joymonk's shared items in Google Reader

The Silliness of Busyness

guest — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 08:59:25 PDT

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Courtney Carver of Be More with Less.

I never thought I would laugh at how busy I used to be. I was serious about my ability to be superwoman. I could work 40+ hours a week, raise a child, volunteer when anyone asked, exercise, travel, cook, and clean. I could do it all, and then some.

Everyone was doing it all, so I did too. I didn’t want to do it all. Doing it all made me exhausted. Doing it all cost me friendships. Doing it all cost me my health. My busyness wasn’t even a little bit silly.

Becoming less busy was not an accident, but a decision I made on purpose. I made the decision that a busy life wasn’t a life for me. Being a good person, loving wife, mother and friend…that was the life I wanted. Next to that, I wanted the freedom to do things that made my heart sing instead of things that weighed me down.

Until I intentionally left a life of chronic busyness, I couldn’t see how silly it really was. The silliness of busyness is that sometimes you are so busy, you can’t recognize you are in trouble. You are so overwhelmed that you can’t figure out how to change. You are so used to being busy that you create more work to make your life even busier.

You may be lost in the silliness of busyness if…

Your usual response to “how are you?” is “so busy”, “crazy busy” or “busy but good”
You spend time worrying about how busy you are going to be tomorrow
You get angry when your spouse or friends aren’t as busy as you
Your busy life keeps you up at night thinking about everything you didn’t get done
You make a point of letting people know that you stay at the office after hours
You check email several times a day
You zone out during conversations thinking about everything you have to do
You volunteer for things you don’t care about
You spend time complaining about how busy you are
You make list after list to make sure you don’t forget anything during your busy day
You allocate time each day to clean your desk or organize your stuff
You regularly eat in your car
You use a phone in the car because “it’s the only time you have to talk”

If you are anything like me, you are busy because you want to be or because you don’t know how to be un-busy. You are busy out of misdirected guilt because you think if you do enough, you will be enough. When you decide that it is ok to live life your way, you can stop being busy and start doing things that matter. You can talk about your meaningful day instead of ranting about your busy schedule. Decide today that you are enough, even if you never do anything, accomplish anything or produce anything ever again. You are enough.

How to be less busy

be unproductive on purpose
only check email 2X per day
delete email and toss mail that you don’t need to read
turn your phone and computer off when you aren’t working
turn everything off in the car (except the car)
put your ipad down
read The Power of Less
help someone
do less, be more
stop trying to keep up, measure up or catch up

While you may think that you are making sacrifices for others by being busy, you are likely sacrificing the same relationships you think you are saving. Get real, make time and consider what is most important to you. Then do that first. The rest can wait.

Courtney Carver is the author of Simple Ways to Be More with Less. Read more from Courtney at her blog, Be More with Less, or follow her on twitter.

Remaining human: A Buddhist perspective on Occupy Wall Street

(author unknown) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 18:01:44 PDT

Group meditation at Occupy Wall St. / Photo: Velcrow Ripper

As the movement grows in New York and all over North America, Michael Stone believes we are creating a language to reimagine what a flourishing society looks like.

A MAN STANDS on a bench in Zuccotti Park on Wall Street and chants a phrase from a meeting last night: “We don’t want a higher standard of living, we want a better standard of living.” He’s wearing a crisp navy blue suit and typing tweets into his iPhone. Next to him, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, wearing a red t-shirt, is surrounded by at least a hundred people as he makes his way onto a makeshift platform.

Since the protesters aren’t allowed to use megaphones or amplifiers, they have to listen carefully to the speaker’s every sentence, after which the speaker pauses, and those close enough to have heard repeat the sentence in unison for those farther away. When Naomi Klein spoke three nights ago, some sentences were repeated four or five times as they echoed through Liberty Park and down Wall Street, passed along like something to be celebrated and shared, something newborn.

Slavoj Žižek said:

They tell you we are dreamers. The true dreamers are those who think things can go on indefinitely the way they are. We are not dreamers. We are awakening from a dream which is tuning into a nightmare. We are not destroying anything. We are only witnessing how the system is destroying itself. We all know the classic scenes from cartoons. The cat reaches a precipice. But it goes on walking. Ignoring the fact that there is nothing beneath. Only when it looks down and notices it, it falls down. This is what we are doing here. We are telling the guys there on Wall Street – Hey, look down!

We are awakening from a dream. When the Buddha was asked to describe his experience of awakening he said, “What I have awoken to is deep, quiet and excellent. But,” he continues, “People love their place. It’s hard for people who love, delight and revel in the fixed views and places of absolute certainty, to see interdependence.”

Over and over, the Buddha taught that what causes suffering is holding on to inflexible views. The stories that govern our lives are also the narratives that keep us locked into set patterns, habits and addictions. The same psychological tools that the Buddha cultivated for helping us let go of one-track rigid stories can be applied not just personally, but socially. Enlightenment is not personal; it’s collective.

The media love a good fight. In Toronto during the G20, those not involved in the protests were eventually distracted by the images of a burning police car in front of the banking sectors. With burning cars and young men breaking windows, there was suddenly a more entertaining target than the real issues of coming austerity measures and avoidance of policies that deal with climate catastrophe. With violent images prevailing, the protests lost momentum because the issues were forgotten in the media.

This time, even though there is a massive police presence at most protests, the movement is not giving the media the images of broken windows that they love. Instead we are seeing a blossoming of creativity and hope.

