Ben Nesvig's Blog, page 4

Focus on the process not the goal

Read enough books and everything starts blurring together. I rarely recognize a good point in a book that I haven’t seen some version of before in another book.

Stumbling on the video below reminded me of the book Zen and the Art of Archery where the author learns the same lesson of focusing on the process, not the goal.

The advice in the book also reminded me of something Viktor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning:

“Don’t aim at success-the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more...

Stop Trying So Hard

This winter has been a mess, especially wednesday two weeks ago. Overnight, the clouds vomited a pile of snow onto Minnesota that made driving conditions an adventure. Against my better judgement, I chose to get coffee over lunch. I knew I would risk losing my parking space and have to drive through the unplowed Minneapolis streets, but the $2 mocha (today only!) would be worth it.

Pulling into the tiny unplowed parking lot, I pause as a police officer is reversing out of what is soon to be th...

Happy Groundhog Day

Groundhog Day is one of my favorite movies. I love the movie so much I recently read the book How To Write Groundhog Day by Danny Rubin.

In the book he sums up the philosophy behind why I love the movie (besides the fact that Bill Murray is in it):

The absolutely worst day of Phil’s life took place under the exact same conditions as the absolutely best day of Phil’s life. The best day and the worst day were the same day. In fact, a whole universe of experiences proved to be possible on this sin...

The Gap by Ira Glass

I’ve seen a few variations of this video, but this version of “The Gap” by Ira Glass is the best one I’ve seen.

THE GAP by Ira Glass from frohlocke on Vimeo.

Why I Read Books

Given that I read, on average, over one book a week, you’d think I’d have analyzed why I read so much by now. There’s the whole “wanting to feel smarter” thing, but that’s mostly on the surface. There’s an answer beneath that.

The other night I was raving to my wife about meatloaf and how it’s an under appreciated food. Rarely can you combine so many prominent ingredients and produce something so delicious and versatile. It’s very rare that something can be great on its own, but also just as g...

Musings on Movies, Emotion, and Storytelling

I feel strange admitting this, but one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time is a story of a man falling in love with a computer. During the movie I kept wondering if my wife had secretly been slipping estrogen pills into my food. How else could you explain the range of emotions that this robot of a man went through? feeling of the range of emotions about a guy who falls in love with his operating system?

Only after the movie did I realize that the director and writer also directed anoth...

27 Things I Learned In Year 27

Below are a few things I learned in my 27th year of life. It’s an incomplete list and mostly off the top of my head. I read 80 books in the last year and most of what I learned is sitting dormant in my head until something triggers it.

1. Fear and worry are two different things.

Fear is a signal from your environment that things aren’t right. Worry is manufactured.

2. Worrying is a choice.

“Since worry is a choice, people do it because it serves them in some way. The worry about public speaking m...

One Second Every Day For 365 Days – Timelapse

In 2013 I took a one second video (almost) every single day. The experiment of taking video often forced me to take a closer look at my day and notice something different. While I went to San Francisco, Hawaii, and Vegas, there are a lot of videos of my dog. There are also a disturbing amount of cupcake videos. What is even more disturbing are the number of cupcake videos I didn’t include. It’s probably for the best I didn’t take a daily photo of myself again this year.

The experiment of takin...

Why Movies Are Better In The Theater

I recently saw the movie American Hustle. I had hopes the movie would be good, but it defied my high expectations and ended up being one of my favorite movies of the year. It’s almost distracting how good the acting is from everyone, especially Christian Bale who deserves any and every award for his role (and ability to gain 50 pounds). There are a lot of moving parts to the movie and a lot to keep up with which made me realize that I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much if I didn’t see...

2013 Year in Review

The end of the year brings one of my favorite things–the annual filmography videos mashing together clips from movies released in the last year. Once again, Gen Ip created my favorite retrospective that I’ve seen this year (2013 below, watch 2011 here).

I’ve been thinking a lot about movies this year, likely because I read at least 5 books about storytelling, including the massive book Story by Robert McKee. You can learn a lot about life through studying the elements of good storytelling. Eve...