Grown-ups can play too, especially Jeff Greenspan

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wolfraven/2545068856

I discovered the artists, Jeff Greenspan, today via the blog, It's Nice That.  He previously was the Chief Creative Officer for Buzzfeed and now freelances his witty work.

I'm absolutely loving his playful style today.  There's no reason adults need to be so serious.

I mean, even Plato believed that play was important:

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” 

And, Ralph Waldo Emerson went as for as calling it a talent:

"It is a happy talent to know how to play" 

So, following in these great mens' footprints, I've started giving my presentations in "meme" form and have been sending out a lot of dancing bear GIFs to accompany my process emails.  I'll report back if their wisdom is doing justice in the business arena.

Maybe I'll get some inspiration from Jeff's work below...

An excellent witticism

"Hipster Traps"

Tourist lanes in NYC

"Letter Bombing"

"Oil Bombing", the precursor to "Photo Bombing"

One of My Favorite Commencement Speeches: "This is Water"

Source: WSJ Illustration "This is Water"

I have a soft-spot for graduation commencement addresses -- maybe I'm needy for inspiration, or perhaps I'm always on the verge of a new existential crisis (for the record: both our true).

I've always held Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech as the epitome of graduation speeches -- easy to follow, powerful, quotable.  I've watched it over and over again even with full knowledge that he's not a perfect role model.

Today, I watched David Foster Wallace's 2005 Kenyon Commencement Speech, "This is Water," and I must say, it's excellent -- incredibly thoughtful and tries to shy away from platitudes.  It *might* be even better than Steve Jobs' commencement.

He addresses the point of education:

"It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over"

And the importance of trying to understand life from someone else's perspective:

"The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too. 

Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe; the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute centre of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real."

And, along the way, he makes you laugh and think.  It's the beauty of David Foster Wallace.

Take 20 minutes out of your day & watch the video below.

If Google was a guy...

I like to tell people I can see their searches at work to see their reaction (disclaimer: this is not true).  It scares people.  Makes them uncomfortable.  Squirm in their seat.

Your search history is one of the most private artifacts of your life.  It's the closest thing to reading someone else's mind.  In fact, it was a major relationship milestone when I finally let Alan use my computer, almost on par with moving in together (well, kinda).

So, what if your searches were exposed in real life?  

Would they look anything like these...

[This is Awesome] NextDraft

Why curate your own news when someone else will do it for you?

Dave Pell of Next Draft sends out a daily email newsletter with goodies from around the web.

Funny, insightful & interesting every time.  It's worth the extra email in your inbox.

Art of Feminism

In my Cal Arts Coursera class, we explored the development of storytelling overtime -- from mainly portraying historical & biblical scenes -- to illustrating "everyday life" in the 19th century (Edouard Manet) -- to replicating scenes that may or may not be real in the 21st century.

In the 1970s, avant-garde female artists used art as a medium to start questioning the traditional role of women in society.  These artworks spurred reflection.  internalization.  They proved that images and stories are just as necessary as debate in creating change.

I've included a few images, videos and an excerpt below.  They made me reflect on the feminist movement -- where we've come and what still needs to happen.  On the plight of moving from an object to a human.  On the freedom to choose a different path in life.

I think we need more art in public discourse.

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Stills

 
Martha Rosler, Semiotics of the Kitchen

Patti Smith, Piss Factory

Sylvia Plath, Bell Jar

“I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after Ihad children I would feel differently, I wouldn't want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state.”  

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Do you believe your memories?

Sounds like a trick question, right.  Of course, you believe what you remember to be true.

Elizabeth Loftus, a cognitive psychologist who studies false memory, says that most people think their memory works like a tape recorder -- we simply record the sights and sounds around us and then recall those memories, verbatim, in the future.

Makes sense to me.  But, it's false.  

As humans, we do two things:

1. We tend to reconstruct memories when recalling an event.

Dr. McGaugh, a professor on autobiographical memory at UC Irvine, explains that:

 "All memory is colored with bits of life experiences.  When people recall, they are often reconstructing.  It doesn't mean it’s totally false. It means that they’re telling a story about themselves and they’re integrating things they really do remember in detail, with things that are generally true." 

