Author: Eric Johnson

"The best way to know the truth or beauty is to try to express it."

The truth about art

Eric Johnson

We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth. –Pablo Picasso

Jason Silva keeps making good stuff. I appreciate his effusive expressiveness. He’s got charisma, and I love how he’s using video to convey in short bursts his passion for ideas and feelings that awaken possibility and shine a light on what could be.

This Paradox of Art video is a good reminder of the value of art and the power of effective art to communicate truth beyond its own form.

I remember as a teenager being frustrated reading poetry in high school English class.

“What does it mean?” “I don’t get it.” “What’s the point?”

I was trying to read poetry as if it were prose. I grew to understand that art could point to something far from its explicit expression. As I grew in my own depth, the beauty of art began to reveal itself to me.

I don’t have to get stuck to the words in a poem. Those words should send me to an understanding or insight or emotion that I otherwise wouldn’t experience were it handed to me directly.

And when I try to express myself, I need to remember to embrace the freedom offered by metaphor and mystery. I don’t have to serve it up straight and cold and direct. In fact, allowing and encouraging the audience to ponder and search and discover is preferable. As Kubrick said, giving your audience “the thrill of discovery” will allow your art to connect even more deeply than if your truth was just handed over.

Of course, art is infection, as Tolstoy explained. So, don’t make your work so impenetrable that it has no effect.

And all of us are artists, we all can create and offer something of value. Get busy creating and trying to express your truths as artfully as you can.

Eight weeks left in 2014: Walk on

Eric Johnson3 Comments

december-31st

I’ve been counting down the weeks left in the year, and we are at the eight week mark today.

I’ve been consistent with the hundred pushups challenge, but not so much with my reading habits. Get on that, man. Wake up earlier. Stop getting lost in internet mazes. What if I read eight more books before New Year’s Day? Compiling my list tonight.

I’m adding a new habit this week: walk a mile every day. It’s an easy, quick distance to cover. The dog needs the exercise and the attention, and I need to get moving more often.

Walking is a simple, primal activity that is good for body and mind. Mark Sisson published a post recently detailing the prolific walking habits of some great thinkers – Aristotle, Thoreau, Wordsworth, Dickens, and Beethoven among others.

Sisson quotes this from Soren Kierkegaard:

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.

The author of my favorite book, Brenda Ueland, wrote about the therapeutic benefits of leisurely, meandering walks. She went on a solitary, five to six mile walk every day to tend to her creative spirit. Harry Truman was famous for his daily, brisk walks and lived a long and interesting life.

Few things refresh and recharge like a walk. And sitting for a living as most of us do necessitates some intentional movement for a healthier life. Setting a goal of just one mile each day, which takes twenty minutes or less, makes this so doable. I could do this at lunch or early in the morning or include the whole family in the evening. I’m using the Runkeeper app to track my distance traveled.

I want to be stronger and healthier and building my day around healthy routines and productive habits will make a bigger impact than setting random goals.

Wake up knowing you’ve got to get your mile in each day. Walk on.

Shine for someone

Eric Johnson

I found this anecdote a while back:

“Maya Angelou was once asked what was her secret to being such a good writer and poet. Her response was, ‘Because when I was a little girl, every time I walked into a room my daddy’s eyes lit up.’”

I can’t trace it to an interview with Maya Angelou or verify it’s her story, but it rings true for me and seems to fit what I know of her. Every person is unique and has the gift of their never-to-be-duplicated presence to offer. But that sense of worth needs nurturing, and the potential for a truly radiant spirit and creative gift can be quashed without regular doses of encouragement and eye-shining love.

Whose eyes have shined for you? Who has given you the courage to be your best, to dare to be more than even you have imagined?

My parents, my grandmother, my sister. They all made me feel like I was special. My wife has the most amazing eyes of anyone I’ve ever seen, and I was smitten on our first date when she shined those gorgeous blue eyes on me with as much delight and focused attention as I’d ever known, as if I were, at that moment, the most interesting man in the world.

