Derek Sivers’ Hell Yeah or No: a collection of counterpoints

Get on on Derek Sivers‘ great mailing list. Last week through this list he offered me the opportunity to buy his accidentally published book

Derek Sivers

“Hell Yeah or No“. I took the bait.

The saying “Hell Yeah or No” has become one of Derek’s more famous expressions, originating from the book Anything You Want.

The book Hell Yeah or No is a collection and rework of a number of Derek’s blog posts.One chapter in the book describes best what Derek is about.

My public writing is a counterpoint meant to complement the popular point.

Many articles in the book make you think “Mmm… yeah – that’s a good point of view too”.

A couple of week ago I purchased his other new book Your Music and People. Did not find room to read it yet. But expectations are up. 

Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson

The world was too big, even for the huge talents of Leonardo Da Vinco Walter Isaacson wrote a biography of one of the world’s biggest geniuses. 

Da Vinci was a strange guy. He was extremely curious. So curious, that he hard a hard time finishing things. Always on the way to the next thing, and many other things at the same time. 

He didn’t make things easy for himself. He was interested in so many things: painting, drawing, sculpture, engineering, science, urban design, biology, anatomy, physics. The list goes on. 

What also did not help him was his perfectionism. If it couldn’t be perfect, he lost interest, or kept on improving forever. The Mona Lisa was a life-time’s work. He carried it around for decades, constantly improving it. A huge wall fresco in Florence, The Battle of Anghiari, he abandoned because he could not produce it the way he wanted. The invention was more important to him than the execution, improving more important than delivering. He had many book ideas, but finished none. 

But this immense breadth of interests and his doggedness is also the core of his genius. He invented things that others could not see. He combined knowledge that was not combined before. He approached art with a scientific approach. He made anatomic drawings with artistic quality. He wanted to know everything about anything. Isaacsons calls him the personification of the universal mind.

In the last chapter Isaacson lists the lesson we can learn from Da Vinci’s life. (Da Vinci was a keen list-maker himself.)

Be curious, relentlessly curious.

Seek knowledge for its own sake.

Retain a childlike sense of wonder.

Observe.

Start with the details.

See things unseen.

Go down rabbit holes.

Get distracted.

Respect facts.

Procrastinate.

Let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Think visually.

Avoid silos.

Let your reach exceed your grasp.

Indulge fantasy.

Create for yourself, not just for patrons.

Collaborate.

Make lists.

Take notes, on paper.

Be open to mystery.

A good article that summarizes the lessons, is this: https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2018/05/20-life-lessons-leonardo-da-vinci/

Some of these lessons, when applied undisciplined (like Da Vinci), can lead to the perfectionism and chronic inability to ship we have seen in Leonardo’s life. Despite his extreme talents, the world was too big, even for Leonardo Da Vinci.

Max, Micha & the Tet Offensive by Johan Harstad

In Max, Micha & het Tet Offensive, Johan Harstad writes about the confusing lives of a Norwegian family that migrates to the USA. The family falls apart while they are trying to re-establish their lives in their new country, they find each other, drift away again, and come back again.

Harstad’s style is very detailed, he uses very long sentences that nevertheless read like a roller-coaster ride. He drags the reader through the youth of the Norwegians and their friends, their dwellings and their unfulfilled dreams in the US, in Vietnam, Canada.

The art world in the 80s and 90s is part of the scene – Max is a stage director, his girl friend Mischa a talented painter.

SOnix Youth somehow plays an important role in the book. Through never very exploicit, Harstad refers a number of times to Kim Gordon and Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation album. Kim Gordon visits one of the first exhibitions of Mischa, and promises to buy a large realistic painting of a refrigerator (probably a reference to their album Washing Machine).

In the back of the book a song text from Sonic Youth is quoted.

It’s an anthem in a vacuum on a hyperstation
Day dreaming days in a daydream nation

4

Photographers’ Sketchbooks

Yesterday I wrote about Bryan Formhals. He is the co-author of Photographers’ Sketchbooks. The book describes and shows how artists, not just photographers as the title suggests, create, try out, design, figure out, make notes, iterate, channel their creative endeavors. The books features Roger Ballen, Rob Hornstra, Peter van Agtmael, and many others.

Bomb of inspiration.

A Piece of Art – podcast

Abbi Jacobson must be a tireless centipede.  Amongst all the things she does, she hosted the podcast A Piece of Work, about modern art. The Moma and the podcasting company WNYC Studios produced this fantastic series. 

Wikipedia (May 2020) tells us Jacobson is planning to do another series. Let it come.

Rick Pastoor – Grip

Rick Pastoor worked as IT lead at Blendle and taught himself to work very efficient. He wrote about his working methods in Grip. Soon to be published in English. Pastoor combine various best practices for efficient working into a very practical and systematic working manner.

Put everything you are going to work on in your calendar. Not just appointments, also your focused work.

Select activities that go in your calendar on the basis of priority, urgency, focus.

Important things first.

Do not switch too much between creative work and things like meetings abnd calls. Do not do many things at the same time.

Drop all tasks you think of in a list. Use an app like Todoist or some other way to easily save things to do or reminders. Categorize the items in the list.

Execute bigger things in small steps. Set intermediate goals, so you get the satisfaction of achieving things.

Do not email all the time but block time for batch processing of email. Apply David Allen’s Getting Things Done method for handling your emails.

Block each week a half hour for cleaning your task list and agenda.Do a weekly review. Create a checklist for the review.

Part 2 of the book is called Grip on Your Year, and is about planning yearly goals and how to achieve these.

What drives you, what is your passion, mission, skills cycle.

Look for an accountability partner that help help you achieve goals and keep you an the right path.

Part 3 of the book goes even wider and is called Grip on your Life.

Set big goals, but little steps to achieve them. Develop habits.
Apply Seinfeld’s rule: don’t break the chain.

Listen and ask advice.

Have different advisors for different perspectives of your life (personal, business, specific issues, …).

Get better at strategic thinking:

  • Understand the issue at hand.
  • Analyse what other before you did.
  • Think up alternatives.
  • Don’t deceive yourself. Be aware of your prejudices, preoccupations and preferences.

Think even bigger than think big.

Where Cal Newport advocates productivity through refraining from the use of digital devices, Rick Pastoor puts the digital tools to his advantage and helps us finding out how to use the tools efficiently.

Maria Popova’s Brainpickings

Brainpickings, the beautifully intense mind sprout by Maria Popova. She write about books, philosophy, writers, thinking, tenderness, music, art, love, the beauty of life, and more I can safely say.

Maria Popova: why we need an antidote to the culture of ...

All these beautiful essays…

Started as a simple email list, the site has grown into a monumental achievement showcasing the richness of what the Internet can bring humanity. 

Simple – Ottolenghi’s definition of …

Whether simple applies to the recipes in this book is probably a subjective matter. His list of basic ingredients in the back of the book says a lot: Za’atar, Sumac, Urfa chilli flakes, Ground cardamom (ok then), Pomegranate molasses, Tahini (soi), Rose harissa, Dried barberries, Black garlic, Preserved lemons. It reads like a poem but probably surpasses “simple” for many a cook.

But  the dishes presented in the book are wonderfully original an dtasty, and  the book is beautifully illustrated.

Along with Harold McGee’s Keys to Good Cooking and Ottolenghi’s Plenty probably the new classics of cooking.