Friendly reminder: Understanding the business problem > cultural relevance. Culture is an ingredient in the cake, understanding the business problem is the whole bakery.
This will be relevant to exactly 0 people, but here is the very first note I added to my notes app:
it was in 2014 and I had just moved to New York. I guess I decided to look at all my latest google searches from living in San Francisco.
Stumbling upon it this week, 7 years later, it’s wild how vivid of memories were prompted by 7 year old search queries.
Seeing “Paul Walker Tattoo” didn’t just remind me of a memory, it transported me to a different stage of my life and I can feel and smell the setting (burning calves and stale pee, walking through The Tenderloin in SF after a day of drinking in the park).
I dunno. I found it interesting.
DOWNLOADS
An evolution of “Pirate Readings.” Sometimes will be books, sometimes not. But this deepens my well and makes this newsletter more about adjacent thinking– which is the point.
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Scans of vintage ads I bought at an antique mall. (DROPBOX)
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FAST Writing Guide by David Perell (a few things from David this week) (DROPBOX)
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OGILVYISMS. I almost certainly got this from Praveen. shout out. (Dropbox)
SCRAPS
David Perell on Writing:
“The fresher your eyes, the better you can edit your own writing.”
I do that by changing devices. I write on my computer, edit on my iPad, and always make final edits on my phone in bed.
“The higher you rise in your career, the more writing will become part of your job.”
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Most of the time as planners we spend our effort developing strategies that help us cope with the reality that others force on us. As if we can do no more than that.
Yet I believe that strategy demands more of us. It asks that we impose ourselves on the world rather than be constrained by it. That we leave a mark
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The ability to communicate fiction is why we beat the Neanderthals
(that along with brutality, additional cognitive advantages, and interbreeding)
That does remind me though of something I heard recently that made a pretty significant difference in how I deal with issues of mental health.
“Your brain’s job is not to make you happy. It is to keep you alive”
May have shared that here before, but worth repeating.
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Some heady shit I’ve collected on Are.na
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A letter written by a CD I used to work with. She titled it “A letter to clients from a Creative who used to moonlight as a client.”
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WEEKLY MONSTER
Messed up on the right ear. oh well