​It’s tough to measure ROI on SEO in terms of RMR, IMHO. Did you get that sentence? I wrote it in an email several weeks back to a couple of friends, and both knew that acronyms. That could be scary or a sign of the times we live in.

Whether it’s because of texting or truncating words, the world today is filled with confusing (or clarifying, depending on your perspective) shorter verses of complete words or strings of word. We shorten to simplify (so we think), but often end up confusing others.

Take that opening sentence, which if fully written out would state: “It’s tough to measure Return on Investment on Search Engine Optimization in terms of Recurring Monthly Revenue, In My Humble Opinion. There. Got it?
 
Most people (I’m thinking anyway) would get that sentence without need to explain the acronyms. But perhaps not. You must presume people understand financial terms, marketing language, have knowledge of recurring revenue and are schooled in the shortening of phrases through texting. So I guess it’s probably more likely most people wouldn’t get that sentence on first glance. Unless they went to Google and checked a couple of the definitions to clarify it.
 
Many of us go down this path of presuming others get what we’re talking about without ever asking their background or understanding of certain terms. Public speakers (and writers) can be especially bad at this, jumping right into complicated terms and stringing together two or three acronyms in a row that serve to make them sound important and like an expert, when all it does is make the audience or reader want to yawn, take a nap and tune the person out.
 
Lawyers, engineers, doctors and people working in information technology are extremely adept at pulling confusion off. The mumbo jumbo is often ended with, “Okay, are you with me?” You want to reply, “Of course not, you dufus. I don’t understand 90 percent of what you’re saying.”
 
But you don’t say that because you’re embarrassed. You’re supposed to understand, so you nod your head with glazed eyes and daydream about blueberry donuts.
 
It’s easy to poke fun at people who micromanage language. For example, start talking in code to your work manager if you want to impress that person,  and see if it gets you a promotion.
 
“McGillicutty,” you say to your boss, “I’m WTIM the past few weeks. What should I do?”
 
If McGillicutty gives you some tips on how to stop wasting time in meetings (WTIM), you know you’re on the same plane and you could have a chance to move up the ladder by creating more subroutine, company-specific terms and phrases to impress him with your business acumen and creativity.
 
On the other hand, if McGillicutty’s eyes glaze over when you say “WTIM,” then you know you’ve lost him and there’s not much hope of connecting. Language at its finest is about building that connection.
 
Acronyms serve a purpose, particularly in specific industries and fields. Once you get outside that arena though, tread lightly.

Gauge your audience. See if they nod their heads as they pretend to understand what you say, or a hand shoots up and asks, “what’s WTIM mean?” If you get the question, you know they care and are paying attention. That’s something.

​How strong/long is the human attention span? I sure don’t know. But it seems to grow shorter by the year.
 
The first time I began to notice it was when USA TODAY came on the market. Their model was to create a national newspaper with shorter stories. They added more charts and graphs. They gave readers a state-by-state one issue synopsis. Most stories followed their model of less is better.

Shift to today with the explosion of media channels, including the ability to send snippets out of context. Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Vine, Vimeo and many other many other vehicles play to our dwindling human attention span. “PAY ATTENTION TO ME!” Delete. “READ THIS!” Delete. “CHECK OUT THIS PICTURE!” Delete.

We scan and delete, scan and delete, rarely taking time to read, assimilate and think. We lose personal judgment when that happens and become easily to manipulate. Individuals, companies and organizations have figured this out, playing to our base instincts.
 
Television stories average 8 seconds in length. THAT’S 8 SECONDS, FOLKS! Do you think you’re informed in that period? Do you have time to evaluate data that quickly? Can you form an intelligent opinion in a few seconds? Of course not.
 
If you read a Tweet, you’re probably done in less than 8 seconds. Again, you’re not informed when you glance at 140 characters while looking at a photo of someone making an absurd face.
 
Sadly, the written word is slowly disappearing. I have adapted to this. When this column started almost 20 years ago (WHOA!), I wrote it to the average newspaper length for a column –750 words. I doggedly stuck with this for 15 years, even when it became clear that fewer and fewer people sat down to read about a subject rather than listening to two jabbering heads talk about something on TV instead.
 
The 750 word limit dropped down to about 600 words around 5 years ago, as I gave into reality. “People won’t stay with the column until the end, so I better shorten it.” No one noticed. No one commented. I still got positive feedback from the same readers.
 
