When someone is impatient and says, "I haven't got all day," I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?
Happy New Year Heresy
Welcome to 2008! What are you letting go of today?
Here's none other than Stewart Brand to get us started out with some radical words:
The Story of Stuff
My friend Jay recommended this great, short presentation that gives you the big picture on how stuff gets made, gets bought, and gets disposed of. Check out Annie Leonard in The Story of Stuff and then look around more at the website for ideas on how to change things.
Kickin' It Old School
Turn off your tv and your computer and pick up a book to relax with.
15 minutes with a good writer beats an hour of checking blogs and randomly watching videos on YouTube any day of the week.
Care.
"Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.”
-- Albert Schweitzer
Ask Some Questions
My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school, "So? Did you learn anything today?"
But not my mother. "Izzy," she would say, "did you ask a good question today?"
--Isidor Isaac Rabi
Cultivate a practice of learning every day. One great habit to start is to view encounters with difficult people as the best opportunity you may have each day. "What can this person teach me?" is always a good question, and the lesson isn't always a negative example.
Information Infusion
Feeling a little out of touch? Hanging out with a bunch of knowledge junkies at parties and losing some of the references?
If you are wishing for a boost to feel in the swing of things, it's not as hard as you might think to at least get a basic grip on all those names, places and quotations flying around.
1. Read a complete issue of a real newspaper. The New York Times is ideal, especially the Sunday paper. Be sure to go through those sections you wouldn't ordinarily read, be they sports, fashion or business.
2. Read an amusing compendium of trivial popular knowledge. Any of the Mental Floss books are probably good for this, but Cocktail Party Cheat Sheets and What's The Difference are especially suitable.
3. Read a recent issue of the Economist.
4. Read a recent issue of People or Us magazine.
You should be well into the loop now.
Bonus ongoing step:
5. Start reading, or at least skimming, the Wikipedia Today's Featured Article and In the News items.
Let It Out
Make some private time. Close the door. Take a stack of paper or your journal or a computer with your internet connection turned off and start writing.
Write for an hour.
Yes, a whole hour!
Write!
Wishes, stories, grievances, plans, poetry, prose, porn or pie charts; whatever, just write.
Cultivate Your Habits of Learning
I grew up in one of those wonderful families where when a question came up, then out came the big dictionary or the encyclopedia or the atlas or all three to try to figure the answer.
My mother told me that when she was a kid on Sunday's after church they'd come home, break out the Interpreter's Bible and look at the different ways the particular pieces of scripture quoted that day had been translated and discussed over time.
One of my fond memories of my grandfather, her father, is his insatiable thirst for knowledge and particularly for the origin of words and idiomatic expressions. Many times since his death I've encountered something and wished I could share it with him or ask him if he's heard about it; those moments make me sad, but also happy because I know I'm celebrating a curiosity about life that is a great memorial to him.
When you say to yourself "Hmm, I wonder..." don't just stop there; see if you can learn the answer.
With the web we've got so many great and easy to use resources, there's just no excuse not to keep stretching your brain every day.
For example, I was just wondering if seltzer water and club soda and soda water are all the same thing. Well here's the Wikipedia article on carbonated water. They are the same, it turns out, but different ones may have differing amounts of added salts, including none at all. Reading further though, I discover a paragraph about the discovery of a method of carbonation by Joseph Priestley in the course of various experiements and that reminds me of an amazing painting I saw in London: Experiment on a Bird in the Airpump. Reading further I find a link to the transcript of a marvelous NPR interview with the last seltzer delivery man in New York City. Now when I pour some bubbly water I'll probably think about the way people still 250 years later have such varied reactions to science or perhaps about Trafalgar Square or about paintings with a particular quality of light or about New York or about old people's kitchens and the things they make for you or about changing professions. How marvelous a transformation to make on an ordinary old can of seltzer water!
Celebrate Seeing
We are such fascinating animals with so many varied talents and few more inspiring than art. Combine that with memory, that glorious gift of our big ol' brains, and you reach something transcendent.
Watch these video of savant Stephen Wiltshire drawing panoramic views of Rome and Tokyo and look around with fresh and inspired eyes afterwards.
What happens when you take the time to look and really see details? What intriguing views do you encounter in your daily life? And how do they change with the time of day, the seasons, or over the years?
