A Curious Mind – Brian Grazer

I was not just a little annoyed when I finished A Curious Mind. I wrote a summary on the title page: “Summary: Be curious and do a lot of names-dropping.”

A Curious Mind

The book is quite entertaining but far from the books that normally get a #1 New York Times bestseller.

Grazer tells us about his curiosity process: his inexhaustible drive to visit people he admires, mostly very famous people, and have inquisitive conversations with them. (Except with Edward Teller, one of the inventors of the hydrogen bomb, who does not want to talk to Grazer and it portrayed as a single minded unpleasant person.)

A huge pile of names-dropping forms the basis of Grazer’s stories. He meets the greats of the world and all of them becomes his friends. It is annoying at page 30, and becomes unbearable throughout the rest of the book.

If you are interested in movies and Hollywood, you may find it all interesting, but for someone searching for the curiosity learnings it is hard to digest.

Curiosity gives meaning to life. It makes you pay attention to others. I gives you a determination to act.

Neuromancer – William Gibson

Neuromancer - William Gobson

Neuromancer is an unavoidable read. A classic. The beginning of the books reminds me immediately of the first scene of Bladerunner. The Sprawl indeed is referenced by Sonic Youth (The Sprawl on Daydream Nation) – I had read somewhere they were influenced by the cyberpunk writers.

Where is the beauty in these fabricated, technology-dominated futuristic worlds? Societies dominated by drugs, tech, criminals, violence.

An amazing book, forward referencing many SF movies that followed. The creators of The Matrix heavily borrowed from Neuromancer, just to mention one.

Catching the Big Fish – David Lynch on meditation, art and creativity

Catching the Big Fish, David Lynch book cover

Catching the Big Fish is such a great book. It consists of small stories about ideas, meditation, creativity, film making and other things in David Lynch’s film making life. The tone is wonderfully light. Condensed advice for the living. It is a massive source for inspirational quotes, and I just thumbed through to get to these.

Sometimes restrictions get the mind going. If you’ve tons and tons of money, you may relax and figure you can throw money at any problem that comes along. You don’t have to think so hard. But if you have limitations, sometimes, you com up with very creative, inexpensive ideas.

Little fish swim on the surface, but the big ones swim down below. If you can expand the container you’re fishing in – your consciousness – you can catch bigger fish.

The Ear in the grass from David Lynch' film Blue Velvet

It would be great if the entire film came all at once. But it comes, for me, in fragments. The first fragment is like the Rosetta stone. It’s the piece of the puzzle that indicates the rest. It’s the hopeful puzzle piece.

In Blue Velvet, it was red lips, green lawn, and the song – Bobby Vinton’s version of “Blue Velvet”. The next thing was an ear lying in a field. And that was it.

Read more on creativity, for example Nathalie Dixon, or Werner Herzog.

David Lynch portrait photo

The Universe is Wonky – The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch

Richard Koch’s The 80/20 Principle is about much more than just the 80/20 principle.

richard koch - the 80 20 principle - book cover

The first part of the book applies the 80/20 principle to business. 20% of a business’ activities brings in 80% of its profits. 20% of the customers are responsible for 80% of the profits. The trick is to find which 20% this is. Koch provides the guidelines.

The second part of the book is where the fun is. Here Koch applies the 80/20 principle to your personal life. He approaches this from various angles. Koch describes self-help topics in an excellent concise manner. He limits himself to the bare description of advice. Where many self-help authors often stretch single topics to a full book, Koch keeps it short and to the point. Very elegantly and entertainingly.

Our lives can be improved applying the 80/20 principle. We can be happier and more effective.

The majority of input in our lives have little impact on our outputs, or a small minority of inputs have a dominant effect on our output.

Seek excellence in a few things, rather than being average in many things. Delegate everything that you are not good at or do not want to do. Target a limited set of goals.

Simple is beautiful.

In decision making:

  • Not many decisions are important.
  • Many important decisions are made by default (nothing else is possible realistically).
  • Gather 80% of data in 20% of the time.
  • Make a 100% decision.
  • Change you mind early.
  • If it works, double the bets.

80/20 thinking: think skewness, expect the unexpected, everything. Look for the invisible 20%, focus on the 20% activities, ignore the 80% activities.

80/20 is unconventional, hedonistic, non-linear.

Combine extreme ambition with a relaxed manner.

20% of your activities give you 80% of your happiness. Seek these activities, expand them.

Take objectives seriously.

20% of activities lead to 80% of achievements. Focus on these (a la The 4-hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss).

Hard work leads to low returns.

Do the things you like doing.

Be extreme.

How far could you deviate from the norm without being thrown out of your world?

Prioritize things that can advance your life, things you have always wanted to do, invest in innovative things that can slash wasted time, things that can’t be done, according to others.

Be radical. Screw time leaking activities.

Do things you are much better at than others – and that you like.

Friends: 20% of friends give 80% of joy.

Specialize in a very small niche, one you enjoy.

Manage money 80/20. But stock when people are pessimistic, sell where there is general optimism.

Trust your subconscious. Set goals, let these sink in your subconscious and your subconscious will be put to work to achieve these goals.

Networks and platforms are 80/20 or 90/10 forces.

Work in networks, work in small size, high growth teams.

Find the 80/20 idea.

About Polaroids by Douglas Coupland

In a Douglas Coupland burp, I reread Shampoo Planet and now Polaroids.

What strikes me now: Coupland’s style and subject matter could never be European.

The description of “stuff”

Bret Easton Ellis exaggerated it in American Psycho with the overly exuberant description of the brands of Bateman’s stuff. But even in Coupland you notice that strange for us Europeans yet somewhat exotic way of describing consumer goods.

Polaroids, Douglas Coupland

His world is so unimaginably young to us

A legacy of a few hundred years is already immeasurably deep. After the freedom struggle, suddenly the most important event in the history of the United States (yes I know Coupland is a Canadian) is 9/11. And 9/11 is described as an attack on the United States. European history is teeming with 9/11 events. In the US, a president is assassinated every now and then, but Delaware, Arizona or even Texas did not secede from the US. In a documentary on illegals, I hear Americans talk about “our country” as something based on centuries of history. But most Americans have immigrated to the country in the last hundred years.

Rehab

Coupland (paraphrasing – I lost the exact quote):

When there is an electricity outage, we sing songs, but as soon as electricity is back, we disappear in a haze again.

So it is during this vacation. For example, there is no television. You find that you read a book more easily and chat more, and feel much freer than when that blue eye demands its attention. It’s like quitting drinking or smoking: a TV addiction is in your daily pattern, and it takes a paradigm shift to get rid of it.

About legacy: a little further on, I read that Palo Alto is 100 years old. I rest my case.