We need a language now that allows us to reimagine what a flourishing society looks like. Any meditator knows that there are times when the thoughts that stream endlessly through awareness can eventually grow quiet. But it’s only temporary. The stories come back. But they return differently. They have more space and they are –more fluid, less rigid. We need stories to think and make sense of a world – now an ailing world that needs us. A more convenient way to apply the Buddha’s message to the social sphere is to remember that viewpoints never end or dissolve altogether, rather we learn to shift from one story to another, like a prism being turned, so that the possible ways of looking at our lives can constantly change.

“If you see others as Buddha, you are a Buddha. You remain human. You no longer try to get beyond others. “

It’s time we adapt to our economic and ecological circumstances – uncomfortable truths we’ve been avoiding for far too long. This awakening is not just about economics, it’s about ecology and our love for what we know is valuable: community, healthcare, simple food, and time.

This process of dislodging old narratives is the function of both spirituality and art. Both ethics and aesthetics ask us to let go in a way that is deep enough that we find ourselves embedded in the world in a new way. If we think of this emerging movement as a practice, we’ll see that as it deepens and we let go of habitual stories, our embeddedness in the world deepens. Intimacy deepens. Relationships deepen.

In the same way that moving into stillness is a threat to the part of us that wants to keep running along in egoistic fantasies and distraction, those with the most to lose are going to try and repress this outpouring of change. They’ll do this with police, of course, but they’ll also use subtle measures like calling us communists or anti-American, anti-progress, etc. Our job will be to keep a discerning eye and watch for this subtle rhetoric that obscures what we are fighting for.

In the Lotus Sutra it is said that the quickest way to becoming a Buddha is not through extensive retreats or chanting but through seeing others as a Buddha. If you see others as Buddha, you are a Buddha. You remain human. You no longer try to get beyond others.

A student once asked Zen master Shitou Xiquian, “What is Buddha?” Shitou replied, “You don’t have Buddha mind.” The student said, “I’m human; I run around and I have ideas.” Shitou said, “People who are active and have ideas also have Buddha-mind.” The student said, “Why don’t I have Buddha-mind?” Shitou said, “Because you are not willing to remain human.”

This student wants to transcend his life. He imagines that being a Buddha is something outside of himself, beyond his everyday actions. If you have to ask what awakening is, you don’t see it. If you can’t trust that you have the possibility to do good, to see everyone and everything as a Buddha, then how will you even begin? Our Buddha nature is our imagination.

These protests are reminding us that with a little imagination, a lot can change. We are witnessing a collective awakening to the fact that our corporations and governments are the products of human action. They aren’t serving anymore, and so it is in our power and in our interest to replace them.

We are not fighting the people on Wall Street, we are fighting this whole system.

Žižek, the protestors, the Buddha and Shitou share a common and easily forgotten truth: We cause suffering for ourselves and others when we lose our sense of connectedness. We are the 99 percent but we are dependent on the 1 percent that control forty percent of the wealth. Those statistics reflect grave imbalance in our society.

Of course people are taking to the streets. In the U.S. 44.6 percent of the unemployed have been out of work for over six months. Long-term unemployment at this level is unprecedented in the post second world war era, and it causes deep strife in communities, families and people’s health.

Love Always / Photo: Velcrow Ripper

This movement is also showing the power of non-violence. Non-violence, a core precept in my own Buddhist practice, is not an ideology. It’s the power of facing what’s actually going on in each and every moment and responding as skillfully as possible. The depth of our awakening, our humanness, has everything to with how we care for others. Our sphere of awareness begins to include everything and everyone. The way we respond to our circumstances shows our commitment to non-harm.

In meditation practice we can experience gaps between the exhale and the inhale, between one thought dissolving and another appearing. The space between thoughts is the gentle and creative place of non-harm. The meditator learns to trust that quiet liminal space with patience because from it, new and surprising ways of seeing our lives emerge. This is the inherent impulse of non-harm in our lives. It begins when we bear witness to the fading of one thought and the emergence of another.

These protests are exposing the gap between democracy and capitalism. The way democracy and capitalism have been bound is coming to an end. We want democracy but we can’t afford the runaway growth economy that isn’t benefiting the 99 percent. And if the 99 percent are not benefiting, the truth is, the 1 percent feel that. If there’s anything we’re all aware of these days, it’s that it’s not just twitter and email that connects us – it’s water, speculative banking, debt and air, as well. When the 1 percent live at the expense of the 99 percent, a rebalancing is certain to occur.

If we can trust in the space where, on the one hand, we are fed up with economic instability and ecological degradation and, on the other, we value interconnectedness, we are doing the same thing collectively that the meditator does on his or her cushion. We are trusting that something loving and creative will emerge from this space that we create. It’s too early to say what that may be. It won’t just be a rehashing of an ideology from the past. These are new times and requite a new imaginative response.

The people of Occupy Wall Street and now Occupy San Francisco, Toronto, Montreal, Boston, Copenhagen and 70 other cities are trying to do both: take over a space that’s being wrested from the people, and also hold the possibility of a new way of living. What’s been stolen from the people is not merely a physical space (their foreclosed homes, for example) but space to rethink how our society operates and what to do about the bottom dropping out. Even the media, looking for a hook, can’t find one. “What are your demands?” the media keep asking. The answer: “It’s too early to say.” Let’s see how much space we can hold, let’s see what our power is, and then we can begin talking about demands.

If we are going to fully express our humanity and wake up as a collective, we need to replace our youthful ideas of transcendence with the hard work of committing to the end of a way of life in which our work is not in-line with our values.

We’re demanding a fundamental change of our system. Yes, we all need to work through our individual capacity for greed, anger and confusion. This is an endless human task. We also have to stop cooperating with the system that breeds greed and confusion as it shapes our lives and our choices. This movement is the beginning of bringing that system to a halt.

