Category: advice

Advice to young (and not so young) artists. (We are all artists in some way)


Here are two good pieces full of advice for artists.

One big: Advice to Young Aspiring Artists from Patti Smith, David Byrne & Marina Abramović | Open Culture

One small: None of us know what will happen – Austin Kleon

Key quote from the Austin Kleon piece is this, from Laurie Anderson:

The world may end. You’re right. But that’s not a reason to be scared. None of us know what will happen. Don’t spend time worrying about it. Make the most beautiful thing you can. Try to do that every day. That’s it. You know? What are you working for, posterity? We don’t know if there is any posterity.

(Image from pexels.com)

The things you reveal about yourself inadvertently when you post on Instagram


Suppose you post a lot of pictures with blue colours in them on Instagram. So what, you say? Well, according to this, What Your Instagram Posts Reveal about Your Mental State (and Why That’s Important) | Social Media Today, it shows you’re depressed. Whaaaaat? you say! In the piece, they state:

…. the researchers asked 166 Instagram users for permission to analyze their posts and also asked whether or not they had a diagnosis of clinical depression from a mental health professional. What they found was that people with depression over-indexed in several categories in regards to their Instagram post composition.

For example, people with depression prefer darker colors and more grays or blues than non-sufferers.

You might think this is not much better than phrenology, and I tend to agree.

Just keep in mind that all those pictures you post are being analyzed by someone to sell you something.

Read the article and decide if you want to reconsider what you post.

4 + 1 Rules for dealing with adversity

If you are struggling with adversity, then read this: Read This If You’re Going Through Adversity – Darius Foroux.

There are four rules in it:

    1. Do something good. By this, do something that makes you say, “I love life”.
    2. Ask for help. You know you need help when you are getting to the stage it all becomes “too much”.
    3. Write down your biggest fear. Get it out of your head and on paper. Write about it. You will be surprised how it shrinks on paper.
    4. Create a plan. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. It can be: I will do A and then based on that I will do either B or C. There! You have a plan to deal with things.
    5. Shorten the timelines. This is one I am adding. Often when we think of adversity we imagine it never ending. But it will. Don’t believe me? Go over past adversity. Even long running adversity. It always ends. It ends sooner than we think. This doesn’t mean you should passively wait it out. Write down how long you think this adversity will end, then make a plan, ask for help, tackle your fears and do something good.

Good luck. Need more help? Read the article linked above. And congrats. You were likely facing adversity when you searched out and read this, and you decided you needed to get help. You’re already on your way to doing something about it. Well done!

The Twenty Minute Rule you need to manage your time

 


A smart approach to managing your time is allocating no more than 20 minutes to any task you need to do.  So says this: Everything should take 20 minutes | The Outline. 

The reasoning in a nutshell:

Think about a task you wish to or must complete, and imagine how long it should take you. If you are a right-thinking person like myself, the answer is “20 minutes.” A 10-minute task is hardly a task at all, more of a minor interruption, and anything that takes 30 minutes invites the thought that you could have watched a half-hour episode of television instead. Twenty minutes is, objectively, the ideal amount of time — the Goldilocks number when it comes to doing things.

Now you can quibble about it, but it’s a smart rule. If you are still unsure, read the piece.

If you need to toughen up mentally

Toughness is good and bad. When it is prioritized over other qualities, it is bad. When it seen as a reservoir to get through tough times, it is good. Regardless of your situation, if you want to improve your mental toughness, here are some books you might want to consider: The 5 Best Books for Increasing Your Mental Toughness | Inc.com

Be as tough as you need to be, not just tough for toughness sake.

The most relaxing vacation you can take is going nowhere

Good tips in this article on how to take a successful staycation. Key quote:

The key to a successful staycation, whatever you’re doing, is to just be. That’s not easy for people working in cultures intent on busyness. Yet it is a way we can reduce stress levels and return to work with more energy. “We shouldn’t associate relaxation with being away,” advises Quartz’s managing editor Kira Bindrim, who describes herself as an avid staycation advocate. “Reclaim the place you already chose to live!”

I think you can do staycations in a number of ways. Sometimes they are great ways to achieve a personal project. Other times they are good for exploring the city you live in. But if you want to have a relaxing staycation, check out that article.

