What an abomination!
Hey, cats. How’s your world? It’s been some week, right? And the football, thing. Icing on a cake.
Talking of cake, I’d be honoured to serve you up one of my exquisite chocolate banana muffins.
They even got a seal of approval from our very own domestic goddess.
About the title of this email
So, this curation thing. I’m obsessed with it.
Because information. Simply, there’s way too much of it.
We need a break (beat - that’s a seamless segue to what’s coming a little later on).
Curation is in our hands. As much as we can consume, so we can cleave our way through the noise. To find a signal. And to bask in what it is we need. What we need to succeed.
If you don't find immense joy in everything you read and watch, and the people you call friends, you're dancing to the wrong tune.
📚 Read if it's making your mind moist.
📽 Watch if it's making you think.
🤼 Hang around people making you smile.
💝 None of us have enough breaths and heartbeats left.
💰 Invest them in the delightful.
Can’t break this beat
I’ve always been fascinated learning directly from those at the top of their game. Somewhat serendipitously during a trawl into a throwaway line in Brad Horowitz’s What You Do Is Who You Are, a literary study of modern corporate culture, I discovered hip hop visionary Lenny Roberts and through that name, his producer partner Breakbeat Lou.
This video gives you a glimpse into the great man’s work and his approach to getting on his A game.
Sometimes you come across someone who takes great delight in their mastery. Without even considering their gift to the world, of simply being who they are. That’s why I relish Breakbeat Lou. And why you, too, can be an unassuming master. Just by focusing on deliberate practice…
Lifelong learning
I didn't do Art GCSE, so I could justify diagrams like this.
When you start learning anything, typically you'll be aspiring to autonomy. That stage where what you're doing feels instinctive - invisible, even. You do it without a second thought.
But the true masters aspire to deliberate practice beyond that third stage of learning.
Once you've got cognitive and associative learning out the way - the basics, and layering up with some experience in the form - you need to always focus on technique, constant feedback, and longer-term goals.
This is why some people aspire to be advanced motorists. Why javelinists don't just stop when people start oohing them on the school sports field. And why Gareth Southgate is the best coach England ever had.
The more you know, the less you know. Keep a beginner's mind and you'll keep improving. Forever.
Unsurprisingly, I'm at the cognitive stage of my Google Drawings learning.
Remote working - where do you stand?
In March 2020 when Boris told the nation to stay at home, terror and panic was in the air at my last workplace.
This loss of control. Not having colleagues within earshot. Senior management simply couldn’t take it. Here was a huge trust issue that had been simmering for years. Now the pot was boiling over, and it was all too evident that there were a multitude of issues way beyond instituting a remote working policy.
I’ve always believed that when you hire people with the right mindset, you can put them anywhere and they’ll thrive.
I also understand that young colleagues need the most mentoring, and therefore remote working is not their perfect environment to thrive.
What the pandemic has taught us is that there needs to be a better way to work than being sat in a distant office when you could do a perfectly good - probably better - job closer to, or in, your home.
Commuting is abhorrent. Aside from the environmental impact, it’s two hours of our day stolen away.
I loved this article. I’d like to know what you thought.
What the hell is happening here?
I’ve seen some illusions in my time but I don’t feel like I’ve properly seen this one. Genuinely, how are these cubes not moving? This isn’t illusion. This is MAGIC.
Need for speed
I hate buying a book then discovering it’s trash. Not only because I loathe the wasting of money. But because often the author has tried quite hard and you feel some empathy with them for the time invested in it.
So I’ve decided to learn how to read with speed.
I’ve tried a few of those lousy courses. And then I hit upon a great book - Speed Reading with the Right Brain. I heartily recommend it simply because this endorses a comprehension-first approach to quickening your devouring of books.
I can’t be arsed with affiliate links - so here’s an entirely unmasked link to the buying of this great book on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Speed-Reading-Right-Brain-Instead-ebook/dp/B00O3OD5WY
Did you enjoy this?
I love writing to you. Is it working out? What else can I tell you? Shall we get together on Zoom for a chat sometime?
Thanks for being here.
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