Ryan Holiday condenses the wisdom of stoics into a short manual for living. Again. Previous work by Ryan Holiday (such as Ego Is The Enemy) is themed around specific concepts, which provide some continuity during the reading experience. This latest addition to the collection follows a different hierarchy. The core idea is that stillness is a missing ingredient in many people’s lives today. This core is examined through 3 lenses – mind, soul and body....
I’ve started a daily planning routine with a simple 2020 planner. One page per day. One line per half-hour from 8-21:30. So far it’s carried several tangible benefits with it. I now have a place to log my daily mobility practice, so I feel a sense of continuous achievement and a “streak” of performance over time. I’ve got a place to keep track of grease-the-groove movements, which at the moment is dedicated to pull-ups....
“Herding Tigers” is Todd Henry’s playbook for being the leader that creative people need. Herding tigers because herding cats doesn’t adequately convey the feeling of leading a creative team. Lulz. Nice one, Todd. Apart from the intro (How to draw Darth Vader), the book is split into two sections, one for mindset and one for mechanics. It’s a clean split between approaching the task, and specific tactics. The book is very much an attempt to roll up all sorts of good little nuggets harvested from many sources....
One of the most costly and intensive mental operations anyone performs daily is task switching. It’s as though a brain just isn’t geared for clearing its RAM to make space for a new process. Instead, it gets stuck trying to compute the new task using some ancient page file mechanism, while maintaining the previous task in the RAM. There are a few scenarios that can play out when switching. I can switch perfectly (100%), get into the new mindspace, and start work....
Ed Catmull shares the story of his journey into Pixar leadership, and the principles he believes has made Pixar and Disney able to capitalise on the opportunities they’ve come across. Catmull seeks to make a lasting impression of the principles by delivering them in story, instead of as just a list of tips (although the afterword does contain said list of tips, to serve as reminders – a cheat sheet to revisit for bite-sized Ed wisdom in the future)....