...to the second edition of Total Annarchy, a biweekly/fortnightly newsletter by me, Ann Handley. If you are getting this newsletter for the first time—welcome! You can read the backstory on its purpose in life here.

It’s a cold rain here in Boston, melting most of the remaining backyard snow into congealed splotches of ice. I had to take care to sidestep the slippery rime on my tiny commute to my Tiny House just now, lest I fall and bruise something important.

But I’m here... bones and ego intact! So, hello! I appreciate your clicking-to-open today.

I’m especially grateful since so many distractions and priorities tug at us all, making the task of maintaining balance as dicey as my backyard traverse.

So what do many of us do to stay upright? We build To-Do lists.

The problem with the To-Do List is that it can feel like a prescriptive grind—tick marks on an endless coil of efficiency. To-Do lists can make you feel smugly accomplished. And equally depleted.

So where’s the list that fills you back up?

At the start of this year, I made a list of Love-to-Dos: things I wanted to do and make—and make time for—because they matter to me.

That list fertilized my More Pages, Fewer Screens (MP,FS) 2018 mantra.  And that cross-pollinated into this newsletter you’re reading right now.

Valentine’s Day week seems a good time to check in with my own Love-to-Do List, adding and purging as I see fit. (Because it’s meant to be an inspiration, not a prescription.)

What about you? What’s on your own “Love-To-Do” list? I'd love to hear.

Meanwhile, here are 13 things I thought worth sharing with you this fortnight.

1.
ASAP: As SLOW Аs Possible
The Dewey Decimal pedant in me doesn’t know whether to file this under “writing” or “marketing.” It’s both.

My To-Do List sometimes makes me do things by rote and sequence, ticking off some assignments ASAP—as soon as possible. Lately I’ve been thinking more about how some things need more gestation: What if we flipped some things we do from As Soon As Possible to As SLOW As Possible?

How do you recognize the time to tap the brakes? How do you know what’s a “go-slow moment”?

That’s what I’m developing now. Here’s one: a Slow Writing AND a Slow Marketing moment inspired by The Department of B2B Snack Procurement.

Silly? Slightly. Actual takeaways? Always.

2.
Tools’ Paradise
Related Words is better than a thesaurus because it gives you a much broader set of, well, related words rather than straight-up synonyms.

I use it to look up words or phrases I already know, because that sometimes sparks ideas for more descriptive writing. It’s like playing word association with yourself. Think of it as a way to keep your writing muscles loose and limber.

Everyone: Hey Twitter! Can we get more space to write longer tweets?
Twitter tech developers: Holla! Sure!
Everyone: Can we do something about the typos? Maybe make tweets editable?
Twitter dev: Go eff yourself.

The Grammarly for Chrome browser plugin means you’ll never misspell anything on Twitter again (or anything else, for that matter). The Firefox and Safari extensions don't support editing tweets, which is why Chrome is my jam. (Thanks, Neil Anuskiewicz!) P.S. As always, be careful out there.

4.
Turn It Up to 11
The Unicode Consortium sounds like an affiliation of Soviet labor camps that band together for better pricing on beets.

But the UC is actually the nonprofit organization devoted to (in its words) "developing, maintaining, and promoting software internationalization standards and data." In other words, these are the people responsible for the eggplant emoji!

Emojis don’t kill writing; they enhance communication. And Team UC just released 157 new emoji characters and “sequences,” iterations on individual emojis (emojies? emojii?).

They are due to arrive as part of the Unicode 11 standard, giving us a total of 2,823 new ways to capture the perfect sentiment when English words just won’t do. :) Redheads represent, and women finally get their turn at being superheroes.

Since some of my most beloved family members are gingers and most women I know already are superheroes, I’d say it’s about time. Still no pretzel, though. Insert emoji side eye here.

The announcement got plenty of coverage, but I had to dig for this chart of all the new campers. I’m obsessive like that.

Jack neglected to freshen the batteries in the smoke detector, which means that the beloved This Is Us family never heard the earsplitting pitch of the smoke alarm that sounds at my house every time someone gets a little too aggressive with the microwave popcorn.

Yet somehow it was Crock-Pot and not First Alert that took the fall for the house fire? Rude.

Anyway, that blame sent Crock-Pot scrambling to respond to a fake crisis of a fake death of a fake dad on a fake drama.

I wrote about these strange times, or what happens when a brand unexpectedly finds itself thrust into the limelight—fake crisis or not. What four things can we all learn from their time in the... uh... hot seat?

6.
The Six Things I Love About You
Skyword uncovers the six characteristics of the highest-performing content marketers in its new research report.

Spoiler: 1) a storytelling state of mind, 2) disciplined creativity, 3) excellence in execution, 4) iterative measurement, and 5) my favorite: there is no one size fits all because there are NO ORGANIZATIONAL TEMPLATES. I apologize for the shouty caps, but if I have a nickel for anytime anyone asked me for a prescription for “doing content marketing...” I’d have a jillion nickels.

Actually, I lied. That’s not my favorite part. My favorite is this: the STRUGGLE IS REAL for even top performers and great writers. More caps—because Content is pain, highness. Anyone who tells you different is selling something, to paraphrase the Princess Bride’s Chief Content Officer. Full report here. (Reg. required.)

7.
Resistance Is Feudal
Sales and marketing have traditionally been like that squabbling couple who refuse to get divorced because they won’t give each other the satisfaction.

Yet now the family counseling is paying off, or so this group of marketers interviewed by LinkedIn says. I’m in here, too, talking about why Sales and Marketing alignment is (finally) happening. The kids are relieved.

My favorite part of this video is the opening, when Michael Brenner, Lee Odden, and Ian Cleary (among others) recount a few storied feuds in history. Michael Brenner’s answer turns out to be prescient. And Heidi Cohen’s answer = The. Best.

8.
Snow Way
This is the craziest piece of content marketing I’ve ever seen. And possibly the most beautiful. Wait for the perfect tag line at the end. (Oh, to have Audi’s budget!)

9.
Price Versa
Freelancers, solopreneurs, consultants, speakers: How much should you charge? My friend Dorie Clark says you might not be charging enough.

Low fees can work against you, she writes, because price is often a proxy for perceived quality. And people value what they pay for. This is good product-pricing perspective for marketing/sales people, too. Check it.

(Former foster-dog-mom aside: Many pet rescues and shelters know this, which is part of the reason why adopting animals usually isn’t free.)

10.
Copy and content program: February 22
There are at least seven more seats left to a program hosted by Boston Content and Wayfair about what it’s really like to work in marketing copy and content. Me. Four panelists. Free drinks by Drizly. Stylish surroundings (because Wayfair). Join us!

11.
Free online program on marketing writing: March 9
Tools. Mindset. Craft. It’s all in this free online program featuring Tim Washer, Erik Deckers, and me. If you can’t make that date, no problem: Access it on-demand for 90 days, but only if you sign up by March 9. Check out the ridiculously good program and sign up via this sweet little link. 

Early-bird pricing ends this week. Regret is terrible thing to live with.

AND FINALLY

Cape Town pediatrician ("paediatrician") Alastair McAlpine asked some of his terminal, palliative-care patients what they had enjoyed in life and what gave life meaning. He printed their answers in this Twitter thread.

It’s the best thing you’ll read all week—and it’s a fitting end to this Love-To-Do edition of Total Annarchy: "These are the things these kids wished they could've done more. The rest is details."

Ann

P.S. High-fives for forwarding: If you know someone who might appreciate hearing from me, please forward this post, with an invitation to subscribe here: www.annhandley.com/newsletter.

P.P.S. Not into this? Rude. But fine: Unsubscribe right here: