If you’ve read much of my work, you’ve probably read my frantic warnings that writing is a “sinlge-task” activity — that when you’re writing, you should be only writing.

But you’re busy. Often you’ve got three, five… 15 things on your to-do list. How can you possibly set aside a long stretch of uninterrupted quiet time whenever you have to write a work-related document?

Fair question. So let’s attack this problem from another angle.

Here’s a short time-management workbook I wrote for a seminar company in which I’m a partner. Maybe the ideas in this workbook can help you get more done with your day — and help you give your writing the time and clear thinking it deserves.

Enjoy.

FREE EBOOK — A TIME-MANAGEMENT PLAN THAT WORKS

Oh, and if these ideas work for you — or if they don’t — I’d love to hear about it. Please let me know, at robbie@robbiehymancopywriting.com.

To your productivity!

-Robbie

Just gave a webinar presentation, called Leading Effective Meetings, hosted by the business-publication company Business Management Daily.

http://www.businessmanagementdaily.com/glp/31770/index.html?promocode=216WL

My opening line as the call started: “Thank you for joining this webinar. Snacks and drinks are at the back of the room.”

I’m going to start a recurring post that I’ll call The Passive Aggressive Files. These are amusing real-world uses of the passive voice to hide, conceal blame, or soften criticism. (This first episode includes all three!) Hope you enjoy it. And if you have examples you’d like to share, please let me know — at robbie@robbiehymancopywriting.com.

One of my clients copied me on an email thread today, discussing the progress of a document that I’ve been helping them write. The back-and-forth in this email didn’t actually involve me at all — but I’m glad they thought to include me, or I would’ve missed this passive-voice brawl…

Employee 1: Did you ever send me the sample invoices we need for the proposal document?

Notice how we start out using a straightforward, active voice — “Did you ever send me….” No need to hide behind the passive voice… yet.

Employee 2: No sample invoices were sent. I don’t believe I was asked for any.

Boom. Employee 2 throws the first passive-voice punch.

Employee 1: A request was definitely made for sample invoices. We will need them to complete the billing questions in the proposal.

Pow! Employee 1 isn’t backing down!

Employee 2: If a request was sent for sample invoices, perhaps a copy of that email could be shown to me.

Oh yeah? Prove it, Employee 1!

Employee 1: The request might have been verbal; please send us three sample invoices, issued this calendar year, ASAP.

Okay, maybe I forgot to ask you. Sorry.

I love the passive voice. Every time I hear or read it, laughter is caused within me.

I just visited the website of an independent film director I know. His About Us section had this tab:

The Exec’s

I thought, The Exec’s what? Did he mean “The Exec’s Background” or “The Exec’s Bio,” and did he just forget to include that extra word?

When I clicked that link, though, I realized he meant “The Execs” — plural, not possessive. But his mistake confused me in two ways — it made me assume there was a missing word, and it suggested the section was about a single exec’s… bio, background, or something else.

Turns out, the section included information on the company’s two executives.

This is a very common mistake that you’ve probably seen many times. Someone writes, “We have several solution’s” or “In the 1980’s….”

If you’re referring to a plural that is not possessive — “several solutions,” “the 1980s” — don’t use an apostrophe.

Related tip: Not sure whether or not to include the apostrophe? Google the word or phrase. Then, in the search results, look for the most reputable source that has your phrase or something similar — a dictionary entry, an article in a major newspaper or magazine. Follow their lead. If they don’t use the apostrophe, then you shouldn’t use it either.

Humor is a powerful tool.

We don’t often think of humor that way. Genuinely funny people themselves rarely realize the influence they have. Humor can work almost like magic.

Which brings me to a point about the article’s title. Notice that I didn’t call it “How to Make Yourself Funny.” That’s impossible, in my opinion, and would be like titling an article “How to Make Yourself Tall.” People with no ability to see humor in a situation, or craft and deliver a joke, cannot make themselves funny.

