Great FastCompany bit on using stories as cultural currency.
"It’s all about feeling the granularity of prioritization."
—
- How Analog Rituals Can Help Your Productivity
(I like the way it’s worded.)
"
A small, steady pilot light of fear burning in your stomach is part and parcel of the creative process. If you’re doing something that’s truly new, you’re in an area where there are no signposts yet - no up and down, no good or bad. It seems to me, then, that fear is the constant traveling companion of an advertising person who fancies himself on the cutting edge.
You have to believe that you’ll finally get a great idea. You will.
And there is nothing quite like the feeling of cracking a difficult advertising problem. What seemed impossible when you sat down to face the empty white square now seems so obvious. It is this very obviousness of a great idea that prompted Polaroid camera inventor, E.H. Land, to define creativity as “the sudden cessation of stupidity.” You look at the idea you’ve just come up with, slap your forehead, and go, “Of course, it has to be this.”
"—
Luke Sullivan - Hey Whipple, Squeeze This.
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Mr. Sullivan, I don’t know why I didn’t pick up your book sooner, you brilliant man, you.
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While searching for advice on writing copy for the web, I came across this tiny gem that framed the whole process in crystal-clear perspective. “Stupidly simple” couldn’t be more on the money, all right.
Read the full article here: Writing Content that Works for a Living
"
“Now that you’re not young anymore, do you still fall in love?” asked Yuki.
I had to think about that one. “Difficult question,” I said finally. “You got any boy you like?”
“No,” she said flatly. “But there sure are a lot of creeps out there.”
“I know what you mean,” I said.
“I’d rather just listen to music.”
“I know what you mean.”
“You do?” she said, surprised.
“Yeah, I really do,” I said. “Some people say that’s escapism. But that’s fine by me. I live my life, you live yours. If you’re clear about what you want, then you can live any way you please. I don’t give a damn what people say. They can be reptile food for all I care. That’s how I looked at things when I was your age and I guess that’s how I look at things now. Does that mean I have arrested development? Or have I been right all these years? I’m still waiting on the answer to that one.”
"— from Haruki Murakami’s Dance Dance Dance
the three that resonated with me:
12. Keep moving.
The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.18. Stay up late.
Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.20. Be careful to take risks.
Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.
Amen.
When Fear Turns Graphic
SWITZERLAND stunned many Europeans, including not a few Swiss, when near the end of last year the country, by referendum, banned the building of minarets. Much predictable tut-tutting ensued about Swiss xenophobia, even though surveys showed similar plebiscites would get pretty much the same results elsewhere.
A poster was widely cited as having galvanized votes for the Swiss measure but was also blamed for exacerbating hostility toward immigrants and instigating a media and legal circus. “We make posters, the other side goes to the judge,” is how Alexander Segert put it when we met here the other day. “I love it when they do that.”
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Truly fascinating, albeit disturbing look at today’s use of propaganda art to target and cultivate a growing trend towards extreme populism. The U.S. is not too far behind on this…
Sometimes, to hold on to sanity we need to be reckless. We can disregard several things like personal health, financial obstacles and other such responsibilities in pursuit of an accomplishment that fuels our own happiness. It gives us a sense of purpose — but above all else, makes us feel more alive than ever before. Otherwise, we’d all be dead by now.
"There are different species of laziness: Eastern and Western. The Eastern style is like the one practised in India. It consists of hanging out all day in the sun, doing nothing, avoiding any kind of work or useful activity, drinking cups of tea, listening to Hindi film music blaring on the radio, and gossiping with friends. Western laziness is quite different. It consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so there is no time at all to confront the real issues. This form of laziness lies in our failure to choose worthwhile applications for our energy."
—
Sogyal Rinpiche
(via Swiss Miss)
"
If you start work at eighteen, you are five years ahead of someone starting at twenty-three.
At twenty-three, for all your education, you will still be the office junior.
If you get your career decisions wrong when you are young, you can alter course, but at twenty-eight it is a bit late to find out you are in the wrong job.
So don’t go to university unless the subject of your learning is close to your heart.
Go to work and do your learning in the school of life.
"— “Go to Work.” - from Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite, by Paul Arden
