This 99u session by Simon Sinek is just phenomenal. Compelling examples, excellent humor and fascinating neurobiology come together to describe who we are and how we become leaders.
Earlier this week, in hopes of connecting the nano to the macro, I showed this to some undergraduate biochemistry students who were learning about neurotransmitter structure and function. They were enthralled, and I likely got a jolt of serotonin and maybe even some oxytocin too.
Love you, 99u!!
I just got my set of Tegu blocks, and I am psyched! Such a fantastic toy idea from a company with excellent values and solid mission.
The recent Saturday Night Live parody trailer of a Moonlight Kindgom/Royal Tenenbaums-esque horror film (below) reminds me that Wes Anderson’s distinctive visual aesthetic and unique storytelling sensibility has become so renowned—and rightly so as this auteur’s films are marvelously artistic and charmingly delightful.
It also reminds me of Jamie Travis’ The Patterns Trilogy which has its own striking and engrossing stylistic idiosyncrasies that are reminiscent of the works of Wes Anderson, David Lynch and Edward Gorey, yet create for me a novel, visually and narratively enthralling, genre-defying cinematic experience. With each installment, The Patterns Trilogy is gradually ever more perplexing and unnervingly humorous, while tinged with odd disquietude and subtly sinisterness. I still love it even two years after first coming across it.
The Patterns Trilogy trailers themselves are mini-masterpieces.
I couldn’t help but notice that recently shared perspectives from Roald Dahl, Anna Akana and iDoneThis hammer the importance of being disciplined, building routines or a schedule and having realistic short-term goals as keys to producing creative work.
Reminds me of what Ira Glass said in an interview (below) about how to close the gap between where your work is and where you want it to be: “do a huge volume of work… so that every week or every month you know you’re going to finish one story.”
Here is the excellent All Things Considered story “Roald Dahl Wanted His Magical ‘Matilda’ To Keep Books Alive” which reveals some of Roald Dahl’s writing habits.
That’s from Brené Brown’s 99u talk. And there’s so much more good perspective packed in there as well. Love the storytelling approach and the good humor. Give it whirl by hitting the link below.
Update: pairs quite nicely with this Anna Akana video on sucking, criticism and practice.
Engadget’s latest episode of Peripheral Vision features Ayah Bdeir of littleBits, a company that makes easy-to-connect electronics modules to help people tinker with and understand electronics. The short video by Engadget very nicely conveys stimulating ideas and captures compelling glimpses of a brilliant endeavor. Ayah Bdeir’s TED Talk (embedded below) is also excellent.
The latest installment of The Story of Stuff, “The Story of Solutions,” is an accessible, even empowering fresh framing of familiar environmental and social issues. Although we’ve bemoaned the shortcomings of GDP as a progress indicator for quite some time, Annie Leonard does an amazing job of explaining this and offering a path forward in just under 10 minutes!
While the analogy of the economy as a game used in “The Story of Solutions” is simple, it’s remarkably effective in its intuitiveness and provides insight for action. I also love that excellent examples of what is working (what Dan and Chip Heath call bright spots in Switch) are mentioned in this video to give us a sense of what we can do now. And speaking of Dan and Chip Heath, with this video The Story of Stuff Project, once again, nails nearly every dimension of stickiness in the Made to Stick SUCCES model. Awesome.
It’s now National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)! Although I won’t be taking part this year (to preserve the quality of other projects and the mental energy they need—though admittedly, frenetically writing a novel could be highly invigorating and re-sanitizing…), I am once again excited to find out what happens and am generally thrilled about the very idea of writing an entire novel in 30 days in the company of other literary creatives; it’s invigorating to know there’s a chunk of time proclaimed for a collective challenge to craft substantial fiction. And there’s so much great stuff on NaNoWriMo.org, like listings of local events, fun posters and ways to get encouragement from fellow novelists.
A Contemplative Compilation 