Fifteen good links to help you manage your personal finances better


Lots of good stuff here, from how to save money on food, your kids, your transportation….and much more. From the New York Times, Vox, the Cut, and quite a few from a good site for this information called The Simple Dollar.

  1. When and How to Stop Paying Your Kids’ Bills – The Simple Dollar
  2. 13 smart ways to improve your finances in 2017 – Vox
  3. A Household Budget Strategy for People Who Hate Budgeting | Apartment Therapy
  4. 11 Lifestyle Changes That Will Help You Save Money & Depend Less On Consumerism
  5. What to Do When You’re Bad at Money – The New York Times
  6. How to Save Money But Still Have a Life
  7. What I Learned From Tracking My Spending for a Month – The New York Times
  8. 33 Productive Things to Do Without Spending Money | Apartment Therapy
  9. 5 Money-Saving Lessons I Learned in a Month of Budgeting – Bon Appétit
  10. The First Step Out of Debt – The Simple Dollar
  11. 10 Things You Should Never Pay For – The Simple Dollar
  12. Nine Frugal Strategies for Tackling the Winter Blues – The Simple Dollar
  13. Finding Meaning Within Your Job – Even If You Don’t Like It – The Simple Dollar
  14. Five Monthly Bills You Could Live Without – The Simple Dollar
  15. Five Things You Could Afford If You Didn’t Buy a New Car – The Simple Dollar

So you want to become famous on Instagram? You might want to read this first

Why? Because as this article shows, become famous on Instagram is a lot harder than you might think:  I Tried to Make My Dog an Instagram Celebrity. I Failed. – The New York Times.

Yes, I know you are not a dog, but the same lessons will apply.

My guess is that the ship has sailed on become famous on Instagram. Same for podcasts and any other social media that has been around for a few years. You need to get in early, work hard, and take advantage of network effects.

If you do decide to become Instagram famous and manage to pull it off, please come here and mock me and I will update this post. 🙂

Great advice for parents of older teens/young adults


Can be found here:  How Should I Talk to My Son About His Career Dreams? – The Atlantic. 

Being a parent is never easy, no matter what age your kid is. There is lots of good advice for people with infants and young children but not much for when your kids are older. Glad to see pieces like this and to promote them.

Hang in there, parents!

(image via pexels.com)

Joan Benoit Samuelson at age 60 and what that means

This piece is a must read for anyone trying to maintain their fitness later in life. It’s not easy, even for legends like JBS. Take solace in seeing how even the greats adjust as they get older, and read this:  How a great marathoner — Joan Benoit Samuelson — keeps going at age 60 – The Washington Post

 

why the best white noise machine might be the Google Home Mini

I have had a number of white noise devices with some of them costing a lot more than the Mini. They are not hard to set up and once you do you can ask it to play rain sounds or relaxing sounds or whatever sounds help you relax or sleep it work. Plus you get all the advantages of having it to find out the weather, get news, set appointments and more. If you don’t mind having one in your house – and some people do – then you can buy them everywhere, like here: m.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/google-home-mini-charcoal/11615336

The problem with carpentry and how it differs from IT

It is near impossible to learn how to do carpentry from either books or the Internet. I know because I’ve tried really hard.

Let’s say you decide you no longer want to buy bookcases from Ikea but you want to make you own. You decide a book case is simply a box and decide you want to learn how to make a box with a few tools and some simple instructions.

If you go search for help with your box, you may very likely come across instructions like this: www.popularmechanics.com/home/how-to-plans/how-to/g1591/how-to-make-a-box/

It makes assumptions that you have lots of tools and you can do hard things like cut joints. After a few hours of searches, you will find most sites are like this: tailored to woodworkers making wood pieces that are hard to do and not anything near modern looking.

IT is different. For any technology out there, you can search for the name of the technology and “tutorial” and find something. You can be up and running using the technology in the time it takes you to give up looking for carpentry skills.

I am not sure why that is. Maybe there is more interest in IT so there are more tutorials on it. You could argue carpentry is harder but I have done both and I disagree.

I especially disagree because there is one site I could that actually does make it easy to make furniture and that is Ana White’s. Because of her I have made a wide range of furniture with basically a hammer, a jigsaw and a drill. The furniture isn’t fancy but it was cheaper and better and as modern looking as Ikea.

