial intelligence by being stupid every now and then. I will search for or buy something that’s completely out of character for a 63-year-old white male. My goal is to throw off the algorithms.
Collect all the information you want on me, “My data don’t matter.” You with me?
54. If you want to understand issues of justice, look no further than a crowded grocery store. (Remember them?)
You go to the check-out lines. They’re all long. Not enough cashiers to handle the crowd. As you wait and wait, the manager notices. More cashiers are called in and new lines open up. The first people through those new lines are the people who—unlike you—did not have to wait too long.
A small injustice to be sure, but it’s often the people who didn’t suffer who get the relief that should have gone to those who did.
55.“I don’t want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member.”
Grouco Marx was right.
56. “Watch out for the asshole behind me.”
This is a bumper sticker I saw once driving on the New Jersey Turnpike. I talked about it for days--and still remember the moment, days after first seeing it, that it dawned on me. The driver with the bumper sticker was talking about me!
57. “GOD: Save me from Your followers.”
A saying on a t-shirt that sums up my thoughts about organized religion.
58. For a parent, the best time in any child’s life is when they’re between 6 to 9 months old.
For their first 6 months, babies are really kind of blob-like machines. Eat, sleep, pee, poop. But at 6 months, they start to develop their own personality. By 9 months, however, babies figure out two things—how to move and how to talk back. It’s all downhill from there.
(This wisdom from my first father-in-law, Ted Sushereba, AKA “Poppy.”)
59. There are 4 things you should say when someone tells you they’re really sick:
1. That sucks.
2. I’m so sorry to hear that.
3. I will be thinking about/praying for you.
4. I am here to help.
Then, do some random, unasked-for thing to help.
60. There are 4 things to say on the phone when your partner calls you at work (Remember being “at” work?) and they’re upset about someone:
1. “Uh, huh.”
2. “What an asshole.”
3. “You need to calm down.”
4. “I have to go.”
First, if someone’s upset, it’s usually because someone--and not something--upset them. So, the first thing you need to do is to let them vent. Listen with just gentle prods for them to continue.
Then, take their side. The other person is wrong. So wrong.
Now, it’s time to urge calm. You can’t--and shouldn’t attempt to fix the problem--especially now on the phone.
Finally, you’re at work. Your job is done.
61. There are 4 things you should say to your partner:
1. “You look beautiful.”
2. “I am sorry.”
3. “How can I help?”
4. “Do you want to go out to eat?”
This advice comes from the book on love called, “All There Is” from Storycorp--and yes, I’d love to go out to eat. (Remember that?)
62. The 3 most important words any parent, partner or manager wants to hear are "You were right.”
This advice is from me.
Some might argue that “I am sorry” or “I love you” are more important, but they are, well, wrong. When you say “You were right,” I think there is an implicit “I am sorry” in there--and in the right relationships, saying “You were right” really is saying “I love you.” You let me be wrong--and I know that wasn’t easy.
63. When reading a quiz from Steve and trying to figure out what one thing did NOT happen, pay attention to the 4 things that DID happen.
Incredible things happen every day--even in a pandemic, especially in a pandemic.
What did NOT happen?
A. After reading in Quiz #49. Cookies and Milk that an unidentified coworker had texted me “Quiz is getting a little bleak,” my friend Ryan texted me, correctly identifying that coworker;
B. My sister Ginny agreed with the assessment that the quiz had gotten “bleak.” She urged me to “Keep the faith;”
C. My college friend Brooks gave me a 4-star rating for Quiz #49. Cookies and Milk, writing,
Agreed quiz has been getting too depressing lately. It’s getting old hearing how old you’re feeling, especially when I am as old as you are. Would have given this 5 stars, but Seagrams and apple sauce? That‘s disgusting. Get a grip man. Try it neat. Maybe an ice cube or two. I know you are not a drinker, but take some expert advice here--order some scotch or bourbon;
D. Saturday night, we got our hands on a lemon. I put it in the blender and made a whiskey sour, using a cocktail mixing set Will had from college to strain out the ground-up rinds;
E. For Mother’s Day, I made the bread Sunday morning while Sara slept. I improved on her recipe by taping the parchment paper to the breakfast bar while adding flour to the mix. I also made sure to dust my hands and fingers with flour to keep the dough from sticking to my hands and fingers.
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Want more?
Here’s the next quiz in the series: Quiz #51. Is Your Father Named Stewart?
Here’s the previous quiz in the series: Quiz #49. Cookies and Milk.
Here’s the first quiz in the series: Quiz #1. Stella and Social Distancing, March 13, 2020
Here is an archive of all the quizzes.
The quiz is explained here: Steve’s Stay-at-Home Coronavirus Quiz.
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