From here, anything is possible.

The Fringes Disagree But Science And Religion Do Mix

News Account — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 09:38:00 PDT

To religious fundamentalists, atheists in science are engaged in an insidious campaign to undercut morality and replace it with God-less relativism and moral equivalence. To militant atheists, religious people are intellectually immature, anti-science busybodies telling people how to live.

Five Tips to Break Through Your Filter(s)

John Hagel III and John Seely Brown — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 06:12:13 PDT

It is no surprise that we instinctively seek out those who share our interests. This is especially true in times of increasing pressure and uncertainty. We have an understandable tendency in such times to seek out the familiar and comfortable as a buffer against the unforeseen changes around us. In so doing we can inadvertently put ourselves in a cage of similarity that narrows our peripheral vision of the world and our options. The result? We may be even more vulnerable to being blindsided by events and trends coming at us from new and unusual directions.

The Internet compounds this narrowing by invisibly removing subjects and people from our online searches and even our casual exploration of websites, explains Eli Pariser in his new book, The Filter Bubble. Worse yet, we tend to become more extreme and entrenched in our beliefs when we become involved in a tight-knit group that shares them.

The bottom line: the choices we make and the technology we use can progressively narrow the range of experiences we have. To counteract the potential stultifying effects of the filter bubble we will have to overcome our natural instinct to seek out the comfort of those who are most like us. Here are some suggestions:

1. Audit and re-shape your social network. With the advent of online social network platforms we have an increasing visibility into the make-up of our personal social network. Whom do we interact with most frequently? How similar are they to us?

Scan the periphery of your social network and explore those "weak ties" — the people you may have met briefly and who come from very different environments. Who are some of the most diverse people on the periphery of your network that you might benefit from getting to know better? How could you use online social networks to reach out to people you have never even met but who are engaged in arenas adjacent to your own interests? Each week, resolve to introduce yourself to a friend of a friend on an online network who seems to be the most interesting and most different from you.

2. Revise your conference calendar. How many conferences do you go to each year? How many of those conferences are in fields that you are deeply familiar with and draw people that are very similar to you?

Commit to attend at least one conference every year in a field that may be relevant to your interests but where you have very little experience. Spend some time at the conference trying to understand the key issues that are engaging the participants. Find at least one issue that has some potential relevance to issues that you are confronting and start conversations with people at the conference to explore where and how these issues might intersect.

3. Get more out of your social gatherings. At any reception or party you go to, no matter how similar the others might be to you, there are usually a few people who are from a very different mold. They often stick out like a sore thumb, looking very alone and uncomfortable. Seek those people out before settling in to the comfort of your friends and colleagues.

Early in the conversation ask, "What's of most interest for you here?" Ask open-ended follow-up questions to get closer to their core interest. "Oh, and why's that fascinating for you?" Or ask the universally helpful question to get others to open up: "Tell me more about that." In so doing, you invite three opportunities for fresh insights: what that person tells you, how you react, and how they respond to you.

4. Act out diverse facets of yourself. Seeking novelty in your life? Why not tap into a long ignored passion and carve out some time to re-engage with it. Often our passions are far removed from the comfortable lives we have settled into. By re-connecting with these passions, we are likely to encounter people that are far removed from our daily experience. These new individuals are very likely to provide us with new insight about ourselves and what we have to offer.

Each of us has many selves. With strangers — especially those who are different than your usual crowd — you can project a different part of your personality. As you act differently, so will others in response to you, often leading conversations in new directions.

5. Share an experience in an unfamiliar situation. Because George W Bush and Bill Clinton have quite different beliefs and temperaments, they probably learned more from each other during their joint visit to earthquake-stricken Haiti in 2010. They could observe different ways of interacting with people as well as of collecting ideas about how to help the situation. Seek out opportunities to share an experience with others who have different talents and ways of operating in the world. You'll learn more and you might also discover a hidden or atrophied talent or interest within yourself.

With each of these approaches you can burst constraining bubbles of limited viewpoints and experiences that lead to an ever-narrowing life view. Instead you invite in unexpected encounters with people that can trigger new thoughts, adventures and ways of engaging with others. Rather than diminishing the potential for serendipity, one of the by-products of filter bubbles, you can increase the number and quality of those unexpected encounters. In other words, you can shape serendipity to your advantage. You can create more options from which to live a richly varied life.

Reminders from the world

heathervescent — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 07:47:25 PDT

I found this written on the whiteboard of a local (Albany, CA) high school circa 2003 or 2004.

How to live a Happy Stress free Life

Be impeccable with your word
Before you speak: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?
Avoid being judgmental
Ask questions, express what you really want
Give the benefit of the doubt
We are all doing the best we can at our level of awareness.
Always do your best
In doing so, you avoid self judgment, self abuse and regret

Tattoo 2.0

Marco van Beers — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 00:15:48 PDT

As a child you probably had one of those temporary tattoos that come packed with over-sweetened chewing gum. It was a nice decoration, and a way to stand out. Recently researchers have brought temporary tattoos to the next level with small, flexible electronic circuits.

These electronic patches consist of tiny semiconductor circuits, and are able to stretch with the skin. Scientists from the University of Illinois have created demonstration versions of these “tattoos” using a diverse array of electronic components mounted on a thin, rubbery substrate. Possible applications include sensors, LEDs, transistors, radio frequency capacitors, wireless antennas, and conductive coils and solar cells for power.The patches are mounted on a thin sheet of water-soluble plastic and then laminated to the skin with water, just like a temporary tattoo. The circuits can also be applied directly to a temporary tattoo, hiding the appearance of the electronics.