You can tell when you lose readers based on the types of comments you receive on what you wrote and the frequency of people weighing in. It became clear in the last year that even 600 words was probably too many to expect people to read on a weekly basis. I felt I was drawing messages out, playing around with words too much, and should probably cut the column even shorter. So I did.
 
For those faithful readers, you’re now typically perusing 550 words per week. The messages still come through. Hopefully, funny and insightful stories still grab you during the ebb and flow of what I type. If we lose that, then no one will pay attention.
 
Is shorter better? I’m not sure. But I write to share, get people thinking, laughing and digging deeper into why the world is the way it is, and what we can do to positively impact it for our children and future generations.
 
To be successful, I’ve had to adapt in many ways, like we all must do in our jobs and personal lives. Hopefully, shorter makes sense and you still muse and laugh reading this column. Damn it, just went 557.

​There sure seems to be a lot of uptight people in the world these days, don’t you think? Just today I read a story in the newspaper that was totally focused on workplace stress and the intense levels people feel. Close to 70 percent responded that they have a significant level of stress in their jobs, which was described as a 7 or above on a scale of 1-10.
 
Beyond job stress, you can’t seem to go anywhere without people discussing political divisions, divisiveness in public debate, random shootings or the loss of overall general civility in U.S. society. While I personally don’t believe things are as bad as many feel it is (maybe we should talk a bit more face-to-face and hear out what others have to say rather than jumping to conclusions), there’s no question that there’s a higher level of angst lurking in the background than there probably was five years ago.
 
We need to learn how to relax better. Some of that requires taking your mind off the matter that is bothering you. I came up with a good idea this past week. It’s simple and easy.
 
Opening my Twitter account 7 years ago (WOW, has it really been that long?), I joined to promote a book I’d written, help share my weekly newspaper column and occasionally share a photo, book or movie review. In general, my goal was to put out positive information.
 
As my tweeting and retweeting evolved, I found tremendous photographers on social media and I started following them and sharing their spectacular scenery shots. If a nature scene calmed me, I hit the retweet button. When a photo moved my soul, I shared it. This led to connections with many other people who love fantastic images that improve your emotional mindset.
 
The idea this past week riffed off that same concept – sharing images that calm you, and take you to another place that is quiet and peaceful. While looking at an image of the brilliant colors of a Wisconsin fall on my desktop screen, I thought, “Heck, I haven’t changed that image in awhile. I need a new one.”

So I went to Google and checked out images for the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota/southern Manitoba, Canada. How settling. Soothing. Majestic.
 
I scrolled through many pictures. Twice my wife and I have canoed the Boundary Waters, once on our honeymoon and once about 10 years ago. There is almost no way to describe what a transformative experience it is to paddle in the middle of nowhere, for days without seeing people, soaking in nature in its most pristine state.
 
It was difficult to pick just one picture to select for my desktop screen and save it. Somehow, I was able to accomplish it, and now look at another relaxing image that takes me to another place.


It’s a little thing. But little things add up.

We can all go into our personal files and scroll through pictures that bring back happy memories. Go do that right now. Find one that pleases you. Save it to your desktop. Now, don’t you feel better?

It doesn’t have to be scenery. Family photos work great. The point is to pick something that relaxes you. Golfing, hiking, food, fall colors, snow, fishing, whatever your fancy. Find something and save it. You’ll feel better every time you click the computer on.

​There’s a cleansing feeling when you shred your “to do” list. It’s purging your insides.
 
All week long you hammer away.
 
“Remember to pick up groceries on drive home.”
 
“Send report to Bamberger by COB Wednesday.”

“Get cash for weekend.”
 
“Make lunch reservation with Epstein.”
 
“Pick up beer.”


Take the list, head down to the shredder. Slip the notes in one by one. Listen to that marvelous grinding sound as they get chewed up. All your deadlines are gone. You accomplished something by getting all those chores -- work and home – accomplished. Now you can sigh and start filling up your brain again.

Despite knowing you will have much more to do in the coming week, there is something cathartic about watching and hearing the paper cut into tiny pieces. I think part of the gut wonderful feeling is seeing the paper being swallowed by the machine. It’s going away. So are all those things you meant to do this week. You accomplished something. That makes you feel good.
 
A couple of weeks ago, I had an extra busy week. You could feel pressure driven by external demands, which resulted in me writing many “to do’s” down. It seemed like an avalanche pouring down from high on a mountain, rumbling towards my brain.

