productivity

Newsletter: We crave irreality

August 11, 2017 By Wells Baum 6 Comments

Give the drummer some! Below are some interesting reads in creativity, culture, and tech from this week. Listen to the track ‘Glue' from Belfast-based electronica duo Bicep after the jump.

web gems

1. The actor turned painter/sculptor, Jim Carrey, makes art as a form of catharsis in order to bring some color to his life. His work is impressive. As he puts it in the video, “artists make models of their inner life.” Watch Jim Carrey: I Need color.
2. “Museums shouldn’t be trending! They should set trends,” says the former Met director Philippe de Montebello. Great read on How the Metropolitan Museum of Art Can Reclaim Its Glory in the age of cell phone screen irreality.
3. “Analysts warned of several metric tons of dopamine and cortisol careening through the global economy.” This business piece made me laugh.
4. The internet seems to be part of the air, ubiquitous and invisible. But what if you could get closer to the servers and cooling fans and take a listen? Explore What The Internet Sounds Like.
5. Facebook is surveillance, and we give Big Brother the benefit of the doubt in selling our information to marketers in exchange for the ease of communication with so-called ‘friends.’ Thoughts?

Thought of the week

“Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.” — Steven Pressfield, The War Of Art

New track on loop

Bicep – Glue

Digging in the crates

Bullion – Caroline, No

Thanks for reading. Have a great weekend!

Wells Baum (@bombtune)

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The internet could save your life

August 6, 2017 By Wells Baum 3 Comments

The internet could save your life because it allows you to skip the process of being picked. Anyone can be an author, musician, photographer without waiting to partner up with a label or a distributor.

Standing out in a sea of DIY artists is the real challenge. Ryan Holiday argues that most people should not publish a book. But why not?

The internet encourages possibility and weirdness.

Your work, even if you're a so-called ‘amafessional,' is doing nothing to get in the way of die-hard professionals who make a living off their art. Just because your creations don't belong in the Louvre shouldn't hold you back from showing others what you made. The market generally favors the marketing budgets anyway.

Mediocrity never hurt anybody. If you really want to go pro, you'll spend the extra time to improve and seek the feedback that makes you better. Everything good comes from practice, trial and error, allowing your creativity to pour and shimmer.

Remember, Van Gogh only sold one painting in his lifetime, and to his brother. With a leap of faith, casual work can turn into your most important work and stand the test of time.

Newsletter: Take the stairs 👣

August 4, 2017 By Wells Baum 4 Comments

Happy Friday! Below are some of the interesting reads in creativity, culture, and tech I recently discovered. Composer Kara-Lis Coverdale ‘Grafts' is this tune of the week.

web gems

1. 105-year-old Japanese doctor Shigeaki Hinohara shared his six tips for a healthy life before he passed away in July.

‘6 tips for a healthy life' (in summary):

Retire late (very late)
Watch your weight
Have fun
Share what you know
Don’t worry about material possessions
Take the stairs

2. Perhaps one of the biggest issues of our time is the ability to stay focused in the age of distraction. NPR's Hidden Brain interviews computer scientist Cal Newport on the value of deep work.

3. Can we improve our craft over time? The Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai(1760-1849) seemed to think so. Read his story about the importance of persistence. 🌊

4. External reflection is what philosopher and sociologist Charles Horton Cooley called ‘The Looking Glass Self’ theory. “I imagine your mind, and especially what your mind thinks about my mind, and what your mind thinks about what my mind thinks about your mind.” Watch Jason Silva break it down.

5. I’m reading 1984 even though today’s politics and culture – the fusion of controlled democracy combined with screen culture — seem to be more like Brave New World. Writes Shadi Hamid: “we are now condemned to live in exciting times.”

Thought of the week

“Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life.” — Jerzy Gregorek

New track on loop

Kara-Lis Coverdale – Grafts

Digging in the crates

Calibre – Manchester Nights

Thanks for reading. Have a great weekend!

Wells Baum (@bombtune)

This is my daily collection of interesting reads and new music. I spend a lot of time digging the web for cool stuff and remixing them here. If you dig the blog, please consider making a donation or buying a book. A cup of coffee to helping out with hosting goes a long way.

Working against attention residue

August 1, 2017 By Wells Baum 7 Comments

Continuous partial attention fragments our mind and impedes deep thought, which is at the core of doing meaningful work. #gif — gif via The Daily Dot

Going to work to answer emails won't make you a better emailer, just as another five minutes on Twitter won't improve your social networking game. Email, Twitter, and incoming messages drain our cognitive fitness.

Continuous partial attention fragments our mind and impedes deep thought, which is at the core of doing meaningful work.

How are we alive if all we do is process tasks?

Digital knowledge work seems to be typing into little boxes all day. We confuse distraction with busyness.

If we are the CEO of us, perhaps we need better focus engines to keep our eyes on the donut and not the donut hole.

Listen to You 2.0: The Value Of ‘Deep Work' In An Age Of Distraction

gif via The Daily Dot

A studio state of mind

July 31, 2017 By Wells Baum 1 Comment

The studio satisfies the residue of attention.

It is a room with a view, one that faces up to the resistance, and compels us to push on with god-willing persistence.

But the studio can be anywhere. It is mobile, a canvass in hand, the imagination at play, anything that cultivates attention for periods at a time.

Deep work requires periods of focus and habitual disconnection.

We develop ideas by doing something — taking deliberate breaks — to discover new ideas by doing nothing.

Discovery begs to be lived out, beyond the studio and into the open space.

Newsletter: Reality is too sober

July 28, 2017 By Wells Baum 4 Comments

Below are some interesting reads I collected throughout the week about arts & culture, philosophy & productivity, social media & tech. Peep the new tune from Four Tet after the jump.

web gems

“I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” The Top five regrets of the dying are essential lessons for those looking to reprioritize their life.
We were in high spirits the night until we had to shed the release of toxins the morning after. To free ourselves from the grip of a hangover, we mourn like blues musicians, “The blues is played to get rid of the blues,” and then we poison ourselves all over again. Reality is too sober.
How do we measure GDP when robots and AI take all the jobs? “The computers are not in the productivity statistics precisely because they are so powerful.” Productivity growth is irrelevant.
How do we develop better intuition? Take a page from chemists. Keep tabs on the obvious and learn from other fields and disciplines. As scientist Robert Oppenheimer once put it: “Tea is where we explain to each other what we don’t understand.”
Give the drummer some: Watch birds modify sticks and seedpods to make homemade drums. Their beats “could be a clue to understanding the evolution of music.”

New Track on loop

Four Tet Two – Thousand And Seventeen

Digging in the crates

Red Astaire – Love to Angie

Thought of the week

“Never trust the artist. Trust the tale.” – D. H. Lawrence

Thanks for reading. Have a great weekend!

Wells Baum (@bombtune)