Joel Schwartzberg: Get to the Point

In this interview, I talked with Joel Schwartzberg, author of "Get to the Point," a book about identifying your main point to give better talks, write better articles, and communicate better.

We talked about:

• The difference between having a point and presenting an idea
• The intersection between storytelling and getting to the point
• How to identify your point
• When you should present your point
• How and why to avoid "badjectives"
• How to write better email messages
• Why greetings are important

Joel is currently Senior Director of Strategic and Executive Communications for the ASPCA in New York City and has been teaching effective presentation techniques to clients including American Express, Blue Apron, the Brennan Center for Justice, Comedy Central, the American Jewish Committee, and North Point Ministries since 2006. His articles on effective point-making have appeared in Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, Toastmaster Magazine, and The Huffington Post. A frequent conference presenter and workshop leader, Joel is a former national champion and state champion competitive public speaker. After coaching public speaking teams at the University of Pennsylvania and Seton Hall University, Joel was inducted into the National Forensic Association Hall of Fame in 2002. A staunch proponent of the serial comma, Joel can be reached at www.joelschwartzberg.net.

You can listen to the entire interview by clicking the player above or by finding the Grammar Girl podcast on any podcasting app, but if you prefer to read it, we also have a complete (rough) transcript.

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Why "We Need to Talk" Isn't the Best Way to Save Your Relationship

It is a truth universally acknowledged that among the most dreaded four words anyone can hear from a partner are “We need to talk.”

I looked up “We need to talk” on Urban Dictionary. According to one contributor, the phrase means “Listen to me now or I’m walking out the door.” Another defined it as “The end of your relationship, or something that could mean the end of your relationship unless you take it really seriously.” A third suggested it was “the perfect time to fake a heart attack.”

However you define it, these four words are clearly something you never want to hear your partner say.

Why is everyone afraid of being told, "We Need to Talk"?

Sometimes, of course, the thing that makes the phrase “We need to talk” so bad is what comes next. Whatever your partner says after “We need to talk about those text-messages I just found on your phone” is going to be unpleasant for both of you.

You’d think talking about your relationship would be a good thing. But if that’s true, then why do so many of us dread it?

But sometimes the phrase doesn’t mean you’re about to be called out for something. Sometimes it just means “We need to talk . . . about our relationship.” You’d think talking about your relationship would be a good thing. But if that’s true, then why do so many of us dread it?

As Patrica Love and Steven Stosny point out in their book, How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It, when one person says to the other, “Honey, we need to talk about our relationship,” you almost never hear the other person say, “Wow, that makes me so happy. I’m really eager to share my feelings about our relationship with you, too.”

Let’s take a look at why we’re so resistant.

“We need to talk” really means “I need to talk”

As regular listeners to this podcast will instantly recognize, the phrase “We need to talk” is completely inaccurate. The problem, of course, is the word “we.” What you really want to say is “I”—“I need to talk.” A lot of people in relationships use “we” when they really mean “I.”

'I need to talk' tells the other person that what you’re about to say is subjective. It’s your own experience.

“I need to talk,” or “I need to talk with you,” sounds much better. Because it tells the other person that what you’re about to say is subjective. It’s your own experience. “...

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4 Reasons to Celebrate Your Quirky Child

After adopting our daughter and then overcoming a five-year bout with infertility, I looked forward to hanging out with other moms so I could share in the joy of all thing’s motherhood. I found a wonderful group of kindred mommy spirits, but I also found something else—the ability to compare my kid’s milestones and accomplishments with her peers. This was a positive when my child was developing ahead of the group, but an unexpected downer when one of my children was clearly behind schedule. Not only that, but she didn't behave like the rest of her peers did—she was the odd one.

The other toddlers explored and created things with Play-Doh, but my daughter wouldn’t touch it until she smelled it. She also took big whiffs of the crayons, glue sticks, and the construction paper before she’d color. She was also fixated on a popular Cartoon Network series, The Powerpuff Girls. She resonated with the character Buttercup, the black sheep of the family. For several years, she likened herself to this cartoon tomboy who hated girly stuff and liked to fight.

Every child has a unique personality, but some kids are particularly unusual in comparison to their peers. While this can be a flag for a developmental concern, it might just be that you have a quirky kid on your hands. Here are five ways to embrace and celebrate your beloved oddball.

1. Quirky kids are creative

Quirky children are not only endearing, but they're often highly creative. They have unique views of the world.

