You don’t know if your idea is any good the moment it’s created. Neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for is a strong gut feeling that it is. And trusting your feelings is not as easy as the optimists say it is. There’s a reason why feelings scare us—because what they tell us and what the rest of the world tells us are often two different things.
~ Hugh MacLeod
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People benefit from deep conversations, but we often stick to small talk with strangers because we underestimate how much they’re interested in our lives, according to new research from The University of Texas at Austin.
~ University of Texas at Austin from, Swapping small talk with strangers for deeper dialogue offers surprising rewards
I didn’t find this at all surprising. None the less, it’s nice to see it demonstrated in a repeatable experiment. I often talk about simply being curious, and how that curiosity generates conversations full of wonder. I’ve had hundreds of conversations now with people I know and total strangers, countless times they’ve expressed delight at the conversations we’ve created. The best part? It’s not a trick I’m performing; I’m genuinely curious.
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Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.
~ Josh Billings
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Forums are the dark matter of the web, the B-movies of the Internet. But they matter. To this day I regularly get excellent search results on forum pages for stuff I’m interested in. Rarely a day goes by that I don’t end up on some forum, somewhere, looking for some obscure bit of information. And more often than not, I find it there.
~ Jeff Atwood, from Civilized Discourse Construction Kit
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That’s a wonderful unpack by Atwood of why Discourse, (a piece of software that powers forums,) was created. Along the way there’s also a load of great information about discourse, (the concept.) And this article is now 9 years old.
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I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at your desk and pick up you pen and finish writing when you put down your pen again; a writer is always writing, seeing everything through a thin mist of words, fitting swift little descriptions to everything he sees, always noticing.
~ Shirley Jackson
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Productivity hacks are fun, but they don’t always produce the greatest returns on your time. If you care about productivity, be sure to invest in your energy levels.
~ Chris Bailey from, Don’t forget the basics of productivity
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I don’t do productivity “hacks.” I do productivity. My aversion to “hacking” anything runs deep. All of my productivity comes from doing things which return, the way compound interest returns. Whenever I can, I try to do the hard work up front. I am literally trying to pass gifts, (of time, energy, money, sanity,) to my future self.
It’s wise to occasionally erase the whiteboard to see what something could be like if built from scratch. It never ceases to amaze me when absolutely nothing happens nor changes when I entirely stop doing things. I recently removed an entire project—no one has even noticed. I recently was completely unreachable, (by everyone other than my wife,) for four days—no one noticed. If you started from a clean slate today, what would you choose to do?
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I don’t complain about the lack of time… what little I have will go far enough. Today—this day—will achieve what no tomorrow will fail to speak about. I will lay seige to the gods and shake up the world.
~ Seneca, Medea, 423-5
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The universe makes a sound — is a sound. In the core of this sound there’s a silence, a silence that creates that sound, which is not its opposite, but its inseparable soul. And this silence can also be heard.
~ Etel Adnan from, Shifting the Silence to Find the Meaning: 95-Year-Old Artist, Poet, and Philosopher Etel Adnan on How to Live and How to Die
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I am not a poet. Who knows, maybe if I were, I’d still be at a loss for words. On one hand, having read Popova’s short article I feel relieved; At the least, I’ve now noticed a person named Adnan has lived, and I’ve enjoyed a small sip of her writing. On the other hand, a gripping panic begins to rise up as it’s painfully clear that I will never make even the slightest progress in experiencing the totality of what this universe has to offer. Anyway, go take a sip.
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What are the challenges and rewards of starting and maintaining a podcast, and how can podcasting serve as a medium for personal and therapeutic expression?
Exploring the unexpected emotional connections created through podcasting.
There’s something to be said for the beauty of, oh, this person really doesn’t actually need an answer; what they really just need is another person to go, I see you, I see this struggle, I acknowledge the struggle is real.
~ Robyn Triggs (9:52)
The conversation explores the personal and emotional dimensions of podcasting. Topics include imposter syndrome, the experience of creating a podcast, and the choice to step back when priorities shift. It highlights how feedback from others, especially moments of profound resonance with listeners, can reaffirm the value of one’s work. The therapeutic aspect of podcasting, including the opportunity to process emotions and connect with an audience, emerges as a recurring theme.
The discussion also touches on the practicalities of podcasting, such as starting with minimal resources and deciding whether to publish episodes. The idea of podcasting as a platform for authenticity and vulnerability resonates throughout, with the emphasis on how sharing personal experiences can foster connection and healing, both for the creator and their audience.
(more…)Sounds like we’re losing our grit. We’ve been brought up to think we’re so smart and clever and that we don’t have to work hard for anything that we just give up when we come against a tough problem. The main difference between innovators and the rest of us is that innovators ask more and better questions.
~ Shane Parrish
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