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I just finished reading Marty Neumeier’s Zag: The Number One Strategy of High-Performance Brands and The Brand Gap. While they are both good reads, I really found The Brand Gap to be essentially background information for Zag. Both books deal with the issue of creating you company’s brand, where brand is defined as people’s gut feeling about your company. This definition really hits home with me. I am a big fan of Apple, and I think they are a prime example of a company that knows how to create a brand. (But let’s not get started on discussions about Apple. We all know that those always end up with an endless array of idiotic rants and flames.)

One statement that really struck me in Zag was in determining who your enemy is.

Rather than trying to please everyone at the risk of pleasing no one, step right up and pick a fight.

I love this statement. I am so tired of the option paralysis caused by the dozens of uninspiring, “me too” products on the market. Give me a company that has a passion that I agree with, and I’ll give you my loyalty.

While I’ve had this suspicion for years, it became apparent to me several months ago during a conflict with some long time friends that people think about things differently. I’m not talking about just having different opinions and beliefs, but that their act of thinking is significantly different. I’ve always thought that I was pretty good at putting myself in other’s shoes to see where they’re coming from, but this time it just did not work. This really disturbed, confused, and scared me a bit due to the voracity of their argument.

Since then, I’ve been reading books on how people think and how the mind works. These include A Whole New Mind,Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion, and most recently, The Art of Thinking.

While I haven’t finished it yet, The Art of Thinking verified what I had suspected. They outline five different styles of thinking in the book and have a quiz that allows you to figure out what type of thinker you are. After taking the quiz, I found out that my thought process is quite rare. I am primarily a synthesist which only 11% of people are. I am also proficient in the pragmatist and realist ways of thinking. However, being proficient in those ways of thinking means that I am probably terrible in the last two ways of thinking, idealist and analyst, which account for the way that 70% of the population thinks. This would explain why I have trouble getting people to “see what I see.”

I hope the second half of this book is as good as the first and can help me find ways to communicate with those who don’t think like me. I’ll keep you posted.

I’ve been looking for a nice writing instrument for a while now. I just feel more creative when I’m using equipment that is designed with attention to detail (which is one reason that I use Macs). For years I just used very inexpensive BIC ball point pens (the kind you buy 10 in a pack). These are pretty reliable, don’t glob ink all over, and generally just work well. However, the bland white shaft with black plastic cap don’t exactly inspire any masterpieces.

I have seen Cross pens all over the place from jewelry stores to office supply stores. They looked pretty nice, so I gave one a try. I paid about $30 for it and was quite pleased with the aesthetics and overall feel of the shaft, writing with it left a lot to be desired though. The tip of the pen seemed to collect a lot of ink and I would have to wipe the excess off occasionally. This excess ink would also lead to smearing which is completely unacceptable.

I had read about the Fisher Space Pen on a couple of blogs as well as in the book Mind Performance Hacks, so I thought I’d give one a try. It had some interesting features: pressurized ink cartridge, writes from -30 degrees to 250 degrees, writes an any angle, etc. I picked up the green bullet pen from the local REI (the green one just seemed the most creative ;). I’ve had it for a couple of weeks and I am very pleased. It hasn’t leaked any ink, the casing is very smooth and pleasant to hold, and it also writes very smoothly. The bullet pen casing is also very interesting. It is very short when the pen is closed. But when you take the cap off and put it on the other end for writing, it becomes a full length pen. This makes it very easy to carry in your pocket without any unsightly bulges or worries about leaking ink. I’m sure that there may be better pens in the world somewhere, but if you want a nice piece of writing equipment for a decent price, you might want to check out the Fisher Space Pen.