Hey Reader,

I got back from LEAD conference last week, where AD Training Retreats ran a full day workshop and panels on Audio Description. Throughout the week I reconnected with old colleagues, made some new ones, too. And my favorite part, which seems to go with this conference: I didn't have to work at any conversaions. If anything we were limited by time to get to the next panel.

I had an experience in conversation with someone who keeps forgetting to take their medication. And then my mind started to go down a contemplative rabbit hole.

I played out this obvious question in my head, with the intent to support: "Hey, did you remember to take your medication?" And then I played out their reaction to that question, seemed to go in two directions, each not so great a response from them. If they hadn't, it's a correction. If they had, it's a poke. Either way I'm the guy checking up on them. Ick.

So I tried another version. "Congratulations on taking your medication, or here's your welcomed reminder."

OOO! That's it!! it's a question with the either / or that gets rewarded. If they took it, they get the credit. If they didn't, the nudge shows up as care. I don't have to know which one is true, and with no assumptions, I don't have to guess right.

I'm guessing that new sentence wouldn't always be welcomed, either. Sometimes a person is annoyed no matter what, or how, you say it, and sometimes the pill still sits there. But I'd guess it works often enough that I'd rather ask this way than the other "Did you remember to take your medication?" (even thinking this sentence now sounds unwelcome, hounding, even like a nag).

For me, I'd want someone to ask the gentle version. "Congrats or here's your welcomed reminder." For that vitamin I forget to take this morning, or that stretch I should have done this morning. Oh shit, that call I said I'd return on Thursday. When I forget something small, what I want is for whoever notices to still be kind to me, and give some space that maybe I did remember.

Then I turn around and ask that question to myself. It used to be in a tone I'd never use on another person. And that tone? It's never once made me move faster. It would make me want to avoid doing the thing they're asking, or, more likely, avoid whoever is asking. Which in this case, is me. I'm doing this unkind ask to myself less often, or at least catching it sooner.

What's the way that type of reminder would actually welcome right now? I think about the way that question comes through, from others or internally.

​Karen Pryor trained dolphins before she wrote about training anything else. You can't correct a dolphin. There's no leash, no corner to put it in. Get it wrong and it swims away, and you're standing there alone with a bucket of fish. So she built her whole method around catching the thing that worked and paying for it right then.

That's also how intention works at the mic. You can say words, but if the intent is too sharp, filled with judgement, or harsh, you'll get one response. You can say those same words and bring lightness, joy, and hope. Same words, different intent.

There's plenty to choose from within every scene I've performed Audio Description. What I bring to them is the part I choose.

How do you remind someone without it landing as a nag? Hit reply. I want to know what works for you.

I built a four-video series out of finding ways to make choices so that words on the script land, within the context of what's happening on screen. Intention, and why it does more than pushing on words. How to stop over-performing without going flat. Timing when the cue is four seconds long, cause that affects the audience too. How to take a note and use it without losing your read.

The High Wire Act. Four videos, seventy minutes, four handouts, $97.

​RoySamuelson.com/HighWireAct​