My friend and colleague Will Leitch does an amazing free newsletter every week (sign up for it here). However even more than the ramblings of a dad and citizen of the world, he makes an offer…send me a letter or a note, in the mail, handwritten, stamp and everything.
He has been doing it on and off for a few years and I have never asked him how many notes he gets, but my guess is it’s more than just a few, and it’s a great example of doing the little things to see what the response is from those in your orbit. I was recently talking to a group of faculty members from various schools as well as some folks in the search business and they were bemoaning the lost art of writing…not just emails, or complete sentences although that is an issue, but of handwriting. Cursive? Ha. Stationary? C’mon.
Yet they all noted how they REMEMBER easily people who do take the time to send a handwritten note, no matter how simple or illegible it may be. The notes give people..jobseekers, friends, colleagues, a memorable edge.
It is the idea of the note and the letter that brings me to a special little thing I pay for each month. It’s a service called LetterJoy. Each week I receive a typed envelope, well it looks like typed and inside is a re-creation in the handwriting or the prose of someone from history. Some are Presidential notes from notables like Washington or Roosevelt. Some are letters sent about a footnote to history, but all are in the exact words of the sender, sometimes with the reply they received, and best part…is a page summary of what the context was and why this letter from this person had intentional or unintentional impact on histrty, big or small. Many of these letters I save to remind me of something, some…there was one recently from a PR person who worked with Franklin Roosevelt…I will reuse as examples for class or for other posts. Safe to say every time I literally open the envelope, I become an engaged learner over and over again. The surprise and “who knew” effect never ceases.
One other example of the power of the written note. I recently lost a longtime friend, Jimmy Dempsey, to Leukemia. Jimmy always had the positive attitude and never ceased thinking he could beat the disease, even as it came back a third time. Other than his friends and family, Jimmy loved nothing more than the Green Bay Packers, and to a slightly lesser extent, the Yankees. He was a “Lombardi era” Packers guy who made the pilgrimage to Lambeau several times, and we had planned another trip that sadly never came about as his health issues never ceased to allow for travel. Out of all the sadness and disappointment for Jimmy’s family came a ray of light…in the mail…from The Packers.
It was a letter expressing condolences from an organization far away, but it really had a profound impact on his wife Margaret and the kids, and was a great example of how a little thing done by someone in the organization…something they didn’t have to do…had a ripple effect. It wasn’t a tweet or a text or an email. It was a signed typed letter on Packers stationery.
Old school format, timeless impact.
So, as we get through our challenged days let’s not forget the impact of the mail…the cards, the notes, the personal written thoughts for things big and small, can have an even bigger impact as we get less tangible pieces of correspondence delivered to us every day. All it takes is the time to write it, get a stamp and drop it in the box.
You never know how valuable that stamp is until you try it. From the historic to the nostalgic, drop someone a note soon, it is worth the effort.
