The Third Thing

“What we did: love. We did not spend our days gazing into each other’s eyes. We did that gazing when we made love or when one of us was in trouble, but most of the time our gazes met and entwined as they looked at a third thing. Third things are essential to marriages, objects or practices or habits or arts or institutions or games or human beings that provide a site of joint rapture or contentment. Each member of a couple is separate; the two come together in double attention.”

The Third Thing by Donald Hall

Missing From Your Job Description

– Add energy to every conversation
– Ask why
– Find obsolete things on your task list and remove them
– Treat customers better than they expect
– Offer to help co-workers before they ask
– Feed the plants
– Leave things more organized than you found them
– Invent a moment of silliness
– Highlight good work from your peers
– Find other great employees to join the team
– Cut costs
– Help invent a new product or service that people really want
– Get smarter at your job through training or books
– Encourage curiosity
– Surface and highlight difficult decisions
– Figure out what didn’t work
– Organize the bookshelf
– Start a club
– Tell a joke at no one’s expense
– Smile a lot.

I stumbled upon this post again from Seth. Not new. But oh so good.

50 Short Rules for a Better Life (From the Stoics)

Focus on what you can control.
You control how you respond to things.
Ask yourself, “Is this essential?”
Meditate on your mortality every day.
Value time more than money/possessions.
You are the product of your habits.
Remember you have the power to have no opinion.
Own the morning.
Put yourself up for review (Interrogate yourself).
Don’t suffer imagined troubles.
Try to see the good in people.
Never be overheard complaining…even to yourself.
Two ears, one mouth…for a reason (Zeno)
There is always something you can do.
Don’t compare yourself to others.
Live as if you’ve died and come back (every minute is bonus time).
“The best revenge is not to be like that.” Marcus Aurelius
Be strict with yourself and tolerant with others.
Put every impression, emotion, to the test before acting on it.
Learn something from everyone.
Focus on process, not outcomes.
Define what success means to you.
Find a way to love everything that happens (Amor fati).
Seek out challenges.
Don’t follow the mob.
Grab the “smooth handle.”
Every person is an opportunity for kindness (Seneca)
Say no (a lot).
Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Find one thing that makes you wiser every day.
What’s bad for the hive is bad for the bee (Marcus Aurelius)
Don’t judge other people.
Study the lives of the greats.
Forgive, forgive, forgive.
Make a little progress each day.
Journal.
Prepare for life’s inevitable setbacks (premeditatio malorum)
Look for the poetry in ordinary things.
To do wrong to one, is to do wrong to yourself. (sympatheia)
Always choose “Alive Time.”
Associate only with people that make you better.
If someone offends you, realize you are complicit in taking offense.
Fate behaves as she pleases…do not forget this.
Possessions are yours only in trust.
Don’t make your problems worse by bemoaning them.
Accept success without arrogance, handle failure with indifference.
Courage. Temperance. Justice. Wisdom. (Always).
The obstacle is the way.
Ego is the enemy.
Stillness is the key.

Found here.

A Universal “Data-base” of Positive Intentions

“Around the world, people create amazing experiences and opportunities. When they do, energetically, it becomes available to everyone. Think of it as a universal database of Creative Consciousness. One that we are all uploading our divine talents to. Therefore, we make them vibrationally accessible to kindred spirits across the globe.”
What is Creative Consciousness?

A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden

A garden is a collection of evolving ideas that aren’t strictly organised by their publication date. They’re inherently exploratory – notes are linked through contextual associations. They aren’t refined or complete – notes are published as half-finished thoughts that will grow and evolve over time. They’re less rigid, less performative, and less perfect than the personal websites we’re used to seeing.

Great read: A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden

Digital Gardens

“…as I wander the internet, I wonder where the digital gardens are that will connect me to fellow gardeners more deeply. More often than not, the digital gardens of today are botanic—privately owned online spaces made for visitors to fawn over while a “do not touch” sign looms in view. These private gardens are generative for our personal learning, but they are far from the communal gardens I grew up in that valued collective work and knowledge. Where are the digital gardens that lead us towards collective learning, play, and dreaming?”

