Don’t break the chain

Life so often gets in the way of one’s big plans. A productivity method may seem such a mechanical and artificial way to run one’s life, but most of us already use a calendar to plan events and actions. And structured productivity methods like Covey or Getting Things Done takes things to the next level and beyond.

There are simple, but effective ways to make sure one focuses on the important stuff–every day.

I recently re-started using my own version of Jerry Seinfeld’s don’t-break-the-chain method to get things done. Mine’s a bit more complex, with several different actions I’m tracking. I’ll go into more detail in another post.

Compiled by Matt Kalina | Scottsdale, AZ

MattKalina at yahoo.com | @MattKalina | LinkedIn.com/in/MattKalina | MatthewKalina.com

9 rules of everyday life

The Rule of Saint Benedict (Regula Benedicti) is a book of precepts written by St. Benedict of Nursia (c.480–547) for monks living communally under the authority of an abbot. — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_Saint_Benedict

9 rules for everyday life:

1. Park in the first open space in a parking lot aways away from the front of the store.

2. Pull into the front of a space so when you leave, so you don’t have to back up.

3. Never follow a mini-van or a cement truck.

4. Avoid the right lane of a multi-lane road unless turning right.

5. Stash cloth bags in your vehicle so you never use plastic bags in the store and you’ll get a bring-your-own-bag discount anytime you shop — at many stores.

6. Carry a metal water bottle everywhere you go.

7. Never buy soda. Fill up a wide-mouth bottle with ice and water at the self-serve soda fountain at fast-food joints, gas stations and the airport. Never buy soda.

8. Travel with a flashlight and bottle opener clipped together on a mini-carabiner.

9. Always get a booth instead of a table in the middle of a restaurant.

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Compiled by Matt Kalina | Scottsdale, AZ

MattKalina at yahoo.com | @MattKalina | LinkedIn.com/in/MattKalina | MatthewKalina.com

Poverty grows in suburbia land

The Dallas skyline looms in the background of suburbs.
— Wikimedia Commons

In a reversal of fortunes, U.S. suburbs face the fastest-growing poverty rates as more and more Americans flee to livelier, more happening, more walkable urban areas.

Diane Rehm of NPR interviews a three-person expert panel Aug. 7, 2013 on the big changes happening on where Americans are moving and living today in a segment called The Changing Suburbs.

Touching a Nerve: Brain Chemistry and the Self

Neurophilosopher Patricia Churchland offers a fascinating and controversial view that we are our brains, and that’s about it. Tom Ashbrook interviewed Churchland on his On the Point show on NPR July 22, 2013, the day her book, Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain, was published. Her point is that the more we study and know about the biology of the brain, the more evident it is that there is no mind, no self, no soul.

Brain Art showcases prizewinners in the 2012 Brain-Art Competition that honors outstanding visualizations of brain research data. The works are by John Van Horn (US), Neda Jahanshad (US), Betty Lee (US), Daniel Margulies (US) and Alexander Schäfer (DE). (Flickr/Ars Electronica) From On Point with Tom Asbrook, July 22, 2013.

Checking up on Arizona’s wilderness

Arizona Wilderness Coalition, which helps monitor the 90 federally designated wilderness areas in the state, trained 30 volunteers to be the eyes and ears in the wild.
There are more than 1 million acres of wilderness in Arizona.

Sam Frank of the Arizona Wilderness Coalition ran the day-long wilderness stewardship training July 13, 2013, at the U.S. Forest Service, Goldfield compound, near Mesa, Ariz.  I completed the training and plan to put it to use, checking out Sycamore Canyon Wilderness July 21.

The sun spotlights hanging fruit cholla in the foreground with the Superstition Mountains in the background in Tonto National Forest near the U.S. Forest Service Goldfield compound, site of Arizona Wilderness Coalition steward training, July 13, 2013.

Vonnegut’s 8 rules for creative writing

You’ve probably seen this before, but it’s worth reading again as Kurt Vonnegut cuts through the fog and clutter and tells it like it is.

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Rules for Creative Writing

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

— From the introduction to Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction

Ben Richardson at Ragan strikes up an interesting analysis.

And just for fun, another nugget from Vonegut:

“Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.”

 

The lost art of walking

Americans walk the least of any industrialized country, and walking is engineered out of the U.S. landscape, according to Slate in “The Crisis in American Walking.”

Pedestrian in Nashville, Tenn. in 2010 | Photograph by Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos.

Artists tell stories about themselves

A pile of trash on the floor—old clothes and a battered suitcase—are clues to one artist’s story in pure, documentary fashion. In another, a wall-sized grid of eccentrically penciled (sometimes erased and whited out) storyline, along with haphazardly placed sketches and graphic cutouts, spins a bizarre, modern-day Hitchcock-type tale of obsessed paranoia, loneliness and claustrophobia. Peering out a rear window of an urban apartment building, one protagonist documents an evil web of meth addicts, obese cats, mailmen committing drug deals, Russian mobsters and famous drug lords, including none other than Pablo Escobar.

William Lamson shoots arrows with over-sized razor blades while pursuing territorial shoes dangling from telephone lines in his 2008 15-minute, two-channel, high-definition video Hunt and Gather, courtesy of the artist and Pierogi Gallery, Brooklyn, N.Y. His folding-ladder-welded-to-a-bicycle contraption is displayed along with the bow and arrows.

The five-artist exhibition Artists Tell Stories (Mostly about Themselves) runs through Jan. 22, 2012, at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, Ariz.

Meanwhile, in Economy of Means Towards Humility in Contemporary Sculpture, artists reflect the lean-meat-eating days of our current economic times with displays of found objects and pieces constructed from second-hand materials, including a four-foot-tall tower of painted, recycled kiln bricks. One docent explained to visitors that while the bricks are very heavy and create a stable base, the piece is precariously balanced and nearly toppled over during installation.

A shortcut through the grounds of the newly opened The Saquaro mark the way home from the Scottsdale Musuem of Contemporary Art, Old Town Scottsdale, Ariz.

Economy of Means runs through April 29, 2012.

The icy, imperfect sonic resonance of Reznor’s new soundtrack

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, talks in an interview with Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air about modifying old pianos with clothespins and odd hardware to get the desired cold, imperfect sound for the soundtrack of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Thomas Dolby’s solar- and wind-powered studio boat

Thomas Dolby, songwriter, performer, inventor and software developer works in a self-made studio — powered by the sun and wind — he built in a 1930s lifeboat named Nutmeg of Consolation on the north coast of England.

Dolby talked this morning with Audie Cornish, host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday, about about his boat studio and new album A Map of the Floating City.