I’m packing up my desk this evening.

Don’t be alarmed – I’m not going anywhere. Well, technically I am going somewhere – a new office, a new desk. A new beginning. When Matter gets back from our holiday break, I’ll be in new digs.

Yes, we all know the old wisdom of starting off fresh in the new year. Resolutions to lose weight, call your mom more, drop bad habits. How about a resolution to start with a clean slate? Try to lower the pressure a bit on all those grand expectations.

At the office, there’s no real clean slate. We have projects that carry over, indifferent of dates, relationships that continue through holidays, a to-do list that remains on your desk while you’re gone and greets you next Monday morning. But what we can do is use the time off around the holidays to help re-set ourselves. Just a simple act of cleaning out one’s desk, as I’m finding out right now, can help cleanse the palate. I think you’ll agree that reducing clutter on your computer’s desktop is a little bit liberating. Re-write that to-do list in a fancy pen, clean the dust off your keyboard, buy a new calendar, clean out your email. All these things are little deposits into our personal bank of sanity and energy.

When you get back, enjoy your nice clean desk. Use that clean slate to re-set goals, update lists, get organized. You’ll be more productive, rested, and ready to meet and exceed the expectations of 2010. Your clients will appreciate it as much as you will.

So, hurry – there’s only a week or so left to get things in order for next year. Wrap up those reports and freshen up your workspace and tools. What are you going to do to clean out the proverbial closet?

Me? I’ll be at my new, clean desk, ready to roll.

I’ve always been a strong writer; growing up, my mother was very strict when it came to school work, especially written reports. I remember countless hours spent at the kitchen table, writing and re-writing book reports, history papers and science projects while she coached me:

“That sounds too confusing – what are you trying to say? Okay, then write that.”

“Hold on…if you have to take a breath in the middle of a sentence, it’s too long.”

“You’ve used that word way too many times…find another way to say that.”

“That sounds great…except you didn’t address your teacher’s actual question.”

I learned to write well, to write with style, to write with personality. I learned the importance of grammar and punctuation and story-telling skills, even when writing something objective. I was a straight-A student and when I got older, I took writing classes for fun. But my biggest challenge was always brevity – then and now. I can be a very verbose, long-winded guy. My New Year’s resolution for 2010 is to continue to improve my self-editing skills.

When I was in school, I could count on my mom to review my work before it was turned in. In college, my writing classes, journalism seminars and PR courses typically involved a fair amount of group work, so I benefited from my peers editing me. Throughout my numerous internships and even my first few years at a PR agency, nearly everything I wrote passed through a supervisor, teammate or a mentor who would help fine-tune my pitches, press releases and article drafts. I learned that despite my being a talented writer, it was equally important to have a talented editor on-hand. Of course, now I realize it’s even more important to hone those skills and edit myself as much as I can.

Short. Concise. To-the-point. Direct. Succinct. All of these words run through my head when I’m writing a blog entry, drafting a press release or readying an email. Instead of taking a second look before sending, I’ve been training myself to take a third or fourth. If you scroll through the “Sent” folder in my Outlook account, you’ll see that my emails and subject lines are shorter than they were a year ago. While it’s true I am making a concerted effort to self-edit, the truth is this: the reason I’m getting better at reducing my word count is in large part because of how much time I spend on Twitter. Constantly trimming sentences down to 140 characters or less has forced me to do what for years seemed like the most difficult task of all.

If you’re not very active on Twitter or Facebook, I urge you to try to be in the new year. Not just because these are useful and efficient networking and news-sharing vehicles, but because embracing social media and new tools can often have unintended consequences, like what I described above. They force us to think quicker, shorter, even more creatively sometimes.

And with that, I’m going to sign off. Because another part of self-editing involves knowing when you’ve said enough and it’s time to just press save, send or publish.

Have a great weekend, all!

“We live in an ADD society.”

If my experience and the experiences of my clients, teams and the journalists with whom we work is any indication, this statement is verifiable fact.  People rarely take the time to read an email in its entirety or a full article these days – we look to executive summaries and bulleted lists to tell us what we need to know.  Multitasking is part of our vernacular, part of many job descriptions and a key feature of most smartphones.  But we all know there’s a line: sometimes it’s OK to do two or more things at once, other times it is definitely not.

So, as you consider New Year’s resolutions, think about this. Instead of multitasking more – let’s learn to be more efficient, more productive. Hold extreme meetings or cut them altogether by using online collaboration tools such as Campfire’s group chat tool. Try more frequent – but much shorter – brainstorming sessions as one of my coworkers suggests (note her wise suggestion to limit the time to <30 minutes). But as we welcome the change a new year always brings, let’s agree to focus more and multitask less.

I have one more (unrelated) thought to share (further proof of our ADD society?).  I had considered writing about ClimateGate or Tiger Woods and the importance of having a solid crisis communications plan.  I won’t say much more on this, except to remind you of what you already know:

• make sure you have a crisis plan in place;
• make sure that your teams know what to do when the time comes; and
• preparation is key.

