Everlong

This week I stumbled on an amazingly powerful 2011 graduation speech from actor Denzel Washington in which he advises to "fail big".

His powerful life advice asks a simple question:

"do you have the guts to fail?"

He goes on…

"if you don’t fail... you’re not even trying... and to get something you never had, you have to do something you never did.”

I've re-watched this one 5 or 6 times this week, and if you're going through one of those weeks where you need a kick in the pants to get you progressing forward with life, spend 15 minutes and watch this one. You won't regret it.

Remember…

"if you hang around a barbershop long enough — sooner or later you will get a haircut"

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Forward Thinking

Tim Urban has been an incredible source of humor and thought-provoking inspiration for me over the years from his amazing writing and stick-figure illustrations. This weeks 'forward thinking' is his TED Talk from 2016: Inside The Mind of a Master Procrastinator.

In it, he discusses his habitual procrastination, the process he went through (which includes MRIs) to understand more about the brain of a procrastinator and non-procrastinator and the mercilessness of the 'Instant Gratification Monkey'. Another worthy watch.

Oddly enough, I came across a tweet from Tim this week that provides humor and truthful insight into the world of technology1:

Latest obsession

I love paper journals; I have way too many of them, but there's something magical about the feeling of writing on paper versus electronic ink. My favorite one by far is Lochby's Pocket Journal; I picked up the black waxed canvas version with a 3.5" x 5.5" Dot Grid Refill. (For completeness, I use a Fisher Space Pen as my writing utensil of choice)

It's lightweight and can be taken anywhere for thoughtful commentary or mindless doodling.

This weeks "Deep Links"

Here's a few of the articles and videos that resonated with me over the last week:

• Love watching these ‘Behind the Magic: The Visual Effects of The Mandalorian Season 2’ videos. Season 2 had almost 5,000 visual effects shots, and this look at how they did it is equally as impressive. This is the way - Watch
• When I'm ready (and truth be told, I'm not yet ready), I plan on writing more about my out-of-nowhere heart attack; but this article hit home for me: ‘How To (Almost) Kill Yourself (Really) On a Smart Trainer’. "Athletes may be the last to realize they have heart disease or recognize their symptoms" sounds awfully familiar - More
• Quitting is equated to failure, but it can be a smart strategy. ‘If There’s No Light At The End Of The Tunnel: QUIT’ explores this (which reminds me of Seth Godin's fantastic book, The Dip) - More
• ‘The Invention of a New Pasta Shape’ is a wonderful look at cascatelli pasta, which has been specifically engineered to maximize the amount of sauce that sticks to it - More
• ‘To Become Who You Want to Be, You Have to Face the Gap’ is my pick of the week. A look at the Ira Glass Gap where the "you have to try being bad at something before you can get good at it". - More
• I hadn't heart of micromorts prior to this article on ‘How Much Risk Should You Take Now?’ A Miromort is measurement used by scientists (and insurance companies) to calculate risk and is equivalent to a one-in-a-million chance of dying - More
• The internet is constantly disappearing; it’s a world of broken links and missing files. A look at Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine in ‘You Probably Don’t Remember the Internet’ - More
• "The reverse meeting" is ‘Combating Zoom Overload’ - More
• As you know (from above), I'm a huge fan of the benefits of journals. So you can count on seeing articles that explain how awesome they are. In ‘Why Successful People Keep Journals’ a look at using them as a way to document experiences in life on getting things done. - More
• A sad look at the ‘Six Things Millennials Have in Common with Dr. Frasier Crane (No. 5 Will Drive You Into a Deep Depression)’ - More
• The infamous story of Trader Joe's "Two Buck Chuck" in ‘How Trader Joe's $2 wine became a best-seller’ - More

Fin

I've listened to the Foo Fighters for a long time, but they elevated in epic-ness this year the more I learned about Dave Grohl and the bands history. This week, at Oates Song Fest 7908, comes the story of how their hit song 'Everlong' was created (and includes an amazing acoustic version).