Category: life
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Happiness is a Choice You Make
Journalist John Leland spent a year learning life lessons from the 'oldest old' (aged 85+) for his book Happiness Is a Choice You Make: Lessons from a Year Among the Oldest Old. There were some deceptively simple findings (including the importance of gratitude, strong relationships, and purpose) but I particularly liked this one, about the difference…
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Beating Burnout
I have to admit to being terrible at creating and protecting space for myself in amongst the every day work schedule. It's one of the things I regularly fail at. So there was lots to take from this episode of the EatSleepWorkRepeat podcast (from friend of ODF Bruce Daisley). There were a couple of things…
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Three Deaths, and the Afterlife
“There are three deaths: the first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.” I liked this thought about afterlife, described by Austin Kleon and taken from…
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Shipped in 2017
Every year around now I write up a kind of end of year review of what I've been up to professionally over the last 12 months. I do it simply as a way of taking a step back and looking at the patterns of what's been going on, an opportunity to look at the bigger…
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Creativity vs Productivity
Jason Kottke had a thought-provoking post about how a focus on productivity and optimising our time might actually be harmful to creating the kind of space we need to allow our minds to wonder, to play and experiment, and to take those big leaps forward. His post was stimulated by a reflection that Cory Doctorow…
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Ikigai
'The Japanese concept for…' feels bit like 'The German word for…' but that aside I've always really liked the Japanese concept of Ikigai, which means 'reason for being'. This WEF piece about the concept got some Twitter love earlier this week and reminded me of it. In Japanese culture, everyone has an Ikigai. Finding it can require a lengthy…
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The Best Career Advice
From (Dilbert creator) Scott Adams, quoted in Tools of Titans: 'If you want an average, successful life, it doesn't take much planning. Just stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths: 1) Become the best at one specific thing…
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The Purpose of Life
'Ironically enough, when you make peace with the fact that the purpose of life is not happiness, but rather experience and growth, happiness comes as a natural byproduct. When you are not seeking it as the objective, it will find its way to you' I can't find the original source of this quote that Tom…