This is an important advancement in wearable electronics. Such patches could allow us to measure brainwaves and other mental activity in an everyday setting. Currently this is only possible in a lab with a complicated helmet and a lot of wires. Imagine what else might be possible. In the near future we may be able to exchange contact information through a handshake, or finally find that mysterious six sense.

Via Physorg

Violin made with a 3D printer

Everett Ruskin — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 11:45:00 PDT

German firm EOS has succeeded in replicating a Stradivarius violin with a 3D printer.

Realtime Face Substitution softwear

Everett Ruskin — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 10:47:00 PDT

This is a technical demo for face substitution technique. The picture in the right hand corner is substituted in real time and it's developed using the opensource framework for creative coding openFrameworks: openFrameworks.cc Check out Micheal Jackson at 1:28 -uncanny

On The Creating And Sharing Of Awe

(author unknown) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 22:04:57 PDT

Timothy Leary and Buckminster Fuller called themselves “performing philosophers,” using the power of media communication to spread galactic-sized ideas about the state of the species in relation to the wider universe. Leary used to say, “In the information age, you don’t teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today, he’d have a talk show.” Carl Sagan is another example of the philosopher-as-media-personality, effectively hacking pop culture with his iconic Cosmos TV series and sending our collective minds reeling.

Unautomate Your Money

guest — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 14:33:00 PDT

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Baker of Man Vs. Debt.

Every time we automate a process in our lives, we trade a piece of consciousness away for a piece of convenience.

This can be fantastic, as long as we ensure that we automate positive, sustainable habits.

The problem with automation comes when we try to apply it to areas in our lives that need more consciousness.

We run into trouble when we try to solve a problem by automating it.

Automation itself doesn’t fix anything.

In fact, automating a undesirable process only buries the problem even further.

“Problems can’t be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.” -Albert Einstein.

We cannot solve problems by trading away consciousness.

We need to reverse this trend. We need unautomation.

Unautomation is the act of deliberately trading back pieces of convenience for increased consciousness in return.

In our financial lives, there are plenty of examples were we can benefit from unautomation:

Creating a list of every item you own. While far from convenient, this will drastically increase the awareness of our clutter.
Using a 30-day list for wants. Waiting 30 days to purchase an item can be a drag, but we’ll likely realize how little we really desired it in the first place.
Tracking our spending with pen and paper. Carry a small pocketbook and record every purchase by hand rather than just on your plastic.
Converting the cost of items into time we’ll need to work. This can be a tough exercise, but will put things in perspective quickly.
Purging 2 items for every 1 you bring into your life. Yet another inconvenient (at times) rule-of-thumb that can raise awareness around just how much clutter we bring into our lives.
Quit signing contracts. Until you’ve ever tried to quit signing them, you don’t realize how fundamental contracts are in our society.
Spending with cash over plastic. Going without plastic isn’t easy, but you can’t get much more aware than we spending cold, hard cash.
Taking public transportation. You may have to leave early or plan a little more in advance, but taking public transportation will open your eyes the other side of your daily commute.

These examples are only a handful of hundreds of money instances where we could benefit from a path of less convenience and more consciousness.

The next time you look to change a set of behaviors in your life, don’t turn to automation.

Start with unautomation.

Registration is now open for You Vs Debt, Baker’s 6-week online class with daily videos, challenges, and accountability forums to empower your battle against debt.

5 Ways To Turn Fear Into Fuel

guest — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 08:59:59 PDT

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Jonathan Fields, author of Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt Into Fuel for Brilliance.

Uncertainty. It’s a terrifying word.

Living with it, dangling over your head like the sword of Damocles, day in day out, is enough to send anyone spiraling into a state of anxiety, fear and paralysis.

Like it or not, though, uncertainty is the new normal. We live in a time where the world is in a state of constant, long-term flux. And, that’s not all. If you want to spend your time on the planet not just getting-by, but consistently creating art, experiences, businesses and lives that truly matter, you’ll need to proactively seek out, invite and even deliberately amplify uncertainty. Because the other side of uncertainty is opportunity.

Nothing great was ever created by waiting around for someone to tell you it’s all going to be okay or for perfect information to drop from the sky. Doesn’t happen that way. Great work requires you to act in the face of uncertainty, to live in the question long enough for your true potential to emerge. There is no alternative.

When you find the strength to act in the face of uncertainty, you till the soil of genius.

Problem is, that kills most people. It leads to unease, anxiety, fear and doubt on a level that snuffs out most genuinely meaningful and potentially revolutionary endeavors before they even see the light of day. Not because they wouldn’t have succeeded, but because you never equipped yourself to handle and even harness the emotional energy of the journey.

But, what if it didn’t have to be that way?

What if there was a way to turn the fear, anxiety and self-doubt that rides along with acting in the face of uncertainty–the head-to-toe butterflies–into fuel for brilliance?

Turns out, there is. Your ability to lean into the unknown isn’t so much about luck or genetics, rather it’s something entirely trainable. I’ve spent the past few years interviewing world-class creators across a wide range of fields and pouring over research that spans neuroscience, decision-theory, psychology, creativity and business.

Through this work, a collection of patterns, practices and strategies have emerged that not only turbocharge insight, creativity, innovation and problem-solving, but also help ameliorate so much of the suffering so often associated with the pursuit of any creative quest.

