ANNOUNCEMENT -- CHANGING FOCUS -- THE FUTURE IS NOW!

My literary agent has advised me that to improve traffic and traction on my blog I should send a paragraph or two of my missives to my emailers and include a link to my blog should they want to read the entire essay.

He suggests adding a "share this" button so visitors can share my articles with their friends or the entire missive -- there are over 400 complete missives posted on my blog.

I read and comment on books, articles and subjects as diverse as poetry and history to mathematics, from classical and current fiction, from the social and behavioral sciences to the physical sciences, from philosophy and theology to politics and current events, from management to culture and education.

I haven't as a rule sent out pieces on some of these disciplines, such as the curious world of chemistry and mathematics, but still have run into trouble with some readers when I describe my take on sensitive subjects such as religion, politics, patriotism, nationalism and economics.

Being an eclectic or catholic reader and thinker, I claim no expertise in any discipline other than the psychology of organizational development.

My agent wants me to "twitter" and, at this point, I have no idea what "twittering" is.

Some of you like my long essays, most of you don't, and many of you once they come to a sentence they don't like, hit the delete button. How do I know? You tell me.

That is the reader's right. It defeats my purpose of making connection, but it is okay. In any case, I don't plan to change my style.

My effort is to describe possible problems and let the reader work out the prescription for solving them. I am not a problem solving or solution guru, as I am not privy to all the variables that make up the reader's problem.

My sense is that we have too many solutions chasing too few problems, yes, I say "few problems."

If you look at a life, or a country, or a society, and really look at it, there are only a handful of problems. We have a mind, however, full of self-estrangement and conflict that chooses to invent problems exponentially, and throw up our hands finding them insoluble, which makes us vulnerable to "experts," when expertise is an oxymoron.

One reason I was successful as a young chemical sales engineer was that I worked out that I encountered no more than a half dozen problems again and again, developing an assortment of ways to deal with them.

It made my career very uncomplicated which everyone thought was lucky, that is, until they read CONFIDENT SELLING (1970), and found it had nothing to do with luck. What they saw as luck was simply focusing on the obvious and dispatching it, realizing that the biggest challenge was getting out of my own way.

I think that applies to life for everyone.

Be always well,

Jim