Mind your busyness...
I don’t care if you use ayahuasca, drink a beer or write prompts for ChatGPT before generating your content or whatever creative endeavor you pursue. Learn to code or don’t learn to code, read voraciously or be another of the influencer cacophony.
Do you and all that being you entails.
Why anyone cares what you do is beyond me. Wave your little freak flag — and stop caring who salutes.
Writing is challenging but like anything else, practice makes readable. Perfection is illusive and shouldn’t be your pursuit or end goal.
I work in a technical field. The books I have written are now pinged by AI and I am helpless to stop them but that is simply how the cookie crumbles. Maybe figure out what kind of cookie you want to be. I will continue to believe that there will be a difference between a person that understands and has foundational knowledge in Python of SQL vs. relying on LLMs to provide the code (if you know, you know)
The analytics are quite complex as you move from data architecture to data modeling and machine learning. Be a chocolate chip not an easily simulated Oreo cookie.
Grab the whole cookie.
The same goes for all the noise around storytelling. The best way to learn how to tell better stories is to read them. Put them through your filter and reinterpret them uniquely — not according to some algorithm or listicle.
In this season of my professional life I am often building stories from the stage. My topic of choice is the intersection of humanity, climate science and the built infrastructure. Thinking of carbon as a flow and not simply an asset or problem that can be exchanged and mitigated by sheer will has brought me to inspiring and powerful conversations. I learn something every day.
From a planetary view, the warming atmosphere is a response, and adjustment, a teaching. Earth’s climate is not breaking down as some would have it. However, it is changing faster than humans can adapt.— Paul Hawken, Carbon, The Book of Life*
Enormously informative and written outside of the talking head rhetoric of loosely based theories and scientific jargon, I have recommended this book probably more than any other on the topic.
Summer brings a slower pace this year. After spending almost a month last year traveling around Europe for scheduled talks I chose to push obligations off until the fall. I am working on the layout for my 3rd book, creating videos for several talks in September and beyond and reading my way through several books that will be fodder for future conversations.
“You strengthen the mind for exactly this reason: these are symptoms of a mind that's been weakened by a culture designed to keep you from thinking.”
― Ankhara, Ayahuasca
Currently listening…