25 hour day

kottke.org - a blog by Jason Kottke contains random news/websites/tools and photos.

I looked at my google reader trends report and this guy averages seven posts a day!

How to run a brainstorming meeting

How to be a genius

Creative thinking hacks

How to detect bullshit

Why smart people defend bad ideas

How to survive a bad manager

and more at http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/

From an interview with Timothy Ferriss of The Four Hour Workweek

Humans have very poor impulse control and they have very poor distraction filtering. Its far more effective to create an environment that doesn’t allow you to misbehave, then to depend on making decisions about discipline at every point through the process.

Basically its much easier to concentrate on a task if you don’t have anything to distract you. So creating an environment where you can concentrate is much more productive than trying to concentrate in an environment that has plenty of distractions.

It relieves you of choices. For example, lets say you want to read a book. If you are on a plane, you can not watch tv, talk on your cell phone, etc… You have limited options. Thats why you can concentrate on reading a book…because you don’t have to “make decisions about discipline”.

Tim gives an example of getting an apartment 2 hours away from your work which gives you 2 hours of commute time where you can learn a skill.

Highlights from an essay by Scott Berkun, Creative thinking hacks:

…an idea is a combination of other ideas. Say it five times out loud. Say it to your cat. Yell it out you car window at strangers waiting for the bus. Every amazing creative thing you’ve ever seen, or idea you’ve ever heard can be broken down into smaller ideas that existed before. An automobile? An engine + wheels. A telephone? Electricity and sound. Reese’s peanut butter cups? Peanut butter and chocolate. All great creative ideas, inventions, and theories are comprised of other ideas. Why should you care? Here’s why: if you want to be a creator instead of a mere consumer you must see ideas currently in the world as fuel for your mind. You must stop seeing them as objects or functional things: they are combinations of ingredients waiting for reuse.

Increasing creativeness at any time doesn’t require anything more than an increase in your observations: become more open to the possible combinations of things than you currently are.

Over time, creative masters learn reusable combinations, or patterns, that can be used again and again to develop new ideas or modify old ones.

We shut down the pursuit of many combinations because of predictions we make about what the result will be like. Remember this: we suck at prediction.

One way to think of creative people is that they’re the ones who have more control over their fears, or simply have less fear of embarrassment. Being creative has more to do with being fearless than intelligent, brilliant or any other adjective superficially associated with creativity. This explains why many people feel more creative when drinking, on other drugs, or late at night: these are all moments when our inhibitions are lower, or at least altered, and we allow ourselves to see more combinations of things than we do at other times.

Dancing with the Stars and the Meaning of Life:

I’m the first to admit that I’m the luckiest guy in the world. I can honestly say I wake up every morning with a smile knowing what a wonderful family, friends and life I have. It’s the exact same way I felt when I was broke.

Money makes so many things in life easier, but it can’t buy you a positive outlook on life. Fortunately, how any of us approaches each of our days is completely up to us. It’s not something you can buy or sell. It’s not hard to put a smile on your face every day, but for some reason some people find it impossible to do. Not me.

I’m going to be out there to win, but I promise you no one is going to be having a better time than me. I can promise you that.

When I’m 90 years old and talking to my grand kids and hopefully great grand kids, I won’t be the grandparent who tells them about the things I wished I had done and how they should experience life, I will be the grandparent with tons of great stories that hopefully inspires them to live their lives to the fullest .

That’s why I’m doing Dancing with the Stars

“What does it take to create a great company?”

Steve Jobs:
“You got to have a lot of passion for what you do.
The reason is that it is so hard that any rational person would give up.
If you don’t love it, you going to give up.” - at 10min30sec of this clip

interview of steve and bill

“this is the closest i’ve ever gotten to a college graduation”

Justin.tv is the website of Justin Kan, a 23-year-old guy who is “lifecasting” himself on the web.

If this concept sounds familiar, thats because its very close to the plot of the movie “Edtv“.

You can check out his archive for more exiting content at his blog

I’m not sure what the long term goal of this site, but I think they fulfilled their short term goal of getting a lot of exposure.

An interesting blog that I regularly skim over is kottke.org by Jason Kottke.
He gathers stories on variety of topics.
On his “about me” page he writes out his biography.
It is short and in reverse which makes it an entertaining read.

A reverse chronology of my life (updated 1.11.2006)

2007: Currently happening…

2006: Got married.

2005: In many ways, the opposite of sucked.

2004: Sucked, sucked, sucked, sucked, sucked, sucked, sucked, sucked, sucked, sucked, sucked, sucked, sucked, sucked, sucked, sucked, sucked, sucked, sucked, sucked, sucked.

2003: I’m having performance anxiety about this whole year summary thing…

2002: Crikey, now I’m in New York. Can’t quite figure out how I got here. Not exactly a point A to point B kind of thing.

continues…