Your Gap Year – What’s Stopping You?
Guest Post on Chip Conley's Wisdom Well blog My husband, Sam, and I took a gap year at age 62, forty-four years after our respective parents forbade us from taking a timeout before starting university. The goal was to reinvent ourselves. We were determined to resist...
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From Stomach Doctor to First-time Author: the Inside Story
Following is a behind-the-scenes story by my husband, Sam Harrington, a former gastroenterologist and soon-to-be published author of At Peace: Choosing a Good Death After a Long Life. His book about end-of-life decision making for the elderly will be published in Feb....
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Acting “As If” Your Writing or Speaking Makes a Difference
Do you read as a form of procrastination? I read the New York Times, Facebook, e-newsletters, and Kindle eBooks. I've got hard and softcover books stacked by my bed, along with print-outs of articles. I feel a little panicky if I don't have something with me at all...
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When Depression Creeps In Like the Fog
The stigma around depression is stubbornly pervasive. No matter that depression affects 350 million people worldwide. Chances are that someone in your office or your circle of friends or even your immediate family suffers from depression – and you don’t know about it....
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Reflections on My 65th Birthday
I dreaded it for months. But my 65th birthday came and went recently and life is still good. Grand, in fact. Despite recurrent depression, despite self esteem issues, despite everything about myself that I’d like to change, I am so looking forward to what lies ahead....
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Running the New York Marathon vs. Writing a Book
My daughter Amanda ran the New York Marathon yesterday. She hadn't trained properly. She was sleep deprived. She walked for several miles. But she finished. Amanda is a surgery resident (surgeon-in-training) so she had plenty of excuses for not being prepared. But she...
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Why Your Blog Is the Hub of Social Media Marketing
To mark the publication of the new, updated edition of The Coporate Blogging Book, I created a free ebook that explains Why Your Blog Is Your Social Media Hub. I asked a dozen or so high-profile blogging and social media experts, including corporate, nonprofit and...
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The Big List of Big Brand Corporate Blogs
Corporate blogs are a subset of how social media is being used by companies and organizations. Think of a blog as the hub of the wheel, the home base of your social media strategy. From your blog, you link to your Twitter stream, your Facebook fan page,...
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Only 12% Are Corporate Bloggers, According to Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere Report
No surprise: corporate bloggers are the smallest piece of the blogging pie, according to Technorati's just released State of the Blogosphere 2008. Only 12 percent of bloggers self-identify as "corporate," meaning they blog in an official capacity for their company....
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Attention Business Authors: Self-Publishing Is No Longer for Losers
Ten years ago, the idea of self-publishing a serious business book would have been laughable. Self-publishing was for losers, right? Self-publishing was a last resort after not being able to get a book contract from one of the Big Six publishers…
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My First Article About Blogging
I published my first article about business blogging in August, 2001, only a few weeks before 9/11.
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5 Reasons to Play Hooky in the Summer
This is not the first summer that I’ve taken a break from all digital, all the time. And I hope it won’t be the last. As I wrote last July, there’s something about a stretch away from DC that makes me feel like…
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Hey, Stop Procrastinating and “Do the Work”
I know I’m in trouble when I haven’t posted to my blog in a while. I can feel the wall of resistance rising higher and higher. My inner voice chatters away: “For godssakes, write a new blog post. Something. Anything. Panic. What should I write about? What is important enough? Paralysis.”
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Amplify Keynote
As part of Sydney's biannual Amplify Festival, I gave a keynote on baby boomers and social media to executives and managers of AMP, one of Australia’s largest and oldest financial institutions, as well as to AMP Capital. In my talk, Friending Over 50, I reveal the...
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How to prepare an Ignite or TED talk
TED and TEDx talks are the holy grail for speakers who want to move hearts and minds. But five-minute Ignite talks are an excellent warm up. Like TEDx’s, Ignite talks are regularly given in dozens of cities around the world. I was invited to give two in Washington D.C.
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Q & A with Seth Godin about writing best-selling Poke the Box
Five questions with Seth Godin about his 85-page book, “Poke the Box.” First question: Why is there no table of contents?
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Not a Full-Length Book? Write a Kindle Single Instead
How do you know whether you’ve got a Big or Little book idea? These days, it doesn’t matter.
read moreFriending Over 50: Sex, Lies and Baby Boomers
I’ve been searching for a catchy way to describe the surprising story of baby boomers and their love affair with social media. Sex, Lies and Baby Boomers (inspiration: Sex, Lies and Videotape) has a nice ring to it.
read moreWhy I Love National Grammar Day
It’s hopelessly old-fashioned to care about it’s versus its. Who versus whom. Affect versus effect. But I do. I really do.
As I wasted time on Twitter today, I ran across a tweet about National Grammar Day. March 4th. Every…
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