Month: August 2013
There was a great article in the L.A. Times of August 19 about the B-52 bomber. Remember Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove, straddling a hydrogen bomb in the bomb bay of a Strategic Air Command plane, then dropping into thin air while cutting loose a Rebel yell? That was a B-52. In real life the aircraft first saw service in the 1950s. It’s still flying today. With the latest upgrades, the B-52 is expected to remain as the Air Force’s #1 workhorse bomber into the 2040s. But here’s the sentence from the article that leapt out at me: Now the plane,…
Read MoreMy apologies to everyone who got psyched up, a few weeks ago, to learn more about the Foolscap Method (which I wrote about then in this space and promised to write about again), only to have me drop the ball completely. Sorry! There’s a reason. We’ve been working feverishly over the past few weeks to re-jigger this site to handle some new long-form material that we want to make available to our regular readers. That’s what the FIRST LOOK ACCESS box is all about, above and to the right. Bottom line: the Wednesday after next, we’ll be ready. We’ll start…
Read MoreBecause something is happening here. But you don’t know what it is. Do you, Mr. Jones? —Bob Dylan Bob Dylan has a Twitter account, but I’m about as certain as death and taxes that it isn’t him banging out tweets on a keyboard. Under 400 tweets, it’s a short stream of concert updates and other announcements. To the point. Nothing there for Mr. Jones.
Read MoreThis post first ran November 9, 2011. We’re revisiting it today as I approach another deadline and am reminded of those 10,000 hours. I’m not sure whether Malcolm Gladwell was the first to identify this principle or was simply responsible for popularizing it. But his name is definitely associated with it. The rule says that in order for an individual to master any complex skill, be it brain surgery or playing the cello, she must put in 10,000 hours of focused practice. Since a thousand hours seems to be more or less the maximum we humans can handle in one year,…
Read More[I never do this—pull a post from another site—but this one is so good (and I am in such passionate agreement with it) that I couldn’t resist. [Thank you, Tim Ferriss, from whose blog this came, and thank you, Kevin Ashton, for writing it. Kevin is the co-founder of the MIT Auto-ID Center, which created a global standard system for RFID and other sensors. He also created the Internet of Things. Here’s Kevin’s article:] A Hungarian psychology professor once wrote to famous creators asking them to be interviewed for a book he was writing. One of the most interesting things…
Read MoreBefore you read this post, watch the video below (and then stick with me as I circle back around to why it is being shared).
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Start with this War of Art [27-minute] mini-course. It's free. The course's five audio lessons will ground you in the principles and characteristics of the artist's inner battle.