When you have a day or week like that, unless you jot down what needs to get done, your brain jumbles up. You don’t accomplish anything. It’s much easier to sit and feel the chaos generated around you. “Honey, what did you do today,” your spouse poses to you when you return home.


“Uh, I don’t remember. I forgot to write it down.”
 
Chances are you will forget. And not just because you didn’t write it down. Churn causes forgetfulness.
 
Years ago, my editor put yellow sticky notes on her desk on a daily basis. I remember walking in to hand her copy for our newsletter and seeing a long scribbled list. Certain items were crossed off. Others were written with large exclamation points at the end for greater emphasis or the words were put in ALL CAPS.
 
She didn’t have a shredder, so she was a master of crumbling it up and tossing it in the garbage can at the end of the day (or week). I doubt she got quite as much pleasure as there is when you shred, but I could see the feeling of joy on her face watching the yellow notepad paper being scrunched up and thrown. There’s probably a similar sense of finishing the job off and finality from that routine.
 
Now though we get the hum of the shredder. We hear the buzz. We watch its jaws clutch the paper and slowly feed it to its death.
 
After all the notes are slipped into its clutches, you’re done. Go home. Eat dinner. Read a book. Watch TV. Take a bike ride. Go for a walk. Play pickup basketball. Enjoy your dogs. Let the deadlines and chores go.

Because they’re back the next day or after the weekend and you have to begin making lists again. Remember that you’ve got that shredder waiting at the end of the line though when you call it quits. It will give you little extra something to look forward to.

​“Try the liver, it’s not bad.”
 
Nope, don’t think so. It tastes horrible and it’s bad for you. That’s all you need to know.
 
How did cave people decide certain foods were edible or tasty? They had to try stuff somehow. People must have died. How would they correlate the fact that they eating hemlock leaves caused Justavious to convulse, vomit and die on the cave floor instead of it being leaves of the rhubarb plant? If hemlock was the salad and rhubarb dessert, they’d have to find some other to test each item separately on another unsuspecting cave dweller to determine which was the culprit.
 
There sure must have been a lot of trial and error back on those days. Many human descendants croaked before food standards rose and cooking became a knowledge-based industry fueled by safety and testing.
 
Sometimes in books, you read about hunters still eating fresh livers from the game they kill. Does this really still happen? You have to wonder how that practice started: A bunch of animal worshippers eating organs. “Gustav, the liver has a fresh tang to it. Here, try a bite. Believe me.”
 
Probably not. If you’re like me, you gag when it comes to liver. We were forced to eat it as kids growing up. Mom bribed us with bacon as a side dish to make it palatable. It didn’t. It still tasted horrible, meaty, gamey, strong, forcing the esophagus closed. “It doesn’t want to go down the trap, mom.”
 
‘Take a bite or you can forget about that chocolate cake and ice cream for dessert.”
 
“Uh, okay.” Nibble. “Is that enough?” Us three brothers would take a taste then hide the rest under our baked potato skin.
 
Back in the day, cave people tried everything – dirt, grass, sassafras bark (“mmmm, good”), porcupine, alligator shells, whatever. They had to figure out what was edible and what would sustain them.
 
I want to know though who figured out if you boiled pistachio nuts they went from poisonous to edible.  Ha ha, not true, but like the cashew, pistachios are a member of the Anacardiaceae family, meaning they, too, naturally contain the chemical urushiol that makes poison ivy and others in the family so irritating. So if your stomach starts itching later, you know where to scratch and why.

For that matter, who figured out you couldn’t eat poison ivy?  “Ugggg, me tastum something bad on shiny leaf. Me not eatum anymore.”
 
Maybe if they figured out that they broke out in a rash from touching poison ivy, then you shouldn’t ingest it. Who knows?
 
Maybe Neanderthal man was just tougher than us. They probably consumed a ton of dirt, ash, bark and bacteria and that could have driven their immune system strength off the charts. To survive, their digestive system needed to improvise and break down stuff that today sends us to the emergency room or worst.
 
Still, it would be amusing to have a game show, “What’s This Taste Like,” for people from thousands of years back. Contestants would taste and smile, grimace or keel over. The audience could then learn what made sense to put in their mouths and what to avoid. “Too bad ‘ol Thor passed away, he would have loved this liver stuff.”