Author: Kevin Berardinelli

two quick email tips

Here are two quick notes on how to improve email communications within an organization. 

In addition to good filters, flags, folders, rules, and search, it seems that sometimes there is no way around a good old fashioned email headache (I think I get on average about 30-40 work emails per day). Although you cannot control how your senders organize their emails, when they send them, how frequently they send them, or how they format them, it is your duty to maintain organization and minimize headaches for recipients of your emails. Hopefully karma applies to email traffic…

1. Minimize emails! Take an extra minute or two to gain all your thoughts around a subject. Create the email as a draft and come back to it later. By minimizing the amount of emails that end up in other people’s inboxes, it will help manage and maintain email threading as well as package your organized, detailed, well-worded thoughts in your email communications.

2. Keep threads going when appropriate. Well-titled subject lines should stick around like discussion board threads. If you are responding to an email that arrived a week ago, find that last email in the thread and reply to it. Maintaining the breadcrumb of communication will assist in your own personal work efficiency and desktop organization and additionally allow all parties involved the ability to see what has been discussed previously.

mind-bend it like beckham

I’ve played soccer for pretty much my entire life. According to some quick calculations, I’ve probably spent almost 10,000 hours around soccer (practices, camps, indoors, outdoors, games, high school, middle school, intramurals, adult leagues, premier teams, district teams, travel teams, tournaments, refereeing, etc.). That’s equivalent to over 400 full days – over a year if I played all day/night (which sometimes I think I did).

Now considering I’m 24, that means about 1/24th of my life has been on the soccer field. To put that in perspective, I probably eat for 1.5 hours a day which would be 1/16th of my day. Therefore, eating and soccer combined have taken more than 1/10th of my life. Subtract sleeping, school, and work, and how much free time did I really have for a bat and turkey catching club (P.A.B.A.T.)?

The point is that I love the game. One must be physical but sensitive, dynamic yet passive, and logical yet imaginative in order to be a complete player. This balance of attributes while being prepared mentally will always make someone an asset to their team.

I think most of all it’s the pre-game mental preparation and in-game mind-reading that make it so much fun (and I’m talking not just of your opponents, but of your own players too). Studying the other team means identifying stand-out players or leaders and recognizing weaknesses in formation. Studying your team means knowing players’ strengths, weaknesses, and most of all, tendencies. You should be able to move as a cohesive unit and almost play blindly – the best teams I’ve been on have been where I can pass the ball without looking, knowing someone will be there who will know what I am expecting them to do with it.

While in the game, it’s about reading minds of players. Anticipation and probabilistic expectation play huge roles in gaining an advantage on the other team. A quick analysis of 2 connected passes should lead you to forecast subsequent moves based on the prior movements of nearby players.

It’s true, soccer is math, and really I mean it. Optimize your position and forecast movements based on prior states – all from looking at someone else’s eyes, hearing their communication, and most of all, intuition based on thousands of hours of experience. It’s pretty simple.

“The scoreboard never lies but it rarely tells the whole truth.”

first post… welcome!

Well it’s about time I started a blog. I’m not going to recruit followers but indeed need a place on the interwebs where I can capture my thoughts. If some followers accidentally get piped to my blog and gain interest, well alrighty then! I’ll keep it interesting.

Well how about an explanation of the name to start. Adsideology was something I started back in college. I was learning about different religions, philosophies, philanthropies, and sciences, and realized my thoughts aligned with no existing thought group. Rather than confuse anyone interested in my personal beliefs, I thought I would give a name to my way of thinking in hopes it would help me explain its roots.

Adsideo is latin for to sit or to be at one’s side; to give comfort or advice. More broadly, I see it as the science of developing strong, mutual relationships through general social interaction, while finding happiness and love in the search for questions and answers. It is meant to instill good values in anyone looking to better understand the world in which we live.

I don’t expect that to wow anyone or to make anyone better understand me, but hopefully through some more reading of my blog you’ll find something interesting to talk (or laugh) about with others.

As a final note, this blog might be about anything. I love my job, I love sports, I love science, I love working with kids, I love reading, I love learning, I love asking questions, I love dreams, I love getting dirty, I love my family, I love my friends, I love cooking as much as I love eating, I love technology, I love space, I love math, I love thinking, I love music, I love how the word “love” probably looks funny to you now. So, it might be about anything.

“Spend your days not in anonymity, but rather in the societal sharing of culture, intelligence, and imagination.”