Those things are easy now. They might cost more than we’d like, but you can put them on a check-list and they’ll get done. What’s hard now is breaking the rules. What’s hard is finding the faith to become a heretic, to seek out an innovation and then, in the face of huge amounts of resistance, to lead a team and to push the innovation out the door into the world. Successful people are the ones who are good at this.
~ Seth Godin
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Despite having been published in 1910, Arnold Bennett’s book How to Live on 24 Hours a Day remains a valuable resource on living a meaningful life within the constraints of time. In the book, Bennett addresses one of our oldest questions: how can we make the best use of our lives? How can we make the best use of our time?
~ Shane Parrish from, How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
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I’ve mentioned Arnold Bennett before, and my opinion remains the same: How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, is a delightful little read. Although this post from Parrish isn’t where I first heard of the book, it remains a terrific summary. If you’ve ever thought, “I wish I could find time to…” you should read Bennett’s thoughts.
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Not just that every day more of our life is used up and less and less of it is left, but this too: If we live longer, can we be sure our mind will still be up to understanding the world—to the contemplation that aims at divine and human knowledge? If our mind starts to wander, we’ll still go on breathing, go on eating, imagining things, feeling urges and so on. But getting the most out of ourselves, calculating where our duty lies, analyzing what we hear and see, deciding whether it’s time to call it quits—all the things you need a healthy mind for… all those are gone.
So we need to hurry.
Not just because we move daily closer to death but also because our understanding—our grasp of the world—may be gone before we get there.
~ Marcus Aurelius
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The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Susanne Mueller published part two of our conversation on, Take it from the Iron Woman and my conversation with Gerdi Verwoert appeared on her, Daring Self-Leadership & The Nature Connection podcast. Episodes of the Podcaster Community’s show continue, recently with Simon Ratcliffe and Hernán Braberman.
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Most see excellences as some grand aspiration. Wrong. Dead wrong. My two cents: Excellence is the next five minutes or nothing at all. It’s the quality of your next five-minute conversation. It’s the quality of, yes, your next email. Forget the long term. Make the next five minutes rock!
~ Tom Peters
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Human-based adjudication systems are not useless pre-Internet human baggage, they’re vital.
~ Bruce Schneier from, Smart Contract Bug Results in $31 Million Loss
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There are lots of things to say about the stuff built, conceptually, on top of block-chain technology. (Type “NFT” into your favorite search engine, for example; there’s a lot’s been said.)
But Schneier’s point about adjudication is something I’d never thought of. I’ve always known that “the software is the source of truth” is a literal disaster. Spend 30 years writing and working within software and you’ll agree. Software only works because there are intelligent people doing the really hard work.
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Forethought is a virtue; remember that one day, that distant future will be now, and the choices you make today will have shaped the choices you are able to make then.
~ Tim O’Reilly
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In fact, some of the best advice comes in the form of clichés. Be yourself. Seize the day. Fake it till you make it. Despite how trite these phrases sound now, they are still deep, paradigm-shifting insights about being human. They’ve undoubtedly changed countless lives, which is how they became trite. Precisely because these principles have been discovered and expressed many times, in many contexts, they’ve become too general and too familiar to revolutionize how someone does something.
~ David Cain from, Advice Gets Good When It Gets Specific
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Everyone knows by now that the ‘S’ in SMART goals stands for “specific.” I completely agree with Cain. My experience has been that magic happens if I can—when appropriate, when asked—give both the generic cliché and a specific example. For example, “Fake it ’til you make it. People can detect confidence. So work to overcome your nervousness and self-doubt by keeping your communication as simple as possible. Simplify until you have clear, simple statements and clear, simple requests.”
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This is super important. Everybody’s impatient at a macro [level], and just so patient at a micro [level], wasting your days worrying about years. I’m not worried about my years, because I’m squeezing [everything] out of my seconds, let alone my days. It’s going to work out.
~ Gary Vaynerchuk
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Not only do I not shop, but I very specifically try to not spend one cent. NOT because I hate shopping—I do hate shopping. And NOT because I hate sales, mobs, false-scaricity, commercialism, consumerism—I do hate those too. No, I do it because I like people; And no people should have to work any sort of holiday chaos insanity. I digress.
But I do have a Black Friday tradition! I have a rather enormous collection of sappy holiday music. I shuffle that play list and turn it up. If you’ve never heard Ella Fitzgerald’s rendition of Sleigh Ride… uh… I don’t know what to say. (Other than, go find a copy and play it.) Giddy up! Giddy up! Let’s go!!