2. We tend to change or distort our memories when fed misinformation.

For example, Elizabeth Loftus ran an experiment in the 1980s where she was able to plant a false memory that they were lost in a shopping mall as a child in 25% of the participants .  Her study is one of many along a similar line -- convincing people that they were attacked by a vicious animal or that they witnessed demonic possession as a child.

We are malleable creatures.  We can make our memories match our current situation.

What does that mean if we can change our memories and thereby, change our life stories?

In the podcast "How I Got Into College" by This American Life, Michael Lewis interviews Emir Kamenica on his life story.  He was a Bosnian refuge that eventually made his way to a tough neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia as a teenager with his widowed mother.  Emir describes himself as having trouble in school due to his terrible English and feeling very isolated from the other students.  One day, a peppy substitute teacher, Ms. Ames, asked the students in Emir's class to write an essay about a photo -- she gave Emir one of a young boy with a haunted expression on his face.

Emir went home and plagiarized a passage from a favorite Bosnian book, The Fortress, translating it from his native tongue into English.  Based on his memory, the teacher liked the essay so much that she brought Emir along on an interview to a fancy prep school nearby.  

Eventually, he gets to go to the prep school on scholarship and magically goes from there to Harvard undergrad to a Harvard doctorate program in Economics to a professorship at the University of Chicago.

Emir believes that the copied essay saved him.  
That Ms. Ames was his guardian angel.  
That his success is all luck...

"I mean, it is by far the-- in everyone's life there are many forks. This is by far the biggest one. This is what made the most difference. There's no doubt that my life got onto a very different kind of a track. And I'm pretty sure that if it hadn't been for her, I would've stayed in Clarkston High School. I wouldn't have thought to apply to a private school. I most certainly wouldn't have gone to Harvard.And if you gave me a piece of paper and a pen 10 years ago and said, OK, describe what you think of as the most wonderful life, I think I'd come up with something less good than what it actually is."

That's a nice, feel good story, right?  Except, it's false.

Halfway during the podcast, they brought on Ms. Ames (who took a long time to track down).  It turns out that she was actually his permanent teacher (not a substitute) and was repeatedly impressed by Emir's "genius" in her classroom.

When recalling the moment she decided to help Emir, she said:

"Well, actually, I think it was the day that he diagrammed sentences for me on the blackboard for the rest of the students. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to make them learn it. And it was just mind-numbingly boring. 

And Emir said to me, I really think I can explain this. And they'll understand it. So he took over, and it was a great class. And he did a wonderful job. And it just occurred to me, right there on the spot, this kid is just capable of so much more than this school can offer him."

She couldn't recall the essay.

And,  it wasn't pure luck.  Emir was exceptionally talented.  In fact, Ms. Ames said Emir would have been successful even if he had stayed at Clarkson High School.  

Even after Emir discovered the truth from Ms. Ames on the podcast, it didn't seem like he was going to change his story.

And, why would he? Emir's wife describes him as the happiest person she has ever met. 

Michael Lewis describes a possible reason for this happiness:

"Now, there is no obvious connection between a person's happiness and the way he tells stories about himself. But I think there's a not-so-obvious one. When you insist, the way that Emir does, that you're both lucky and indebted to other people, well, you're sort of prepared to see life as a happy accident, aren't you? 

It's just very different than if you tell yourself that you simply deserve all the good stuff that happens to you. Because you happened to be born a genius or suffered so much or worked so hard-- that way of telling the story-- well, it's what you hear from every miserable bond trader at Goldman Sachs, or for that matter, every other a-hole who ever walked the earth."

What if we all told ourself stories more like Emir?  

Stories that make us grateful.
Stories that make us indebted.
Stories that make the world seem like a happy accident, despite turmoil.

Or, you can always do the opposite and be this guy:

[Advertising Technique] Targeting the Right Audience

I often think of direct mail & trash in the same sentence.

But, what if your advert actually reached the right person (or cat in this case)?  Check out the creative technique used in the video above.

PS - Speaking a felines, whoever made this really loves their cat...

[Advertising Technique] Elicit Empathy II

Personally, I don't think it's possible to ever *really* know someone.  In fact, it's difficult to even know ourselves.  (Or, maybe I just a pessimist).

