Design Talent

I have always admired the creative arts. Movie making, Painting and drawing, Photography, Artistic design, etc. These images by Jazzia tickled me:

Source: jazzia.

Erich Fromm Appreciation Month

In this coming month, I plan to post all my backlogged notes and quotes from my reading of Erich Fromm.

The two-books I have read and will be quoting from are:

The Art of Loving (1956)

Review:

The renowned psychoanalyst Erich Fromm has helped millions of men and women achieve rich, productive lives by developing their hidden capacities for love. In this astonishly frank and candid book, he explores the ways in which this extraordinary emotion can alter the whole course of your life.
Most of us are unable to develop our capacities for love on the only level that really counts––a love that is compounded of maturity, self–knowledge, and courage. Learning to love, like other arts, demands practice and concentration. Even more than any other art it demands genuine insight and understanding. In this startling book, Fromm discusses love in all its aspects; not only romantic love, so surrounded by conceptions, but also love of parents for children, brotherly love, erotic love, self–love, and love of God

Source: Source.

The Sane Society

Review:

First published in 1955, "The Sane Society" is widely recognized as being one of the most powerful and eloquent explorations of the human condition in modern society. Fromm argues that modern society subjects humans to continuous disenchantment from the world which they created. People in modern society are estranged from other people, from the objects which they produce and consume, from their government and from themselves. Capitalism has produced "the manipulated personality". To allow present trends to continue unchecked will result, Fromm contends, in an insane society in which alienation is the order of the day. Rejecting the options of both capitalism and communism, Fromm discusses a third way of exploring things. He writes of a form of organization in which no individual is a means towards another's ends, where the well-being of individuals is the focus of society, and where personal growth complements economic growth. Fromm presents a complete outline of the concept of humanistic psychoanalysis, and charts the paths which can divert us from the tendency to robotism. He looks forward to "the sane society" in which individuals are productive, healthy and responsible. This book should be of interest to students of sociology and psychology.

Source: Source.

Discipline

I've been having a long hard think about discipline vs procrastination, and after much reading and soul-searching, I've come up with this quote that I want to put out there and see what people think:

Discipline: Feeling uncomfortable for a limited time to achieve a desired outcome

Pablo Picasso

"Without great solitude no serious work is possible."

– Pablo Picasso

I take it ole Pablo wasn't a fan of the open plan office!?

focus : a simplicity manifesto in the age of distraction (free ebook)

Focus is about finding simplicity in this Age of Distraction.

It's about finding the focus you need to create, to work on what's important, to reflect, to find peace.

Go here (http://focusmanifesto.com/) for a free ebook (PDF format)

The Science of Spoon-Bending

What does science (or in this case, The Laws of Physics) have to say about people who claim to be able to bend spoons with only the power of their mind: 

Short answer: No way, Jose:

That’s it. We are done. The deep lesson is that, although science doesn’t know everything, it’s not “anything goes,” either. There are well-defined regimes of physical phenomena where we do know how things work, full stop. The place to look for new and surprising phenomena is outside those regimes. You don’t need to set up elaborate double-blind protocols to pass judgment on the abilities of purported psychics. Our knowledge of the laws of physics rules them out. Speculations to the contrary are not the provenance of bold visionaries, they are the dreams of crackpots.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2008/02/18/telekinesis-and-quantum-field-theory/

The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2012/08/the-disciplined-pursuit-of-less

   Quote:

Why don't successful people and organisations automatically become very successful? One important explanation is due to what I call "the clarity paradox," which can be summed up in four predictable phases:

Phase 1: When we really have clarity of purpose, it leads to success.
Phase 2: When we have success, it leads to more options and opportunities.
Phase 3: When we have increased options and opportunities, it leads to diffused efforts.
Phase 4: Diffused efforts undermine the very clarity that led to our success in the first place.

Quote

   ...Instead, we can conduct an advanced search and ask three questions: "What am I deeply passionate about?" and "What taps my talent?" and "What meets a significant need in the world?" Naturally there won't be as many pages to view, but that is the point of the exercise. We aren't looking for a plethora of good things to do. We are looking for our absolute highest point of contribution.

http://abstrusegoose.com/479

Your rewards in life...

Your rewards in life are based on the problems you have chosen to solve, the speed and accuracy at which you solve them, and for whom you have decided to solve them for.

Src: http%3A%2F%2Fwatsoninc.blogspot.com%2Ffeeds%2Fposts%2Fdefault

Debonair

debonair, debonnaire [ˌdɛbəˈnɛə]
adj (esp of a man or his manner)

1. suave and refined
2. carefree; light-hearted
3. courteous and cheerful; affable
4. having a sophisticated charm; "a debonair gentleman"

Source: The Free Dictionary.