Jason Shen
@jasonshen
Exec coach helping founders and creative leaders rebound and reinvent so they do more of what matters most.
Jason Shen
In using standards, it is important to ask for precedents. “Have you ever done this before?” and “Have you ever made an exception?” should be part of your everyday vocabulary.
Stuart Diamond • Getting More
Negotiation and Getting Your Way
Think like a judge when negotiating—look for precedents and exceptions
The iterative process of recording a great track — patience, good ear, encouragement
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
The ostrich really needed a carrot
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.
This is an example of what’s called a “divergence test” (as opposed to a test like the Raven’s, which asks you to sort through a list of possibilities and converge on the right answer). It requires you to use your imagination and take your mind in as many different directions as possible. With a divergence test, obviously there isn’t a single right
... See moreMalcolm Gladwell • Outliers
Some people are stronger at converging than diverging
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
... See moreErik Malinowski • Betaball
Sometimes a single summer you can learn a skill that sets you up for a lifetime
If you’re totally lost on what to focus on getting better at, focus on braiding.
Narrative-style writing (fiction and nonfiction) has four major components:
And you... See more
Narrative-style writing (fiction and nonfiction) has four major components:
- Action: Things happening
- Dialogue: What people are saying
- Description: The environment around the people and events
- Interiority: The characters internal reactions to the place and action
And you... See more
On Writing Better: 43 Things I Learned from My Insane 2 Years of Study
Nat Eliason on how to improve your narrative-style writing
Dean Simonton, a psychologist, has spent his career studying creative productivity. He has found that even creative geniuses, what some may call David Guetta, have a hard time recognizing when they have a hit. Simonton spent some time studying Beethoven and spoke about him,
“Beethoven’s own favorites among his symphonies, sonatas, and quartets are... See more
“Beethoven’s own favorites among his symphonies, sonatas, and quartets are... See more
You truly never know