In a world of high-intensity information barrage, the late author David Foster Wallace once said something simple yet valuable. I want to share this with you today. I received 500,000 discrete bits of information today, of which maybe twenty-five are important. My job is to make some sense of it. Like Wallace, we are all…
Author Archives: Mark Dykeman
Fraley on persistence in creativity
The ever-wise Gregg Fraley gives us an important reminder about the value of persistence in creativity: The difference between success and failure is often sheer persistence. Talent, skill, luck, and resources have often been beaten by the person (or organization) that simply won’t quit. Click here to read Gregg’s full post about persistence and…
The purpose of pain OR sometimes things have to be hard to get better
Common wisdom: if it hurts, don’t do it. More wisdom: no pain, no gain. These statements are both true, in my experience. The only way that they can both be true is that there is a continuum of pain in life. Pain is not a binary on/off switch. Pain lies along a gradient of intensity….
The R.O.I. of doing… something
What do you get for your time, effort, money and emotion spent on doing something different? Return on investment (R.O.I.) started out as a financial ratio used by accountants and business managers. It’s a way of describing what you get in return for the money that you’ve invested in something. Now R.O.I. is used to…
Getting better – thoughtwrestling along a road less traveled
I want to share with you some of the opening lines of one of my favorite books. These paragraphs come from The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth by the late M. Scott Peck, M.D. They apply to a lot of the things that we’ve written about here…
R.I.P. Steve Jobs, Creativity Enabler
I really don’t have a whole lot to say about the co-founder of Apple Computers, who passed away on October 5 after a long battle with illness. But here’s something. Most people are aware the influence of Steve Jobs influence on personal computers and other consumer electronics (Apple), entertainment (Pixar) and, indirectly, Western culture. I…
About those missing 89 days…
So, it’s been about 89 days since my last post on Thoughtwrestling. I’ve been focusing on other things during the past few months and almost all of my writing has been done offline. All’s well. I’ve been spending a lot less time online during these 89 days but I’m still finding the time to do…
Thoughts on imperfection
Today I want to point you toward an excellent post by my friend Geoff Livingston. Imperfection speaks to one of the most vexing aspects of being a creative person: how hard it is to get something right. When you look at an excellent finished piece of creative work, whether it’s a painting, sculpture, a dance…
Short video on ways to stay creative
This is a great little video that will take less than two minutes to watch. Check it out! Click on the link below if you don’t see the video… 29 WAYS TO STAY CREATIVE from TO-FU on Vimeo. Thanks to Neatorama and Design.org for finding this gem!
Changes aren’t permanent but change is
I couldn’t make any phone calls. I was isolated from the outside world. Why do things have to keep changing? And what does this have to do with Thoughtwrestling? The reason that I couldn’t reach the outside world is that they upgraded the phone system at work. Instead of pressing 9 to get an outside…