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And in the end, cynicism is a lousy strategy. Hope without a strategy doesn’t generate leadership. Leadership comes when your hope and your optimism are matched with a concrete vision of the future and a way to get there. People won’t follow you if they don’t believe you can get to where you say you’re going.
~ Seth Godin
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It is not possible to be in favor of justice for some people and not be in favor of justice for all people.
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Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
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The Scientific Revolution began in the 1500s; the Industrial Revolution not until the 1700s. Since industrial progress is in large part technological progress, and technology is in large part applied science, it seems that the Industrial Revolution followed from the Scientific, as a consequence, if not necessarily an inevitable one.
~ Jason Crawford from, What was the relationship of the Scientific Revolution to the Industrial?
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It seems clear to me, (and the article does not disagree,) that the the Scientific Revolution was a necessary precursor to the Industrial. So, “was it necessary?” isn’t a very interesting question.
But the question, “how did it lead to and enable the Industrial revolution?” is a very interesting question. I hadn’t thought about how, specifically, did the one lead to the other. The Scientific Revolution didn’t simply create some sort of encyclopedia of human knowledge, (spread out among all the scientists.) It did that, yes. But it also set things up for the Industrial revolution because suddenly the regular, uneducated people believed the world was knowable and believed that they could tinker, and iterate to improve things.
Which is an interesting point to keep in mind the next time I’m ready to throw my hands up in frustration at some wacky something-or-other.
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How does the concept of “utterance” shape personal reflection, communication, and creative processes?
The dynamic interplay between internal dialogue and outward communication shapes the creative journey.
The intent— The intent to influence— …and that means, if you want to influence, you’ve got to be at your best and you’ve got to be as pure-hearted as possible.
~ Mary JL Rowe (4:22)
The conversation revolves around the concept of “utterance” as a multi-faceted tool for personal reflection and creative expression. Utterance involves intentionally speaking thoughts aloud, which transforms not only how they are communicated but also how they are understood by the speaker. This process fosters clarity, emotional depth, and self-awareness, offering insights into how one’s words can influence others.
Other topics include the challenges of curating meaningful content, balancing personal authenticity with audience expectations, and crafting a compelling narrative. The idea of creating safe, structured spaces for creativity and collaboration also emerges, emphasizing shared understanding and values such as compassion and mercy.
Takeaways
Utterance as a process — Speaking thoughts aloud changes their impact and understanding.
Intentional communication — Words are most effective when they stem from sincerity and clarity.
Personal growth through reflection — Recording and revisiting thoughts fosters self-awareness and improvement.
Safe spaces for creativity — Creativity thrives with guidelines that encourage trust and freedom.
Balancing authenticity and expectations — Effective communication requires addressing audience needs while maintaining authenticity.
Vision for a better world — Shared values of compassion and understanding can guide collective progress.
Resources
Toastmasters — An international organization offering structured opportunities to improve public speaking and leadership skills.
Business Networking International — A networking group focused on professional connections and business growth.
Rick Lindbergh — Mentioned as a source of advice on creating distance in recording and listening processes.
(Written with help from Chat-GPT.)
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Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?
~ Charles Bukowski
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Nothing will change your future trajectory like your habits.
~ Shane Parrish from, Habits vs. Goals
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This article is a great overview. It’s basically the article I wish I could have written… or at least one that I could have found decades ago.
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The speed with which all of them vanish—the objects in the world, and the memory of them in time. And the real nature of the things our senses experience, especially those that entice us with pleasure or frighten us with pain or are loudly trumpeted by pride. To understand those things—how stupid, contemptible, grimy, decaying, and dead they are—that’s what our intellectual powers are for.
~ Marcus Aurelius
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That even though we evolved as ruthless replication machines, we’ve somehow risen out of the muck and we currently find ourselves running cultural software that’s way out of sync with what game theory would dictate, and perhaps we can seize the moment and build a civilization that can tame the brutal dynamics that created us.
~ “Dynomight” from, About
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Eliding a long explanation, I’ll just say: I hope that’s still accessible by the time you read this. Also, my normal routine is to bookmark stuff and to later—often much later—write a blog post around it. But not this time. This one caused me to drop what I was doing and blog about it… before even having finished reading it.
You’ll instantly see (once you go there… why are you still here?) why it appeals to me. You’ll be way ahead of the average level of science knowledge if you just skim the list. But the big take-away for me is: It’s not at all hard to find things to be thankful for, and I don’t just mean insanely technical things like that which are on that list. No, I mean…
All you have to do is look around, and start imagining changes. Completely realistic changes. Small changes even. And every single thing that we think, “oh, that’s nice,” becomes something to be thankful for.
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I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.
~ Frederick Douglass
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