> “Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success.” – [Clayton Christensen](http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life/ar/pr).
Another excerpt:
> “It’s easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time. If you give in to “just this once,” based on a marginal cost analysis, as some of my former classmates have done, you’ll regret where you end up. You’ve got to define for yourself what you stand for and draw the line in a safe place.”
That is, addiction in general and information/Internet addiction in particular.
> The world is more addictive than it was 40 years ago. And unless the forms of technological progress that produced these things are subject to different laws than technological progress in general, the world will get more addictive in the next 40 years than it did in the last 40…
> My latest trick is taking long hikes. I used to think running was a better form of exercise than hiking because it took less time. Now the slowness of hiking seems an advantage, because the longer I spend on the trail, the longer I have to think without interruption…
> We’ll increasingly be defined by what we say no to.
The Acceleration of Addictiveness.
Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one
— [Michael Forbes](http://doblog.tumblr.com/post/700149267/educations-purpose-is-to-replace-an-empty-mind)
It’s better to fail with your own vision rather than following another man’s vision.
— [Johan Cruyff](http://doblog.tumblr.com/post/687080110/its-better-to-fail-with-your-own-vision-rather)
I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take a game winning shot….and missed. I have failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed
— [Michael Jordan](http://doblog.tumblr.com/post/700144778/i-have-missed-more-than-9-000-shots-in-my-career)
“To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.”
This exploration of Lincoln’s depression shows a man who, instead of trying to destroy or avoid his mental pain, integrated it and drew the strength to do great and difficult things.
> In his mid-forties the dark soil of Lincoln’s melancholy began to yield fruit. When he threw himself into the fight against the extension of slavery, the same qualities that had long brought him so much trouble played a defining role. The suffering he had endured lent him clarity and conviction, creative skills in the face of adversity, and a faithful humility that helped him guide the nation through its greatest peril…
> Lincoln then took a small Bible from a stand near the sofa and began to read. “A quarter of an hour passed,” Keckley remembered, “and on glancing at the sofa the face of the president seemed more cheerful. The dejected look was gone; in fact, the countenance was lighted up with new resolution and hope. Wanting to see what he was reading, Keckley pretended she had dropped something and went behind where Lincoln was sitting so that she could look over his shoulder. It was the Book of Job…”
> Viewing Lincoln through the lens of his melancholy, we see one cogent explanation: he was always inclined to look at the full truth of a situation, assessing both what could be known and what remained in doubt. When faced with uncertainty he had the patience, endurance, and vigor to stay in that place of tension, and the courage to be alone.
“Creativity is just connecting things…[but] a lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.” – Steve Jobs, 1996
“Futurists perform a quirky, but necessary, task in modern society: we function as the long-range scanners for a species evolved to pay close attention to short-range horizons.” – Jamais Cascio.
Sometimes it feels like you are trapped by your own body–by aches and pains, by sickness, by physical abilities.
But somehow practicing yoga makes it feel like instead of the body’s desires dominating the mind, the mind is able to control the body.
Today I stopped myself from sneezing during yoga by recognizing it was just a false trigger from my body.
I suspect that meditation works similarly, by training the soul to direct the mind instead of the monkey mind trampling the soul. But I’m not quite there yet unfortunately…
[This interview with Eagleman by the Guardian](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/apr/04/david-eagleman-40-afterlives) contains a lot of great bits, many which resonate with my recent thinking. Eagleman is the author of [Sum](http://futuryst.blogspot.com/2009/03/alternative-afterlives.html), which I greatly enjoyed.
> I’m using the afterlife as a backdrop against which to explore the joys and complexities of being human – it turns out that it’s a great lens with which to understand what matters to us.
This is similar to my philosophy on concept design–tell yourself (and others) that this is the “future” experience, when really that’s just a technique to help you think about what you wish things were like today.
> Every time you go into a book store, you find a lot of books written with certainty…I think what a life in science really teaches you is the vastness of our ignorance.
As I get older I feel like I “know” less and less. I always expected it to be the opposite, but this feels right.
> I think the first decade of this century is going to be remembered as a time of extremism. But, as Voltaire said, “uncertainty is an uncomfortable position, but certainty is an absurd position”.
I’ve often said that my job title is designer, but that what I’m paid to do is tolerate uncertainty. It’s uncomfortable and hard to do, but most important projects require a significant period of uncertainty and very few people are willing to endure that.
My new favorite artist. Selected projects include: copyrighting his mind, paintings by trees, a mobile ringtone based on John Cage’s 4’33”, a travel documentary for houseplants, and an antimatter bank.
That, folks, is divergent thinking.
Ambition and naivete always seem to go together; it seems like a good idea to always be a novice at something, but to be aware of it.