Proust questionnaire

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Unsplash

I love reading the Proust questionnaire column in Vanity Fair magazine. It gives such a great insight into a person. These days it’s common to stalk an individual on a Linkedin or Facebook profile. To my mind it would be useful if every profile or About page included a mandatory Proust questionnaire.

So in the interests of disclosure, I provide the following insights for your consideration.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Warmth, nothing scheduled, an empty day ahead.

What is your greatest fear?

Chaos.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

A tendency to exaggerate to enhance a good story.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?

Delusion.

Which living person do you most admire?

Someone brave, wise and strong.

What is your greatest extravagance?

Imagined extravagance: laundered sheets. Actual extravagance: sleep.

What is your current state of mind?

Grateful.

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

I like them all. None are overrated.

On what occasion do you lie?

When the truth really, really hurts.

What do you most dislike about your appearance?

That it’s staring back at me.

Which living person do you most despise?

There’s a great many that I don’t particularly like. But despise is a bit harsh. I don’t despise anyone. But given time, opportunity and more information…

What is the quality you most like in a man?

It’s tough to list just one. Maybe, kindness despite it all.

What is the quality you most like in a woman?

Dignity.

What words or phrases do you most overuse?

What would you like for dinner?

When and where were you happiest?

On holidays, on a bicycle.

Which talent would you most like to have?

To sing like Joan Sutherland.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I’m too old to change anything. I’ll work with what I’ve got.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Getting this far.

If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?

My cat.

Where would you most like to live?

Anywhere with a garden, lots of books and a cat.

What is your most treasured possession?

Anything belonging to someone I loved who is gone.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

Working for evil.

What is your favourite occupation?

Garbage collector. Any sort of waste management that keeps the world turning.

What is your most marked characteristic?

Solitary.

What do you most value in your friends?

Shared history. I’m proud of all of my friends.

Who are your favourite writers?

A.A. Gill, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Salman Rushdie, Flannery O’Connor.

Who is your hero of fiction?

Anyone who pulls themselves back from the brink of destruction.

Which historical figure do you most identify with?

Anyone confused and afraid, but forging-ahead nonetheless.

Who are your heroes in real life?

Catherine Freeman (focus under pressure), Julia Gillard (I will not be lectured to about misogyny by that man), Noel Pearson (a champion of his people), people who keep going when it hurts.

What are your favourite names?

The names of the people I love.

What is it that you most dislike?

Saying yes, when I really don’t want to.

What is your greatest regret?

Hurting people.

How would you like to die?

Quickly, and with little fuss.

What is your motto?

It changes from time-to-time, but ‘Done is better than perfect’ is being bandied-about at the moment.

Who's driving your social media?

About once a week someone says to me: “we’ve got to find someone to help you do all that social media stuff”. I think they have in mind a junior person who could relieve me of their idea of ‘hack work’, while I sit about and write strategy, or attended corporate golf events.

I’ve seen many clients offload their social media to someone ill-equipped to deal with it. In almost all cases the delegation has failed. In some cases it’s done irrevocable damage to a brand and caused serious legal problems.

Here’s why. Social media is publishing. It's direct communication with the public and your potential customers. It’s also like meeting someone in person. Your organisation has a brief opportunity to make an impression. Your voice and communication must be as professional, well crafted and assured as it is in your company’s advertising. Social media is the media these days. The only difference is that now your advertising needs to be produced faster and more frequently.

Would you leave your 20-year old intern in charge of your company’s advertising campaigns? Nor should you leave them in control of your identity and reputation on the most important communication channels available to you.

Companies who lead the way in social media have teams of professionals generating quality content, crafting copy, running advertising campaigns and managing customer service on social media. It is where your brand, products and corporate culture are being put to the test—and judged.

Social media is maturing fast. It’s no longer acceptable to outsource the responsibility for it to a kid. It is a major marketing activity and part of your corporate identity, voice and brand. Do it well and you give a great impression and sense that your company is proficient, cool and professional. Do it badly, and I don’t want anything to do with you.

Text with a nasty typo? I’m going to judge your quality control (maybe your products are sloppy too). Poor quality imagery? I assume you are lazy and apathetic, or simply have no eye (again, sloppy). And what about the tone of voice? Does your law firm sound like a nightclub? There are a million ways to mess it up.

Messing it up is rarely in the mechanics of posting. It’s not about how often people post (although too frequent seems a bit desperate to me), what time you post (I’m awake at weird hours) or how many followers you have (you can buy them). If your social media content is consistently beautiful, entertaining and inspiring—and I’m interested in what you offer—I’ll be a fan. If not, I have never even noticed you.

Great media content is not created by accident. Content creation is tough creative work that takes technical skill, experience, time and money to conjure from the ether. Invest in it.

Underestimate the importance and skill it takes to do well, and hand your social media to the ill-equipped at your peril. It’s not something everyone can do (even when they express a keen interest). If it matters to you, treat your social media with respect. Engage a professional and expect to pay for the results social media can deliver when done well.

Over capitalising

The first thing I learned on the first day of studying communications was that writing is about conveying information to the audience. It’s not about how clever you are, or how much you know, or your ego. It’s about the efficient transfer of information to your audience.

I come back to that every time I put words on paper or screen. It’s something I think about when I see over capitalisation: which is my favourite editorial curse.

Capital letters creep into our sentences like rising damp. They’re everywhere and unnecessary. Rooting them out will improve your writing and help your readers comprehend your message with fewer distractions.

Capitalisation should only be used for proper nouns. What’s a proper noun? It’s a name used for an individual person, place, or organisation (for example, Michael, Melbourne and Microsoft).

Unless a word is strictly a proper noun, there’s no justification for aggrandising it with an initial capital letter. Now let’s all read that last sentence again.

In typography (the art of typeface design) the point of a capital letter is to jolt the eye as the uppercase letter form is encountered along the horizontal line of text. That jolt is designed to mark the beginning of a new sentence or highlight something of importance (a proper noun).

When we over capitalise there are lots of chances for the eye to experience that little jolt. It becomes disruptive to the flow of reading. Think of it like a tiny electric shock. The more of them you get in a sentence, the more your eyes will get fatigued and your mind distracted. When your job is to convey information, distraction is death.

A proper noun is: The Reserve Bank of Australia. That’s it’s full and official title. In subsequent references we should then refer to it as ‘the bank’. That is not it’s full official title, so doesn’t warrant capitalisation at all (and it saves us repeating the full title).

Here’s where it gets fascinating. As we write, we make decisions about capitalisation. Before you know it, the board has become the Board. The doctor has become a Doctor, and a committee is a Committee. We assign importance to things we think deserve it. The Chief Executive Officer gets the treatment but often the cleaner does not.

If ever there is a habit that’s hard to break, it’s what people choose to make important. What they don’t realise is that capitalisation choices lead to poor comprehension and reader distraction. If you want your words to be read and your sentences to flow, ditch the unnecessary capitalisation.

Keep it simple

We think complexity is clever, but it isn't. Designer Paul Rand wrote "Design is so simple. That is why it is so hard."

I'm a fan of simplicity. It's honest, straightforward, accessible and clear. It doesn't waste time.

But we live in a world that values complexity: more features, more tools, more stuff. As a result we have options paralysis. Options, alternatives, what ifs grind our minds to a halt. People are fed up with features and options and choices. It's exhausting.

Simplicity is good. Probably even great. This year I'm going to take the easy route, do the easy thing. Keep it simple. Get it done.

It's good to keep simplicity in mind when you're trying to communicate. The point is not to be clever, or impress people, or give them options. Keep it simple, get the message across and get it done.