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 fact, people with extreme traits can often structure their lives in such a way that they can trade on the ways they’re exceptional, leaving no persistent reason to address some particular deficit they have. And, generally, people are savvy enough to hide their dysfunction. People will disappoint you, eventually.
Sasha Chapin • Some Advice Gathered From People Smarter Than Me
people hide weaknesses
A while ago I got interested in being more agentic. Emmett Shear tweeted that it was teachable. He would train people by prompting them with certain questions. I gathered those questions and put them into a flow chart that I go through to problem-solve: https://t.co/kM0MID8bT5 https://t.co/M8adOBcwL5
Josh is making animated videosx.comA decent if very explicit flow chart on how to be more high agency
This is the ultimate trapdoor in the hall of fame; to become a prisoner of one's own persona. The desire for recognition in an increasingly atomized world lures us to be who strangers wish us to be. And with personal development so arduous and lonely, there is ease and comfort in crowdsourcing your identity. But amid such temptations, it's worth... See more
Gurwinder • The Perils of Audience Capture
You can’t escape work
You can escape the employment system. But if you think you’ve left work behind there will be a reckoning
The desire to contribute is human.
Paul Millerdx.comPaul Millerd on the need for human contribution
Second, because genius isn’t linear . You can’t create something world-changing by simply following steps 1 through 10. You need chaos. You need disorder. But it has to be tethered chaos 1 —chaos that’s guided by a deep sense of purpose and vision. It’s about engaging with the unknown while keeping one foot grounded in reality.
Lane Watson • Critical Creative Genius at the Intersection of Order, Disorder, and Chaos
20 years isn’t that long, right? 😩 #gaminginyour30s #gtavicecity @Retro Games Plus @Noah Grossman #gta #gaming #funny #comedy #humor #gamersoftiktok
tiktok.comWhen the game is more retro than the setting
Picking a few hits requires a tolerance for many bad ideas, mediocre ideas, and even good ideas cursed with bad timing. Above all, it requires a business model that supports the inevitability that most new things fail; the most promising ideas often attract a chorus of skeptics; and one big hit can pay for a thousand flops.
Derek Thompson • Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction
hits driven businesses are unintuitive
Other studies published in 2006 and 2009 showed something similar—that people who read a lot of fiction tend to be better at empathizing with others (even after the researchers had accounted for the potential bias that people with greater empathetic tendencies may prefer to read novels). And, in 2013, an influential study published in Science found... See more
Ceridwen Dovey • Can Reading Make You Happier? | the New Yorker
Evidence that reading makes you more empathic