As Atticus said in "To Kill a Mockingbird":

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it."

A mix of listening and empathy are the only ways to come close.

In the ad below, Alzheimer Nederland makes a good attempt at getting folks to empathize with people suffering from Alzheimer's disease with some help from photoshop and Facebook.

I wonder if this advertising technique could be used for other cause-based organizations.



PS - The diagram below shows the differences between a healthy brain & an advanced alzheimer's brain from azl.org

 

My formula for dissecting happiness

Lucas Zimmerman

I like the idea of optimizing my life.

A few years after college, I came to the conclusion I was going to die young.  It's one of those ridiculous stories that I made up in my head that run contrary to all objective evidence.  I'm healthy, and life expectancy is on the rise.  It's silly.

But, because of this fear, I try to maximize my experiences and typically make changes quicker (and more frivolously) than my peers.  It's my personal version of Vanitas art

It's why I'm an aggressive traveller
It's why I switch jobs so quickly (rather than "sticking it out")
It's why I've moved or "been on assignment" so many times
It's why I barely thought about moving all the way to Singapore

I err on the side of change.  I think it's always a good thing.

Lately, I've been philosophizing on how to get the most out of life (sound cliche?) with my boyfriend, Alan.  

We've been using this idea of a 10 point scale.

There's 168 hours per week, which I think breaks down as follows:

• Work - 50 hours
• Pleasure - 50 hours
• Sleep / Shower / Other Mundane Activities - 68 hours

Therefore, our general happiness is based on an equal part work and an equal part pleasure.  For example, if your work life is a 5 and your home life is a 9, you're averaging a 7 out of 10 happiness.  Personally, I don't think it's a possible to achieve a 10 out of 10 on both scales, as a perfect work life requires a lot of personal sacrifices and vice-versa.

It's all a balancing act.  Here's two examples where I failed and eventually re-corrected.

Example 1: When I was on consulting & private equity, work and my crackberry (remember that term pre-RIM's fall?) consumed my life.  In some ways, it was good -- I worked in a "desired" job field at firms that were a respectable notch below the McKinseys & Blackstones of the world.  I worked with kids from fancy university with fancy connections, which put me on a good career track.  

Unfortunately, my work happiness quickly dissipated, and my *very* small amount of pleasure time never really made up for it.  Eventually, I became miserable, nodding in sad agreement with Dilbert cartoons.  After 4 years, I moved to Google, and my score went up.

Example 2: Last year, I had a difficult manager situation (no need to bore you with the details), which turned my Google utopia from an 8 to a 3.  No matter how much I invested in cool things outside of work (re: lots and lots of travel), I couldn't fully recuperate.  At best, I was at a 6.5, besides the 3 months I was on a rotation, which bumped up life to an 8 (it would have been higher if not scrambling for a new job in the midst).

In typical New Year's fashion (20 days late), I'm thinking through how to really optimize 2014.

Here's the plan for 2014:

Work: I've switched jobs (again) to a role where I think (fingers-crossed) I can maintain a steady 7ish on my self-imposed scale.  I'm not radically "changing the world", but I think I can obtain the three drivers of job satisfaction: autonomy, mastery & purpose while getting out of work in under 50 hours a week at a good salary.

Play: Now, for more interesting stuff -- my pursuit of pleasure and purpose outside of work.  I'm not going to name any direct resolutions (Derek Sivers says not to), but I'd like to think of my 50 hours of freedom in a couple buckets.

In 2014, I'd like to spend my "play" time each week, equally across 4 buckets:

• Creating: From painting to photography to sous-chefing to app-making (via a developer) to blogging -- I want to continue "making" things for the sake of creating
• Socializing: "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy"  Girl's gotta talk (and drink)
• Exploring: "Go West, young (wo)man" - Horace Greely.  I've set a target for the number of new countries I want to hit this year, but  again, I won't say because of Derek.  Plus, I'm determined to find Singapore's underbelly.
• Learning / Reading: I'm thinking more books & Coursera.  Less Twitter.

Note: I need to put exercise somewhere in there.  Plus, meditation & maybe volunteering. 

Lucas Zimmerman

[Mental Health Break] This is fun

This is a pretty great way to waste a few minutes.

