This is where I keep my book reviews, book notes, and links to other writings across the internet.

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17
Jul 11

John Mayer on Disintegrating Focus

Found via Evelyn Rodriguez on Google Plus: this recap of a music seminar with John Mayer. Of particular interest to me was the idea that when you are focused on something small things like crafting that ultimate Tweet, you don’t practice the harder things you really want to be doing, like writing that great 4-minute song:

“The tweets are getting shorter, but the songs are still 4 minutes long. You’re coming up with 140-character zingers, and the song is still 4 minutes long…I realized about a year ago that I couldn’t have a complete thought anymore. And I was a tweetaholic. I had four million twitter followers, and I was always writing on it. And I stopped using twitter as an outlet and I started using twitter as the instrument to riff on, and it started to make my mind smaller and smaller and smaller. And I couldn’t write a song.”

Something to think about

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15
Jul 11

Scientific Reasoning and the Language of Teaching

This article in Ars Technica, College Upperclassmen Still Fail at Scientific Reasoning, suggests that professors inadvertently speak a different language than their student. Another data point toward text books that fail to explain, because they’re trapped in their own world.

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17
Mar 11

Review: “Eat People” by Andy Kessler

"Eat People Book"

I’ve often wondered how business people think differently than other people. To date, I’m most familiar with the world view of engineers and artists. As an engineer, I find I’m drawn to the minutia sequencing action to produce results. As an artist, I’m drawn to the interplay of my senses and thoughts with other people’s life experiences. But business? I have no idea. The offer to review Andy Kessler’s new book Eat People came at a good time, as I’m going to have to figure out this business stuff if I want to make a living doing my own thing. Continue reading →

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17
Feb 11

Review: The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman

"The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman"

I’m a reluctant business person. While I’ve had the notion that I could somehow parlay my interest in making/writing into some kind of sustainable lifestyle, it’s only recently that I’ve even started to think about this in business terms. It’s perhaps not that surprising since I’m a preacher’s kid, and I grew up in an environment where discussion about enriching one’s self was not a topic of discussion. Those idyllic times are long past, and today I’m very interested in making money, because I’d like to have the freedom to do what I want in the greater context of achieving personal excellence.

My review copy of Josh Kaufman’s The Personal MBA arrived at just the right time. For the bulk of 2010, I’ve just been getting used to the idea of being a business entity. To give myself some structure, I took a pass at outlining agency processes and drawing maps of my overarching goals, but I must admit that I was still feeling a little lost. Happily, The Personal MBA is the much-needed atlas of the business world that I needed, and it’s helping me understand what I’m up against with greater clarity. Continue reading →