Il Scrittore Del Giorno…

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. We were in my cousin Nancy’s house last Sunday on the island of Lipari, off the coast of Sicily. Amidst the modern technology there was typewriter that still worked…and a China closet full of cards and letters from relatives in America…all hand written. She told me those notes gave her such a conenction to America that you can’t get in an email. And she is right.

Old school format, timeless impact.

So, as we get through our chellenges 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.