Lessons from the Dead Poet's Society

Apple has a history of prodigious advertisements that elevate their product from a device to a philosophy.  

There's the 1984 Superbowl Commercial, the Think Different campaign and now this...

The video didn't make me want an i-pad.  It made me revisit clips from the Dead Poet's Society.

Here's some of my favorite parts (sorry for the low quality footage from youtube)

On conformity ...

On changing your perspective...

On seizing the day...

A portrait of consumerism

Source: Photopin

"At it's core, this big data revolution is about how humans create and preserve a historical record of their activities.  Its consequences will transform how we look at ourselves.  It will enable the creation of new scopes that make it possible for our society to more effectively probe its own nature.  Big data is going to change the humanities, transform the social sciences, and renegotiate the relationship between the world of commerce and the ivory tower"

- from Uncharted by Aiden & Michaels 

If you collect enough dots, it will eventually turn into a picture.  a story.

Today, I heard an interview with Kate Bingaman-Burt on Design Matters describing a daunting side project -- she documented everything she bought for 28 months.

It's all recorded here.  It tells both Kate's story and our own story -- a tale about the objects that define us and the emotional relationship we have with money. 

Our daily lives are filled with consumption—$1.50 for a cup of coffee, $5.95 for a magazine, $17.99 for headphones, $1.79 for cough drops, $36.00 for a haircut. Whether bought out of necessity or indulgence, purchased alone or in a group, everything we buy has its own story to tell. We buy art supplies while feeling inspired, CDs while shopping with friends, and a new pair of jeans to give us a lift when we are feeling blue. Yet, these powerfully emotional experiences can be fleeting—quickly erased by the pull of the next "must-have" acquisition.

- Obsessive Consumption, book description

The project morphed into her drawing all her credit card receipts until she paid off $23,000 of debt.

Twelve years later, the project is still running.  She now draws one picture a day of her purchases.

What do you think your purchases say about you?

Taipei is (really) cool.

I like Singapore for lots of reasons:

• Warm weather.  I might be the only person that counts this as a plus
• Awesome public transport.  My commute went from 3 hours to 30 min per day
• A mix of people.  We've got every religion and nationality represented
• Food, food, food.  All price ranges.  All genres.  Really excellent
• Proximity to travel.  My passport has never been so excited
• The "resort" life.  It feels like I live in a country club
• Safety.  This might sound lame, but after being robbed in San Francisco, it's higher on my priority list. 

Unfortunately, Singapore can sometime lack "coolness."  They try (and copy) really hard, but it's not the same as cities that develop organically.

All that being said -- Taipei was cool.  Lots of energy, a cool cafe culture and locals claiming their food is the best in the world.  Plus, they have this everyday.

Okay, now for some photos.

 

The coolest annual report I've ever seen

Source: Eye Magazine

I've started listening to Design Matters podcasts at painting class every week.  It's one of my better habits (the worst being successive cookie eating every afternoon, which leads to a sugar-induced coma at my desk).

This Sunday, I was introduced to Marion Deuchars (podcast here).  Besides having a lovely accent, I really liked two parts:

1. She made an annual report that looked like this.  Awesome.

 2. She wrote a series of books called "Let's Make Some Great Art".  

She has a theory that kids love art until around the age 10.  At that point, if their drawings look realistic, they continue on with art.  If not, they move on to soccer or dance or whatever the new replacement for pogs is.  They start believing that they are not creative, which schools and the world continue to reinforce (for more on that, check out this TED talk by Ken Robinson)

As a child, I was naturally drawn to art.  I entered all of the elementary school poster contests, which were always on fire safety (I wonder if that still exists) and even sold drawings of cats to unexpecting guests in hotels lobbies (much to my parents' dismay).

Then, Kevin Pender was named the best drawer in my 4th grade class.  He dethroned me.  

At that point, I considered myself an average drawer.  Not much has changed.  I took one mandatory art class in high school and decided that basketball and student council were "my things."

Maybe things would be different if Marion's books were around then.... 

PS - One of her sons briefly joined the podcast and boasted about turning the Mona Lisa exercise into the "Man-a" Lisa.  It was adorable.