Just sat down to pay my property taxes, which is seldom a pleasant experience.  As I filled in the little form, wrote the check, and stuffed it all back into the envelope with the little window, I noted that the three-fold sheet they sent me was folded in a size such that it did not fit back into the envelope.  And while I’m ranting, since they send out 10 gazillion envelopes all coming back to the same place, why use those with windows that align poorly and have the prospect of putting a check in front of the delivery address?  Just give me an envelope with the address on it already.  It’s safer, easier, and ultimately better for the tax folk.Rule of thumb: make it easy for your customer, client, audience, whoever.  If it’s hard to buy, the public won’t (I guess I have to persevere with my taxes, but that doesn’t excuse them from good customer service).  We do the same things with communication, making it hard to hear, hard to understand, and hard to remember.I listened to a sermon recently that had three points that were easy to remember, but the content (why I should remember them) was so all over the map I had trouble in real time trying to figure out why they were even being made.  By the end of the message, I was convinced it had no application to me, so my mind wandered and my scratch pad filled with notes of other things.  I noted from the speaker only that he failed to connect with his audience.  He made it hard to listen, and as I visually polled the audience, it was clear that many weren’t (hint on speaker evals — watch the audience to determine if the speaker is engaging).

Make your interactions easy on the other person.

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