THE SERENDIPITY SLIDE:
Transcription
THE SERENDIPITY SLIDE:
tracking wonder H A N D B O O K two THE SERENDIPITY SLIDE: 20-Plus Resources to TRACK WONDER For Your Creative Profession & Life THE SERENDIPITY SLIDE Don’t you love serendipity? Let’s say you’re a marketer and PR guru during the week. But it’s Saturday, and you’re at the park with your little boy. While he’s squawking up a storm as he chutes down an old-fashioned metal slide, you’re secretly thinking about ways to promote one of your client’s new services. Your client helps schools develop long-term projects to improve their respective communities and has asked your team to create a campaign brand to distinguish what she offers. Your boy squeals, his arms lifted toward the sun, as his sneakers land again onto the sand. Another parent and little girl show up. You two make small talk while your kids make big laughs. It turns out she’s a community organizer. She’s involved in her daughter’s school. She’s never made the connection between her occupation and her passion for her child’s education. You exchange cards. That evening your family goes out to eat. You overhear someone complaining about his son’s school. The curriculum seems meaningless. Maybe that conversation at the park and the overheard conversation at the restaurant alone don’t give you “the solution.” But they do give you a sense you’re on the right track, gathering “accidental” resources and making spontaneous connections. If anything, your unconscious should be primed that night for some insightful dreaming. You’re riding the serendipity slide. Serendipity is not only the chance fortunate encounter or connection itself. It’s also the disposition itself to be open to such accidental good luck. Psychologist Richard Wiseman studied and interviewed hundreds of successful people that we might tag as “lucky.” The first of four key traits he discovered that they held in common is they “create, notice, and act upon chance opportunities.” Like your boy on the slide, serendipity is fun and sometimes makes problem-solving more effortless. This TRACKING WONDER HANDBOOK #2 proffers resources to arouse serendipitous leads, ideas, connections, and actions as you pursue your creative projects. The following allies and delightful surprises will keep you on wonder’s scent. Here’s all I ask in return if you like what you read. Our world needs more wonder trackers. Wonder is here. We just need to let wonder open our eyes and minds so we can experience it and help change the world accordingly. 1. end me a link to or note about your S favorite TRACKING WONDER Resource not already on this list, and I might add it to the handbook. [email protected] TRACKING WONDER 2. 20:10: Think of 10 people you know who hunger to change the way creativity happens in our homes, studios, businesses, classrooms, communities, forests, and beaches. Send them a note telling them about this handbook and linking them to this page. EMAIL THIS DOCUMENT The Top 20 1 World Wide Wunderkammern 17th-century Wunderkammern, Wonder Cabinets, were the glass cabinets and sometimes whole rooms and shelves devoted to natural oddities such as skulls and bones and exotic clothes. «Now digital artists Marek Walczak and Martin Wattenberg are creating the Wonder Walker: A Global Online Wundermakker. Here’s an article about it from Mappa Mundi Magazine – itself a resource of online wonders. «Here’s a spontaneous collective Flickr Kunstkammer (Curiosity Cabinet) that might inspire your own collection. «Cluster Flock offers some of the best random wonder on the web. It’s an experimental collective blog. You can become part of the flock just by using the Christopher Walken account. Over 300 posts fall under the CF category of awesome. 2 The Imagine IT! Project The Imagine It! Project – This non-profit gathers brilliant organizations, entrepreneurs, schools, and individuals with a core mission: to change the way education happens through creativity, imagination, and innovation. Co-founded by innovative film producers and visionary entrepreneurs Rudy Poe and Richard Tavenar, the Imagine It! Project offers numerous free video interviews and other resources. “Creative thinking can change the world” is one of their key beliefs. Hear here. Because we’re devoted to changing the way creativity happens in the schools, we heartily endorse The Imagine It! Project. 