In short, we have to be extroverts. And if we’re not extroverts, we have to learn to pass as extroverts, at least convincingly enough so that we won’t be regarded as weird or anti-social or “too much in our heads”. (God forbid that you be, you know, an intellectual.) We also have to pretend that many of the real extroverts, as they dominate the conversation and confidently hold forth with their faulty opinions, who will talk without thinking and rarely think to listen, don’t annoy us.
I suspect that the people who say I’m dystopian must be living completely sheltered and fortunate lives.
When I’m writing a book I get up at seven. I check my e-mail and do Internet ablutions, as we do these days. I have a cup of coffee. Three days a week, I go to Pilates and am back by ten or eleven. Then I sit down and try to write. If absolutely nothing is happening, I’ll give myself permission to mow the lawn.
don’t buy a jetback, build a peer2peer jetpack factory
I say “it made me” but I made it, too. You get the power by using it. Nobody confers it on you.
But how do you optimize for creating?
Cease input – turn your cellphone off, stop reading every stupid blog post about productivity, just stop.
Get off the popular train – teach yourself not to judge based on anything other than your own view. Stop listening to the mainstream radio or to popular music channels. Try college radio. Browse an actual bookstore for books rather than the Suggested for You or Popular sections of some website. Stop only reading popular blogs.
Have a system for capturing ideas - no matter where you are – a paper notebook, your phone, whatever. You think it you capture it. When you have an idea, any type, any quality, record it without judgment. Separate idea generation and filtering into two phases.
Put some structure around making things – give yourself some time to write, to record, to photograph, to think. Schedule a lunch break to just sit and think.
Change your mind about your mind – overcome common mental barriers to making things.
If you quiet your mind and allow yourself to stop judging everything you will find that you have more potential for innovation (at work, in the kitchen, in the garage, in the bathroom [this just got weird - bringing it back], with your hobbies, with your thoughts) than you thought before. You were using the same brutal quality filter on yourself that you used on viral videos, talk radio, and blog posts. You deserve better.
As William Gibson remarked, if he’d tried to sell “Zero History” in 1985 (a novel set in 2001), the only part of that mainstream-ish novel that would really cause his editor to question his sanity would be the collapse of the USSR.
you need to start thinking about all of your purchases as LONG-TERM events, not short-term ones. That means each decision should be carried forward in your mind for at least 10 years, rather than just until your next paycheck.
This file contains the individual troubleshooting tools and help files. It does not contain non-troubleshooting tools like the BSOD Screen Saver or NotMyFault.
Naturally, the occurrence of a record early-season snow storm will lead to cries of “what happened to global warming?” Global warming theory does predict that we should see a decrease in early-season and late season snow as the climate warms, since it will not be cold enough to snow. However, the climate models also predict that we may see an increase in the intensity of the strongest winter storms, like the Nor’easter that dumped the record October snows over the Northeast on Saturday, and it is important to realize that snow is not the same thing as cold.