And when I’m giving a presentation, I live for those in the audience who smile back at me, who nod and engage from where they are. Who laugh at my humor, or fake it just to be kind. And I want to be that kind of person for someone else when I’m in an audience.

I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of people offer me encouragement throughout my life. Who do you need to appreciate for the encouragement you’ve received? Who have been your biggest fans?

And who gets the gift of your shining eyes? Who do you light up for? Whose fire can you warm yourself at?

I want to regularly light up for my wife and daughters and for the people I work with and for strangers who cross my path. It’s easy to take for granted the people we see often. But those closest to us deserve to be reminded that we are grateful for their presence.

It takes courage to express enthusiasm when “meh” is the prevailing sentiment.

Most human interactions are self-absorbed and monotonously sterile. Genuine enthusiasm and delight and focused attention seem shocking by comparison, and it takes courage to express enthusiasm when “meh” is the prevailing sentiment. But don’t you grow a little bigger inside when someone lights up at your presence?

Have the courage to be encouraging, to embolden those you encounter. Give your complete attention to the person in front of you. Genuinely connect with the random people you see and may never see again as well as with the people in your life every day. Be known for the energizing effect you have just for the delight you take in acknowledging the presence of others.

Get excited and allow your eyes to light up when others walk in the room. Shine for someone.

Peaking at 80

Eric Johnson

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I’ve been telling students recently they should make decisions with the intent to peak at 60. The long game will reward you.

I chose 60 because it seemed distant enough for a college student to imagine the long arc of a career. As a 50-year-old myself, though, 60 is shockingly close now and not much of a long game for me.

Then I came across a post from Kottke who linked to this excellent New York Times feature on masters in their field who are still doing great work into their 80s and beyond.

Here’s Tony Bennett:

“Here I am at 88, and I still feel like I have an awful lot to learn, today and tomorrow and the next day and the next day. About my craft. About how to become a better artist. About coming up with creative ideas.”

There are profiles of people from a variety of professions, and the recurring theme is a discontent that propels constant growth and a relentless commitment to learning and improving.

Don’t ever arrive. Keep striving.

“The tree of knowledge and the fountain of youth are one and the same.” –Lewis Lapham

Sunday night Stoic: Calm, purposeful, authentic

Eric Johnson

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A new week to practice the traits you want to characterize your life.

Keep calm and rise above the frenzy. Breathe and observe. Choose to respond with poise.

Be intentional in your actions. Don’t worry about appearing to be busy, but know that purposeful action is powerful. Don’t wait and waste what little time you’ve been afforded. Just begin.

And be real, be authentic. Don’t try to be. Just be. Don’t overthink how you are perceived. Speak and act and think as best you know how right now.

Bonfire

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Many a man has a bonfire in his heart, and no one comes to warm himself at it. –Vincent Van Gogh

Sitting by a warm fire on this cold night in Tennessee reminded me of this great line in a letter Van Gogh sent to his brother, Theo.

Everyone has a fire within, with the potential for it to be stoked into something great with a little attention and care. It is a noble calling to be one who helps others come alive just by listening and encouraging and being present.

Just keep going

Eric Johnson

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ht Jason Silva

Times are tough for you? Patience. This will pass.

All is well? Life seems good? This, too, shall pass.

Anxiety, elation, frustration, satisfaction, boredom… No feeling is permanent.

It doesn’t matter how you feel. Just keep going. It’s what you do and how you respond that matters most.

Can you simply observe your emotions and your thoughts without getting lost in them? Me, neither.

But those who are masters of mindfulness have described a state where you can watch your thoughts and feelings flow by as if you were in that empty space behind a waterfall. Sign me up for a comfortable chair in that blissful spot.

Observe and inhabit all you think and feel knowing it’s all impermanent. Don’t get down on yourself for being unable to control the torrent. Learn to observe and be curious. And just keep going.

