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| Illustration: Marc Rosenthal |
Take It From Me
How to Write a Love Poem
SAY IT WITHOUT FLOWERSBe direct. Think of this memorable first line from the Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” You can’t get much better than that.
Avoid abstraction. Words such as “love,” “beauty,” and “hot hot sexiness” are like carbohydrates on the dinner plate. Use them sparingly. Instead, favor concrete descriptions, which are the leafy greens and lean proteins of language. Here’s Christina Rossetti, another Victorian: “My heart is like a singing bird,” she writes, then “My heart is like an apple-tree,” then “My heart is like a rainbow-shell,” and finally, at the end of the stanza, “Because my love has come to me.”
Praise extravagantly. Check out this exaltation that the contemporary American poet Maureen McLane adapted from the sixth-century Greek poet Sappho: “some say a host of horsemen, a horizon of ships under sail is most beautiful but I say it is whatever you love I say it is you.”
Know that less is more. These lines from a Shakespeare sonnet, for all their drama, nevertheless seem intimate because the statement they make is so simple: “Being your slave, what should I do but tend / Upon the hours and times of your desire?”
Consider taking a risk. Here’s some straightforward seduction courtesy of the seventeenth-century poet John Donne: “To teach thee, I am naked first; why then, / What needst thou have more covering than a man?” And if you shrink from the thought of writing anything like that, reflect on Donne’s famous watchword: carpe diem. In other words, YOLO.
Share Power, Improve Teamwork
Think different. Banish the assumption that you, as the formal leader of a team, are solely responsible for everything, including identifying the team’s direction and key goals, leading team meetings, and managing challenging work relationships among team members. When you operate with this sort of mindset, you inevitably wind up feeling as if you are in a boat where you are the captain, navigator, and chief engineer, and your team simply shows up to row. It not only leaves you exhausted and the team disengaged; it also wastes team members’ talents and limits any results the team might produce.
Get talking. Raise the issue of accountability and commitment with your team. Explain why you need a team in which each member shares leadership, and discuss how such a team could produce better results.
Ask questions. Do the members of your team see how sharing leadership with you would result in more productivity? Are they interested in taking on leadership roles? Are they interested in the results you have described? If not, what could you do to make them interested?
Making Googly Ads
PUT SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING TO WORK FOR YOU
Identify good keywords. The words you choose to make your ad appear in users’ search results are critical. Use free tools such as Google’s Keyword Planner. Look for words that are common in searches, relevant to your business, and not too likely to trigger ads from your competitors. Also, make sure your ad copy is relevant to the keywords. Consider “dynamic keyword insertion,” which introduces users’ search words into the text of your ad.
Don’t be too inclusive. Avoid wasting your budget on bad clicks. Find negative keywords—words that signal the search engine not to show your ad. For example, a cruise company might specify “Tom Cruise” as a negative keyword. Use resources like the store of data in your Google Adwords account to refine your list of keywords, making sure that they reflect developments in the news and popular culture.
Don’t link directly to your homepage. Instead, send users to a “landing page” first, so that you can keep track of how much interest your campaign is generating. You can find out which keywords are driving the most traffic to your website, and if you have several different campaigns, you’ll learn which ones are pulling the best results and perhaps which products are most appealing to your target audience.
Inner Peace on the Go
Embrace imperfection. When students come to me for help in leading a balanced life, I try to approach them with empathy, remembering that I, too, am far from perfect. Extend the same attitude toward yourself, and realize that even a short moment of centering can improve your day.
Take deep breaths. Slowing our breathing slows our heart rate, and slows our thoughts so that the mind can attend to the task at hand.
Understand that red lights are your friend. Times when you’re forced to wait are perfect opportunities for meditation. If you’re stuck at a red light, breathe deeply. Let your eyes rest on the horizon. Watch for the light to turn green in your peripheral vision.
Walk mindfully. Don’t like to sit still? Try walking meditation, in which you keep your attention on your movement with each step. Do it in your office, in your basement as you pick up your laundry, at the store as you buy groceries.
Add ommmm to your iPod. Sites like calm.com provide free recordings to guide you through mediation. Listen to one on the bus or subway. Try one when you can’t fall asleep or are too distracted to read.