I recently re-read Robert Cialdini’s book Pre-Suasion (Remember Cialdini? The Professor who wrote Influence) where he talks about designing our workspace with cues to support what we’re doing.
As he puts it: We have to become interior designers of our regular living spaces, furnish them with features that will send us unthinkingly in the directions we most want to go in those spaces.
My first client as a speechwriter was Peter Sutherland, when he was Chairman of BP. I was summoned to his office for a 15 minute interview. During that interview he rummaged in his desk drawer and got out his commonplace book.
ENGAGE BRAIN
– How to record, retrieve and remember what inspires you
(rather than settling for digital oblivion)
Date of Publication: 3 May 2022
Pages: 24
Publisher: UK Speechwriters’ Guild
ISBN: 9780956322654
In the summer of 2021, I went back to the village I left in September 1980. We went on a family holiday in a cottage next to the school I used to go to. I remembered Hilmarton in the pre-Thatcherite era. This was a chance to see how 40 years of history had changed where I grew up.
A Christmas Stocking 2021
– a commonplace selection by A Speechwriter
Date of Publication: 15 November 2021
Pages: 24
Publisher: UK Speechwriters’ Guild
ISBN: 9780956322647
These are weird historical times. I like to keep snapshots of how we’re managing transitions back to more ‘conventional’ reality.
On Sunday 19 September 2021, I spent the first night away from my family for over two years.
There is a Jewish custom of writing an ethical will in which we convey our hopes and concerns to our children. I wrote a speech when my son, Leo, was born, expressing my hopes for his life. I’m doing the same for my second son, Axel, on his first day of school.
Axel, you’re going to school today. A big moment for your mum and dad, and for you.
A Christmas Stocking 2020
– a commonplace selection by Brian Jenner
The Challenge
This week I gave a 20 minute keynote presentation to a speechwriting conference in Vilnius in Lithuania via Zoom from a studio in Southampton, England.