On Digital Gardens: Tending to Our Collective Multiplicity by Annika Hansteen-Izora

(Thank you Annie)

The Cozy Web


Thank you David Spinks for sharing this graphic and introducing me to the term “The Cozy Web”. He got it from this article: The Dark Forest and the Cozy Web

Slow Learning

Tom Hodgkinson and a group of around 15 authors, artists, and teachers came up with a “Manifesto for Slow Learning,” which includes a “Bill of Rights” for the slow learner. (Start each of these with the phrase, “You have the right to…”)

1. Focus on direction, not destination
Immerse yourself completely in the journey and you will reach your final goal gradually.

2. Raise your hand
Asking questions is a fundamental human right.

3. Learn at your own pace

Find your rhythm, find your flow. Don’t compare yourself to others.

4. Unplug
You have the right to disconnect and move your attention towards what’s essential. Learn unplugged, far away from digital distractions.

5. Change your learning path (and mind)
Don’t get too comfortable in the habit zone and start with changing the aversion to change. Think differently and learn new things.

6. Take a break
Micro-breaks, lunch breaks, and longer breaks will all improve your learning performance. You have the right to rest.

7. Make mistakes
Don’t fall into despair but Fail Forward.

8. Leave it unfinished
We live in a super busy, multi-tasking, results-oriented society. Step away from your long to-do list and enjoy once in a while the beauty of an unstructured day.

9. Unlearn and forget
Harness the power of unlearning. Reboot your mind, abandon old knowledge, actions and behaviours to create space.

10. Slow down
Sometimes slow and steady will win the learning race. Make haste slowly.

(via Austin Kleon)

Kindness Scales

“It scales better than competitiveness, frustration, pettiness, regret, revenge, merit (whatever that means) or apathy. Kindness ratchets up. It leads to more kindness. It can create trust and openness and truth and enthusiasm and patience and possibility.

Kindness, in one word, is a business model, an approach to strangers and a platform for growth.It might take more effort than you were hoping it would, but it’s worth it.”

Seth Godin

Resurfacing this quote I posted in 2017. It’s so good.

Disembodied Communication

“The body is everywhere assaulted by all of our new media, a state which has resulted in deep disorientation of intellect and destabilization of culture throughout the world. In the age of disembodied communication, the meaning and significance and experience of the body is utterly transformed and distorted.”
Have I mentioned that I’ve been trying to figure out the Internet?”
– Eric McLuhan

Uranus, Eris, and the Riddle of the Internet, by Eric Francis Coppolino

(Thank you Tim)

I am, because we are

“The African view is that a person is a person through other persons. My humanity is caught up with your humanity, and when your humanity is enhanced — whether I like it or not — mine is enhanced as well. Likewise, when you are dehumanized, I am dehumanized as well.”
– Archbishop Desmond Tutu

The Bantu philosophy of “ubuntu” focuses on the power of community. Be famous within five miles.

The Nine Rules of Wile E. Coyote

“Chuck Jones, the brilliant animator who conceived of this most clever depiction of the banality and inevitability of repeated failure in the modern world, actually had “Rules” for the Coyote.”

The 1000 Deaths of Wile E. Coyote

Rebuilding Society on Meaning

Thank you Joe Edelman for sharing this thoughtful piece on rebuilding society on meaning! “If we want to make meaningful things, we have to measure meaning.”

Stock and Flow

…There are two kinds of quantities in the world. Stock is a static value: money in the bank or trees in the forest. Flow is a rate of change: fifteen dollars an hour or three thousand toothpicks a day. Easy. Too easy.

But I actually think stock and flow is a useful metaphor for media in the 21st century. Here’s what I mean:

Flow is the feed. It’s the posts and the tweets. It’s the stream of daily and sub-daily updates that reminds people you exist.

Stock is the durable stuff. It’s the content you produce that’s as interesting in two months (or two years) as it is today. It’s what people discover via search. It’s what spreads slowly but surely, building fans over time. …

Read the full article titled Stock and Flow

The Black Sheep of the Family

“The so-called black sheep of the family are, in fact, hunters born of paths of liberation into the family tree.

The members of a tree who do not conform to the norms or traditions of the family system, those who since childhood have constantly sought to revolutionise beliefs, going against the paths marked by family traditions, those criticised, judged and even rejected, these are usually called to free the tree of repetitive stories that frustrate entire generations.

The black sheep, those who do not adapt, those who cry rebelliously, play a basic role within each family system, they repair, pick up and create new and unfold branches in the family tree.”

– Bert Hellinger

Full text here.

Critical Introductory Reading to Art + AI

Interesting article recommendations in this thread.

