Just Say It Already... @justsayitalready - Tumblr Blog

When Seth Godin talks, people listen. The bestselling author of 17 books has a legendary background in publishing, entrepreneurship and online marketing.

What’s your biggest aggravation or pet peeve at the moment (writing related or otherwise)?

After 25 years, the MacOS is getting sloppy around the edges when it should be going the other way. Flying wears me out. The TSA is a joke.

And most of all, the biggest thing, big enough that it’s not a pet, or even a peeve, is the media’s efforts to distract us from opportunities and urgencies by inflaming every small conflict into an epic game show.

We respond to The Diary of Anne Frank differently at age 42 than we do at 12, in part because of all the other stories that have changed our perception in the interim. We argue with stories, internally or out loud. We talk back. We praise. We denounce. Every story is the beginning of a conversation, with ourselves as well as with others.

Once upon a time... how stories change hearts – and brains | Aeon Essays

The greatest spiritual problem of them all may be that we are simply too willing to give over our sense of direction, our compulsion to search, to those who want from us anything but a self. They want obedience or conformity or sacrifice and silence. They do not want us to make up our own minds about anything.

Joan Chittester, Called to Question, page 73.

Mr. Trump is banking on the American public’s willingness to revert to such a conception of truth that does not require any basis in fact. And it is here that a bit of von Ranke’s hardheadedness can serve as a corrective. We can worry later about drawing significant lessons from history, about finding meaning for our lives in the past. For now what is crucial is to insist that the past can be known — that Mr. Obama was not born in Kenya, that climate change was not made up by the Chinese and that anyone who pretends the opposite, as part of a larger plan to make America great again, is, as a matter of simple historical fact, an impious fraud and a liar.

No, He’s Not Hitler. And Yet ... - The New York Times

beingblog

This is the first, wildest, and wisest thing I know, that the soul exists and that it is built entirely out of attentiveness

— Mary Oliver (via beingblog)

For example, if you actually put the teams in a hypothetical game, my guess is the Bulls would be called for a million hand-check fouls, and we would be called for a million illegal defenses when we overloaded the strong side," Kerr said. "So the game would take, like, six hours because the refs would be calling stuff all game. It's kind of hard to get past that. Now, they wouldn't call traveling in either era.

Scottie Pippen predicts 1995-96 Chicago Bulls would sweep Golden State Warriors

Bo: Yeah, that’s really well said and I’m telling you, like Joan just used the word “work.” It’s a lot of work that I did on myself but that is the greatest work one can do. You know? When you start to develop your own voice and your own story and you start to find your way and where your strengths and weaknesses are, boy, you’re pretty much unstoppable because you can’t get knocked off who you are anymore. Joan: That’s right. It’s really interesting. A lot of people think that you’re just here composed and your stories are contained well inside and then you tell stuff. It’s like you know who you are and then you speak. What I have found, and this is exactly what you just said, is once you start speaking then you know who you are. Bo: Ah, yeah, that’s very true. Joan: That’s part of finding your voice. You actually have to give voice to find your voice.

Own Your Story, Own Your Life - Bo Eason

Conversely, those of us who don’t have imposter syndrome might have reason to question their abilities: High levels of self-confidence can be a result of “Dunning-Kruger effect,” which essentially means you can’t recognize your own ignorance.

Is imposter syndrome a sign of greatness? - Quartz

When I interviewed Ericsson for my book, he explained why. It’s only when you’re alone that you can engage in something he calls Deliberate Practice. In Deliberate Practice, you identify the tasks or knowledge that are just out of your reach, strive to upgrade your performance, monitor your progress, and revise accordingly. Deliberate Practice is best conducted on one’s own because it involves working on the task that’s most challenging to you personally. In an ideal world, you’d also have the guidance of a coach or teacher so you don’t get stuck. Only when you’re alone, Ericsson told me, can you “go directly to the part that’s challenging to you. If you want to improve what you’re doing, you have to be the one who generates the move. Imagine a group class — you’re the one generating the move only a small percentage of the time.

“We’ve Always Known That One-on-One Is the Best Way to Learn” — Medium

People who like to spend time alone are decidedly at odds with today’s team-based organizational culture. According to management research, introverts are much less likely than extroverts to be groomed for leadership positions even though another Wharton study led by Professor Adam Grant found that introverted leaders outperform extroverted ones when managing proactive employees — precisely because they give them the freedom to dream up and implement new ideas.

Why Creative People Are Rarely Seen as Leaders — Medium

The problem of course is that having more information available, even more accurate information, isn’t what is required by the ideal. What is required is that people actually know and understand that information, and there are reasons to think we are no closer to an informed citizenry understood in that way than we ever have been. Indeed, we might be further away.

Googling Is Believing: Trumping the Informed Citizen - The New York Times

The worry is no longer about who controls content. It is about who controls the flow of that content. It is no coincidence that we are now seeing Big Data companies like Facebook sponsor presidential debates. Nor is it a coincidence that people are increasingly following the election on social media, using it both as the source of their information and as the way to get their view out. Consent is still being manufactured, but the manufacturing is being done willingly by us, usually intended for consumption by other people with whom we already agree, facts or no facts.

Googling Is Believing: Trumping the Informed Citizen - The New York Times

For all their joys, our individual and collective lives are laced with loss and grief. But you don't need me to tell you that. This territory called "being human" contains shadow as well as light. To be fully human, we must embrace all of it.

Embrace the Shadow and the Light | On Being

Like virtually every writer I know, I sometimes get stuck and suffer a relatively mild form of writer’s block. This usually happens at the beginning of an essay, a chapter, or some other writing project. Getting started is the hardest thing for me. Once I have gotten a paragraph or two under my belt, sometimes just a sentence or two, it is much easier to keep going. I have discovered that the best way to get started is to grit my teeth and just start writing, even if those first sentences or paragraphs turn out to be gibberish. I can always go back and rewrite once I have built up the necessary momentum to keep going. When I have finished writing for the day, but the piece is still unfinished, I usually try to jot down a topic sentence and an idea or two for the next paragraph, so that I won’t have to overcome the inertia of starting when I return to the piece the following day.

Scholars Talk Writing: James M. McPherson - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Sylvester Stallone on the Weakest Link in ‘Creed’: Himself - The New York Times

You either self-immolate or you have a kind of interesting revival. So when “Creed” came along, I said to myself, “I want you to realize you’re the weakest person in this movie. You’re not a threat to anyone. You are a ghost, in a sense, and you talk to ghosts. Your entire life is pretty much dissolved, disintegrated like smoke, and you’re just waiting for your turn to meet your friends again on the other side.”

(via Sylvester Stallone on the Weakest Link in ‘Creed’: Himself - The New York Times)

Start by listing three reasons why the people you want to serve will pass a competitor and cross the road to buy from you. Once you get clear about the difference you create for people, the marketing strategy becomes obvious. The shortcut to more is to matter.

The Shortcut To More | The Story of Telling

Storytelling appears arbitrary and its form seems at the whim of its creators, but look closely and every archetypal narrative -- not just film, but theatre, short stories, novels, reality television, even journalism -- is built around a structural grid. It happens unconsciously, it happens without thinking, and it's why writers who've never studied structure can write it perfectly. Something meets its opposite, and that something is changed.

What's the One Key Ingredient Every Great Story Needs?

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