My daughter expressed her creativity through her infatuation with Buttercup. She also articulated her creativity in the way she dressed—stripes and plaids for this gal!—and in the way she decorated her bedroom with loud colors and patterns. Singing at the top of her lungs while moving and grooving was also freed her spirit!

Science supports the notion that those who march to the beat of their own drums—the highly individualistic people we often see as strange—are true originals.

As an article in the Canva blog points out, science supports the notion that those who march to the beat of their own drums—the highly individualistic people we often see as strange—are true originals. They're less likely to respond to authority and respect (or even truly understand) social norms. But they've got something else going for them—they're uniquely positioned to develop off-the-charts creative talents.

The article about how weird people can be ultra-creative reinforced what I already knew....

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99 Problems at Work? Try the One-Pound Strategy

True confession—my heart’s bleeding, and it’s for Jay-Z. Sure his life and wife look all sorts of glam, but let’s get real—he’s got 99 problems. The internet says, so it must be true.

Ah, problems. They’re all around us, haunting and taunting us without an ounce of shame. Much like Jay, we’ve all got ‘em in every facet of our lives. My expertise doesn’t qualify me to advise on who you date, what you should binge-watch on Netflix, or whether or not to go paleo, but I'm never shy about diving into a conversation on solving problems in the workplace.

Everyone has problems at work

In my practice, I hear all sorts of issues plaguing those around the water cooler. Comments like:

• I have 17 hours of meetings today and I still have to get that brief written up
• I am so bored in my job. Every day feels like I’m on autopilot
• My big project is totally stuck because everything is caught up in an approval process and I can’t move forward

Any of these sounds familiar, or even familiar-adjacent? If yes, we’ve all been there with you. And if no, please give me a call—QDT may need you to host your own podcast on living problem-free!

No one gets through their working life without problems. And while it's nice to know you're not alone in your workplace struggles, what do you do about them? Many of us groan and grumble around the water cooler to blow off steam and then rage-eat the stale donuts leftover from the morning’s staff meeting (definitely not paleo, btw). But then what?

Finding solutions is hard work. Unless … the word “solution” is actually the problem.

Are we too focused on solutions?

At a client organization several months ago, I was talking to a product manager named Liz. No disrespect, but poor Liz was not looking well. Under-eye circles, chewed-up cuticles … Liz bore all the signs of burnout.

I sat down with her and she showed me her calendar. It looked unwell, too. Overlapping colored boxes showing meetings on top of meetings. No wonder Liz barely had the will to move.

I said “Liz ... that’s a lot. Is there maybe just one meeting you have this week that you can find a way to opt out of? Like, literally, just one?”

Do you know what Liz said? “I don’t think that’s really a solution.”

Solutions are all around us, often disguised in one-pound increments.

I invited Liz to sit by me while I told her a quick story, and I promised that, in the end, it would be relevant. Because she was too tired to move anyway, Liz was a captive audience. So I told her about something I'd recently read. It was about a...

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How to Harness Light to Defeat the Winter Blues

Winter can be a beautiful time full of holiday cheer, gorgeous snowscapes, and fun activities like sledding and skiing. But even with all this fun, some people can't help but experience the winter blues. Their mood takes a dip in the fall and winter even when life is otherwise going well.

Is it winter blues or Seasonal Affective Disorder?

For about 3 percent of people, this mood downturn is so severe that they have something called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). They not only feel blue but they also experience:

• Loss of interest in things they usually like
• Unusual tiredness or sluggishness
• Trouble sleeping
• A tendency to overeat and gain weight
• Difficulty concentrating and thinking clearly
• Feelings of hopelessness, or sometimes even having suicidal thoughts

Why does this happen? Is there a way to beat the seasonal blues?

Light may be the key to beating the winter blues

The secret may lie in light. That’s right, the free resource that comes from our sun. Plants rely on soaking up light to make food and grow, but it turns out that we animals need light too. Our biology is so wrapped up with light that our metabolism, mood, and thinking are all affected.

Here are some things to know about why light is important for mental health and how to harness it for better health and happiness, especially in the winter months:

Our mood is intimately tied to light

The winter blues and SAD don’t just happen to people because they don’t like winter. There is actually a biological reason for winter depression. Here's a clue: The people most susceptible to winter-induced depression are those living far from the equator. Living farther away from the equator means you get fewer daylight hours in the wintertime.

Light is the single most powerful factor in tuning your body clock.