Maybe you don't draw very well, but just give it a try. Or write a story or a piece of music or a poem about the world you see. Or tell someone, a child or someone very old, about what you've seen. Or let the way that seeing in new ways opens up your mind and heart guide your hands as you make something, be it a quilt, a repaired car engine, a clay pot, or just dinner.
[Thanks to Jason Kottke, whose hands & mind take that energy and pour it into his excellent blog, for pointing out these videos.]
Whole New Taste
Today you're going to eat two things you've never tried before.
A good way to do this is to go to lunch & dinner with a friend and get them to introduce you to a new food that they really love. Or check out the produce area and see if there's something interesting and exotic.
So what's it going to be? Big wide world of things to try out there...
Tell about your tasting adventures in the comments!
Discard yourself!
Put on a mask, apply another persona, try out a different way of behaving.
Halloween is the best time of the year to remember how to play make believe. Trick or treat!
Who knows, you might learn something interesting about yourself in the process...
Two Priorities: Day 6
1. Work
What? Work on a weekend? Yes, because this time I want you to do something that doesn't necessarily relate to your present job but to your ability to do jobs in general well and with less stress.
Stroll on down to the library or your local bookstore and get your hands on one of these books or something else that's been recommended to you to help build skills you want:
- Getting Things Done by David Allen (to help with prioritizing your time)
- Don't Sweat The Small Stuff or Don't Sweat The Small Stuff At Work by Richard Carlson (to help with general stress reduction)
- Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug (to help anyone who makes or works on websites do it better)
- Wishcraft by Barbara Sher (to help with identifying what you really want to be doing)
2. Home
Yay! You have time to work on a project if you want, I hope. Or you could go to the movies or take a long bath. Whatever. Enjoy!
Discard the knee-jerk biases based on philosophical/spiritual affiliation
I know, I know, easier said than done, but watch yourself and see if you can catch yourself in the act of not listening as soon as you know that the person speaking (or writing) is a [insert belief system here].
This is particularly common across the boundary of belief and non-belief in God (or gods). Secular humanists are very quick to tune out the religious, missing out on deep insights and traditions of charity, and, as a most disheartening survey in the United States revealed, atheists are less trusted than any of the other groups listed (e.g. women, blacks, homosexuals, Jews, etc. etc.) despite their significant numbers and contributions even in a highly religious country like the U.S.
Try reading something across the boundaries of your beliefs. C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity have something to offer even a diehard atheist. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins or just about anything by Carl Sagan can help theists & deists understand the love & passion that the irreligious can bring to the world around them
If those are too big a jump, go read the humorous Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by atheist Douglas Adams or enjoy Sister Wendy's books and videos on great art of the world.
Input & Output
Today read about another country you know nothing about and then spend at least 20 minutes writing steadily. Journal, letters, fiction, a Wikipedia subject you do know about, whatever. Just open your mind and then write.
What you write need have nothing to do with what you read, just read and think and start writing.
Make up your own holidays
Naturally, this post by Scott Berklun on custom holidays pleases me greatly.
What holiday would you like to propose?
Discard World Ignorance
Take some paper and make three columns down which you place the numbers 1 to 243.
Over the course of the day, write down the names of every country you can think of.
To give you a little help here are the breakdowns by letter:
A - 18
B - 18
C - 23
D - 4
E - 7
F - 6
G - 15
H - 4
I - 9
J - 4
K - 8
L - 9
M - 22
N - 16
O - 1
P - 13
Q - 1
R - 3
S - 30
T - 14
U - 7
V - 6
W - 2
X - none
Y - 1
Z - 2
Now, using a different color pen, take a look at a List of Countries and see how well you did. When you're done filling and correcting the names you missed, go read the entry for the first of the ones you didn't know.
If you do this every week, by the end of a year, you'll know about the whole world.
Let go of nationalism and anti-nationalism, they're both highly flawed
Here's a really excellent essay by the smart friend of a friend about recognizing your perceptions and misconceptions and biases. It's called Hating America and it's one of those things that reinforces my long-held idea that travel outside your native country should be mandatory. It's also kicked me in my mental ass and reminded me that travel inside my native country and losing some snobbery should also be mandatory.
Discard (or at least acknowledge) your design sensibility baggage
One of the best commentators on culture, politics and creativity today is also one of the funniest. Ze Frank is a real inspiration to me and his little video show from Friday includes one of his best longer pieces yet.
Watch the show.
