Me, we, I. Our pet hate.

it's all about me me me

On the way to work this morning Sophie was reading my email out of the corner of her eye as she often does on the train (clients: do not be afeared I never let her spy on confidential things, I wait till she’s asleep or doing complicated make-up manoeuvres before I write ‘those’ emails). Anyway she noticed that I was using the word “we” in a way that she approved of. In a business context not a relationship one.

An interesting discussion followed about how we both really hate it when people do the whole. Me, my, I, mine thing when talking about the work that a team of people are doing. And how it’s so much nicer when someone uses words like we, our, ours and so on.

My personal pet hate – and it is mine not ours, actually, it might be ours, I need to check – is when people talk about ‘my team’ or even worse ‘my designers’ or even even worse ‘my account man’. Those people should be hung for intent to commit slavery.

Of course one is allowed to have a personal opinion or do stuff on their own, so sometimes ‘I think’, or ‘I’m going to sort this out today’ is totally appropriate.

This may appear a bit pedantic. But if you were on the receiving end of someone claiming that you’re ‘theirs’ you might feel different.

Anyway that’s what we think.

10 Books I Heartily Recommend

Whilst trying to unblock blog block at the weekend I started thinking about the books that have been major influences in how I approach work stuff. And I was going to go back and start re-reading some of them to see if they’d kick-start any interesting thoughts.

Then I figured that I should share this list of books with people. Some of them are really well known and some of them are slightly culty books. Some people will know all of them. But I’m hoping that a few of you might find one or two new or interesting titles in the 10.

What amazed me was that you can get Being Digital for 7p on Amazon marketplace – at least you could when I first pulled the widget together. 7p for the book on Digital that started it all for me. It’s almost an insult.

And yes, if you click through from the above and buy stuff I’m using my Amazon referrer link so I’m selling you down the mucky river for a fast buck. If you’d rather not do that feel free to click this unsullied link to Amazon.co.uk and do the searching yourself – it won’t be any cheaper, but you’ll be denying my capitalist ass some filthy ill-gotten gains.