Back in 2001, the earliest phase of the new millennium, I was feeling overwhelmed. The onrush of email, websites, and other forms of electronic communication had exploded, and I was directly in its path.
My entrepreneurial instinct is to turn any problem into a business opportunity. Obviously, I thought, people everywhere are probably experiencing a similar state of being overwhelmed.
The next two thoughts were:
- Master or conquer the state of overwhelm
- Write a book about it
OK, that sounded good. I need a book title, and a domain to go with it. My brain is geared to work in headlines, domain names, and titles. That skill is derived from being enamored with the creative style of billboards which fuse copy and images better than almost any other medium. The copy guideline: 7 words or less was the norm. For domains and book titles, one things in even fewer words, preferable no more than 2 or 3.
Magically, it hit me: “I’ll call it Dot Calm!” It’s a play on the phrase dot-com. “Simply brilliant,” I thought.
Then, in a moment of humility, I thought I’d better search Amazon.com
, in the unlikely possibility that someone had the same thought, had written a book with that same title.
Well, whaddya know. There it was… dotcalm: The search for sanity in a wired world.
I wasn’t terribly disappointed. I simply bought the book. It was brilliant. And it stands up very well, today. So, if you’re touched by the occasional or constant problem of TMI (too much information), buy yourself a copy, new or used, from Amazon.com
I reread it periodically. It’s that good.
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In the retail biz, the day after Thanksgiving, is referred to as Black Friday. This ‘first official day of the shopping season’ has, unfortunately, turned into a discount day.