Now the good news: We can all make ourselves funnier.

By developing a few habits, we can increase our “Funny Quotient,” which I’ll refer to as our “FQ” (mostly because it sounds scientific). More good news: It’s not that difficult.

Of course, there are no hard-and-fast rules to making yourself funnier. What follows are simply suggestions. Please take these tips in the spirit in which I am offering them to you… as your comedic bible, guaranteed to raise your FQ, and from which even the slightest deviation will result in total social disaster!

1. Don’t milk it.
You know the old saying: “Milk a cow long enough and eventually you’ll be yanking out spoiled milk.” Okay, that’s not really a saying. But if it were, it would make perfect sense here.

When you tell a joke and get laughs, you’ll feel tempted to respond to the laughter with follow-up lines that keep the laughter going. Fight this temptation.

Imagine: You’re with friends, you say something witty, and everybody laughs. You’re a genius. They love you. Why stop now?

Here’s why. Follow-up jokes are rarely as funny as that first surprise witty line or hilarious comment. Your audience will probably laugh at your next line, and your next—although the laughter will diminish each time. But eventually these poor friends, who have been so generous with their laughter, will be struggling just to smile. And you’ll have lost what could have been a great moment of genuine humor.

Yes, a joke that earns you laughs also earns you some short-term credibility to tell a follow-up. And if that next joke is funny too, go for it. The trick is not to abuse this trust. Each joke has to earn its keep. Don’t milk it.

Standup comedian Jerry Seinfeld (who also had his own sitcom—a funny show that never quite caught on with audiences or critics) once observed that celebrity gives you a five-minute free pass in standup comedy. What he meant was that, even though he came to the stage as the famous Jerry Seinfeld, if he wasn’t funny pretty quickly, the audience would treat him like any other bad comic who was wasting their time.

2. Tone it down a bit.
Humor and decibel level are inversely proportional.

There’s something obnoxious about a person who raises their voice when delivering a punch line. It’s as if that person is sucking all the energy out of the room. This desire to yell your punch line makes logical sense. After all, we tell jokes to get attention. So naturally we want to raise our voices as we hit the punch line. Don’t.

Unlike most aspects of humor, this is something we can actually quantify. Here’s my equation: (Your level of humor) – (Your voice level) = (How much I’ll laugh at your joke).

A joke almost never works unless its punch line is a surprise. That’s the point of humor—to surprise us, to lead us down one path and then rapidly change our course. But by raising your voice and demanding attention, you’re essentially alerting everyone that your funny line is nearing. And in doing so, you’re robbing your audience of the chance to discover the joke on their own. You’re stepping on your own punch line.

Often the best way to deliver a joke is simply in the same tone of voice and at the same decibel level as the rest of your conversation. Sneak up on them. Surprise them. You’re more likely to make them laugh.

3. Don’t laugh at your own jokes.
This tip is really a corollary to Robbie’s Equation on the Inverse Proportionality of Humor and Decibel Level™. The idea is the same. When telling a joke, imagine there is a finite amount of enthusiasm in the room. If you start laughing right after you deliver your punch line, you’ve taken away some of that enthusiasm and left less of it for your audience.

Also, going back to the point about humor being a surprise, there’s something funny about looking at someone who has just made a hilarious remark but still looks serious. That’s a surprise. That’s funny. A self-supplied laugh track has just the opposite effect.

It’s natural to laugh at your own joke. Obviously, you think it’s funny. But a deeper reason for doing so is fear. There’s something terrifying about making an attempt at humor and then waiting quietly—even for a fraction of a second—for the people around you to laugh.

But that fear is yet another reason not to laugh at your punch line: If you remain serious-looking after telling a joke, and it doesn’t get a laugh, you’ll be far less embarrassed. You can even pretend you weren’t trying to be funny. But if you do laugh at your own joke, imagine how embarrassing it’ll be if you’re the only one.