Here it is as transcribed by the fabulosos of the The Show wiki:
For a very long time, taste and artistic training have been things that only a small number of people have been able to develop. Only a few people could afford to participate in the production of many types of media. Raw materials like pigments were expensive; same with tools like printing presses; even as late as 1963 it cost Charles Peignot over $600,000 to create and cut a single font family.
The small number of people who had access to these tools and resources created rules about what was good taste or bad taste. These designers started giving each other awards and the rules they followed became even more specific. All sorts of stuff about grids and sizes and color combinations — lots of stuff that the consumers of this media never consciously noticed. Over the last 20 years, however, the cost of tools related to the authorship of media has plummeted. For very little money, anyone can create and distribute things like newsletters, or videos, or bad-ass tunes about "ugly."
Suddenly consumers are learning the language of these authorship tools. The fact that tons of people know names of fonts like Helvetica is weird! And when people start learning something new, they perceive the world around them differently. If you start learning how to play the guitar, suddenly the guitar stands out in all the music you listen to. For example, throughout most of the history of movies, the audience didn't really understand what a craft editing was. Now, as more and more people have access to things like iMovie, they begin to understand the manipulative power of editing. Watching reality TV almost becomes like a game as you try to second-guess how the editor is trying to manipulate you.
As people start learning and experimenting with these languages authorship, they don't necessarily follow the rules of good taste. This scares the shit out of designers.
In Myspace, millions of people have opted out of pre-made templates that "work" in exchange for ugly. Ugly when compared to pre-existing notions of taste is a bummer. But ugly as a representation of mass experimentation and learning is pretty damn cool.
Regardless of what you might think, the actions you take to make your Myspace page ugly are pretty sophisticated. Over time as consumer-created media engulfs the other kind, it's possible that completely new norms develop around the notions of talent and artistic ability.
So, Discardians, get out there and create whatever the heck you want to!
Re-appreciate your homeland and all its people
Today is a good one to look around with fresh eyes at the country where you live and see again the things you love about it.
Find common ground with your neighbors and with those people you sometimes forget are your neighbors.
For people in the United States, I offer this challenge: Appreciate the differences that make this country so vital and fascinating.
That means embracing the true diversity, bible belt and urban liberals, new immigrants and Daughters of the American Revolution, 5th-generation Spanish-speaking California farmworker and foreign-born governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
It's a wild and frustrating mix, difficult to blend and to understand the other viewpoints, but we don't get to pretend that only the parts we like exist and that the rest could be discarded. Like a person with pleasing & irritating habits, the pieces make the whole that we interact with.
Make the best of it, and I don't mean "lump it", I mean those words very literally: make it the best you can make it.
New tricks for old dogs
Not in university anymore, but still like learning new things?
Fill your iPod with lectures from your library's non-fiction CD collection. Go for a walk or to the gym and let you body and your mind both get stretched.
A particularly good series to watch for is the Teaching Company's Great Courses series. (Here, for example, is what San Francisco Public Library has).
Agreeing to Disagree
You may never find the common ground that allows you to understand all of why your opponent on something approaches the situation as he does, but you do need to let go of the idea that he does what he does because he is stupid or evil.
Let go of this so that you can move forward from a position of greater comprehension about the situation as whole.
Let go of this so that others - opponents, allies or observers - are less inclined to see you and your viewpoint as naive.
Let go of this so you are more open to a successful outcome.
Discard Your Isolation: Travel Locally
Many European countries border on as many as 10 or more neighboring countries; the United States only borders on 2. No wonder it's hard for average folks to afford a vacation to experience life in another country.
There is one thing anyone can do, though, and that's visit cultural centers within the big city nearest to you. Go spend a weekend or at least a whole day in a place where people speak a different language, eat new foods, and learn about the history and traditions of another culture.
A great way to pick where to explore is to see what other languages your local election ballots come in or the library's web site is offered in. Or call the local library and ask about census numbers for languages spoken. Searching on the web for your city name and "demographics" will probably also give you interesting information (though do consider the source before you assume it's accurate).
For a San Franciscan like me, the obvious choices are exploring the city's Chinese and Hispanic communities. A third of the population is Asian, so there are many neighborhoods full of Chinese restaurants and shops and we have one of the premier museums of Asian art. With a name like "San Francisco", it doesn't take a rocket scientist or a walk through the Mission District to suggest that Mexican and Spanish cultural are a huge part of the background of the city.
Where can you travel without having to leave town?
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