Data, data everywhere…

Eric Johnson

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*From a Jeremy Waite tweet

And there are a lot of stars in the sky.

We are traveling in uncharted territory. The information age we are creating has us swamped with more to read and see and hear than humans have ever encountered. We are constantly consuming words and images and ideas. I find it a challenge to just sit or do anything not requiring complete attention without reaching for a device to beam some more info my way.

I am grateful to be living in the future. I live to learn and grow. But I’ve got to build in some quiet, some space carved out from the noise of the nonstop flow of information. Maybe meditation is the way to go. Or a daily walk sans earbuds.

What’s the balance between consuming and creating and just being? What systems and habits do I need to build into my daily life to better navigate through the sea of data we’re all swimming in while still living an authentic, present, fully human existence?

Only nine weeks left to make 2014 awesome

Eric Johnson1 Comment

december-31st

It’s Wednesday. As of today there are only nine weeks left in 2014, one week down in my ten week countdown to make 2014 more awesome.

What will you have to show for this year? How do you want to finish? Schedule some time for a meeting with yourself on New Year’s Eve to assess the year, to review what was great about 2014 and what could have been better. Really, go put this on your calendar now. I just added it to mine. (By the way, I use Fantastical, a killer calendar app for Mac and iOS. So good.)

I’m imagining Wednesday, December 31. There will be football on TV and a family gathering that night probably. But that morning will most likely be a quiet time to get away and reflect on the year and on these last ten weeks especially. I’m hoping I’m stronger (I’m one week closer in the hundred pushups challenge) and a bit smarter (my book reading plan is slow go for now, though). I plan to have written something I’m proud of, and I’m counting on having even better relationships with the people I love.

What can you do to finish well? What actions can you take this week that will create momentum for the habits and routines you want to build. Systems trump goals, and these final weeks can give you a good foundation to build systems that will endure and that can truly transform your life over time.

Nine weeks is plenty of time to make remarkable progress on something you truly care about. Don’t wait till there are only eight weeks left to get started on finishing strong in 2014.

Start. Now.

Claim your place on the internet

Eric Johnson1 Comment

Everyone should claim their place on the internet. Go grab the URL of your choice for just a few bucks a year and own your online identity.* Why not? We are living in the future! The internet offers the chance to express and connect in a way humans have never been able to before. Don’t sit this out.

Of course, I think everyone should write. Even if you create a site that no one other than your mom ever visits, it’s worthwhile for your own benefit to have a platform to build your ideas and share your creations. The attempt to create something, to express yourself, will help you see and understand in ways that just thinking passively never can. And posting something publicly, that anyone in the world might come across, will focus your attention more finely and compel you to hone and craft your ideas with more care. Kind of like how you clean your house so much better when you’re expecting company, writing something with the awareness that others might read it will lead to clearer thinking and better work.

Writing something with the awareness that others might read it will lead to clearer thinking and better work.

Young people, especially, who are just getting started on their careers, should be expected to have a thoughtful online presence. To heck with your resume, show me what you’ve done. If you want to go into marketing or advertising, for example, wouldn’t it be more impressive to show a prospective employer your blog filled with posts analyzing marketing and advertising instead of just your grades in classes. If you’re passionate about public health, why not chronicle what you’re learning about health policy. If you’re an artist, make and share your art.

The college students I work with are getting it. From a design student to a mass media student to a fashion merchandising student, they know that they should go ahead and start acting like and creating like they are who they want to be. Sarah, the fashion merchandising student, was in a college class I spoke to a few weeks ago. After my talk she came up and told me she’d been wanting to create a web site about her interest in fashion. The next week, she sent me a link to her new site, and it’s terrific. And it’s going to help her figure out what she really cares about and what’s worth sharing and how to express her ideas more effectively. And when she’s pursuing career opportunities she will have a tangible body of work to share, not just a resume. Or maybe her web site will become a career. It happens.

Write the internet you want to read.