I think that is a problem with a lot of woodworking sites. They assume you want to do fine woodworking. Find woodworking is fine, but for people starting out, they likely want to make a simple table, a bookcase or set of shelves, perhaps a storage chest. A good joint may be best, but most Ikea furniture is held together with dowels and screws. If you make a book case with dowels and screws and glue, it will last and hold lots of books.

I wish there were more introductory sites on the internet that help people who wanted to learn how to make furniture and do carpentry, like there is with IT. Right now all I have found is Ana White’s site. I highly recommend it.

It’s RRSP season in Canada. You may feel: why bother contributing? Read this then.

If you are daunted and dismayed with the impossibiity of saving for retirement, then read this.

A few thoughts:

  1. It’s written for Americans, but it works just as well for Canadians. (Replace 401K with RRSP).
  2. You may still not be able to retire, but the more you save, the more cushion you have for later.
  3. It may help you get to sleep at night when your brain starts saying: you are doomed to die old and poor!

A great list of interchangeable ingredients to turn to when you are cooking, from Mark Bittman

Is this list.

Print it off, leave it in the kitchen, add your own items.

I often use sriracha for dried chilies, or even any hot sauce, for when you just need some heat. Likewise, if you don’t have jalapenos, you could also replace them with some of other heat source. (If it is a lot of jalapenos, you might use regular peppers with some chilies or other hot things to add the appropriate level of hotness.)

Finally, I’ve seen people suggest replacing creme fraiche with full fat greek yogurt.

Things you don’t need and the one thing you do

This struck me today: I had these two posts I found interesting, both starting with “You don’t Need”. This is good: I think I will stop pursuing something because I think I need something first. Recipes help. And have free time to make things helps. But don’t use things you think you need stopping you from doing what you want.

Here are the two pieces. The only thing you need is a desire to make things.

  1. You Don’t Need to Quit Your Job to Make
  2. You Don’t Need a Recipe – The New York Times

C’mon, It’s Just 7 Days – a good challenge for next week

You either are keeping your New Year’s Resolutions (yay!) or you have shelved them. If the latter, cheer up. You don’t need to wait a year to resolve to be better. And you don’t need to necessarily make a big commitment either. Maybe just a week of doing something for the better is enough to make an improvement in yourself. A week may be just the thing to kick start you and send you off in a better direction.

Sound good? Great. And if you are stuck for ideas, check out this:  C’mon, It’s Just 7 Days recipes and how-tos from Food52. 

It’s not just about food. If you are looking for a week of challenges to try out, read the articles there.

The articles are fun even if you aren’t looking to change. A lot can happen in a week.

10 Spectacular Roast Recipes That Aren’t Turkey

Many people

  1. want to make a roast turkey for Christmas
  2. do not want roast turkey

If that’s you, Chatelaine has your back with this:  10 Spectacular Roast Recipes That Aren’t Turkey | Chatelaine.

They truly are spectacular recipes, perfect not just for Christmas but any time of the year (ahem, winter) when a good roast is just what you need.

The Disaster of Richard Nixon, and thinking about US presidents

A good book on something that people needs to be reminded of:  The Disaster of Richard Nixon | by Robert G. Kaiser | The New York Review of Books.

No matter how bad the current president is, longing for bad former presidents is nostalgia at its worst. It’s good that works like this are frequently published to remind us and give us perspective.

How art can make us more confident


According to this, art can make us more confident by providing us with stories and representations of people with characteristics we share that overcome similar obstacles that we run up against. After all….

Confidence isn’t the belief that we won’t meet obstacles. It is the recognition that difficulties are an inescapable part of all worthwhile contributions. We need to ensure we have to hand plenty of narratives that normalise the role of pain, anxiety and disappointment in even the best and most successful lives.

I agree.

The image is an extended version of the work highlighted in the article. Like the Stations of the Cross and other works, they illustrate the difficulties of a way of life, and by making us aware of them, allow us to best prepare to meet them and overcome them.

What You Can Control

While this article, What You Can Control at The Simple Dollar, is financially oriented, it really contains wisdom you can use in general. While this wisdom is obvious once you read it, most of us lose sight of this from time to time. Go remind of yourself of it by reading the article.