22 Nuggets of Wisdom from Cory Muscara

1. Finding your true self is an act of love. Expressing it is an act of rebellion.

2. A sign of growth is having more tolerance for discomfort. But it’s also having less tolerance for bullshit.

3. Who you are is not your fault, but it is your responsibility.

4. Desires that rise in agitation are more aligned with your ego. Desires that arise in stillness are more aligned with your soul.

5. Procrastination is the refusal or inability to be with difficult emotions.

6. The moment before letting to is often when we grip the hardest.

7. You don’t find your ground by looking for stability. You find your ground by relaxing into stability.

8. What you hate most in others is usually what you hate most in yourself.

9. The biggest life hack is becoming your own best friend. Everything is easier when you do.

10. The more comfortable you become in your own skin, the less you need to manufacture the world around you for comfort.

11. An interesting thing happens when you start to like yourself. You no longer need all the things you thought you need to be happy.

12. If you don’t train your mind to appreciate what is good, you’ll continue to look for something better in the future, even when things are great.

13. The belief that there is some future moment more worth our presence than the one we’re in right now is why we miss our lives.

14. There is no set of conditions that leads to lasting happiness. Lasting happiness doesn’t come from conditions, but from learning to flow with conditions.

15. We often need to get out of alignment with the rest of the world to get back into alignment with ourselves.

16. Real confidence looks like humility. You no longer need to advertise your value because it comes from a place that does not require the validation of others.

17. Negative thoughts will not manifest a negative life. But unconscious negative thoughts will.

18. Bullying yourself into enlightenment does not work. You must befriend yourself to transcend yourself.

19. There are 3 layers to a moment: Your experience, your awareness of the experience and your story about the experience. Be mindful of the story.

20. Your mind doesn’t wander. It moves toward what it finds most interesting. To improve focus, become curious about what’s in front of you.

21. Life continues whether you pay attention to it or not. I think it’s why the passage of time is so scary.

22. High pain tolerance is a double-edged sword. It’s key for self-control but can cause us to override the pain of being out of alignment.

Read Cory Muscara’s original post.

Staying soft vs Tightening

“Tightness erodes clarity. Tightness reduces expansion. Tightness broadens fear, scarcity, and the feeling of being powerless. Tightness keeps me wound in my own Small Self, forgetting entirely about everything that exists beyond the tightness. Tightness looks like turning away from reality. It looks like worst-case-scenario, all-or-nothing thinking. It looks like ‘What if this doesn’t go the way I want it to?’ and ‘I don’t think I can handle this’ — like worry embodied. It looks like self-doubt and rumination, catastrophizing and smallness. It looks like forgetting about my body and only listening to my brain.”
Stay Soft, Lisa Oliver

(via Jocelyn)

Patience

“Patience, I believe, is a core competency of a healthy civilization.”
Stewart Brand

Connection on A Global Scale

Deeply moved by this thorough and generous article on the magic of CreativeMornings, my biggest labor of love.

In case you’re not familiar with CreativeMornings: It’s the world’s largest face-to-face creative community. You can attend events in 225 cities every month or tune into our free digital FieldTrips (aka workshops) online.

Something Worth Noticing

“The body of work you’re creating adds up over time. The consistency and empathy of your vision will seep through. Drip by drip, you’ll create something worth noticing.”
Crickets by Seth Godin

Audience Capture

“Audience capture is an irresistible force in the world of influencing, because it’s not just a conscious process but also an unconscious one. While it may ostensibly appear to be a simple case of influencers making a business decision to create more of the content they believe audiences want, and then being incentivized by engagement numbers to remain in this niche forever, it’s actually deeper than that. It involves the gradual and unwitting replacement of a person’s identity with one custom-made for the audience.”

The Perils of Audience Capture, by Gurwinder

(via Bailey)

The American Scam

“Everyone knows how productive you can be when you’re avoiding something. We are currently experiencing the civilizational equivalent of that anxiety you feel when you have something due the next day that you haven’t even started thinking about and yet still you sit there, helplessly watching whole seasons of mediocre TV or compulsively clicking through quintillions of memes even as your brain screams at you — the same way we scream at our politicians about guns and abortion and climate change — to do something.”

It’s Time to Stop Living the American Scam, by Tim Kreider

Color and Coffee

A lovely piece on colors of coffee and Tiramisu.