Imagine a world where your resume and reputation becomes entirely redefined – not by where you’ve worked before and for how long, but by what skills you have and how they’ll make you exceptional in the future.
From the startup Smarterer — looks worth reserving a spot in the beta.
It is not so easy to find what you want to pursue in your life. Thus, if I may make a suggestion, I would say “Why not thoroughly, day and night, struggle to get an answer about yourself or what you should do. I was always thinking about my life, and searching for the way to connect myself with society. Motherhouse is really the answer to my questions. I have been able to move forward little by little by overcoming troubles that I faced because I felt responsible for my choices that I had made. It’s all right to have sleepless nights. They will become your power someday for sure. It is also important to feel happy about your success even if it is a small thing.
via Alumni Voices | Keio University.
“As I’ve traveled I’ve had the good fortune to meet and frequently befriend people whose minds have evolved beyond the mean imposed by advertising and commercial entertainment — people whose thinking runs counter to the current of the continuum, people of ideas and fortitude. I greatly admire humans who assume responsibility for their own thinking. . . those who live within coordinates of their own calculation, and who sometimes regard the culturally acceptable as contemptible.” — Jack Loeffler
via Headed Upstream – Google Books.
Chris Guillebeau gets it right again:
In a group project, a person who freaks out about being busy will stall, defer, and generally keep everyone else waiting on them. They use busyness as an excuse for poor performance. Sometimes it’s faster to put this person in a room by themselves and let them whine while you do their job for them.
A person in control of being busy will keep the project moving forward at all costs. They like deadlines, direct communication, and tough assignments. That’s the kind of person you want on your team. If you’re serving on someone else’s team, that’s the kind of person you should be.
via The Art of Non-Conformity » “I’ve Just Been So Busy Latelyâ€.
In a meditation class once I learned about how the word in Buddhist texts often translated as “laziness” doesn’t have the same connotations in the original as it does to our ears. According to the teacher, there are really three kinds of laziness: laziness of laziness, which is the kind we think of when we think of laziness; laziness of discouragement, which is the kind where we “don’t bother because it will never work anyway”; and laziness of busyness, which is the kind where we just can’t get to the real work because this email and this conversation and this phone call and this blog post just won’t wait.
In my experience, it can be helpful to take an attitude of casual interest in my laziness. Sometimes I can approach it close enough to see which species it is, and then I have more information to work with. “Oh, I see I am not doing this task. What’s it like to not want to do this task?”
“I just don’t feel like it.” (laziness, an aversion often related to the fear of not getting what I want)
“Oh, there’s no point in doing this anyway.” (discouragement, often related to the fear of failure)
“Oh, I just haven’t gotten to this yet.” (busyness, often related to the fear of losing control)
It’s more often that I just head straight over to dailypuppy.com or start griping with a co-worker or get deeply involved in redesigning my Outlook taxonomy without even registering my avoidance as avoidance, but when I can pause, recognize my laziness, and sidle up to it, sometimes I gain useful information.
I don’t care about common sense or precedent. I usually take those with a grain of salt. If you want to discover your or someone’s potential, you need to abandon your limited view.
via Big Generators #1　Eriko Yamaguchi & Motherhouse Part1.
We are all forces of nature: coyote, whitetail, white ash, hunter, farmer. Different traditions, different niches, different powers and weaknesses, all in tentative shifting balance on one small spot on a planet where most everywhere else humans have the upper hand.
It won’t be the coyotes, deer or trees that will destroy our houses, though, if we don’t look after them. It will be the snow and wind and rain.
That’s the real force of nature around here that we all must contend with. I don’t say do battle, because I don’t like the analogy much. I don’t fight it. It’s not a war.
I just get up in the morning and scratch my head and go out to my shop and get some tools and do some carpentry, some painting, some firewood cutting.
It’s just a job of work. Ho hum. Eight hours and then a nap, and admire what you did the next day. I am glad that I have a vocation that has a beginning, a middle and an end, and for which there is something to see when you are done.
And nothing to spin. Either done well or not. Or not done at all.
—Mick Wormersley, A Great Farm Diary: Womerlippi Homestead Annals
It must have been about a year after we started developing Wii. After speaking with Nintendo’s development partners, I became keenly aware of the fact that there is no end to the desire of those who just want more. Give them one, they ask for two. Give them two, and next time they will ask for five instead of three. Then they want ten, thirty, a hundred, their desire growing exponentially. Giving in to this will lead us nowhere in the end. I started to feel unsure about following that path about a year into development.
Part 1 at Nintendo :: Wii :: What Is Wii? :: Iwata Asks :: Volume 1.
From an interview Nintendo President Satoru Iwata conducted with Wii product team leads. Genyo Takeda, General Manager Integrated Research and Development Division, speaks of the decision to deviate from the existing Roadmaps of “faster and flashier” in lieu of using new technology in unprecendented ways.
“I’m not mellower, I’m not less angry, I’m not less self-critical, I’m not less tenacious,” he said. “Maybe the best part is that your liver cant handle those beers at noon anymore,” he said.
Sage advice from Caterina Fake, who, as a co-founder of both Flickr and Hunch, is no slouch in the work department:
Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on. Paying attention to what is going on in the world. Seeing patterns. Seeing things as they are rather than how you want them to be. Being able to read what people want. Putting yourself in the right place where information is flowing freely and interesting new juxtapositions can be seen.