Because there's less daylight during fall and winter, the body’s circadian rhythm gets disrupted. Light is the single most powerful factor in tuning this body clock, and with less and less of it as we move from fall to winter, the body’s natural rhythms can become less robust. That's bad for your mood, metabolism, cognitive functioning, and many other body systems that play a role in depression. It’s also possible that less...

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Language Alters Our Experience of Time

It turns out, Hollywood got it half right. In the film "Arrival," Amy Adams plays linguist Louise Banks who is trying to decipher an alien language. She discovers the way the aliens talk about time gives them the power to see into the future — so as Banks learns their language, she also begins to see through time. As one character in the movie says: “Learning a foreign language rewires your brain.”

My new study — which I worked on with linguist Emanuel Bylund — shows that bilinguals do indeed think about time differently, depending on the language context in which they are estimating the duration of events. But unlike Hollywood, bilinguals sadly can’t see into the future. However, this study does show that learning a new way to talk about time really does rewire the brain. Our findings are the first psycho-physical evidence of cognitive flexibility in bilinguals.

We have known for some time that bilinguals go back and forth between their languages rapidly and often unconsciously — a phenomenon called code-switching. But different languages also embody different worldviews and different ways of organizing the world around us. The way that bilinguals handle these different ways of thinking has long been a mystery to language researchers.

Time, Imagination and Language

Time is a case in point. Time is fascinating because it is very abstract. We cannot touch or see it but we organize our whole lives around it. The really cool thing about time is the way we actually experience it is in some ways up to our imagination and our language. Because time is so abstract, the only way to talk about it is by using the terminology from another, more concrete domain of experience, namely that of space. For example, in Swedish, the word for future is “framtid" which literally means “front time.” Visualizing the future as in front of us (and the past as behind us) is also very common in English. We look forward to the good times ahead and to leaving the past behind us.

But for speakers of Aymara (spoken in Peru), looking ahead means looking at the past. The word for future (“qhipuru”) means “behind time” — so the spatial axis is reversed: the future is behind, the past is ahead. The logic in Aymara appears to be this: we can...

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The Languages of 'Star Wars'

This fall saw the debut of the "Star Wars" series “The Mandalorian.” And in just a few days, “The Rise of Skywalker” hits the big screen. 

With that in mind, today we’re going to talk about the languages spoken in the "Star Wars" universe. 

Sixty-eight different languages have been featured so far in the various movies, TV shows, comics, and books. And in the original "Star Wars" movie, C-3PO says that he is “fluent in over 6 million forms of communication.” (4)

That’s too much for us to cover today, and we know not all of you are "Star Wars" fans. So we’ll talk briefly about a few of the top languages from this world, and a few fun facts about each.

Shyriiwook and Ewokese

Let’s talk first about the languages spoken by the fuzzy folks of this galaxy: the Wookiees and Ewoks. (By the way, careful spellers will note that “Wookiee” is spelled W-O-O-K-I-E-E. That’s two “Es” on the end.)

Wookiees speak three different languages. Chewbacca speaks Shyriiwook, the most common language of the Wookiees. The other two dialects are Thykarann and Xaczik. All of them sound like a combination of howls and growls.

Wookiees come from a heavily wooded planet, and they are expert woodcarvers. For that reason, their language supposedly has 150 different words for “wood.” (2)

Ewoks are the more petite fuzzy species of this universe. They’re native to the Moon of Endor, and their technology and language are both simple. They use spears and slings as weapons, and C-3PO notes in the “Return of the Jedi” that they speak “a very primitive dialect.” So primitive that he talks with them using a different language: Yuzzum, also native to Endor. Even though 3PO was a protocol droid, apparently Ewokese was too rudimentary to include in his programming.

The sound designer for Ewokese, Ben Burtt, developed the sound of the language by recording speakers from Inner Mongolia, Tibet, Sri Lanka, and India. He chose elements from all of them, weaving them together in a way that evoked the playfulness of the Ewok people. (3)

Droid languages

Let’s move on to droids. Droids play a huge role in the "Star Wars" ecosystem, and they speak many tongues. R2-D2 whistles and squeals in something called “Astromech Binary.” BB-8 uses a more advanced form: 27th generation droidspeak.

Imperial probe droids use Ominisignal Unicode. And some very simple droids — the ones that look like walking trash cans— speak Gonkian, in which the word “gonk” plays a huge role. (4)

Bad guy languages and Galactic Basic

Many of the bad guys in this universe also have their...

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