3 Wonder Nonfiction Books: I could have devoted this whole handbook to 20 nonfiction books, but I’ll limit myself to four delightful and unique books: «The Book of Awesome and 1000 Awesome Things – Don’t you love waking up and realizing it’s Saturday? Or flipping over the pillow to the cool side? Or getting the day off because it’s snowed? Neil Pasricha had an idea. He’d start a blog and post one awesome thing a day each weekday. Friends forwarded it to friends. H AND B OOK TWO 3 Strangers posted their own awesome things. Millions of people read it. A book deal followed. AWESOME! for a 30-year-old guy who had just previously lost a good friend to suicide and a wife to divorce. Neil is an AWESOME wonder tracker. «The Happiness Project, the blog and book – Gretchen Rubin dropped off her young daughter at school one morning and thought, “I’m not happy. I’m going to change that.” So she made the personal pursuit of happiness her project for a year. She kept a blog that recorded her daily experiment to try out every piece of advice, scientific or otherwise, about happiness. The result? An endearing account from a dear human being who definitely is a wonder tracker. «The Power of Positivity - Henrik Edberg’s book and blog offer quick tips and quotations to engage your productivity and heighten your happiness. Like Gretchen, he gave himself a life project to shift his attitude and has been sharing his insight along the way. «The Age of Wonder – Richard Holmes, a British biographer, makes the case that wonder catalyzed the two seemingly opposed movements of Romantic poetry and of Romantic science during the nineteenth century. You’ll find any number of reviews from The Times to Time, but I liked this piece “Keats in Space” by writer Molly Young. Young seems like a wonder tracker herself. 4 Positive Psychology I blog for Psychology Today and keep in touch with a movement that is changing the way we view our minds, each other, and happiness. It’s called Positive Psychology. «Martin Seligman champions the positive in the psyche. That stance in itself flips Freud on his consternated head. We’re not in essence neurotic emotional neophytes with an unconscious filled with sexual demons. Well, maybe some of us are, but Seligman’s work out of the University of Pennsylvania has carried a bright and influential message for psychologists: Let’s study what factors account for human happiness and see if we can’t help people act accordingly. The founder of Positive Psychology, Seligman’s not simplistic. His website is chock full of resources, and his TED Talk suggests his demeanor is of intelligent good cheer. «Jonathan Haidt is one of the few positive psychologists who addresses wonder directly, and his book The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom is well worth the read. «And many of you know I’m a champion of psychologist Mihalyi Csikzentihalyi (cheeks-sent-me-high), who coined TRACKING WONDER the word “flow” for that optimal feeling we experience when we’re engaged in what we love for the love of it. «Psychologist and author of The Luck Factor Richard Wiseman tracks luck, as mentioned earlier. His smart website lays out the four core elements of lucky people and gives you resources to boost your luck factor. 5 Jonathan Harris & Story-Collecting on the Internet 30-something artist and computer scientist Jonathan Harris collects the globe’s stories. His media are savvy computer science, outdoor adventure, and an authentic range of compassion. His numerous Internet art projects do what wonder does best: They evoke deep connection – to one another and to what matters. Start with the 2006 project We Feel Fine. His 2007 TEDTalk relays some of his latest adventures in story, compassion, & wonder. 6 Knowledge that Challenges What You Think You Know Wonder scampers between the nest of knowledge and the field of not-knowing. Know, don’t know, know, don’t know. I’m a fact geek, so these sites send me scampering. (Don’t you love the word ‘scampering’? It reminds me of a hamster at last freed from one of those cruel plastic wheels and who’s running for his life to a summer camp for hampsters called “Camp Scamper”!) «Holy Crap Facts: I often play the “Holy Crap!” Game of Existential Wonder with myself by imagining my car suddenly reeling off the highway because there’s nothing holding up the highway but water. So when I came across this blog, I thought, “Holy Crap!, a site to make my head spin with factoids. Cool.” http://holycrapfacts.com/ «In Barking Up the Wrong Tree, Wired columnist Eric Barker offers a compendium of science-based questions and a review of current research in response to the question. 7 The Outdoors Get outside. Really, just cross that threshold, one foot in and one foot out, and feel how your arms and fingers kind of tingle with tiny murmurs of electric currents. It’s as if a hundred little flowers in the body perk up with the first gust of fresh air and sunlight. Give the eyes a break and follow your ears or nose around the block or into the woods. If you have a Tracking Wonder Field Guide notebook with you, record a few simple moments of sensual delight. The smell of bus exhaust early in the morning. The smell of someone else’s wood-burning H AND B OOK TWO 5 fire on a winter afternoon. The slap of cold wind flying off the Hudson River onto your face to say, “Wake up!” Our children aren’t the only ones suffering from nature-deficit disorder, and a slew of architects, designers, artists, and writers glean glimmers of insight from the languages of the outdoors. 