Jason Shen
@jasonshen
Exec coach helping founders and creative leaders rebound and reinvent so they do more of what matters most.
Jason Shen
twelve years a slave, from his birth, in Dallas County, Alabama, in 1853 or so, until Union cavalry swept through the cotton plantation where he was owned, in 1865. Sixty-four years later, in 1939, homeless on the streets of Montgomery, he became an extraordinary artist, making magnetically beautiful, dramatic, and utterly original drawings on... See more
The Utterly Original Bill Traylor
Outlier Exemplars and Creativity
Bill Traylor, the ultimate late bloomer
In 2018, reeling from simultaneous breakups with a co-founder and a girlfriend, Zerfas signed up for a 10-day silent meditation retreat. “I quickly learned things could get worse,” he tells the room at Applegate with a grim laugh. After eight days of migraines, he changed techniques and stumbled into the most euphoric experience he’d had in a year.... See more
Naina Bajekal • My Week at the Buzzy Meditation Retreat That Promises Bliss on Demand
When you find LOTR characters at a hockey game
What it’s like to be fully dialed in to your role
A half-minute later, Bell got his first donation. A woman threw in a buck and scooted off. It was not until six minutes into the performance that someone actually stood against a wall, and listened.
Things never got much better. In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and... See more
Things never got much better. In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and... See more
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.
Joshua Bell’s performance in the Metro
Chasing scale seems to be a kind of early life affliction. The more you chase it, the bigger the thing you chase gets. Perhaps it’s a natural desire to see how important we can be or at least how important our creations can be to the world (and hence how important we can be by proxy …). A desire to take on a seemingly insurmountable challenge, perhaps a noble one (though not always), and see if we can conquer it.
Second, I'm trying to create content that is more human and expressive. This is why I've been leaning into video—it's much easier to show emotion and create a deeper bond with your audience.