But don’t see your online presence just as a means to an end, as a sort of obligatory extended resume. The best stuff on the internet is created as an end in itself, for fundamental reasons rather than instrumental reasons. Write the internet you want to read. Craft and share work that delights you intrinsically without any expectation of a payoff and see if you don’t make better work than if you were trying to get some extrinsic reward.

You don’t need permission to do work you find meaningful, nor do you have to wait till you’ve earned a degree to get busy getting better at what you want to do. Even if no one pays you for it, ever, go make something and share it with the world.

 

*I use WordPress.com and pay them each year for my custom domain name. It’s a hassle-free, low-maintenance option that I’ve been happy with.

Toughen yourself

Eric Johnson

Looking back through my highlights in Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle is the Way, I found this:

You’ll have far better luck toughening yourself up than you ever will trying to take the teeth out of a world that is—at best—indifferent to your existence.

It’s the same sentiment as this from Ramana Maharshi:

WANTING TO REFORM THE WORLD WITHOUT DISCOVERING ONE’S TRUE SELF IS LIKE TRYING TO COVER THE WORLD WITH LEATHER TO AVOID THE PAIN OF WALKING ON STONES AND THORNS. IT IS MUCH SIMPLER TO WEAR SHOES.

Setting out to change the world seems noble, but the direct path to epic transformation is as simple as changing yourself, steeling yourself against the blows that are bound to come in this world. And helping others do the same would surely change their world.

Epictetus on choices and living artfully

Eric Johnson

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My wife put a lamp by the deeply cushioned chair in our bedroom last night to make a new reading spot in our house, and I gave it a go. I sat down to read from an actual book, made from paper. It was my hardcover copy of The Art of Living, Sharon Lebell’s collection of the best of the wisdom of the first and second century Stoic teacher Epictetus.

Epictetus had been a slave who earned his freedom through his excellence as a student and, eventually, a teacher of Stoic philosophy. Nothing he may have written survives, but his students collected and saved his teachings, which went on to influence everyone’s favorite philosopher king, Marcus Aurelius. (Marcus was an emperor, not a king, of course. Philosopher emperor was beyond even Plato’s imagination.)

The single sentence on the opening page above is as good an exhortation as anyone could need. But it’s followed on the next page by this jewel of simple yet often neglected common sense:

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We always have a choice about the contents and character of our inner lives.

We don’t have much control over what happens around us and to us, but we do get to choose our response. Easy to understand. Hard, though, to own that choice standing in the often very small, poorly lit gap between stimulus and response.

I’ve got to at least be more aware that I am making these choices. I am responsible – able to choose my response – and not made to do or be anything not in my choosing. No one or no thing can make me angry, for example. I may choose to be angry in response, but it’s my choice, whether I own up to it or not.

I need these reminders regularly. Searching to share something insightful every day has been a great way to live a more adventurous inner life and to remind myself to do better, to grow and improve. These notes to self that I share publicly have become a daily discipline that I hope will keep me sharp and curious. I recommend this to anyone looking to make better sense of their own thinking and their place in the universe. Oh, that’s everyone. Of course, everyone should write.

We all are artists creating a unique life, a life that’s never been before and never will be again. Choose to craft yours as though you’re sculpting a masterpiece.

Life is asking us a question

Eric Johnson

From Ryan Holiday’s excellent book The Obstacle is the Way:

The great psychologist Viktor Frankl, survivor of three concentration camps, found presumptuousness in the age-old question: “What is the meaning of life?” As though it is someone else’s responsibility to tell you. Instead, he said, the world is asking you that question. And it’s your job to answer with your actions.
In every situation, life is asking us a question, and our actions are the answer. Our job is simply to answer well.

The question to awaken possibility

Eric Johnson1 Comment

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What if you asked “What if …?” like it was your job?

What if you put no limits on the answers?

What if you asked this about your work, your relationships, your dreams for who you want to become?

What if asking this became a habit, a part of your weekly, or daily, routine?

What if you become known for your embrace of possibility?