Here are 5 starter-strategies to help get you going:

1. Reframe.

We tell ourselves stories all day long. I’m skinny. I’m fat. I’m talented. I’m stupid. This is genius. This is awful. I will succeed. I will fail. I’m terrified and anxious. I’m confident and proactive. It turns out, the storylines we create around a particular circumstance are far more determinative of success than the circumstance itself. They affect not only our willingness to act, but the quality of our ideas and solutions.

If you create a story that empowers action and innovation, that’s great news. Unfortunately, our brains have a strong bias toward negativity, leading most of us to create stories around circumstances that require action in the face of uncertainty that are more likely to paralyze and stunt creativity than fuel action.

Reframing is a process that asks you to suspend negative storylines, explore if the story you’re telling is the only one and, if not (which is inevitably the case), construct or frame a new storyline that empowers you to experience an uncertain circumstance not as a prime for failure and inaction, but as a signpost for meaning and opportunity.

For example, if you’re disabling storyline is around the risk of failure, instead of just asking “what if I fail?” and creating a doomsday scenario, you also ask “how will I recover, what if I do nothing and what if I succeed?” Then build new stories around those questions.

2. Practice Mindfulness.

Reframing is an immensely powerful tool in the quest to lean into the unknown. But it also requires a certain equanimity; the ability to pull back and see what’s really going on, re-center, then breath into that uncomfortable place long enough for amazing things to bubble up. Over time, a daily mindfulness practice goes a long way toward equipping you to do just that.

Plus, it cultivates the sense of persistent grounding that makes living and acting in a world where there is no new normal far more enjoyable. And it trains you in the practice of dropping thoughts, among those, destructive, limiting-beliefs.

3. Exercise Your Brain.

We’ve all seen the research on exercise and health, weight loss and disease prevention. But, did you know that certain approaches to exercise also have a profound effect on your brain?

Daily cardiovascular exercise, for example, especially with high-intensity bursts mixed in can improve mood, executive function, decision-making and creativity and decrease anxiety and fear. The latest research even reveals the possibility that exercise can grow new brains cells, something that until only a few years ago, was thought to be impossible. It’s also strongly correlated with decreases in anxiety and increases in mood, which are directly connected to improved creativity and problem-solving.

4. Singletask.

Multitasking is out. Turns out this badge of honor from the ’90s is more fiction than fact. Our brains don’t multitask, they just rapidly switch between tasks, sometimes fast enough for us to believe we’re doing many things at once. Problem is, every time we switch, there is a “ramping cost” in your brain, it takes anywhere from a few second to 15 minutes for your brain to fully re-engage. This makes you feel insanely busy, but simultaneously craters productivity, creativity and increases feelings of anxiety and stress.

Multitasking also requires you to hold a lot of information in your working memory, which is controlled by a part of the brain known as the prefrontal cortex (PFC). But the PFC is also responsible for will-power, and for keeping fear and anxiety in check. Multitasking increases the “cognitive load” on the PFC, overwhelming it and effectively killing it’s ability to keep fear, anxiety and the taunt of distraction at bay.

Simple solution–just say no. Do one thing at a time in intense, short bursts.

5. Get Lean.

Instead of creating in a vacuum, explore the possibility of bringing a “lean” or “agile” approach to your creative process. Focus on maximum learning, create the simplest version of your idea possible, then bring a select group of those who’d potentially enjoy it into the process earlier in name of soliciting and integrating input into the next iteration. This not only minimizes waste, it changes the psychology of creation by adding more certainty earlier in the game and encouraging consistent, incremental action.

These five strategies and practices can change the way you experience the creative process in a profound way. They’ll not only allow you to tap a reservoir of previously hidden creativity, they’ll also allow you to experience any creative endeavor with a far deeper sense of equanimity and joy.

Pick up a copy of Jonathan’s new book – Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt Into Fuel for Brilliance today, or check out his book trailer.

Become a God of Learning Your Trade

Leo — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 11:33:26 PDT

Post written by Leo Babauta.

A lot of you are like me — trying to do what you love, and figuring out the best way to do that.

It’s not always easy to do what you love, because:

You aren’t sure you’re good at it.
You don’t know if it will work.
You don’t know if people will like it.
You don’t know how to get better.
You doubt your ability to succeed.
You might spend months working on something, only to have it fail.

And these are tough problems.

But I have a method for beating them. And it’s a simple trick.

Do it in public, and get immediate feedback.

It’s one of the most powerful things you can implement, I promise. Here’s why and how.

The Lessons of Street Performers

Consider the street musician or juggler or magician: they do a show in public, in front of people who have other things to do and haven’t planned on watching a show, and have to convince that crowd not only to watch, but to pay them money after having already seen the show. (Read more.)

That’s an amazing business model. If a street performer isn’t good, people won’t watch. But making a small change in the performance, like a better setup or better patter, can make huge changes in audience reaction and payment.

And here’s the thing: they see the effects of those small changes immediately. There’s no wondering, “Will this work? Will it be an improvement or make things worse?” Because they know if it works, if it makes things better or worse, right away.

Instant feedback is the most valuable thing you can get. It’s better even than a sale, because a sale might result in a satisfied customer or it might not, and a sale doesn’t tell you how to improve.

Whatever you want to do, if you can do something publicly, even in front of a small group, and get instant feedback, that’s pure gold. There’s no better way to improve. There’s no better way to evolve a method or creative process or business model than through this simple technique of constant iteration and natural selection.

How to Be Evolve Like a Street Performer

Blogging is one of the best ways to do something in public. Consider: you write about an idea, and you get instant feedback from readers, in comments, emails, tweets, G+ posts, etc.

