The image and the human

“The image is one thing and the human being is another. It’s very hard to live up to an image, put it that way. ”
— Elvis Presley

Stop acting like you have a set path

“And therein lies the best career advice I could possibly dispense: just DO things.  Chase after the things that interest you and make you happy.  Stop acting like you have a set path, because you don’t.  No one does.  You shouldn’t be trying to check off the boxes of life; they aren’t real and they were created by other people, not you.  There is no explicit path I’m following, and I’m not walking in anyone else’s footsteps.  I’m making it up as I go.” – Charlie Hoehn, who has had some interesting career moves himself. Roughly approximates what I’ve been learning myself.

My New Year’s media diet

I would like to be more intentional about how I consume media. Here are some thoughts on how I might do that in the coming year.

*Read the Eternities* ([via](http://www.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=3640))

Focus my reading on classical writing, not modern writing

*Books first*

Books are the complete thought meal (Tim Sanders). Films can be good as well, but leave less to the imagination. Video/tv is the least considered and most ephemeral.

*70/20/10 rule*

* Time: 70% pre-1900, 20% 1900s, 10% 2000s
* Media: 70% written word, 20% films, 10% tv/video
* Reading: 70% books, 20% magazines/journal articles, 10% news/opinion

*Balance media with life*

Media should be a relatively small part of life…80% life, 20% media (meta-life)?

*Balance consumption with production*

80% production, 20% consumption?

*Think in the morning, act in the noon, eat in the evening, and sleep at night. – William Blake*

(I read this originally as “read in the evening”, which likely works better for me than Blake, given the miracle of incandescent light).

*Don’t start the day with someone else’s thoughts* ([via](http://www.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=181))

It’s the only chance you’ll have to think your own.

So, what might this look like in practice? All of these 80/20 or 70/20/10 ratios are terrifically arbitrary, but they’re an interesting starting point.

* 16 waking hours each day
* 20% media = 3 hours
* 80% production = 2 hours, 26 minutes
* 20% consumption = 34 minutes

Of those 34 daily minutes:

* 70/20/10 eras = 22 minutes pre-1900s/7 minutes 1900s/3.5 minutes 2000s
* 70/20/10 media = 22 minutes writing/7 minutes film/3.5 minutes tv/videos
* Of the 22 minutes writing: 15 minutes books/5 minutes magazines/journals/2.5 minutes news/opinion/blogs

Now, pre-1900s is really only books, so that would wipe out the entire “writing” allocation, leaving no room for magazines, journals, or opinion, or for anything since 1900. And you wouldn’t really watch video news from any other era than the present, so the 3.5 minutes on the 2000s would be all video news. So some wiggle room is necessary.

Still, the rough daily schedule is something like: 22 minutes reading classic (pre-1900s) books, 7 minutes watching a film, and 3.5 minutes catching up on the news.

That’s not much time! And it’s hard to imagine watching a film 7 minutes each day. So let’s expand it to a two-week scale: 5 hours reading books, 1 1/2 hours watching a film, and 45 minutes catching up on news. That would roughly correspond to 1 300-page book (at a thoughtful rate of 1 page/min) and 1 film every two weeks, and 45 minutes on blogs/news catchup.

The era breakdown is probably best spread out over time, so that you’d tackle one book or movie at a time rather than splitting your attention between several. So at a rate of 26 books per year, you’d have 18 pre-1900s books, 5 from the 1900s, and 2-3 from the 2000s. Your 26 movies, being mostly from the 1900s and 2000s, could be split more evenly, and perhaps given their rapid evolution give half (13) from the 1900s and half from the 2000s. (Having just reviewed my Netflix queue, I’m tempted to give even more emphasis to recent films. Movies from the mid-80s don’t carry the same weight as Plato’s 2000-year-old dialogues).

How would you practice this? It seems important to first have a set of items that you are interested in consuming in the near future. I keep a massive Amazon wishlist of things I’m interested in, so I’ll need to prioritize from that a set of 18 pre-1900s books, 5 1900s books, and 2-3 2000s that I will actually tackle. Same exercise with films from my Netflix queue.

