William James, 1902

“Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or being.”

Start Anywhere

From our friends over at The 99%, a great video to watch this weekend. Frans Johansson, author of the best-selling The Medici Effect, on pushing through failure and executing big ideas.

The key? Start anywhere.

Dan Ariely Talks Shoes

Nice video from Big Think on employee motivation with MIT Behavioral Economics professor Dan Ariely. This falls right into Fishbird’s thinking. How do you innovate to motivate? As Zappos seems to have a grasp on, it’s bigger than a paycheck.

Thanks, Steve

Great words from a great man:

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.”

Learning from Picasso

One of our Fishbird team members was out in San Francisco for the past two weeks, interestingly enough brushing up on his culinary knowledge (we don’t believe in pigeonholing ourselves). Over the course of his days out on the West Coast, he often wrote us short emails discussing what he was doing and learning. We thought we’d share this one with you:

I went to see a Picasso exhibit at one of the museums by the bay. I’m not sure what drew me there. In most cases, I find art museums to be difficult to walk through, if only because there are so many people standing around trying to get something. By “get” I mean they are trying to figure out the answer to a question that was never asked by the artist. I have counted myself as one of these people until this particular Picasso exhibit. Something changed for me, walking amongst his art. I was staring at one of his paintings, listening to a woman converse with another woman about why he used this color for the face, that color for the hat. I watched people flirting with the artwork, attempting to tease out its secrets. And I realized in that moment that there was nothing to find in Picasso’s work.

It just is.

And all those conversations I used to hear, or used to be a part of, about how some of the greatest pieces of art look like a child could have done them, these conversations came rushing back to me. This is what makes these paintings so prolific, it is that they are just raw energy, thought has not entered the process. By “thought,” I mean the adult ideas of doing things for a reason. Try painting like a child and you will inevitably get lost in thinking about how to paint like a child and all of your energy will not be expressed on the paper.

I walk into another room after all these thoughts have drifted in like summer rainclouds and I see a quote from Picasso, saying something along the lines of, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, it took me a lifetime to paint like a child.”

This is what we are all trying to get back to, in some form or another. Children are energy. Adults are the thought of energy. It is when we get out of our minds and become present that we are able to become children again, children who have no need for greater reasoning or meaning.

Meaning is a solely human pursuit. And we look for it everywhere. It is very much like how we are by and large programmed to see a human face in how certain rocks and shadows are arranged on the surface of Mars. Our minds are looking for humanity, for a sign of life in everything, just like we are constantly scanning for meaning. But just as those Martian rocks are not a human face, the majority of this world has no meaning. It is not trying to mean anything, it is not trying to get us to understand something bigger.

So, for the first time in my life, I appreciated an art exhibit. I stopped trying to be intelligent in the space, and I just let Picasso show me what he wanted to show me. It was beautiful.

Getting Past “Box Fresh”

The Procrastinators – episode 7 from Lernert & Sander on Vimeo.

This is a nice little video series by Dutch design team Lernert & Sander on procrastination. Over the past year, they interviewed a variety of their fellow countrymen – artists, writers, musicians – to see how each tackle the issue of postponing their day to day work. Why don’t we just do things? Why do we put them off for a later time?

Besides the beautiful, simple video, the series speaks to some universal elements that we all face as creatives. This video in particular spoke to us, not only because it’s been translated into English, but also because of the artist’s discussion of “box fresh,” a story about how he never wanted use his new colored pencils or new paints because they were too beautiful to mess with. The beauty of these things, from the brand new paints to the blank writer’s page, are all things we as artists need to get past, for creativity is really about getting dirty.

If you’re a Dutch speaker, check out the rest of The Procrastinators’ series at Limboland. Or just check them out for the great video.

Whatever you do, don’t put it off.