When I started Zen Habits, I don’t think I was that great … I wrote a bunch of posts that didn’t thrill readers. I wrote a couple that did thrill some people, and so learned what works best as a writer — more than I’d learned as a writer in the entire previous decade of writing. Through this kind of public writing, instant feedback, and constant evolving, I got better over the course of months, not years.

No matter what you do, you can put ideas out on a blog. You can also put software out to beta testers, as soon as possible, with the simplest possible version of the software. You can test recipes by making them for people, maybe selling them on the street in a cart. Artists can put artwork online instantly. Musicians and actors can put stuff on Youtube. A business can put itself online in as small an iteration as possible, without taking months of blind development.

For some work, it will take a bit more creativity. But use this idea of working in public, getting instant feedback, and evolving through constant iterations to improve better and faster than ever before.

I admit it can be scary. Which is why you can start with a small group, less public but still using the same ideas, and grow the audience as you grow more confident.

Be a street performer. There’s no better way to get amazing at something.

Tw | G+

A Young Artist's Guide to Playing for Keeps, Pt. 15

noreply@blogger.com (hellomynameisscott) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 08:15:00 PDT

You’ve chosen an uncertain path.
You’ve adopted an inconvenient lifestyle.
You’ve embarked upon an unconventional journey.
You’ve felt the voice inside you growing more urgent.
You’ve committed yourself enough so you can’t turn back.

IN SHORT: You’ve decided to play for keeps.

This is the critical crossroads – the emotional turning point – in the life of every young artist.

I’ve been there myself, and here’s a list of suggestions to help you along the way:
1. Feeling is the agent of fame. At a recent panel discussion, filmmaker and podcaster Kevin Smith put it perfectly:

“People will value you in this life if you can think or feel something for them they can’t express for themselves. If you can deliver something people can’t find on their own, they will be willing to support you because they identify with you. Feel everything. That’s your superpower. Never deaden your empathy.”

That’s the cool part about being an artist: You can always rely on your own feelings as a valuable source of raw material. Next time you encounter a feeling you’re afraid to have, sit with it. Make friends with it. And exploit it in the service of your audience. By expressing the feelings that are yours and yours alone, people will recognize them as their own too. What feelings are you famous for having?

2. Heighten your consciousness. I’ve practiced meditation every day of life since I was twenty-two. It keeps me sane, keeps me creative and keeps me connected to the divine. And while I’m no expert on the topic, here’s what I’ve learned: First of all, meditation is cheaper than worry. I’d rather create a mental pause than waste my imagination sweating over something I don’t even care about.

Secondly, meditation isn’t a technique. It’s not something you accomplish – it’s something you practice. And lastly, the goal of meditation isn’t to get more ideas – the goal is to make the container bigger. That way, ideas are more likely to fall. If you’re never explored some kind of meditation practice, start today. You will never be the same. Your art will never be the same. When was the last time you sat quietly and engaged with your higher self?

3. You are what you charge. Harlan Ellison has written over one thousand short stories, novellas, screenplays, teleplays and essays. In a recent television interview, he shared the following insight:

“The only value for me is if you put money in my hand. You better cross my palm with silver, because I’m supposed to be paid every time I do something. Sure, I’ll sell my soul, but only at the highest rate. Because I don’t take a piss without getting paid.”

When it comes to pricing, share it publicly. Set a precedent of value. When it comes to charging, state your fee confidently – then shut up. He, who talks next, loses. And when it comes to collecting, never feel guilty about asking for your money. If you delivered the work, you deserve the cheese. Who are you still afraid to send an invoice to?

4. Don’t find inspiration – beguile it. With the right lens, the right posture and the right filter, inspiration will seek you out. All you have to install new awareness plans. I learned about this process from obscure book on creativity called Playful Perception, by Herbert Leff. He defines an “awareness plan” as a procedure or mental recipe for perceiving and thinking about the world around us.

Here are my favorite examples: Contemplate special contributions each thing makes to life. Envision what’s going on inside everything you notice. Regard whatever you’re doing as a game. See things as events and not objects frozen in a moment of time. And view everyday things as if they were art exhibits. By changing the way you experience the world, you position yourself to receive a never-ending flow inspiration. Are you waiting for the rain or turning yourself into a lightning rod?

5. Juggle multiple threads of work simultaneously. The best thing my mentor taught me was to think modular. To create in chunks. To work on several projects at once. And to shift between them as circumstances dictate. That’s why I’m always writing five books at once. Not because I’m unfocused – but because I’m creating thought bridges, subconscious connections and unexpected integrations between seemingly unrelated ideas.

Yes, it requires self-control. Yes, it requires belief in your own capabilities to organize and execute. But as I learned from Realizing the Impossible, “The best artists have shit on their shoes. They’re running around in the middle of everything, they can’t settle down, they can’t shut up and they can’t quit fidgeting with everything.”

Cartoonist Hugh Macleod calls this way of life crofting. Someone who never does just one thing. Lots of balls in the air. Lots of different directions. Never waking up and doing the exact same thing each day. Not always the highest paying, but fun and rewarding as hell. How many plates are you willing to spin?

6. Art without point of view, isn’t. Your art needs to do something beside decorate a wall. As an artist, your job is to declare a different way to think about living. As an artist, your purpose is to reorganize the world in ways that are more just. As an artist, your obligation is to express what you feel strongest about. And as an artist, your goal is to signify the spirit of the times by telling stories of the voiceless.

Otherwise you’re just a fad with legs. In the words of legendary film composer and music producer, Hans Zimmer: “A good score should have a point of view all of its own. It should transcend all that has gone before; stand on its own two feet and still serve the movie. A great soundtrack is all about communicating with the audience, but we all try to bring something extra to the movie that is not entirely evident on screen.” How will you avoid the inevitable downward spiral to commodity?

