Abandoning a Cat / Een kat achterlaten is a beautiful book in which Murakami writes about his father. Now and then you can see typical Murakami themes peek through the memories he recounts. The somewhat lost men, a confusing war in the far away and way too large China, socially awkward persons, … much food for the close Murakami reader. Very well-designed Dutch edition, bound in Japanese manner, magnificently illustrated by Marion Vrijburg.
You can’t put this down, I read somewhere before acquiring this book.
Indeed.
Much has already been written about this classic comic Maus by Art Spiegelman; just adding I love it and indeed couldn’t put it down. Two volumes straight.
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.”
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 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 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.
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.
Richard Koch’s The 80/20 Principle is about much more than just the 80/20 principle.
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:
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.
In een Douglas Coupland oprisping herlas ik Shampoo Planet en nu ook Polaroids.
Wat me nu opvalt: stijl en onderwerp van Coupland zouden nooit Europees kunnen zijn.
Bret Easton Ellis overdreef het in American Psycho met het al te uitbundig beschrijven van de merken van de spullenboel van Bateman. Maar ook in Coupland merk je die rare voor ons Europeanen toch wat exotische manier van consumptiegoederen beschrijven.
Een legacy van een paar honderd jaar is al onmetelijk diep. Na de vrijheidsstrijd is de belangrijkste gebeurtenis in de geschiedenis van de Verenigde Staten (ja ik weet Coupland is een Canadees) opeens 9/11. En 9/11 wordt als een aanval op de Verenigde Staten beschreven. De Europese geschiedenis wemelt van de 9/11 gebeurtenissen. In de VS wordt af en toe een president vermoord, maar Delaware, Arizona of zelfs Texas hebben zich niet afgescheiden van de VS. In een documentaire over illegalen hoor ik de Amerikanen praten over “our country” als iets dat op een eeuwenlange historie is gebaseerd. Maar de meeste Amerikanen zijn de afgelopen honderd jaar naar het land geemigreerd.
Coupland:
Als er een electriciteitsstoring is zingen we liedjes, maar zodra er weer electriciteit is, vernevelen we weer.
Zo is het ook tijdens deze vakantie. Er is bijvoorbeeld geen televisie. Je merkt dat je makkelijker een boek leest en meer met elkaar kletst, en je veel vrijer voelt dan wanneer dat blauwe oog zijn aandacht opeist. Het lijkt als bij het stoppen met drank of met roken: een TV verslaving zit in je dagelijkse stramien, en er is een paradigmaverschuiving nodig om er van af te komen.
Over legacy: even verderop lees ik dat Palo Alto 100 jaar oud is. I rest my case.
Via Seth Godin’s podcast. He called The Creativity Leap “even better” then his own, at that time not yet published book The Practice.
The Creativity Leap is about activating the creative process in individuals and in organizations, and how creativity can transform people and organizations.
Invest in hobbies. Learn new things, cultivating a childlike, open outlook.
Seek out ideas from outside your normal world.
Creative ideas are formed during daydreaming, during doing nothing. On the other hand: practice makes perfect, without a lot of practice there is no mastery.
Learn to ask better questions. Start with “big picture” questions and then descend to specific questions.
Open-source collaboration and informal structures lead to cross-pollination and better solutions.
Research leads to better questions.
Practice improvisation and out-of-the-box thinking.
Have explicit attention to intuition; intuition is also a data point.
Work in communities.
Facilitate hybrid thinking; combine tech and artistic thinking, analog and digital.
Reuse, remix what is already there.
Make things within the constraints that are there. Creativity works best within constraints.
Get out of your brain. Look at yourself and things from a different angle. Get messy. Combine deep specialization with broad experience. Combine rationality with ambiguity. Combine a tight organization with a loose network organization.
Drift.
I think it was Tim Ferriss’ podcast episode with Richard Koch that put me on Richard Koch’s trail. First I read The 80/20 Principle, then bought Unreasonabe Success.
In the book, Koch describes the wisdom he has extracted from the lives of amazing people such as Nelson Mandela, Bob Dylan, Winston Churchill, Jeff Bezos, Albert Einstein, Victor Frankl, Leonardo Da Vinci, and others. Including, of course, Bill Bain and Bruce Henderson. Who. Bill Bain and Bruce Henderson, former Koch bosses at Bain and company and BCG, respectively. Of course, it is totally out of place in this list, but let’s just say this is Koch’s tribute to his former work
From the lives of the greats, Koch has identified 9 milestones on the road to success. These landmarks form the backbone of this book. Koch describes the landmarks and illustrates them in a highly entertaining way with stories about the greats of this world.
These are the landmarks that Koch identifies.
Self-belief. The courage to get started. Related to self-doubt. Self-doubt strengthens self-confidence.
Olympic expectations. Think big, think huge. Set expectations much higher than normal. Visualize that you are a great achiever, making success much more likely.
Transforming experiences. Learn unusual things from unusual experiences. The conventional path will not lead to unreasonable success. Special experiences do. Develop these experiences.
Breakthrough achievements are mostly innovative, sometimes strategic achievements. Combine extreme determination with extreme flexibility. Be innovative and laughably ambitious, and your ideas come from the soul.
Make your own trail, create your own segment, Invent a new field, narrow that field, and develop a unique philosophy.
Find and drive your personal vehicle. Jump on a major current and stand out. Or create your own vehicle. We would call this a platform these days, I guess.
Thrive on setbacks. Be anti-fragile. Find risks and actions. No actions, no learning, no improvement. Reframe disasters and setbacks.
Acquire unique intuition. Intuition is unique when it is important, original, unproven, imaginative, and based on deep knowledge. Where is your opinion that most others disagree with? (forgot who said that – was it Peter Thiel?)
Distort reality. Apply extreme optimism and determination. Inspire others.
Some quick notes on the book Company of One by Paul Jarvis.
Book is about staying small in business, and keep having fun doing it. It stead of growing to a monstrous bureaucratic organization, driven by shareholder value.
Companies of one have a clear sense of purpose, are more flexible, can change quickly, can give employees more autonomy and can have more focus.
Make customer relationships more important than customer growth (numbers).
Passion is overrated. Is a side effect of mastery, not the other way around.
Quirky product are not a problem. It distinguishes and provides focus.
More focus on customer success.
Teach everything you know.
Give away ideas.
Trust by proxy – referrals.
Launch quickly, and often.
Build a community.