4. Clichéd jokes are the comedic equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.
You’ve probably heard friends or coworkers respond to an emotional or argumentative statement by saying something like, “Dave, now tell me what you really think.” We’ve all heard that, which is why it stopped being funny long ago.

With the exception of slipping on a banana peel or making that noise with your underarm, few things are funny more than a few times.

Which brings me to another corollary to my equation: Clichéd jokes ≥ the annoyance of chalkboard scratches®. Remember: A bad joke is worse than no joke.

By the way, I apologize for the math. But it’s necessary. People will tell you that humor is something that can’t be quantified. Even I referred to it earlier as magic. But as you’re seeing here, some rules of comedy can be distilled into simple formulas. That’s one of the reasons mathematicians make the best comedians.

5. You’re funnier when you’re yourself.
What do comedians Steven Wright, Richard Pryor and Gilbert Gottfried have in common? Almost nothing.

Steven Wright carved out a successful career by delivering his entire act in a dry, slow monotone that, if he weren’t so funny, might have sent his audience into a coma.

Richard Pryor built a powerful comic persona by strutting around the stage with a cockiness that won over audiences.

Gilbert Gottfried, a timid man, developed his shyness into an endearing stage presence, winning laughs even as he literally covered his face with his hands and tried to hide behind his microphone stand.

Each of these comedians used his unique personality and natural tendencies to find humor. And it’s unlikely that any of them would have been as successful had they tried to hide their true selves and find a funnier character to embody.

Bottom line: You’re funnier when you feel comfortable and your words are unforced. And you’re more likely to feel comfortable when you’re being yourself. No need to go looking for your funny-person alter ego. He’s right there inside you—the real you. If it helps, you can introduce him to the world with that underarm noise. That’s always funny.

The people responsible for this sign, which I just saw at the Phoenix Zoo, should replace “may” with “might.”

The way it’s written here, doesn’t it suggest that the zoo folks have given the animals permission to bite you? But at least they posted the sign to warn you that you’re fair game.

A misplaced modifier is a word or phrase separated from the word it’s supposed to modify, creating confusion. For an attentive reader, it can also make your work unintentionally hilarious. Some examples:

You: Please review the contract that is attached to this email with your supervisor.

Your attentive reader: This guy thinks my supervisor is attached to an email?

You: Our agency just rented office space for several employees with a big cafeteria.

Your attentive reader: Hmm. Your agency has some strange-looking employees.

In these examples, you can fix the unintentional silliness by moving the modifier closer to what it’s supposed to modify:

Please review with your supervisor the contract attached to this email.

Our agency just rented office space, with a big cafeteria, for several employees.

Other common misplaced modifiers are words like “almost,” “only,” “just” and “even.” If you put these words anywhere but in precisely the right spot, your sentence might read awkwardly. For example:

You: My team almost worked 60 hours last week.

Your attentive reader: So, your team came close to working a lot, huh? But it sounds like they wised up each time they got too close to starting.

What you meant: My team worked almost 60 hours last week.

The word “almost” should modify “60,” (as in “almost 60 hours”), not “worked,” because then it reads as though your team “almost worked” (which might be true, but it isn’t something you want to advertise).

Note: Also watch for the misplaced modifier’s cousin, the dangling modifier. This is a clause not clearly or logically related to the thing it modifies—usually because it’s moved to another part of the sentence. Like misplaced modifiers, dangling modifiers can make your document a laugh riot in the hands of an attentive reader.

You: Coming from outer space, I’m guessing the asteroid is billions of years old.

Your attentive reader: Ha ha! You’re killing me! So, what part of outer space are you from?

What you meant: I’m guessing the asteroid, which comes from outer space, is billions of years old.

When I wrote reports and gave presentations early in my career, I loaded them up with statistics.

I assumed that including all the data that led to the conclusions I was presenting would add credibility to those conclusions. And it probably would have—if any of my readers or listeners could keep from falling asleep.