REMEMBER: When you’re ready to play for keeps, your work will never be the same.

Make the decision today.

Show the world that your art isn’t just another expensive hobby.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Have you committed with both feet yet?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS...
For the list called, "52 Random Insights to Grow Your Business," send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author, Speaker, Publisher, Artist, Mentor
scott@hellomynameisscott.com

Never the same speech twice.

Now booking for 2011-2012!

Watch The Nametag Guy in action here!

Twelfth century orgasmic brain heat

vaughanbell — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 17:58:43 PDT

Hildegard of Bingen was a twelfth century nun, possibly with repressed lesbian desires, who had visions, was a proto-scientist, advised the Pope, composed music, and, er, wrote about the role of the brain in the female orgasm.

BBC Radio 4′s Great Lives just had a fantastic programme about her where they read out her description of the female orgasm and how it is driven by a ‘sense of heat’ in the brain.

Remember, if you could possibly forget, that this was written by a nun in the 12th century.

When a woman is making love with a man, a sense of heat in her brain, which brings forth with it sensual delight, communicates the taste of that delight during the act and summons forth the emission of the man’s seed. And when the seed has fallen into its place, that vehement heat descending from her brain draws the seed to itself and holds it.

I for one, certainly feel closer to God after reading that.

Hildegard is most well known among neuroscientists for the descriptions of her visions which Oliver Sacks has interpreted as likely stemming from migraines as these can can cause an array of visual distortions and hallucinations.

Although from now on, I shall give equal consideration to her interest in erotic brain heat.

Link to programme info and streaming.
mp3 of the same in different location because the BBC are a bit slow.

Projecting meaning

(author unknown) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 00:00:00 PDT

Projecting meaning into Chinese characters

Chinese characters look complicated, but they're mostly made up of smaller simpler characters.

语 language = words 讠+ five 五+ mouth 口
谢 thanks = words 讠+ body 身+ inch 寸
妹 younger sister = woman 女+ not-yet 未
你 you = person 人 + bow 𠂉 + small 小
名 name = evening 夕 + mouth 口
样 appearance = tree 木 + sheep 羊

I love learning these because every character is like a tiny poem.

语 language = words 讠+ five 五+ mouth 口

So a language is words that five mouths speak? Brilliant!

谢 thanks = words 讠+ body 身+ inch 寸

Hmmm... so.... when you say thanks, you speak words that give a body an inch of space? Interesting.

名 name = evening 夕 + mouth 口

So your real name is what's spoken by a mouth in the evening? That's kind of romantic.

They're so vivid. I try to imagine the historical or cultural meaning behind each one.

Projecting meaning into Talking Heads lyrics

Talking Heads were a great band from the late-70s to mid-80s. Their lyrics were really evocative and mysterious. Specific but vague. Made you wonder what they were really about.

Here's an example:

Watch out - you might get what you're after
Cool babies - strange but not a stranger
I'm an ordinary guy
Burning down the house

No visible means of support and you have not seen nuthin' yet
Everything's stuck together
I don't know what you expect staring into the TV set
Fighting fire with fire

All wet - hey you might need a raincoat
Shakedown - dreams walking in broad daylight
Three hundred sixty five degrees
Burning down the house

I read an interview with David Byrne from the Talking Heads who said that many of their lyrics were just random. Literally!

They would write evocative phrases onto little pieces of paper, then throw them into a bowl, and shuffle them up. Then they'd pull them out in random order, and put them into the song in that order. They did this because they liked how the listener creates meaning that wasn't intended.

Hearing one phrase next to another makes you assume they're connected in a meaningful way. But nope. It was just random. You made that meaning yourself.

Back to Chinese.

I have a Chinese dictionary called Wenlin that tells the history behind every character.

I looked up 谢, 你, and the rest, and found that those characters are just phonetic. Those composite character bits were not chosen for their meaning, just their sound.

So... it seems I've just been putting the meanings into them, myself. They actually had no meaning.

But even knowing that, I choose to keep doing it. It's poetic. It's beautiful.

Projecting meaning into everything?

How many other things in life really have no meaning?

She was born April 12. He was born September 22. What does it mean?

One day you ride your bike instead of taking the bus. That day your usual bus gets into a big accident. What does it mean?

Black cat crosses your path as you walk under a ladder on Friday the 13th. What does it mean?

Nothing at all.

Nothing has inherent meaning. It is what it is and that's it.

We just choose to project meaning onto things. It feels good.

Even if presented with proof that it's totally random or neutral, we decide it has meaning anyway. It makes life more poetic and beautiful.

(And what if you've projected some bad meaning onto something, and it's getting you down? Don't forget that none of it is true. You're the one that put the meaning into it. You can just as easily take all the meaning out of it.)

P.S. Appropriate video: “Double rainbow! What does it mean?”

AGI and the Emerging Peer-to-Peer Economy: Ben Goertzel Interviews AI Researcher Mohamad Tarifi

(author unknown) — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 15:53:32 PDT

I first encountered Mohamad Tarifi on an AI email list, where he was discussing his deep and fascinating work on hierarchical temporal memory architectures. Using a combination of rigorous mathematics and computational experiments, he treats these constructs very broadly as an approach to both vision processing and artificial general intelligence.

