I still miss Daniel Schorr.  Daniel Schorr was a journalist for longer than my entire life, right up until his death in 2010 at age 93.  His last few years were spent at NPR, where I absolutely loved to listen to him.  He would make his comments about some news incident of the day, but it was his overflow that made him so valuable.  He know, and remembered, so much – from other parts of the world, from decades long since passed by.  He spoke, he reported, from overflow.  And it was his overflow that made his comments so valuable every time I heard him.

Just this morning, I heard a Morning Edition segment on a new album called Foreverly, with duets by Billie Joe Armstrong (lead singer of Green Day) and Norah Jones.  An unlikely pairing with unexpected material…  The music education and memories in these two:  well, lots of room for overflow.

“I’m a big vinyl collector, so I was just flipping through the bins,” Armstrong says of discovering Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, a lesser-known album of traditional tunes recorded by The Everly Brothers. “I thought it would be cool to remake the record. But I thought it would be cool to do it with a woman.”

Do you read many of the reviews of business books and interviews with authors by Bob Morris, on our blog?  They are all valuable; useful.  But he does not just talk about the book or author at hand.  He brings up other books, other authors, and keeps making connections to ideas from far afield.  Overflow!

I remember a friend of mine who knew Peter Drucker, and would tell me of his conversations, and he would describe Drucker’s presentations.  He would say — “there is no telling what Drucker would bring up.”  I remember him telling me about the time that Peter Drucker spent a chunk of minutes on Russian history, and tied it into modern day business.  Overflow!

I think that I am an unabashed fan of overflow.  And I think it is one reason why I loved The West Wing.  It oozed with overflow.  President Bartlett would teach Sam Seaborn something major about world affairs – by teaching him about chess.  Bruno Gianelli would teach President Bartlett something major about political campaigns – by referencing racing sailboats.  The West Wing at its best was always a scrumptious buffet of overflow.

We could keep going through the list.  There are so many other examples.  But, I think we know this:

Overflow provides breadth, connections, context.  It opens the mind, it stretches the thinking.

Now, I’m a big fan of preparation.  You have to prepare a speech, a talk, an article.  But if all you do is stick to the subject at hand, with the material at hand, when you speak – if that is all you “know” – if you don’t have thoughts and stories and books and articles and movies pop into your mind, and just seem to flow out of your mouth or pen, then you are simply giving a report – something that a good junior high student could do.  Something that a robot will soon be doing.  It is your overflow that makes you valuable.

In fact, it is why you are asked to speak or write.  It is not just “this” that you cover, but it is that “other stuff” that you know that seems to undergird and add depth and substance and context to what you have to say or write.

No, this is not a call to ramble, or to get off topic.  But it is a call to prepare well, and then to join in the surprise with your audience of listeners or readers when something flows out of you from your overflow.

So, how do you develop overflow?

Live long.  Read widely — very widely!  Have a “big vinyl collection” and listen to a bunch of it.  Pay attention.

And…  well, can I tell you a personal story?  I speak regularly to residents of retirement communities.  These residents are smart; accomplished in their earlier lives; and now living in retirement.  I speak on “current events” mostly.  But they perk up when I tie in a current event to a much earlier event or practice.  Many of them have a little trouble understanding some of the modern ways – the internet, smart phones, technology in general.  Whenever I can explain something from today with a memory or story or example from yesteryear, they “get it” more quickly, much more easily.  I have forced myself to pay attention to this process.  Explaining the internet to an 85 year old retired person who has seldom, if ever, even looked at a computer screen has helped me communicate more clearly.  And I think this practice has helped me think about the use of “overflow” to all of my audiences.

But I’m pretty sure I’m right about this:

it really is tough to speak from overflow…  if you don’t have much overflow.