Summarize Posts

sumarize

Most peo­ple write, and assume peo­ple care.

It shows humil­ity to sum­ma­rize your book like Seth Godin did in his new book. Peo­ple are unlikely to read more than a few chap­ters of any book they buy, so it’s a great idea to sum­ma­rize the book so that read­ers can decide if a book or a chap­ter is worth the time.

From SVN

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Scripture Memory

galatians220

I’ve been eager to start mem­o­riz­ing scrip­ture regularly—it is so dif­fi­cult for me. My brain wants to com­pre­hend, but not rote learn. So I chose the verse for the week because I already know most of it. But I’m going to begin to prac­tice prac­tic­ing my mem­o­riza­tion skills. You may want to con­sider join­ing me this week in com­mit­ting this great truth to memory.

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Books that can’t be burned

Paper has treated us well the last cou­ple mil­lenia, but it’s got it’s problems.

  • It costs money for each addi­tional page
  • It takes up shelf space
  • It can’t be updated
  • Pic­tures are expen­sive and they can’t move
  • It can’t be searched
  • Every­one thinks they can write (as proved by this chimp-esque blog)
  • And on, and on…

Dig­i­tal will hap­pen, paper & black ink will con­tinue to be a dying busi­ness model, and we may as well enjoy the ride. This video is a day dream, but it’s got stay­ing power—the Kin­dle is a suc­cess, and the book and mag­a­zine indus­try are look­ing for a life raft.

Mag+: The magazine’s dig­i­tal future — Core77.

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A primer on the epicenter of global terrorism.

afghanistan

Read about Jihadis­tan in For­eign Pol­icy.

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How email intervals can save you from insanity

Prob­lem: Email is unre­lent­ing, and when you tend to your inbox—people just reply back to you more quickly. Email will take over your life if you let it. Here’s how I fought back.

Solu­tion: Email Intervals

Step 1: At the begin­ning of the day decide when you’ll check email

I sug­gest that you pick a time in morn­ing and at the end of the day, and stick to only open­ing your inbox at those times. We’ve been trained like lab rats to keep hit­ting the refresh bar, but it’s silly and makes us unproductive.

Step 2: Get a timer

Email inter­vals will require you to sprint through your email for a set period of time. Grab a timer, I sug­gest Min­utes for the OSX dash­board, you can also your a phone.

Step 3: Work like a crazy per­son for 10 minutes

Open your inbox like a horse leav­ing the gate—hus­tle. You will be sur­prised how much email you can get done in the first inter­val. In the first 10 min­utes try to use what ever pro­cess­ing sys­tem you use to tell what is impor­tant, what is trash, and what is good to just file away.

Step 4: Take a two minute break and read a few pages

I find that I clear my mind by read­ing a few pages of a book. It takes me out of the suf­fer­ing tor­ment of email for just long enough to remind myself that if I hurry I can get through my entire inbox and get back to mean­ing­ful work—creating things, meet­ing with peo­ple, plan­ning, build­ing, think­ing, dis­cov­er­ing, invest­ing in relationships…

Step 5: Repeat and then shut down your email program

When you fin­ish your short break, get back to another 10 min­utes of hus­tling through your email. and repeat steps 3 and 4 until you’ve done what you need to.

My find­ings

Most peo­ple rely on email way too much—it’s a good com­mu­ni­ca­tion tool, but it lacks emo­tion, can go on rab­bit trails, and gives peo­ple a sense that they need to include every­one in their con­ver­sa­tion (death by cc:).

Peo­ple learn quickly that if they need you imme­di­ately, they should pick up the phone. A 3 minute phone call or face to face con­ver­sa­tion can clear up a 20 email con­ver­sa­tion, and has the added bonus of build­ing a trust rela­tion­ship with that person.

What do you think?

Let me know what you think of this idea. Will it work for you? What reser­va­tions do you have?

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Solving Problems that aren’t broken

elegant_traffic_light

I’m sure it’s pos­si­ble to build a bet­ter mouse­trap. It’s cer­tainly pos­si­ble to build a bet­ter stop light, as proved by Eko Design. This sim­ple design change could con­ceiv­ably save mil­lions of bar­rels of oil and count­less lives by giv­ing dri­vers more infor­ma­tion about when a light will change from red to green.

One of the painful habits of a designer is to see that every­thing is bro­ken.

Eko: A Traf­fic Light Aug­mented by Progress Bars — infor­ma­tion aes­thet­ics.

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The Politics of Design

Design is a problem-solving activ­ity. It pro­vides a means of clar­i­fy­ing, syn­the­siz­ing, and dra­ma­tiz­ing a word, a pic­ture, a prod­uct, or an event. A seri­ous bar­rier to the real­iza­tion of good design, how­ever, are the lay­ers of man­age­ment inher­ent in any bureau­cratic structure.

via Paul-Rand.com :: The Pol­i­tics of Design.

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Do you care if newspapers die?

americans_dont_care

via Pub­lisher Lays Out Plan to Save News­pa­pers — NYTimes.com.

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You are what you eat

I started the first day of my vaca­tion watch­ing movies, includ­ing this gem—Food inc (streams free on Net­flix). Every­one should watch it to at least have an idea about where their food comes from. I’m not one to jump on every health band wagon—in fact this was my old food philosophy.

Old Phi­los­o­phy:

animals

Ideas to con­sider to improve your health and stew­ard well:

  1. Buy organic or sus­tain­able food.
  2. Go with­out meat once a week.
  3. Read labels—know where your food comes from.
  4. Drink more water, fewer sug­ary beverages.
  5. Sup­port com­pa­nies that treat work­ers, ani­mals, and the envi­ron­ment with respect.

Food, Inc. | TakePart Social Action Net­work: Con­tro­ver­sial Issues, Activism, Envi­ron­men­tal, Human Rights, Polit­i­cal News.

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Dieter Rams is a brilliant designer

Dieter Rams is the indus­trial design genius who steals inspires most Apple prod­ucts. This video is an inter­est­ing inter­view, take a minute to watch it and let us know what you think.

New Dieter Rams Inter­views with Gestal­ten and Design Museum — The Mid-Century Mod­ernist.

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