After being tasked to come up with a personal information consumption rule by the final Note to Self mini-episode in the Infomagical project, I’m basing my guideline off of the “Best Friend Question” in Dan and Chip Heath’s amazing book Decisive. The BFQ is basically a decision-making strategy that pushes you to gain some distance from your dilemma by asking the question
What would I tell my best friend to do in this situation?
Drawing upon this, Continue reading
Pushing us to take a hard look at the pursuit of writing as a career, the conference session “The Strategic Writer” provided some realistic, practical perspective for writers in any stage of their development. Led by literary agent Eve Bridburg, the session took us through a framework for approaching writing with clearer purpose and direction, ultimately allowing us to find the viable paths and then select the best ones—reminds me of the quote from Émile-Auguste Chartier shared in Do More Great Work, “Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it’s the only one you’ve got.”
Two major components of the framework are
and
These points Eve discussed immediately reminded me of concepts from the invaluable books Made to Stick and Switch, especially
and
The session also resonated with points made in Kevin Starr’s PopTech talk “Lasting Impact” which I require all of my Intro to Environmental Science students watch and apply. Clarity of mission can make all the difference.
Kevin Starr: Lasting Impact from PopTech on Vimeo.
Dan Heath’s interview with Peter Bregman nicely describes the disconnect between what we want to have done (made progress on our creative projects, spent quality time with family, jogged a few miles for exercise, etc.) and what we want to do (check our email, veg out with TV, etc.). Much like a lunch buffet presenting us with a variety of food options, life constantly confronts us with different kinds of activities we could do. This analogy provides some helpful perspective on the competition between long-term interests (stay healthy with fiber and nutrients from vegetables) and short-term desires (gratify our palates with cheese-covered Tater Tots).
From there, the conversation heads into deeper examination of this disconnect and simple, effective strategies to remedy it, interweaving ideas from Switch and Decisive. If you’re familiar with those excellent books on behavioral change and decision making, I think you’ll appreciate the helpful context they add to the discussion—the amazingly effective Rider, Elephant, Path metaphor for behavior is once again incredibly useful. Overall, it’s a great 30 minutes of dissecting the problems and considering solutions.
If you’re looking a way to stay focused on achieving large, important goals and minimizing time lost to less pressing activities (avoiding the perils of what Todd Henry calls “fake work”), give this interview a listen!
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.
A Contemplative Compilation 