There seems to be a switch that flips in some consultants’ heads after a few years working with clients: “I’m going to write a book that answers all those questions that I keep getting!” I can’t count how many business books I’ve read that are essentially a codification of an individual consultant’s approach to her area of expertise, often with some explanations of the broader topics of interest related to her field.
I’m torn about the concept as a whole. I’m a big fan of writing about your area of expertise and creating great resources for your customers. But these books are often so similar.
I read one such book recently: Clockwise
, by Andrew Pain. It was a fine enough overview of some of the basic concepts of productivity. If you needed a refresher or were, perhaps, coming to the concept of time management cold, it’s not a bad book.
But anyone interested in hiring a consultant to help with time management is a bit beyond this book; it’s not something that firmly establishes Pain’s expertise even over his local competition. Given the ease with which you can publish something short, specific and stunning these days, it’s practically necessary to stand above the crowd — at least if you want the effort of publishing your book to be worth the bother.
Writing a book can’t just be something that you cross off the list in order to make yourself more marketable in your career. You have to have something worth writing — even just a morsel of an idea that will take your readers to a new level, especially if they’re hoping you provide solutions to the problems in their lives. Push harder: that nugget of something new (at least to your audience) is there somewhere.
Our concept of a place is tied directly to experience: what we did there, what we said, who we met allows us to navigate just as much as latitude and longitude. There are a million tools that are built on this fact — Foursquare check-ins can drive up return rates for that very reason — but I have a new favorite.
Hi calls itself a narrative mapping tool. Obviously, I’m always up for anything that involves writing, but it’s a little more sophisticated than that. You can add a few words about any location, along with an image if you so desire.
You can probably guess what a lot of the content looks like: plenty of scrumptious food and majestic scenery, with the occasional questions of “How do I use this?” But there are occasional bits of surprise: a moment that stands out through sheer color, a quote that puts a museum exhibit in perfect context, a captured idea from a technical talk… there is an interesting potential here that is a little more thoughtful than the typical social media update.
Currently, Hi is wait-listing people who want to join and then onboarding them in batches. But even if you’re still waiting for an invite, you can explore other people’s posts — I prefer just clicking around on the map interface and seeing what I find.
Craig Mod is part of the team behind Hi. His projects never fail to fascinate me. Mod has written an essay about the logic behind Hi. It’s not required reading for using the platform, but it’s got some interesting ideas on narrative, starting new platforms and creativity in general.
