6 Things I Learned by not Watching the Oscars

I skipped watching the Oscars last night, and being the annoyingly introspective person that I am, I thought I would share some insights from my award-free evening. Maybe you'll learn something from my self-reflection, or maybe this will be the final stroke of boredom and irrelevance that drives you from my blog. Either way, sounds like a win/win for you to read on in my brilliant "6 Things I Learned by not Watching the Oscars," or perhaps better titiled, "What Terrible Awards Shows can Teach About Running a Business."

1. Trust your instincts, they're usually right

I was tempted to watch the show last night because I love James Franco, but decided against it because I figured even his amazing charm couldn't divert the flood of terrible that is the Oscars. This morning, seeing the universal scorn being heaped on both the show and his performance, I'm glad I went with my gut.

2. Haters gonna hate

Is there anything more a giant, tangled mass of bitter complaining than Hollywood award shows? You've got the fashion critique shows, pre-and-post snark-riddled "analysis" shows, late-night comedians, daytime comedians, 70 percent of everyone on Twitter, probably 100 percent of major newspapers and online news sites, and a math-defying 200 percent of every entertainment blog on the Internet all jumping on the wounded animal that is the Oscars, looking for their piece of the complaining fun. Of all this criticism, how much of it is legitimate, and how much of it's people either complaining for complaining's sake or trying to build themselves up by tearing something else down? As your business grows, how much attention should you pay attention to the critics and the haters?

3. After about two seconds, all congratulatory back-patting becomes a dull, monotonous buzz

I caught a couple acceptance speeches on the radio this morning, and I was stuck by how canned an inauthentic they always sound. It's not that the speaker is necessarily being insincere, it's that after hearing for the eighty-millionth time that a movie "was a great project and we're all really proud of the result," the words start to lose all meaning. Remember this when writing P.R. for your company. It isn't enough to talk about how good it is, you need to take special care to write something that sounds authentic, sincere and different just to have a chance of standing out from the rest of the P.R. noise out there.