While I recommend reading the whole article, but here are some points I pulled from it:

  • You can’t control the actions of others
  • You can control how you respond to the actions of others
  • You can’t control natural forces
  • You can control how you prepare for the possibility of natural forces
  • You can’t control big expenses, especially unexpected ones.
  • You can control how you prepare for those unexpected expenses

Also:

When it comes to things completely outside of your control, it’s not very beneficial to you to exert time, energy, emotion, or focus on those things.

Finally:

In general, actions based on emotion in response to something you can’t control are awful choices.

Some thoughts on my new Amazon Fire 7 8GB FireOS 7″ Tablet for $59 at Bestbuy.ca


I saw this in Best Buy the other day, Amazon Fire 7 8GB FireOS 7″ Tablet With MediaTek MT8127 Quad-Core Processor – Black : Android Tablets – Best Buy Canada, and after reading some reviews and other articles (see below), I decided to get one. The $59 price tag had a lot to do with this.

My first thought was to try to use it as much as I could out of the box without making modifications to it. I set it up according to instructions, which were simple. I think you really want to have an Amazon account/userid to do this. I did and so things went smoothly.

The Amazon Fire has a modified version of the Android OS, which means it’s like an Android tablet, but not exactly. Likewise, Amazon has an App store, which is a limited version of the Google Play App store. You can get a number of apps from the Amazon App store, but not everything you can get on the Google Play store.

I wanted this device mainly as a place to consume media. Good news is it runs Netflix, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mail, Texture and a modified version of YouTube.  I was especially interested in Texture, which allows me to read magazines like New Yorker, Bon Appetit, Wired and others. I have been trying to read them on my phone and the experience was poor. On the tablet, the experience was much better, and the resolution was good. Likewise, YouTube videos are better on the tablet than the phone.

Downsides?  First the device is slow compared to my iPhone 6. You notice it with things like Twitter and Instagram. You don’t notice it for things like Texture because there is more reading time and less scrolling.  It’s not terrible, but it is noticeable if you have a newer device. If you have an up to date phone or tablet, you will notice this.

Another downside is the limited number of apps, especially media apps. I could not get the New York Times, Guardian or CBC app for it. It comes with the Washington Post, not surprisingly.

The browser that comes with it is slow. You cannot download other browsers without hacking the device.

One upside is you can get quite a few apps working for it. I downloaded Remember the Milk (for todos), Simplenote (for notetaking), WordPress (for blogging), Dropbox and more. I mainly want to use it for media consumption, but those things make it better.

To summarize: for $59, I think it is a great device for media consumption and basic functionality. If that’s all you want, I think you’d be happy with it. I’m glad I got it. Some reviewers said it is better to get the Fire 8 or 10, but for the money, I think the Fire 7 is surprisingly good.

P.S.Originally I was going to hack it to make it more like an Android tablet, but for now I think I’ll leave it as it is. If you did want to hack it, here’s some links to articles along that line:

P.S.S. This is not sponsored content.

The internet says: follow your passion. But what if you have no specific passion to follow?

You can find many places on the internet where you are encouraged to Follow Your Passion. One such place is here: Why Following Your Passions Is Good for You (and How to Get Started) – The New York Times

Love to cook? Love to write? If those are your passions, then the internet wants you to follow them.

But what if you don’t have specific passions. The NYTimes piece has an answer for that too:

No passions? Cultivate skills instead
While hobbies both enrich our lives and can turn into rewarding careers, those of us who don’t have a particular obsession aren’t hopelessly out of luck. Instead, cultivate skills that will give you a leg up in your field. We all carry a “toolbox” to work in the form of specific abilities that make us better at our jobs. Some experts say leveling up on some of these will improve your job satisfaction more than initial enthusiasm ever will.

It’s easier to improve yourself in an area you are passionate about. But taking pride in your skills and your qualities and working to hone them is worthwhile. If there’s not an area you feel a strong passion for, at least improve in the areas you can.

Passion is a strong word. So is pride. If you can follow your passion, follow your pride and be justly proud of the things you are good at.

