I’ve been offline this week, enjoying the wilds of Newfoundland. So just a couple of recommendations for a bit of Great Work provocation and inspiration:
1. Hugh MacLoed of Gaping Void talks to Chris Anderson about his new book, Free
These are two smart, provocative men. I’ve got Free: The Future of a Radical Price on my bedside table and I’m looking forward to jumping into it. You can read the discussion here.
On Fridays I share the best of what I’ve come across on the web, topics that inspire, provoke and encourage Great Work. Here are three short articles, all different and all interesting.
1. What’s it like at your place of work?
Here’s a short article on Netflix, the company that’s broken the heart of Blockbuster by reinventing how we rent DVDs. It points to an interesting mixture between freedom and structure to keep employees engaged.
2. What does Impossible mean?
I can’t say I always like how Tim Ferris comes across, but I do admire his willingness to challenge conventional wisdom and look at what really works. This is a short post on how to reframe what’s “impossible”.
3. Sex with Mum was Blinding
The headline will make more sense once you listen to this TED talk, one of the latest to get posted. It explores what success is really about – a funny and wise 18 minutes.
I’ve been mulling over the value of friction for a while, and as usual Seth has come in and summed things up in the way I would have eventually got to. Eventually.
I’ve noticed that I’m trying to build in friction or resistance as a way of improving my life. I know that sounds contradictory, but here’s what I mean. If something’s easy, I’ll do it. Even if it’s not that great for me in the long run (or short run for that moment). So I don’t have a BlackBerry, because I want it to be difficult for me to check my emails obsessively. And I don’t use a cell phone (much), because I don’t want to be fully accessible to the world. And occasionally I go and work in the beautiful members lounge of the AGO, because there’s no wireless which means I have to go and create, not surf. And I don’t have chocolate in the house (except when I do). And so on.
You know, Kevin Kelly’s blog posts are just fantastic. They’re rich, dense and deeply thoughtful. I could easily have just posted about ten of his best posts here, but I’ve picked this one. In a world where free is coming to be expected and is no longer special, you have to figure out what might make you or what you offer the world extraordinary.
I’m wrestling with this – I give away quite a lot for free, and realise that I may be devalueing what I do have. So this article’s really got me thinking.
Anyone following my writing will know how enamoured I am of the TED series – in fact, my own Great Work Interviews are inspired in part by TED. This is a great little piece about why the TED talks are so wonderful. And they should be required reading for anyone speaking at any time.
David Hoffman is a documentary film maker. This four minute clip from TED tells his story of losing every in a fire, nine days before his talk.
As I write this, I’m also listening to the unfolding tragedy of the Italian earthquake with hundreds of people dead and lives destroyed.
And behind that, there’s the on-going distressing rumble of people losing jobs as economies struggle to flow.
There’s something important, delicate, shocking about these reminders of our fragility and our mortality. It stops us from the rush into busy-ness and the ordinary rush of life, and forces us to face some important questions.
Hoffman asks one of them early on: “Am I my things?”
At the moment, I think I know the answer to that one, but that query opens up the door to ask something different:
“What’s most precious to me? And how am I nurturing or looking after that?”
It reminds me of how few things really matter to me and how many people really do.
(Looks like I’ll be spending some of today on the phone.)
What have you found?
In the same TED video, Hoffman repeats a couple of times a mantra that has obviously helped him cope with his loss:
“You gotta make something good out of something bad.”
I can’t really argue with that. The new-ish disciplines of change such as Appreciative Inquiry, Positive Psychology and Positive Deviance all talk about finding what’s good and amplifying it.
And I’d also cast the net a little wider.
I want to ask myself: “Am I learning from this? “Am I noticing what I need to notice?”
Here’s what I’m learning about myself.
Here’s what I’m learning about the world.
And knowing that, what really matters?
Where’s the wisdom for me to find in today, today?
