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Books as Conversation Starters
No one ever picked up someone else’s Kindle and explored the title or back cover of the book being read. Physical books enable serendipity in a way e-books cannot and can spark interesting conversation between the reader and the person who noticed the book. I got to enjoy this experience over the Christmas holiday when my wife’s cousins boyfriend had a copy of Braiding Sweetgrass laying on a chair, prompting me to pick it up, explore it and ask him about it.
I don’t think I had considered this experience in the value lost with more people using e-books.
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Write Shitty First Drafts
Shitty First Drafts by Anne Lamott via Do By Friday
The pressure to right well can be paralyzing whether it’s a blog post, a book, an essay, or even just an email. Writing a first draft should be a way of reducing that stress. It’s one of the steps in my weekly review 1 for addressing writing tasks that haven’t budged.
- okay, I never actually do the weekly review as I’ve designed it, but I am better about doing rough drafts as opposed to eternally putting off a task than I used to be. [return]
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Persistence of Paper
I’m becoming increasingly convinced that digital technologies are very, very far from completely replacing paper. Some well articulated points in this book review by Malcolm Gladwell for The New Yorker.
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The Maintenance Race
The Maintenace Race on Works in progress
Even as a draft, this article about the race to become the first to circumnavigate the world solo and unsupported by sail, was fantastic. I loved how it portrayed the different approaches, challenges and solutions of each racer. I feel like I saw a little of myself in each of them. Great lessons that can be applied to many parts of life as well.
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Kurt Vonnegut on Making Art
Kurt Vonnegut’s response to some high school students’ letters requesting he visit the school.
From Letters of Note, linked to from this HN post comment about the value of continuing to teach creativity in schools despite it not being valued by employers.
November 5, 2006
Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:
I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.
What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.
Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.
Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?
Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.
God bless you all!
Kurt Vonnegut
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College Isn't for Everyone
College Was the Biggest Mistake of My Life
While college ended up being the right choice for where my career ended up going, it certainly wasn’t clear at the time. I related to several pieces of this article, including:
My decision to go to college was made under pressure — from my parents, peers, social circles, and from society — but no one put a gun to my head. I was a legal adult… I was a dumb, naïve kid — poorly-advised, ignorant of the world, who ultimately didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life, but felt an intense pressure urging him to decide anyway.
And,
I legitimately thought that if I didn’t go to college, my only career options would be of the lowliest, least remunerated, most depressing order imaginable. So, yes, I made the decision. I could have refused. But I didn’t. Because my choice was inevitable. You’d have to visit trillions of alternate universes to find a single simulation where I did, in fact, choose differently.
And the 1.7 trillion dollar question, should we be letting adolescents make such huge financial decisions?
It’s worth taking a moment to reflect on the fathomless insanity of expecting teenagers to hatch decade-spanning plans intended to shape the course of their lives, while their brain’s prefrontal cortex, responsible for long-term planning, is seven years away from being fully developed.
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Visualizing Jeff Bezos Wealth
Getting people to understand how rich the ultra-wealthy are is hard. This is one of the better and informative ways I have seen:
Another way of thinking about it: let’s be really really generous and say you earn $3,000 per hour. Yes, three thousand dollars per hour.
And because you are so awesome, you are capable of working 24 hours per day, 365 days a year. No breaks, no vacations. And even better, all your expenses are paid for so you can save every dollar.
How long would you have to work to have earned as much as Jeff Bezos is worth?
. . . . . . . . .
Over five thousand years, 24/7/365.
Per hour wage 3,000.00 = per year 26,280,000.00 Working 24/7/365 Goal 150,000,000,000.00 Have to work 5,707.76 years -
Monkeys, Monsters and Why Procrastinators Procrastinate
Why Procrastinators Procrastinate on Wait But Why
I can definitely relate to the Instant Gratification Monkey and Panic Monster characters.
Sometimes I can’t help but wonder if there is an upside to procrastination. By putting it off , the resulting time crunch necessitates prioritizing. How can you get the most out of the time you have for the task? A Parkinson’s Law productivity hack?
But at the end of the day, you are not just a mere doer of things.
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