stupndus

the Findings of Stu Gray.

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Confirmation Bias (rough Definition_

People will pay attention to, and they will judge things to be important if you tell them to pay attention, and if you tell them they are important. - Rich Harshaw

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Do the Work

The only rule is WORK. If you work, it will lead to something. Its the people who do the work all the time who eventually catch onto things.

Sister Corita Kent

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You Aren't a failure until you start blaming others... You can make mistakes, but you aren't a failure until you start blaming others for those mistakes.     When you blame others, you are trying to excuse yourself. When you make excuses you can't properly evaluate yourself.     Without proper self - evaluation, failure is inevitable.  - Coach John Wooden

woodenswisdom.com

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Read, Think, Do

‘Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.’

—-Christopher Morley

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The Five Ingredients of an Effective Apology

Most apologies don’t work but here's how to fix them

The Keys to Constructing an Effective Apology

Apologies are tools with which we acknowledge violations of social expectations or norms, take responsibility for the impact of our actions on others, ask their forgiveness, and by doing so, repair ruptures in our relationships, restore our social standing, and ease feelings of guilt. This formulation implies that for an apology to be effective it must have the following key ingredients:

1. A clear ‘I’m sorry’ statement.

2. An expression of regret for what happened.

3. An acknowledgment that social norms or expectations were violated.

4. An empathy statement acknowledging the full impact of our actions on the other person.

5. A request for forgiveness.

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On Gay Talese’s address book and love of collage and paper

Legendary American literary journalist Gay Talese has been keeping an address book since the 1950s and has never erased a single name or detail. In this film, Talese gives us a tour of his address book, which contains the names, addresses, and phone numbers of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Tony Bennett, Francis Ford Coppola, and many more.

Holy lord, so many people sent me this video. (For good reason: it’s amazing.) The address book is great, but I really love seeing Talese’s office/bunker:

In case you are, like I was, wondering what those crazy collages are behind Talese as he’s reading, here’s a description from The Paris Review:

There are shelves running up to the ceiling filled with boxes and boxes of files. Each box is elaborately festooned with a collage: photographs from newspapers and magazines, excised words, drawings, cartoons. The files contain notes for all of Talese’s books and articles, clippings, outlines, letters. The collages make the cardboard boxes look whimsical, childlike, flamboyant; there is a joy here that most of us can’t muster for file keeping.

I knew about Talese’s shirtboards, but I had no idea that he actually composes his works using collage: “He initially composes his articles and books on long strips of paper that he strings above his desk, making a constellation of words.”

As he says in the video, “There’s something decorative and interesting about how to put things you want to remember on pieces of paper.”

Talese has a really interesting routine, too: dresses up every day, walks the outside stairs of his apartment down to an old wine cellar where he works, saves everything in boxes and file folders, and looks damned good for 80.

Here’s another tour of “the bunker”:

I save everything. I think that I’m a person of record… Some people collect a lot of stuff and then they don’t know where it is. I know where it is — it’s all on file… It’s a whole process of giving worth to every moment of your day. I’ve seen things. I’ve interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people over many years. By saving it, I’m not just being a collector of stuff — I’m a documentarian of what it is that I do. Who I know. What I see. This stuff is never dead because stories never die. Stories are never over.

I actually stole the line “I’m a documentarian of what it is that I do” for a chapter in  Show Your Work!

Filed under: Gay Talese

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Gay Talese’s outline for the 1966 classic Frank Sinatra Has a Cold, one of the best long-form magazine pieces ever penned, written on a shirt board. 

(↬ The Paris Review)

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Creativity isn't a talent... It's a mode of operating

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Leaving the system behind and creating something of your own may actually be thing that gets you into the system, hopefully on your own terms. The point is, forget the gatekeepers. As far as I’m concerned, what you create in a 30-seat, hole-in-the-wall improv theater in Phoenix can be far more meaningful than a mediocre sitcom being half-watched by seven million people. America doesn’t need more stuff. We need more great stuff. You could make that.

Mike Birbiglia’s 6 Tips for Making It Small in Hollywood. Or Anywhere. - The New York Times

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(via Stop Calling Creative Work “Content” | Phil Cooke)

...we shouldn’t call creative work “content.” “Content” can be what’s inside a package, or other inanimate object, but should never been the name we give artistic and creative endeavors.

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(via A Peek Inside the Notebooks of Famous Authors, Artists and Visionaries – Page 5 – Flavorwire)

From Kurt Cobain’s Journal - Lots of ideas on one page. Awesome.

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Ten bullets by Tom Sachs

I’d never seen these before! 

1. SACRED SPACE: KEEP TOOL KIT AT THE READY SO WHEN INSPIRATION STRIKES THERE IS NO DELAY, EXCUSE OR HINDERANCE BETWEEN YOU, YOUR THOUGHT, AND IT’S REALIZATION

8. RESET. AT THE END OF THE DAY: KNOLL YOUR WORKSPACE, SWEEP + EMPTY TRASH, PRE SET YOUR WORK STATION WITH SOMETHING PLEASURABLE TO COMPLETE. BEGIN YOUR DAY WITH A SENSE OF ACCOMPLISHMENT…

9. PROCRASTINATE. IF AT FIRST YOU DONT SUCCEED GIVE UP IMMEDIATELY, MOVE ON TO SOME OTHER TASK UNTIL THAT BECOMES UNBEARABLE, THEN MOVE ON AGAIN CIRCLING BACK AROUND TO THE FIRST PROBLEM. BY NOW, YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS WILL HAVE WORKED ON IT, SORT OF LIKE SLEEP, ONLY CHEAPER

Here’s a video of slightly different bullets: 

See other lists of ten: Keri Smith’s How To Feel Miserable as an Artist, and Corita Kent’s Art Department Rules

(Sent to me by @sheddenm)

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Experimentation brings you into the present, and forces you to be detached from the results.

James Altucher

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"With an experiment, you run a test and see what the results are. If you don’t get good results, you can try another option, and run another test. Then you can see what the outcomes of the choices are (the info you didn’t have when first thinking about the decision), and you can make a better-informed decision now."

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Following the "life as an experiment" idea for a bit...