Category: Creativity
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Pineapples, pizza, and possibility
Do you like pineapples on your pizza? The style is known as a Hawaiian pizza, and it’s a polarizing topic. For example, the former president of Iceland joked that he’d ban pineapples on pizza if he could. When I lived in New York City, I searched far and wide before finding a half decent restaurant…
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Collect underpants → ??? → Profit: A guide to filling in the question marks in your plans
There’s a TV trope called the Missing Steps Plan (it’s also an internet meme). Here’s an example from a South Park episode, which involves gnomes stealing underpants: We are all missing steps in our wishes and dreams. The question is to what degree. For example, someone who hasn’t cooked and wants to cook might have…
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Do things that make you feel proud of yourself
You probably won’t feel proud of binge watching a TV show. You’ll almost certainly feel proud when you do one of these things: Make progress towards your goals. The greater the reluctance you feel before, the more pride you’ll feel after. Write or speak something from the heart. Put it out there. Take a small…
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Three useful pieces of advice for public speaking
In a vaulted episode of New Material, I received public speaking advice from Hamza (and, in exchange, advised him on publicity). While I was very focused on speaking as a business opportunity, Hamza’s most powerful advice for me was to practice speaking as its own craft, exactly like I treated writing. With that intention, I’ve…
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Music is a buoy in the seas of time and space
What new music do you listen to when you travel? Because if it goes well together, there’s a good chance that your brain will naturally associate it with the place. You can tap into this by being open to what’s around you, as well. In one of our first weeks living in New York City,…
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Robert Frost on uniting your hobby and vocation
Good things happen when you find the Overlap. Here’s an excerpt from a poem by Robert Frost (via Jim O’Shaughnessy) that describes the Overlap very well: My object in living is to uniteMy avocation and my vocationAs my two eyes make one in sight.Only where love and need are one,And the work is play for…
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Making art is a small part of the job
DJ Khaled is an artist, and a very popular one at that. He doesn’t sing, rap, or make the beat. He makes songs by finding good instrumental tracks and hiring other artists to record over it. Some people—maybe a lot of them—take this to mean that he doesn’t make music. So what does he actually…
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The desire paths of your mind
When you walk off the sidewalk or paved ground, you contribute to a desire path. The more people that do this, the clearer the path that emerges. Here’s an image of a desire path: Apply this metaphor to your mind. Imagine that your mind was a town that you have designed with a lot of…