Last week I was reminded of the real benefits of a very simple PR tool– one that we’ve all used in many shapes and forms: brainstorming. Sure, sure, we’ve all read about, talked about and participated in brainstorming, likely many times in our lives; but how often do we really sit down for a good, old-fashioned brainstorming session? It’s all too easy to let this type of creative collaboration go by the wayside, as we keep up with our day-to-day tasks and whittle away at our to-do lists.

Last week, though, the Providence office, along with a colleague from our Newburyport office, scheduled some time to chat about campaign and pitch ideas for one of our clients. Sure enough, one person’s idea led to another’s idea, which led to a third’s completely different idea. Eight PR pros and 30 minutes later, we’d filled a couple pages with smart, compelling and realistic ideas the account team can share with its client and use in its 2010 plans. Not only did our brainstorming session spur some great and needed PR program suggestions, it was also a great team building activity and wonderful reminder (not that I needed one!) of how truly creative, intelligent and helpful my colleagues are.

So how do you brainstorm? Here’s a short list of tips that I find useful and that have proved successful in our office:

1. Schedule the time. That’s right, put it on your (and your colleagues’) calendar. Even when I brainstorm on my own, I still find it useful to set aside a specific time. Whether it’s for 15 minutes after lunch or while I’m driving home from the office, it’s dedicated time to let your thoughts evolve that often results in the most creativity.

2. Include colleagues from other client teams who can offer a fresh perspective. It’s easy to get stuck in a rut when you’ve been working on the same project for a long time; often those who are unfamiliar with your client or program can spark the ideas that get you moving in the right direction.

3. Decide on a specific topic for your brainstorm session and stay as focused as possible. There’s no need to tackle a mountain of topics in one session.

4. And, of course, keep the golden rule of brainstorming in mind: there are no bad ideas.

What tips do you have for a productive brainstorming session? And in what other ways do you foster creativity and fresh thinking in your office?

Gawker is one of my favorite blogs to read – it’s snarky, it’s fun, it’s informative and usually it’s right on the money. The other day though, I was a little surprised to read an entry on “The Laziest Journalists on Twitter.” In the post, Ryan Tate called out BusinessWeek’s Douglas MacMillan, WSJ’s Jessica Vascellaro, Wired’s Priya Ganapati and Fortune’s Jessi Hempel, calling them lazy for tweeting requests for sources when working on stories.

Now, I realize Ryan may have been teasing more than shaming, since he acknowledged Gawker itself tweets for sources all the time. But I was surprised anyone would consider a journalist tweeting for help getting in touch with sources to be lazy behavior. On the flip side – it’s a smart and resourceful use of a really effective (and efficient) social networking tool. Reporters have been using tools like Help A Reporter Out and ProfNet to find sources, and no one criticizes those tactics. More old-school journos keep a database of their PR friends and past sources and when they are in a bind, they shoot out email blasts soliciting pitches on a particular topic. Using Twitter, Facebook and any other mode of communication to accomplish the same thing should be a non-issue. I’m proud to admit I’ve responded to numerous “calls for pitches” on Twitter over the past few months – for everyone from Doug to a local news station in New Hampshire and just the other night, another BusinessWeek reporter (Rachael King).

Mainstream media should be encouraged to use the newest tools and networks to do their jobs better – not chastized for it.

Related reading: “How can journalists use Twitter?“

Ever heard the saying “ignorance is bliss”?  Of course you have.  We all have.  Some people even run a little too far with the idea.  But that’s another rant for another day.

I’ve always thought of PR professionals as the wizards behind the curtains.  We exist exclusively behind the scenes, preferring to go unmentioned, monitoring from afar, feeding key messages to spokespeople and strategically delivering inside scoops.  We are ghost writers, and we only occasionally emerge from the backdrop to network and share accolades among fellows of our community.

One thing I never really considered, though (prior to joining the industry), was the trust I would eventually lose.

Trust? What?

Yes, trust.

For example: a magazine is preparing a holiday gift guide, and as PR pros, we started pitching them in August to get our clients’ products represented appropriately. Come November, a consumer picks up the magazine and sees that So-and-so thinks that Such-and-such is the perfect gift for their neighbor’s dog.  And considering that So-and-so is the foremost expert on the needs of neighborhood pets, by golly, it must be true!

But is it?

Maybe not.

Now, I don’t mean to impugn the integrity of So-and-so, writers in general, or even PR pros.  The vast majority of writers and product reviewers are extremely discriminating about the goods they choose to discuss, especially in the wake of “Paid vs. Unpaid” mommy blogger controversy.  As for us, we’re responsible for bringing yet-unseen items to the attention of those writers and product reviewers, keeping them in the loop for the latest advancements and innovations in their industry that they might otherwise have missed.

Knowledge of the process, however, gives me a unique perspective that I sometimes wish I was without.  I’ll look at the same holiday guide, and instead of immediately noting down URL’s and pricing information, I wonder: is this really the best gift for my neighbor’s dog?  Or, back in August, was there one more open slot, and a friendly PR pro spoke up at just the right moment?

And the wonderment of an entire world of pet gifts is lost upon me.

What about you? Are there things you’ve learned that make you wish you could close the curtain once again?  Are there things you’ve learned that make you glad to be behind the curtain?