Article Marketing / Communications 2 min read

Wednesday Buzz: Social Media’s Yin and Yang

We need it for productivity, but it's a maddening distraction. How can you balance the two poles of social media in your office? Also: the root cause of bad writing.

Ernie Smith

October 8, 2014

Heads up: this content is over 5 years old, so some information may be out of date.

During Tuesday’s #assnchat, I poked my head in to say hello.

The conversation was about productivity tools, though the first couple of questions had, shall we say, a similar ring. Here’s question one:

Q1. What are some of your productivity killers? What gets in the way of your productivity? #assnchat  (opens in a new tab)

— kikilitalien (@kikilitalien) October 7, 2014  (opens in a new tab)

A1: Twitter. #assnchat  (opens in a new tab)

— Ernie Smith (@ErnieSmithAN) October 7, 2014  (opens in a new tab)

And question two:

Q2. What is the best productivity tool you use regularly? #assnchat  (opens in a new tab)

— kikilitalien (@kikilitalien) October 7, 2014  (opens in a new tab)

A2. Also Twitter. #assnchat  (opens in a new tab)

— Ernie Smith (@ErnieSmithAN) October 7, 2014  (opens in a new tab)

OK, OK, that was kind of a joke, but there is a bit of truth in it: Social media is an incredibly useful tool, but it comes with an addictive element that can be tough to control at work. How can employers best balance that? The Next Web‘s Ritika Puri has a few thoughts on the matter  (opens in a new tab), both organizationally and regarding policy. There’s a way to make social media an important productivity tool while still letting the personal element shine through.

“The key to your company’s social media policy is employee empowerment,” she writes. “Team members should have the information they need to make decisions independently—and most importantly, to be themselves.”

Bad Writers Know Too Much

Hanlon’s Razor: “”Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” http://t.co/fUZ8bQR43e  (opens in a new tab) via @WSJ  (opens in a new tab)

— Daniel Pink (@DanielPink) October 5, 2014  (opens in a new tab)

When covering a detailed topic, are you losing your readers along the way?

It may be because you know too much about it—and that’s making your writing worse. Such is the novel opinion of author and psychologist Steven Pinker, who argues that bad writing drains “vast sums of money from the economy.” Really.

“The curse of knowledge is the single best explanation of why good people write bad prose,” Pinker writes in The Wall Street Journal  (opens in a new tab). “It simply doesn’t occur to the writer that her readers don’t know what she knows—that they haven’t mastered the argot of her guild, can’t divine the missing steps that seem too obvious to mention, have no way to visualize a scene that to her is as clear as day.”

Whether or not you’re willing to go as far as Pinker did, it’s a good reminder of an ongoing problem in the world of acronyms: a lack of clarity. (ht @DanielPink  (opens in a new tab))

Wednesday Buzz: Social Media’s Yin and Yang

Bad Writers Know Too Much

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