The Future of Brain Workouts

(author unknown) — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 15:50:47 PDT

For thousands of years, humans have strived to move beyond the limits of their own minds through education, philosophy and meditation. Cognitive neuroscientists like myself are trying to turn such aspirations into reality by applying knowledge of neuroplasticity and cognition to cognitive training programs. Millions of people use their income to buy cognitive training games. This trend will continue as new discoveries foster the development of improved training programs, and the implementation of these programs will eventually cause a significant impact in society and education.

Breaking Free From Consumerist Chains

Leo — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 06:00:04 PDT

‘Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends…. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.’ ~Henry David Thoreau

Post written by Leo Babauta.

We are not consumers. We are people.

We are not living lives meant to earn money in order to support a shopping habit, or a large home and two cars, or lives of luxury eating and entertainment.

We are not living to support the corporations. And yet, if you were to take an objective, outsider look at our society, it would seem that we are.

We spend our childhoods — precious years that are far too fleeting — in schools geared to give us the best chance at getting a job. We then graduate and are highly pressured to go to college (getting into large debt in the process) so we can have the best chance at getting a good paying job. Then we claw at each other for the coveted but limited good paying jobs, and the winners are rewarded with big homes and SUVs and nice clothes (and lots of debt to go with all that). The losers are stuck in menial jobs they hate, envious of others they see on TV with luxury lives, eating cheap fast food and consigned to shopping at bargain outlets.

Either way, we find our path as consumers. And everything is solved by consumption — when we’re stressed, we shop. When we want to be entertained, we buy the entertainment. We buy our food in packages, we fix our failing health by buying exercise clothes and equipment. We fix our debt by buying personal finance books and taking out a second mortgage.

Our lives are beholden to our shopping habits. We are slaves to corporations, doing work we loathe for stuff we don’t need.

What if we could break out of it?

What’s the alternative?

The funny thing is, there are millions of alternatives. But we’ve been so trained to believe there is only one way, that we can barely imagine something different.

What would life be like without advertising, shopping malls, online shopping, working for large corporations, wearing large logos all over our clothing, having Apple logos over every device we own, watching movies and television shows developed by large corporations and made for the masses?

It would be quieter, maybe, with more free time. Without having to buy so much, we would work less. What a revolutionary concept! And yet it is: developments in technology have not resulted in less work, but more (a must read: Bertrand Russell’s In Praise of Idleness).

It would be more focused on people instead of stuff. It would be healthier, as we would (likely) move more, get outdoors more, eat less fast food and more real food.

That’s all idealizing, of course, but it’s an alternative I could see happening. We’d have to break free of the consumerist mindset first.

Steps to Freedom

We must first become more aware of what has been done to our minds. When we watch an ad on TV, in a movie, on the web, what urges does this bring up in us? Why are we watching the ad in the first place? Can we avoid it?

Watch less TV. Avoid malls and shopping. Block ads on the web (and yes, I’ve heard the arguments about stealing money from content producers, and I’m not convinced — I make money without ads).

Buy less. When you have urges to buy, consider whether it’s a true need or just a desire. Learn to be content with life as it is, rather than wanting to buy things to make it better.

If there’s something you truly need, consider borrowing it, or making it yourself, or finding it used. If you buy it new, try to buy it from a real person rather than a corporation — a small businessperson or craftsperson. It might be more expensive but cheap turns out to be the most costly of all.

Get creative. Find free forms of entertainment. Form a cooperative of creatives and workers rather than a corporation. Pool resources, form libraries for everything.

Learn to build things and sew things and cook and grow. It’s ancient technology, but it still works. It’s simple and it’s all we need.

Eschew the values of the corporations, of consumption and desire.

Become free. You deserve it.

‘There must be more to life than having everything!’ ~Maurice Sendak

—
Tweetle-dum

Data is the new Oil: must-read PDF by the World Economic Forum

Gerd Leonhard — Mon, 09 May 2011 08:17:11 PDT

This report is a really great find, and a must-read for anyone interested in what can best be summarized as the convergence of the data and attention economies (thanks, HuffPo and Bianca Bosker) :

Download PDF WEF_ITTC_PersonalDataNewAsset_Report_2011

"We are moving towards a “Web of the world” in which mobile communications, social technologies and sensors are connecting people, the Internet and the physical world into one interconnected network.1 Data records are collected on who we are, who we know, where we are, where we have been and where we plan to go. Mining and analysing this data give us the ability to understand and even predict where humans focus their atten- tion and activity at the individual, group and global level. This personal data – digital data created by and about people – is generating a new wave of opportunity for economic and societal value creation. The types, quan- tity and value of personal data being collected are vast: our profiles and demographic data from bank accounts to medical records to employment data. Our Web searches and sites visited, including our likes and dislikes and purchase histories...."

“In practical terms, a person’s data would be equivalent to their ‘money,’” wrote the WEF in its “Personal Data” report. “It would reside in an account where it would be controlled, managed, exchanged and accounted for just like personal banking services operate today.”

Some of my best interviews and related media coverage of my work (PDFs) (mediafuturist.com)
Data is the new Oil: video interview with me, via AMEInfo (Dubai) (mediafuturist.com)
Welcome to the Networked Society Gerd Leonhard MWC 2011 (slideshare.net)
New video: Telemedia Futures: how open technologies will shape the future of business, media and communications (USI 2010) (mediafuturist.com)

TED: JR's TED Prize wish: Use art to turn the world inside out - JR (2011)

(author unknown) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 17:32:00 PST

JR, a semi-anonymous French street artist, uses his camera to show the world its true face, by pasting photos of the human face across massive canvases. At TED2011, he makes his audacious TED Prize wish: to use art to turn the world inside out. Learn more about his work and learn how you can join in at insideoutproject.net.