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Writers need neutral rooms in which to work, not spaces that burden inhabitants with the pressure to generate anecdotes. “You hardly ever see anyone else’s face-quite literally,” said Megan Hustad, author of How to Be Useful. “That sensory deprivation trains the imagination.”

Interesting short writeup about the secret room in New York’s central library reserved for working published writers. You need a keycard to access and there is no wifi. Sounds like a dream. (via Coudal)

Curry Without Worry is a unique soup kitchen. Its meals are premised not just on filling empty stomachs but on the Nepali village tradition of spreading love through food. “We’re all going to die one day, and when we do, we will take nothing with us,” says Kushal Basnyat, one of its board members. “So why don’t we share everything?” The program is in its third year, and every week, it manages to feed about 200 people.

Interesting story, recipes, and a lesson on compassion. What is not to love about this post?

Please don’t get me wrong: I applaud the efforts of these companies in adding a humanitarian component to their business. I, myself, am the proud owner of a pair of TOMS. I’m just saying that as with most things, the buy-one, give-one phenomenon isn’t quite as simple as it seems on the surface.

Nice editorial on the buy-one-give-one phenomenon, not only Tom’s. The struggle to do good and make the world a better place takes a bit more thinking than we have been trained to do by corporate marketing. Such actions and choices require research and deeper thought to the ripple of ramifications. For instance:

I’m not saying that shoes or glasses aren’t of value to any particular group of people. But are they more valuable than a new school, or clean water, or livestock, or pharmaceuticals? The truth is, I don’t know. And while I think that TOMS’s Blake Mycoskie and those like him are doing fantastic things, I worry that someone who buys a pair of TOMS will consider their job done. They’ll feel good about their $50 shoe purchase, knowing they’ve just given a pair to a child in need when a donation of half that amount could have possibly helped that child in substantially more impactful ways.

Really smart and important essay. Also, if you have not already done so, subscribe to Good Magazine. It is wonderfully designed and passionate about the things that matter.

Carrying a Filofax, with all the inserts that came standard with it, made me feel substantial, cliquish and secretive. British. Like a person who keeps close at hand many bankers’ private lines and Mandarin phrases and measurements for handmade shoes. The apparatus of the Filofax circumscribed and elevated my identity. 

A beautifully written ode to what I consider a lost and highly personal art. The datebook remains, in effect, a journal in reverse. Where as a journal is a catalogue of events past, a datebook is a diary of a future yet to come. Perhaps even more interesting is that it is one that is in flux, sometimes changing. Yet, with the passage of time, it in effect becomes that thing which it starts out in opposition to, a record of where you have been, with whom, and the days you celebrated a bit more than the rest.

But I’d also like to point out that large financial centers in certain cities around the planet are certainly going to kill millions of us by destroying our social safety networks in the name of their imaginary financial efficiency. You’re a thousand times more likely to die because of what some urban banker did in 2008 than from what some Afghan-based terrorist did in 2001. *Financiers live in small, panicky urban cloisters, severely detached from the rest of mankind. They are living today in rich-guy ghetto cults. They are truly dangerous to our well-being, and they are getting worse and more extremist, not better and more reasonable. You’re not gonna realize this havoc till you see your elderly Mom coughing in an emergency ward, but she’s going there for a reason.

Fascinating interview with one of our generation’s great thinkers.

My luck was accentuated by my living in a market system that sometimes produces distorted results, though overall it serves our country well. I’ve worked in an economy that rewards someone who saves the lives of others on a battlefield with a medal, rewards a great teacher with thank-you notes from parents, but rewards those who can detect the mispricing of securities with sums reaching into the billions. In short, fate’s distribution of long straws is wildly capricious.

Wherein, Warren outlines, in just under a page and a half, why he is giving 99% of his wealth away before he dies. A great American but, more importantly, a decent and humble human. 

The link above is to a PDF and, you should click it, download it, read it, and then ask yourself one simple question – What have you done today to make just one person’s life better?

Not enough? Thought so. Me neither. Let’s change that.

Religion will always be a case study in hypocrisy. This is because the ideal of religion is harmony but the practice of debating theology is dissonance. Thus religion is  intrinsically orientated around conflict/debate because it isinherently subjective.

In my dream world, James lives right down the street and neither of us have anything better to do then hanging out in each others back yards, sipping teas, and discussing stuff just like this.

Here’s the thing. I need to trust what gets me up, what gets me inspired, what gets me where I’m going, the spaces only I know about, and what others tell me, what I eat, and what others serve me, what I make, and what I make with others every day.

Fantastic. That said, I started to think about my list of what I trust and realize how truly difficult it is. There is not much I trust in this life. Perhaps it is because I have been let down and forsaken way too many times. Not sure what that says about me or if that is normal. All I know is that I need to change it because it is no way to live.

The No. 1 Creativity Habit

In a word: solitude.

Creativity flourishes in solitude. With quiet, you can hear your thoughts, you can reach deep within yourself, you can focus.

Agreed. It is one of the reasons I am so much more productive at night after everyone else has gone to sleep (the other being I am a night owl).

See also: Shhh…

What people want is opinions, analysis, techniques, experiences, and insights. The best of all these come as a bi-product from actually doing stuff. The closer you are to the topics, the more natural you’ll be able to extract the goodies.

“Content” is a word that has been bugging me more and more lately as well. Thanks, DHH, for laying out the smackdown. Also…

This also means that it’s hard to schedule. You can’t put neatly into timeslots when you’re going to be annoyed, ecstatic, disappointed, have a great insight or discover a new awesome technique.

Ever wonder why many of my sites might go days, or even sometimes weeks, without a new post? There is your answer.