8 Creative Action Figures No mind experiments for these guys. The G.I. Joes of creativity consulting, these creativity consultants would agree with Rene Descartes who said that wonder is dangerous if it does not lead to curiosity and inquiry. In other words, all wonder and no action makes Jack a dreamy-headed do-nothing. «Scott Belsky leads this troupe with his 99% Conference and collective blog (and his incredibly useful and engaging book Making Ideas Happen). I tote his nifty Action Cahiers wherever I go, and now so does my wife. I’ve bought them for friends, too. «Mark McGuinNess, a poet and consultant in London, offers similar principles in his consulting business Lateral Action. McGuinness hones in on the particular challenges creatives face in designing a whole and successful life. New York-based giddy dad, yogi, multi-talented venture partner, and consultant Jonathan Fields offers smart, generous advice, services and a blog full of resources aimed to keep you moving in genuine action toward your clients. 9 Jivamukti In the 1990s crazy black and white photographs tucked in the back of Yoga Journal would show a thin near-naked guy sticking out his tongue with his eyes rolled back while an elegant woman dressed in tights and heels gestured in an acrobatic pose. Who would practice yoga with these people? Millions of people, it turns out. Those two people in the ads were Sharon Gannon and David Life. Both performance artists in the ‘80s, together Gannon and Life produce music CDs, write books, and galvanize people around the world. They are changing the way millions of people engage their bodies and minds creatively and spiritually. Jivamukti – it means, simply, the self freed from its own shackles in this body and in this lifetime. 10 Your Body And for that matter, just relish this fleshy mobile home that’s uniquely yours. It doesn’t simply “house” the mind. It’s part and parcel of the brain, and it probably comprises a good 95% of the mind itself. If you never saw the Our Body: The Universe Within exhibit, you can still explore the site of resources. It’s too bad a pretty boy pop musician had to steal the title, but your body is a wonderland. TRACKING WONDER 11 David Abrams & the Alliance for Wild Ethics (A.W.E.) David Abrams & The Alliance For Wild Ethics (A.W.E.) If you’re going to track wonder, you want David in your tracking party. His special background in phenomenology and shamanism makes him a dynamic spokesperson for changing the way we can re-connect with our fellow plants and animals by reclaiming our delightful bodies. 12 The Art of Nonconformity & Chris Guillebeau Did you ever fantasize about traveling to every country? Not only that, but that you also would meet and talk with people in every country about changing the very world you’re traveling around? And not only that, but that you also would make a living by showing people how to do the same and live unconventionally and according to their passion? And, hey, why not throw in a World Domination Summit aimed to galvanize young armies of like-minded people who are all ready to create a world in which we all can live with passion? Meet Chris Guillebeau. He’s 32. He tracks wonder around the world and is doing all of the above. Go, Chris! 13 Delightful Social Networking & Gwen Bell Many creative contrarians bristle at the mega-social networking hurricane. Can being on Facebook feel like being in a yogi group of soulful like-minded people? Can Tweeting your latest insights and links feel like sending out cosmic cupcakes to strangers? Gwen Bell would probably say so. She’s a “social web strategist.” That means she helps you feel connected on the web, but she does so with delight, pleasure, and pure joy. Her yoga and meditation practice probably help. Gwen is a wonder tracker for the social web as her ideas for a digital sabbatical show. 14 A Box of Crayons for CEOs A Box of Crayons for CEOs. Don’t even mention “think outside the box” to Michael Bungay Stanier. Bungay Stanier is a down-to-earth, savvy Fortune 500 coach and author of Do More Great Work (and former Rhodes Scholar). His flick 8 Principles of Irresistible Fun alone puts him on this list as a valued wonder tracker in the boardroom. 