If you need to include stats or other figures in your professional documents or presentations, don’t simply list off a series of numbers. That’s boring. Find a way to spice them up, to make them more memorable.

Snore:

Current projections for the upcoming year are for a budget deficit of $50 million.

More interesting:

We need to cut spending—now. We’re on track next year to be in the hole $140,000 a day.

Here’s a story about one of the funniest corporate moments I’ve ever witnessed.

The CEO of a small technology company I worked for often held all-day meetings with his vice presidents. And he always invited lucky me, the copywriter, to capture any great line uttered in the meeting so we could use it in our marketing materials.

One day, hours into a marathon meeting, one of the VPs, who had passed on all of the unhealthy snacks on the table and hadn’t left the room all day, stood up and headed for the door.

CEO: Where are you going?

VP: I’m starving. I’m going to grab a snack and bring it back.

CEO: How can you be hungry? I just ate.

“How can you be hungry? I just ate.” That was by far the greatest line I ever heard in any of these meetings. Unfortunately it wouldn’t have made much sense in our marketing materials.

So, what’s the point of this story? Not many of us are as self-centered as that CEO. But in our writing and speaking, we are often too “me-focused.”

But your listeners and readers think about things from their own points of view. In other words, they’re “me-focused” too. So if you’re trying to make yourself heard, a more effective method than trying to refocus your listeners on you is to join their internal dialogue about themselves.

Great communication skills come from the ability to connect with people, and that connection is based largely on the use of a single word: You.

Me focus: I’ve posted the updated version of the document to the intranet. I think it has all the relevant information, but if necessary I can add anything I missed.

You focus: You can find my updated version of the document on the intranet. If you find any details are missing or inaccurate, you can let me know and I will make the changes you request.

Seems like a small change, doesn’t it? Maybe not even worth mentioning. But if you apply this subtle change to your writing—from a focus on yourself to a focus on your reader—you’ll find that your audience understands and responds to your words much more positively.

This isn’t new advice. People have probably suggested you-focused communication since the days of the cave man, to avoid conversations like this:

Cave Man 1: So there I was, running for my life from this woolly mammoth—

Cave Man 2: Hey, I just drew a woolly mammoth on our cave wall last night.

Cave Man 1: Please don’t interrupt me.

But most people communicate with a me-focused approach, and they often fail to get their message across to their listeners and readers. This creates an opportunity for you to shine. Be you-focused in your speaking and writing. People will notice, they’ll appreciate it, and they’ll see you as a great communicator.

Remember, to a self-focused reader or listener—which includes most of us—“you,” “your” and “you’ll” are the most enjoyable words in the English language aside from our own names.

This is me, I, Robbie Hyman, signing off.

At the end of the dot-com boom, I worked as a writer for a California startup that was slowly going under.

When things got really bad, the company laid off a large percentage of the staff. How did they tell those employees the bad news? With an email.

And not just an email—a horrible email.

I wasn’t let go, so I didn’t see the infamous layoff message until later. But I remember my cubicle neighbor’s reaction when she received it. She stared at her computer for a few seconds, then looked at me with confusion showing on her face. Then she looked back at her screen.

Finally she stood up, walked into to the HR manager’s office (right next to our cubicles) and asked, “So, does this email mean we’re getting let go or not?”

When I read the email later, I understood why its readers were confused. The message was a jumbled mess of hedging and corporate double-talk. If I received that email, I wouldn’t know whether or not I had a job anymore either.

Because my company’s senior management was so inept, not only were they unable to deliver this news face-to-face (which they should have), but they weren’t even able to fully deliver it in their email. So, ironically, the email drove many of the laid-off staffers right into management’s offices with questions—where managers had to have the conversations they were clearly trying to avoid.

Have to deliver bad news? Deliver it. Fully. Candidly. Honestly. Immediately. Putting it off or trying to hide it only makes things worse later—for everyone.