Ben Nesvig's Blog, page 9
February 26, 2013
Nothing To Do With Perfection
I was going to write about this clip, but Bob Lefsetz wrote just about everything I wanted to say.
From Bob’s newsletter:
We’re looking for viral moments. And now they’re quantifiable. All YouTube clips have a counter. And, of course, the lame labels are trying to game the system, but not when it’s news, not when it’s an evanescent moment captured on tape. This clip will never have a billion views, but it’ll have enough to help Jennifer Lawrence open her next movie.
And how did it happen?
By brea...
February 21, 2013
Why The Harlem Shake Went Viral
The blog post no one wants. I’m not sure if the Harlem Shake video (craze? meme? sensation?) has worn out its welcome already, but it’s worth looking at. In case you haven’t seen any of the videos, there are a few below for reference:
Norwegian Army
Matt & Kim
Whistler
Given it seems everyone but my Grandma (to the best of my knowledge) has made a Harlem Shake video, it is worth deconstructing.
Why The Harlem Shake Went Viral:
1. Easy to parody
Even the most creatively sapped person can brainstorm s...
February 19, 2013
My Evernote Password: Recent Favorite Quotes
I use Evernote to collect and organize and the content I consume and create. Below are some of my favorite quotes I’ve collected over the past few months:
“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 single day. The only difference was Phil himself, what he noticed, how he interpreted his surro...
February 18, 2013
Are You Willing To Be Misunderstood?
Last year I read/listened to 70 books. Across all those words, paragraphs, and pages were several similar themes. Seeing patterns across so many books gave me a sense of what the most important concepts to learn are, one of which is the willingness to be misunderstood.
Everyone who does anything on a higher level feels isolation and experiences being misunderstood for long periods of time.
What primed me to the concept of high achievers being misunderstood was a blog post from Sebastian Marshal...
February 7, 2013
Mini Lifelogging: A Month In The Life
I love lifelogging. Introduced to the topic several years ago by Kevin Kelly, it’s something I’ve been itching to take up more and more.
Last year I took a picture of myself (almost) every day. I also started using RescueTime, which I still use and love. And I also track daily writing with 750words.com where I can see that in the last 90 days (70+ consecutively) I’ve written 73,813 words. Once you start building links in a chain it becomes hard to stop.
This year I’m taking a one second video e...
January 30, 2013
A Million Little Decisions
One of the themes I stumbled across from reading books is that you are the culmination of every decision you’ve made. Eating a cupcake today for breakfast won’t have much impact on my health. Eating a cupcake every day will.
Living in a fantasy world of one single choice changing everything is fun, but reality shows up eventually, if only at death. There are inciting incidents which change the path you’re on, but you still have a thousand choices a day in front of you.
While looking back over o...
January 22, 2013
How To Take Honest Feedback
Knowing how to take honest critical feedback is a skill.
It seems that it’s something that kids become less and less adept at receiving over the years. Educators and parents become more concerned with self esteem and not hurting the feelings of kids, so they live in a little bit of a false reality. In fourth grade I was on the track team at my school. At our final relay race of the year, we competed against other schools and used what felt like a professional track at a local high school. Our...
January 20, 2013
How To Communicate Better
People think in terms of images. Long before you learned how to speak a language, you were processing images. It’s instinctual to think in terms of images. When you talk with just words or numbers, the brain will often still translate what it receives over to a visual to make sense of it. When you speak in terms of images, the brain has to process less, since you’ve already done half of the work.
I spent a year taking boxing lessons. When the instructor was teaching me how to throw a cross pun...
January 9, 2013
Why Fruit Is Always Near The Entrance Of Grocery Stores
One of the problems with reading so much is that I start to feel like I’m living in The Truman Show. While I’ve just taken the world for what it was, it’s only been recently that I’ve been more opened to how things are orchestrated.
Have you ever thought about why fruit is near the entrance of pretty much every single grocery store? Does it make any sense? It doesn’t to the consumer. Fruit and vegetables are the most fragile items you’ll get at the grocery store, so why would you get them firs...
January 8, 2013
This music is what the word “ineffable” was invented for.
This music is what the word “ineffable” was invented for.
