February 2010
57 posts
“Trying to explain why we mix coffee and cream together but don’t unmix...”
– Sean Carroll, theoretical cosmologist
“Art reflects, expresses, invokes and describes the ambiguity of humanity....”
– What Do We Mean by ‘Art’? | Standpoint
"What I Learned from Anna Wintour"
Lesson 1: Keep Meetings Short
Lesson 2: Trust Your Instincts
Lesson 3: Surround Yourself with Great Talent
Lesson 4: Don’t Look Back
Goal: Have more fans tomorrow than you had yesterday.
Measure: Grow fan connections as well as dollars. Every day should mean more email address, Twitter followers, Facebook fans, and MySpace friends (and whatever other way comes along tomorrow that fans can connect with artists and say “please talk to me”) and of course dollars (via direct sales, iTunes, Amazon, etc).
Action: Do...
Dan Buettner: How to live to be 100+ | Video on... →
1) move naturally (tend to walk, have a garden) 2) right outlook (downshift, purpose now) 3) eat wisely (wine@5, plant slant - beans & nuts, 80% rule) 4) connect (loved ones first, belong, right tribe)
“There is no such thing as speed reading,” says Keith Rayner a cognitive...”
– Comprehension Climbs When You Slooooow Doooown
Aerobic training and yoga are good for the brain.... →
“One way to learn Better: Mix yourself up. That’s advice from Robert Bjork,...”
– Embracing Chaos Could Bring Order to Your Memory
“Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for...”
– Neil Gaiman | Ten rules for writing fiction
“There is tremendous power in deciding when and where you are going to do...”
– An 18-Minute Plan for Managing Your Day - Peter Bregman - Harvard Business Review
“I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on...”
– Roger Ebert quote from the Esquire article
People take it for granted that their retirement funds can earn 8.5 percent a year. That’s what their financial planners tell them. And sure, you look back over the past 100 years, the stock market has generally gone up 6 to 8 percent a year. But in a larger historical perspective, that kind of growth is exceptional. If you had done the equivalent of investing in the stock market from, say, 1000...
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is...”
– Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher
“The lesson: spend your time coming up with better ideas, not with more (faux)...”
– Seth’s Blog: Viral growth trumps lots of faux followers
“The effective way to use a cliché is to point to it and then do precisely the...”
– Seth’s Blog: How to use clichés
WatchAuthor Jonah Lehrer explores the power of outsider intelligence.
“The greatest activity of which man is capable: Opening up yet another fragment...”
– Albert Einstein
The Night I Met Einstein - by Jerome Weidman | Derek Sivers
“SOME PEOPLE ARE TOXIC AVOID THEM. …[T]he important thing that I can tell...”
– http://www.miltonglaser.com/pages/milton/essays/es3.html
The One Who Got Away – Pictory →
Watch1. Push your ideas. 2. Trust your gut. 3. Don’t fall in love with your first idea. 4. Don’t censor yourself. 5. Figure out what you want to say. 6. Worry about ideas first. Execution later. 7. Approach the problem from different angles. 8. Don’t repeat yourself. 9. Show people your work. See if they get it. 10. Leave an impression with your audience. 11. Keep going.
i...
How to gauge if someone is in love with you
People who feel a connection naturally mimic each other. People who felt strongly about a romantic relationship they were in did not mimic an attractive, opposite-sex third party nearly as much.
What you should look for in a marriage partner
Find someone who you idealize and who idealizes you.
Marry somebody with high self-esteem.
Ladies, want a husband who is actively involved with his kids’ lives? Find a guy with higher socioeconomic status. Plus it’ll make your kids smarter.
Don’t marry a woman who is sexually submissive if you want to avoid involuntary celibacy after marriage.
Find someone who is...
Deliberate practice
Build an obsession with a clear goal.
Work backwards from the goal to plan your attack.
Expend hard focus toward this goal every day.
Ruthlessly evaluate and modify your approach to remove what doesn’t work and improve what does.
A few more things pop psychology has been wrong... →
Venting doesn’t reduce anger.
Opposites don’t attract.
Men are just as romantic as women.
“Through all problems of my life, my awareness of the love that I have felt, that...”
– Buckminster Fuller in his 1983 book Humans in Universe
“It’s easier to change the people you talk to / hang out with than it is to...”
– Twitter / Ben Casnocha: It’s easier to change the … (via wehr)
“According to a widely accepted model, intimacy begins when one person expresses...”
– Elizabeth Weil, in her 8,000 NYT magazine piece on her quest to improve her marriage.
The Power of the Audience (via 37signals) →
When you are in an audience you see other people around you and there’s a social magic there. People band together, get excited, and things happen. Anil Dash thinks this reveals an opportunity on the increasingly “real time” web. How would sites or web apps be different if you could see who else is there with you in each moment?
“When we read, Dr. Hedge explained, a series of ocular muscles jump around and...”
– Do E-Readers Cause Eye Strain? - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com
Partitioning is a great way to control consumption... →
Interruption makes good experiences even more... →
Nostalgia makes you feel less lonely. →
“Always start where the energy is. If you’re feeling very world-weary—and...”
– John Cleese on creativity: - Barking up the wrong tree
“It may be possible to tactically use disfluency to improve our own everyday...”
– Easy = True
“For the researchers the conclusion is inescapable: the genetic code must have...”
– Horizontal and vertical: The evolution of evolution - life - 26 January 2010 - New Scientist
“Instead of devoting your energy to pretending you feel fine—and explaining why...”
– Do Happy: Stop Explaining | tinybuddha.com
“People who talk about their intentions are less likely to make them happen....”
– Shut up! Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them. | Derek Sivers
“Scientific research has found that tears produced by emotional crying, may be...”
– Why Crying is Good for You - Associated Content - associatedcontent.com
“The ideal life [is] not only accomplished but thoroughly enjoyed.”
– The Serious Pursuit of Fun « Scott H Young
What's more persuasive: fiction or non-fiction?:
Fiction. Marketers, take note. Bonding with characters makes people lower their guard.
“Applying brainstorming techniques to new product development works best when the...”
– When to brainstorm and when not to: - Barking up the wrong tree
What motivates workers?
Making progress:
Having just completed a multiyear study tracking the day-to-day activities, emotions, and motivation levels of hundreds of knowledge workers in a wide variety of settings, we now know what the top motivator of performance is—and, amazingly, it’s the factor those survey participants ranked dead last. It’s progress. On days when workers have the sense they’re making headway in...
“Women who have sex with bilaterally symmetrical men report more orgasms; men...”
– What does your body’s appearance tell others about you sexually?: - Barking up the wrong tree
How To Live (Comfortably) on $36 A Month For Food... →
“Why is it that a guy who happened to be born in the U.S. can do a certain job...”
– Ben Casnocha: The Blog: One of the Best Anti-Poverty Solutions: Immigration
“Good decisions seem to require a mix of dispassionate, rational analysis and...”
– Ben Casnocha
