Quote: “If you want others to follow, learn to be alone with your thoughts”

How do you publicize the necessity to disengage from status quo and social media pressures? Read this article, “Solitude and Leadership.” Actually, it is an essay/lecture by William Deresiewicz. Take your ear buds out. Put away your mobile device (and tablet). Find a quiet corner of a public library (as I am doing presently). And read the essay from beginning to end. Here’s another acorn from the tree to whet your appetite:

“…true leadership means being able to think for yourself and act on your convictions.

One of the consequences for following this wisdom is you will not be popular. Here is another acorn to digest:

“Multitasking, in short, is not only not thinking, it impairs your ability to think. Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. Not learning other people’s ideas, or memorizing a body of information, however much those may sometimes be useful. Developing your own ideas. In short, thinking for yourself. You simply cannot do that in bursts of 20 seconds at a time, constantly interrupted by Facebook messages or Twitter tweets, or fiddling with your iPod, or watching something on YouTube.”

Does that sound familiar? Do you see the need for undistracted time and space to develop ideas?

NOTES:

[1] William Deresiewicz, “Solitude and Leadership,” The American Scholar, Spring 2010 accessed April 8, 2014 http://theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/#.U0QWZa1dXKI

Technology cleanse means you unplug…

…for a short time with longer-term benefits for your relationships…

Interested in a tech cleanse?

Quote

As the trend frenzy deepens, we can see that fashion is no longer about style and self-expression: it is primarily about judgement – self-judgement and judgement of others.

~The Tyranny of Trends

(via somethingchanged)

How These Magazines Increased Circulation While the Industry Declined

Combatting Writer’s Block like A Master

Utne Reader: Classic Ways to Combat Writer’s Block

Top 10 Things You Should Never Say at Work

Discussion Forum Etiquette – Promoting Your Book

Twitter etiquette: the rules

Hard Times Generation: Families living in cars

9 Things That Motivate Employees More Than Money

Penguin moves into self-publishing

How to create running headers and footers in InDesign

Graphic design tip: running headers & footers

I like how Gini Dietrich handles this: “…before you use the digital tools to give your customers access to you, think about what it could mean down the road. Think about it strategically.”

How Much Transparency Is Too Much?

The newsonomics of 1, 2, 3, 4

A Brief History of the Emoticon

1. Being Wrong

2. Failure Doesn’t Suck

3. Fear of Failure

4. Real Change Involves Failure

5. How the Lizard Brain Holds Us Back

6. Six Types of Failure, Only a Few Help You Innovate

7. Roll with the Punches

8. Trial, Error and the God Complex

9. The Fringe Benefits of Failure

(via 99%)

Link: 9 Reasons Why Failure Is Not Fatal

Following the theme of consequences, here’s an interesting long read titled, “The Real Story of Globalization.” Here are some highlights:

“Earthworms… especially the common nightcrawler and the red marsh worm… did not exist in North America before 1492.”

“English ships tied up to Virginia docks and took in barrels of rolled-up tobacco leaves… Sailors balanced out the weight by leaving behind their ships’ ballast: stones, gravel and soil. They swapped English dirt for Virginia tobacco.”

“That dirt very likely contained the common nightcrawler and the red marsh worm… Before Europeans arrived, the upper Midwest, New England and all of Canada had no earthworms—they had been wiped out in the last Ice Age.”

“In worm-free woodlands, leaves pile up in drifts on the forest floor… When earthworms arrive, they quickly consume the leaf litter, packing the nutrients deep in the soil in the form of castings (worm excrement). Suddenly, the plants can no longer feed themselves; their fine, surface-level root systems are in the wrong place. Wild sarsaparilla, wild oats, Solomon’s seal and a host of understory plants die off; grass-like species such as Pennsylvania sedge take over. Sugar maples almost stop growing, and ash seedlings start to thrive.”