What you need to accomplish extraordinary things

I liked both of these articles:

  1. A Lone Man Spends 53 Years Building a Cathedral by Hand | Colossal
  2. Janitor secretly amassed an $8 million fortune and gave most of it away

Both men accomplished significant acts of creativity and generosity without having much resources. In both cases, the things they had in abundance were

  1. drive
  2. dedication
  3. faith

They didn’t have a great amount of money or genius or things that people think you need to accomplish extraordinary things.

How to take your git skills to the next level

One way is to read this: How to become a Git expert – freeCodeCamp.org. There’s a lot of good pages on how to get started on git, but if you are joining a software project, you may be expected to know more than the basics. You may be required to know the kind of things that piece talks about. Of course you can ask people on your team for help, but why not get as much skill as you can first and then ask better questions? There’s always something new to learn when it comes to git and software management: learn as much as you can by yourself and increase your skill set and your value to the team.

Everything you need to know for sheet-pan cooking can be found here

Everything you need to know for sheet-pan cooking can be found here at this page: How to Make a Sheet-Pan Dinner – NYT Cooking

It’s a comprehensive review on how make any meal using a sheet-pan. If you are a fan of cooking that is easy like slow cookers then you want to check this out.

How to guides are great for people who like to come up with their own recipes. It’s also great if you are trying to use up various ingredients in your fridge.

The weather is getting cooler. It’s time to start using your oven again. This guide will help with this.

Do you want to read more women writers but need suggestions? The Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts has your back

How so? Here is a list of one hundred books by great women authors on a wide range of topics, including graphic novels like Persepolis. Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts – #VOTE100BOOKS. 

Regardless of the voting and which book gets the most, it is safe to say that everything listed is worth seeking out.

It’s unlikely even well read people haven’t read all these. If you find you want to read more women, you’re bound to find things on that list.

Do you know someone who wants to learn how to code? (Maybe it is you!)

Then this is a good page for them to go to: How I Learned How To Code Using Free Resources | Home | Bri Limitless. 

There’s plenty of good links to information, and they are all free. I can vouch for a number of them, such as Codecademy and Coursera.

One problem people run into is: why should I learn to code? One obvious answer is to learn a set of skills to help them gain employment. Two other reasons I have:

  1. build a website to promote yourself or any future business you might have.
  2. automate things you do on your computer

For #1, being able to build a website is a great way to promote yourself and show yourself to the world. As for #2, that’s the main reason I still keep coding. There’s lots of information I want to process, personally and professionally, and coding is the best way to do that.

Regardless of your reason, if you want to learn to code, check out Bri Limitless’s web page.

MindMup 2: a good web based mindmapping too

I’m a fan of mindmapping tools in general. One I’ve been using and enjoying lately is MindMup 2. 

Two things I like about it:

  1. It’s simple to modify your mindmaps on the go. You don’t need to do much to add or modify your map.
  2. It’s also simple to export your mindmap into a number of different formats. If you occasionally use mindmaps or you want to start with a mindmap to generate ideas but then you want to do the majority of the work in Word or some other tool, this is a good feature.

Mindmup_2 is a good tool. Go map your thoughts.

How to ask for help (it’s not as obvious as you think)

If you are uncomfortable asking for help, read this: How to Ask for Help and Actually Get It – The New York Times. After you read it, write out the type of help you need and use the article’s guidelines to insure your request for help is more effective.

We all need help from time to time. Read that and you will be more effective in getting the help you need.

One last thought: show appreciation before, during and after someone helped you. Even if they say it is no big deal to help. If for no other reason, it acknowledges the effort someone has taken to help you.

Get help. Your life will get better as a result. And the people who help you will often feel better about themselves for helping you, so you are helping them too.

Good advice on how to get started on that project / hobby / adventure you have always want to start


Good advice on how to get started on that project / hobby / adventure you have always want to start can be found here: How to Dare to Begin.

Beginning is often the biggest hurdle. Before you begin, you can imagine all the difficulties you will have, and such imaginings stop you before you can even start. If this applies to you, read the article. You may find yourself getting started after all.

Another thought: take an athlete’s approach to getting started and keeping at it. Get a coach. Get cheerleaders. Talk it up while you are doing the thing you’ve held off doing. Give yourself as much encouragement as you can. Give yourself a goal. Do all those things and you will find you not only get started but you keep going.

Good luck. Dare to do good things. Great things, eventually.

(Image from the article linked to.)