15 quirky Graphic Artists MARIAN BANJTES and STEFAN SAGMEISTER prove that you can defy corporate slickness and be outrageously successful. Bantjes’s art and design have her indelible stamp of elaborate ornamentation, exquisite care, and delicious delight. Rather than work for 40 years and retire at seventy, Sagmeister and his design firm take year-long sabbaticals every seven years to refresh their perspective. Both of them stay on wonder’s scent. H AND B OOK TWO 7 16 Connecting Again As Human Beings Wonder opens us to what matters, and so do these thinkers: «Alex Steffen and WorldChanging Former environmental journalist Alex Steffen heads up the vast global media network called WorldChanging: Change Your Thinking. With over 10,000 articles, a 600-page book by the same title full of resources (and designed by Sagmeister), and a network of thinkers, WorldChanging puts you in touch with what matters, and tracking wonder is all about acting upon what matters. «Douglas Rushkoff and Life, Inc. More than almost any other thinker lately, Rushkoff puts his keen intellect and capacity to research to work on behalf of recapturing meaningful connections between and among human beings in this digital age. A nine-minute history of corporate America and a six-minute interview on the Colbert Report will get you started. Then, get off the computer and start a barbecue gathering! 17 Spell-Binding Writers Poets, fiction writers, and essayists are among our most ancient traditions of wonder trackers. Here is a sampling of some favorite writers whose work reminds us that language and story can still cast spells. Charles Baxter speculates that the heart of fiction begins with wonder and questions, and his own novels and short stories prove it so. Nicholson Baker has earned a reputation – not always favorably – by writing a series of novels and novellas in the voice of boyishly obsessed, digressive, near-goofy, but always wondrous narrators. In country boy Ted Kooser’s essays and poems, wonder arrives in barns and leaves and the slice of light in October. A guy who titles his memoir A Private History of Awe merits a place on this list, don’t you think? Scott Russell Sanders has carved an oeuvre made of reverence, reflection, and not-knowing musings. 18 Houses of Imagination Part of my curiosity is how we can shape spaces to invite more wonder, reverie, and optimal creative flow. «SyFy Station Commercial: Here’s a commercial that would spin Don Draper’s head. If you like the song “Happiness,” it’s by the English synthesizer duo Goldfrapp. «Anthony Lawlor & the Foundation for Consciousness in Architecture: Lawlor has been writing about and building sacred spaces for a long time. His soulful workspaces will give wonder ample cozy nooks & crannies. TRACKING WONDER «Pattern Language and Christopher Alexander: I love nooks and crannies. Our old farmhouse has a few cozy spots to hide away and daydream. Theorist and architect Christopher Alexander might applaud. In his books and on this website, he lays out elegant principles for drawing upon over 250 fundamental patterns of design that make homes, work space, and neighborhoods livable, fulfilling, and compatible with the planet. Environment shapes the mind. So why not shape your working and living environment with wonder? you wonder what a modern-day Wonder Cabinet would look like? Do Check out this Brooklyn artist’s house: http://vimeo.com/14938491. Ben Wu and David Usui of Lost & Found Films (lostfoundfilms.com) made this short to initiate their “This Must be the Place” series that explores how we make our homes. «Candyland Rooms: Prague-based photographer Jan Faulkner creates surreal rooms that evoke what I’ve been calling lately “Mind Rooms” – those shaped categories of thought that we ask our minds to sit, lounge, and romp in. Faulkner says on her own website, “My personal work is still in progress. I am trying to find the way between reality and fantasy, natural and artificial, original and imitation, personal and global. I focus on the aesthetic quality of depicted objects or persons, there must be some signs of beauty, truth and deeper value.” Beauty, truth, and deeper value – those are key elements that define wonder. 19 Wonder Performance Pioneers After John Cage flipped the art and music worlds on their silent heads in the 1960s, the 1970s and ‘80s erupted with pioneer wonder trackers. David Byrne just doesn’t stop creating. Neither does wonder vocalist Meredith Monk. 20 A Hut of Questions If I do my job well, A HUT OF QUESTIONS will become your regularly resource for serendipitous reflections, links, and tips for crafting a creative life rich with meaningful work, project completion, and dynamic relationships. Dwell in some questions with me. The experience of wonder is not a relic of childhood. It’s a reminder that some things are more important, more real, and more beautiful than others. It’s also not an accessory for people with easy lives. It’s as essential for us to thrive in this human life as is good food and love and fresh water and play. See you in the woods, Jeffrey www.trackingwonder.com