(via wsj)
Link: Globalization circa 1571 and brought to you by earthworms

The purpose of sketching your ideas

“The purpose of sketching your ideas is to help you explore as many ideas as possible in order to trash the bad ones, leaving you with a couple of good ideas that could evolve in a solid  design…”

Read the blog post for more details on productivity and creativity. Here’s some techniques offered:

  • Brainstorming
  • Idea writing/sketching
  • Mind Mapping
  • Gap filling
  • Boxing gloves

(via First Step in Making Your Ideas Happen – Sketching)

Ten website design tips

Here’s a great list of things to keep in mind:

1. Install and Use Analytics.

2. Create Logical & Clear Navigation.

3. Make Your Site Legible.

4. Create Visual Balance.

5. Make an Impression with your Header or Logo.

6. Use High Quality Graphics & Photos.

7. Put the Most Important Information “Above the Fold.”

8. Format Your Text for Readability.

9. Create Unique Page Titles and Meta Tags.

10. Use an Experienced

Read more details at 10 Tips for Designing your Small Business Website.

Deviating slightly off theme here’s something about connections. Here’s an article by Scott Young is a blogger and author of Learn More, Study Less.Here’s some quotes from the article:“K. Anders Ericsson[’s]…. research had a fairly groundbreaking conclusion: practice, not potential, defined our level of ability. Studying everyone from athletes to typists, he found that a person’s potential could commonly be surpassed, with focused effort and practice.”“If you understand something in only one way, then you don’t really understand it at all. The secret of what anything means to us depends on how we’ve connected it to all other things we know.” – AI researcher Marvin Minsky“Compare learning through connections to its opposite: rote memorization. Rote memorization involves learning merely by repeated exposure. Even if it can work, it rarely produces the speed or brilliance we associate with extraordinary mental abilities.”“Many of us learn by rote, simply because nobody ever taught us a better method. It’s difficult to imagine a professional basketball player who was never instructed in how to dribble or shoot. Yet most people are never taught how to learn; instead, we are expected to just pick it up as we play.”   “Across a variety of learning theories and mnemonic tricks, one broad generalization stands out: Smart people learn through connections.”  ”One way is to create metaphors. A metaphor is a connection between two ideas that aren’t actually related. Describing differential calculus in terms of the speedometer and odometer on a car is an example.”“Good metaphors and analogies aid in understanding because it forces you to really examine the idea. You can’t draw out similarities without understanding how a concept works. Metaphors also aid in memory because they make the ideas more vivid. Vivid imagery also appears to be an almost universally used tactic of brilliant thinkers.”“Another way is to create visual associations. Memory works better storing pictures and places than facts and figures. By translating those abstract details into vivid mental pictures, you’re leveraging your brain’s strengths.”(via 99%)

Link: Training Genius: The Learning Secrets of Polyglots and Savants

The relationships between leaders and teams, and among peers – how the challenge is framed, what managers say to their teams, and how team members support, encourage, and challenge each other.Money buys you people’s time. It should also guarantee you basic professional competence. But you don’t get outstanding creativity by simply offering more money. You get mercenaries. If you want real creativity – the magic ingredient X that sets the product apart – you need to inspire it, by showing them what makes the work fascinating, challenging, meaningful, and fun. And you need to give them freedom to do it their way, rather than micro-managing every step.

(via 99%)

Link: You Can’t Buy Creativity

Read: 10 Strategies to Reinvent Your Personal Brand

10. Be a leader.

9. Be a resource.

8. Be a relationship builder.

7. Be a good listener.

6. Be on the lookout.

5. Be enlightened.

4. Be a communicator.

3. Be credible.

2. Be a catalyst.

1. Be involved.

(via talentzoo)
Link: 10 Strategies to Reinvent Your Personal Brand

Five things to do when you’re laid off

If the bad news comes your way, consider these five tips.

  1. Get what’s coming to you
  2. Check your options for severance pay
  3. Make copies of your contact lists
  4. Strive to get a positive recommendation
  5. File for unemployment benefits

(via latimes)

Link: What to do if you’re laid off

*cringe* I think I’ve done a couple of these.

12 Most Annoying Things People Do On LinkedIn