Next is to set aside the time for consuming and producing. A daily time for reading seems right, as does a biweekly time for a film. News or blogs could be done as either a daily check-in (3.5 minutes! What tools would make *that* possible?) or as a biweekly binge (might help prioritize what’s really important). Experimentation is probably necessary here.

Producing is a more nebulous area, but setting aside an hour to write each morning, and perhaps one afternoon a week to film or write something longer, would be a good use of that time. And, similar to consuming, keeping a list of things I’d like to produce–and scheduling them–would make sure I’m ready to go immediately.

So, given that I started with those arbitrary numbers, how does this look?

The first big ratio was “80% life, 20% media (meta-life)”. Is it right to spend a fifth of my waking life on media? Well, the average America watches 5 hours of television each day (almost a third of their waking life), and my combined internet and video consumption is probably at least that much. So slimming down to “just” 20% actually seems like a good first step, and I enjoy books and films enough that I’m happy to start there.

The producing/consuming ratio is the part I’m least clear about. Is producing media really 4 times as important as consuming it? Worth spending 2 1/2 hours a day? How would I even do such a thing? Well, blogging is a part of it, and personal journaling could be considered media production as well. Beyond that, it would be interesting to blend more rich media production, creating video or music on a variety of topics. This is something that is subject to big change given experimentation, however. The thinkers I most respect, however, are tremendously prolific in their writing and filming–even if they are not “professional” writers or filmmakers. So there’s something in this media production craft that seems worthwhile.

And the 20% consumption is not the limit of all media I’ll see. Media is a part of many other parts of life (that other top-level 80%), and if movies, books, or the internet are included in my work or social life I consider that separate. Watching a movie with friends is socializing, not “consuming”. But I hope to be more intentional about the things I personally choose to consume on my own time.

Here’s the schedule I’m going to start with during my sabbatical:

* 1 hour of writing daily
* 30 minutes of book reading daily (~1 book every 2 weeks)
* 5 min blogs & news daily (5 min catchup at the end of the day)
* 1 filmmaking or long writing session each week
* 1 film watching session every 2 weeks

I’ve also separated my media wishlists (Amazon & Netflix) into the appropriate categories:

* [Pre-1900s books](http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/QHCSTDGJP4YE/) (targeting 18/year)
* [1900s books](http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/LTW9WYUFTPQD/) (5/year)
* [2000s books](http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/3P4SAB9E93N0T/) (2-3/year)
* [1900s films](http://www.netflix.com/StrangerLists?prid=264588053&showList=353682) (13/year)
* 2000s films (the rest of my Netflix queue; 13/year)

Thoreau said that we should “be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on [our] attention.” Hopefully my new media diet is an appropriate mix! I’ll check in later with an update…

Bark4Beer

On tv!.

The difference between the main engine and a starter motor

> “The fossil fuel deposits of our Spaceship Earth correspond to our automobile’s storage battery which must be conserved to turn over our main engine’s self-starter. Thereafter, our ‘main engine,’ the life regenerating processes, must operate exclusively on our vast daily energy income from the powers of wind, tide, water, and the direct Sun radiation energy.” – Buckminster Fuller.

I’ve thought similar things about a lot of situations: taking a sabbatical, for instance, isn’t sustainable, but it can recharge the storage battery, and power the setting up of new practices that are sustainable. Booster rockets are another analogy–you can’t use them forever, but they can help you break free of gravity. It’s important that we use fossil fuels, booster rockets, and sabbaticals to set us up for when they’re gone.

Real priorities

“A priority is observed, not manufactured or assigned. Otherwise, it’s necessarily not a priority.” – Merlin Mann. Real priorities are what you are actually doing.

Read not the Times

“We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention. Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.” – Henry David Thoreau, Life Without Principle

Story of the PUMP

Behind the scenes of the development and evolution of the Reebok PUMP shoe, 20 years ago.

Man, I wanted these so bad…also includes a bit on the Bodega “hidden” shoe store in Boston.

Doubt is better than certainty

“I remember once going to a class in yoga where the teacher said that, spirituality speaking, if you believed that you had achieved enlightenment you have merely arrived at your limitation.” – Milton Glaser’s rule #8

When was the last time you had an epiphany while speaking?