Gregory Ciotti @ciotti - Tumblr Blog

Winners act like they’ve been there before.

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Infolding

Useful concept: infolding, from Arthur Koestler's Act of Creation: "The intention is not to obscure the message but to make it more luminous by compelling the recipient to work it out by himself—to recreate it. Hence the message must be handed to him in implied form—and implied means ‘folded in.’ To make it unfold, he must fill in the gaps, complete the hint, see through the symbolic disguise."

Great writers might be able to transmit more through infolding. A great reader (or at least one experienced in a particular author's work) would be able to extract more by unfolding.

[via]

#Note #writing

A person's success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations they're willing to have.

No longer the youngest person in the room

“Now that I am almost never the youngest person in any room I realize that what I miss most about those times is the very thing that drove me so mad back when I was living in them. What I miss is the feeling that nothing has started yet, that the future towers over the past, that the present is merely a planning phase for the gleaming architecture that will make up the skyline of the rest of my life. But what I forget is the loneliness of all that. If everything is ahead then nothing is behind. You have no ballast. You have no tailwinds either. You hardly ever know what to do, because you’ve hardly done anything. I guess this is why wisdom is supposed to be the consolation prize of aging. It’s supposed to give us better things to do than stand around and watch in disbelief as the past casts long shadows over the future.

The problem, I now know, is that no one ever really feels wise, least of all those who actually have it in themselves to be so. The Older Self of our imagination never quite folds itself into the older self we actually become. Instead, it hovers in the perpetual distance like a highway mirage.“

[via]

#Note

Narrative memos at Amazon

6 pages is the upper limit; the memo can be shorter

The format is designed to drive the meeting structure by requiring attendees to read the memo in the first 10 minutes of a meeting, followed by discussion

You can push extra information into the appendix if needed to convince those looking for more evidence

The memo is self-sufficient as a unit of information, unlike a PowerPoint that relies on the presenter (or a video of them) to contextualize and connect the information

The basic thrust is to bring the discipline of scientific style article writing into office communications (and avoid PowerPoint anti-patterns in the process).

#Note

I find writing too hard to want to spend it on things that disappear.

Martin Fowler

#quote #writing #write #nanowrimo

Goals are strategic and aspirational, whereas tasks are tactical and will likely happen anyway. Goals are progress oriented, not event oriented.

Paul Adams

#quote

A succession of little things

For the great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together.

What is drawing? How does one get there? It’s working one’s way through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do. How can one get through that wall? — since hammering on it doesn’t help at all. In my view, one must undermine the wall and grind through it slowly and patiently. And behold, how can one remain dedicated to such a task without allowing oneself to be lured from it or distracted, unless one reflects and organizes one’s life according to principles? And it’s the same with other things as it is with artistic matters. And the great isn’t something accidental; it must be willed.

—Vincent van Gogh

#quote #quotes #habit

On teaching: recognize that learning can be boring

One of the best teachers of the 19th century was scientist and educator Sir Humphry Davy. He was a very successful researcher in his own right: he discovered chlorine and invented a special kind of safety lamp for use in coal mines. He gave public lectures that were wildly popular, even though they dealt with abstruse and complex scientific topics.

Davy filled his lectures with explosions and comic effects (he loved laughing gas); he made witty remarks. He wasn’t simply being amusing. He was using fun to help him transmit serious ideas he was hugely committed to. He understood that an overwhelming obstacle to learning is boredom. If we get bored, we stop learning. Instead of getting sniffy about this and blaming people for being so feeble and lacking in the bole thirst for knowledge at any cost, Davy simply accepted it as a fact about the human mind and made sure his audiences never failed to learn for that reason.

He was free of a fatal confusion of ideas which tempts those teaching to think that if what they have to say is important they must present it in a solemn manner. They feel that humor is unworthy of the dignity of the topic. But sadly that often just means that important things don’t get the recognition they deserve.

[via]

#notes #teaching #learning

You can passively consume hundreds of articles and podcasts and learn far less than shipping one side project a year.

Ben Orenstein‏

#quote #motivation

Famous

The river is famous to the fish. The loud voice is famous to silence, which knew it would inherit the earth before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth, more famous than the dress shoe, which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men who smile while crossing streets, sticky children in grocery lines, famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous, or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular, but because it never forgot what it could do.

—Naomi Shihab Nye

[hat tip to Kevan Lee]

#poetry #note

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.

Anaïs Nin

#quote #writing

Your opponent’s strongest argument

If you’re interested in being on the right side of disputes, you will refute your opponents' arguments.

But if you're interested in producing truth, you will fix your opponents' arguments for them. To win, you must fight not only the creature you encounter; you [also] must fight the most horrible thing that can be constructed from its corpse.

[via]

#note

Pessimism is too easy, even delicious, the badge and plume of intellectuals everywhere. It absolves the thinking classes of solutions.

Ian McEwan

#quote

First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.

Octavia E. Butler

#quote #habit

Orwell’s rules, revised

(i) Avoid using metaphors, similes, or other figures of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Think of fresh ones wherever you can.

(ii) Prefer short words to long ones.

(iii) Try cutting a lot of your word-count, especially those words that add little extra meaning.

(iv) Don’t over-use the passive voice. And whether passive or active, be clear who did what to whom.

(v) Prefer everyday English to foreign, scientific or jargon words.

[via The Economist]

#note #writing

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Gregory Ciotti