Jason Shen
@jasonshen
Exec coach helping founders and creative leaders rebound and reinvent so they do more of what matters most.
Jason Shen
2 Go to parties. You can't even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues.
from Black Swan author's rules for living - Boing Boing
Nassim Taleb on leveraging serendipity of social gatherings
- IF A GREAT MUSICIAN PLAYS GREAT MUSIC BUT NO ONE HEARS . . . WAS HE REALLY ANY GOOD?
It’s an old epistemological debate, older, actually, than the koan about the tree in the forest. Plato weighed in on it, and philosophers for two millennia afterward: What is beauty? Is it a measurable fact (Gottfried Leibniz), or merely an opinion (David Hume), or ... See morefrom Pearls Before Breakfast: Can one of the nation’s great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let’s find out.
- Don't Edit Before You're Done with a Draft
On that note, don't waste time editing ANYTHING -- not even a misspelled word -- until you're done with a full draft.
When I finished the first draft it was about 100,000 words. The first thing I did was go back to the beginning and delete the first 30,000 of them. They were boring and unnecessary but I had... See morefrom On Writing Better: 43 Things I Learned from My Insane 2 Years of Study
Bold advice to just put everything on the page before any editing
- it was my daughter’s love that freed me from my delusions of grandeur. It liberated me from the tyranny of trying to prove myself. Since her birth, I feel calmer and more secure. I have a sense of security I haven’t felt since I was a young child, living with parents who unconditionally loved me. Now, I care less about what other people think of me... See more
Meaning & satisfaction is often found in doing doing what is needed
- Human labor will be in the "Safe Zone" in the social, unstructured environments where it will be hard to train an AI to train pets, offer physical therapy, and style someone's hair and face.
- Meanwhile, structured, asocial work is most easily replaced, such as fast food cooks, garment factory workers, and cashiers, he calls this the "Danger Zone"
- The
from 131: How to Be Human in the Age of Generative AI by Jason Shen
You probably aren’t—and don’t want to appear in any case—perfect. As long as the quirks you display are irrelevant to the core of your reputation and why people select you—in the case of Summers, for his brilliance in the field of economics—the flaws and foibles can actually strengthen people’s commitment to you.
from Power: Why Some People Have It—and Others Don't by Jeffrey Pfeffer
Accentuate certain flaws to underscore your strengths
In the summer of 2004, Dell, a full two years retired from the league, was fully available to teach his eldest son the ways of the jump shot. Ground zero was the half-court adjacent to their Charlotte home, and the two spent hours each day forging a new kind of jumper—a more traditional style that depended on the top-of-the-jump wrist flick most NB
... See morefrom Betaball by Erik Malinowski
Sometimes a single summer you can learn a skill that sets you up for a lifetime
- Many people who are talented in their various fields have access to insight they can’t share with others. They simply see something we can’t. They try to describe it—picture any Paris Review interview—and often hearing them talk about their process is interesting and informative. But they’re unable to describe the core thing—what gives them the sto... See more
from inarticulable knowledge by Ava
We often struggle to articulate what we are really good at
- Bell has played, literally, before crowned heads of Europe. Why the anxiety at the Washington Metro?
"When you play for ticket-holders," Bell explains, "you are already validated. I have no sense that I need to be accepted. I'm already accepted. Here, there was this thought: What if they don't like me? What if they resent my presence . . ."from Pearls Before Breakfast: Can one of the nation’s great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let’s find out.