What if you helped awaken possibility in others?

What if you actually did something to make even a handful of those possibilities become reality?

The end (of the year) is near: The ten week challenge

Eric Johnson11 Comments

december-31st

The end is near. Ten weeks till December 31. The year is in wind down mode. But how can you gear up for a strong finish, so you can look back on 2014 as a remarkable year in your life?

Ten weeks is enough time to build a habit, to craft a routine, to hone a system.

Me, I’m going back to my hundred pushups plan. It will be rewarding to finish the year physically stronger than I started it. I’m also going to focus on tightening my daily habits for reading and writing. I want to aim for a bigger writing project than posting on this site daily. And I’m going to be intentional about more quality time with my family.

It’s easy to slack off as the holiday season approaches, to defer discipline and hard things to the new year. But imagine how you hope to feel on December 31. What project have you put off that would excite you if you did it? What relationship in your life needs attention? Is there a worthwhile challenge that scares you a bit? Which habit can you form that would make a big difference?

Open a document or grab a marker and some paper and write: “What if…?”

Respond quickly to that question with as many possibilities for the next few weeks as you can imagine. Then go through that list and focus on the possibilities that elicit the most excitement. Now put a plan in place to make them happen and get busy.

Schedule an appointment with yourself for December 31 to review your year and to begin planning your adventures for 2015.

How can this be your best year yet? A lot can be done in ten weeks. It’s not too late to take action and finish strong.

Presenters: Prepare for AV to fail

Eric Johnson

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I did a talk to a student group last night and the AV didn’t work. It was in the main classroom building on campus where I’ve never had any AV problems before.* I had just created a new version of this presentation earlier in the day and hadn’t taken the time to rehearse, so when I didn’t have the slides to guide me I was a bit lost. But I winged it and jumped in with enthusiasm. I knew my stories and points well. I wasn’t solid on the new structure and flow, though. It was an audience eager to engage and smile, so they were very forgiving of my somewhat disorganized delivery.

A presentation is not about the slides, of course. It’s about the interaction, the connection between the presenter and the audience. And seeing an audience like last night’s was so encouraging. It makes me want to make the effort to be the kind of audience member who gives presenters engaged attention and smiling eyes.

About halfway through last night, one of my brilliant friends in attendance (Thanks, Sheryar!) got a version of my slides to work, so I shuffled through the deck and made them fit where I was in my talk.

This experience reminded me to walk into every presentation with the assumption the AV won’t work and to be prepared to go without any visuals at all. I let this audience down by not being ready to give my best no matter what happened with the AV.

Here is a PDF of the slides that I didn’t get to fully use. Next time, I’ll be ready to roll with or without them.

 

*I present using Keynote on an iPad mini connected by a VGA adapter to the projector. My remote control to advance the slides is Keynote on an iPhone. Usually, connecting the iPad to a VGA input works perfectly. Not this time.

Showing my work: FAB 4

Eric Johnson1 Comment

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Showing my work helps remind me what a rewardingly messy process creation is. An audience typically only sees the well honed final creation, but it’s worthwhile to share openly the process that creates the product. I take heart when I see an artist show the rough drafts and discarded wrong steps.

I’m remixing a presentation for tonight. I’m speaking to a group of college freshmen and sharing wisdom I’ve learned from a career working with campus superstars. I’ve got a handful of ideas and stories I rely on for these kinds of talks, but this morning I decided to scrap a version of the talk I’ve used recently and rethink the structure and design.

I turned my chair around, away from the computer, and took some markers to the jumbo scratch pad on my desk. I mapped out the most important ideas and rearranged the flow before turning back around and designing the slides in Keynote.

It helps to change tools and switch from digital to analog to jump start a fresh approach. And it’s worthwhile to take something you’ve got down pat and jumble it up and start over. New possibilities appear that otherwise would have been hidden behind old, safe patterns.

 

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Dig deep

Eric Johnson

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Digging is hard. It’s easy to just stay on the surface. But the good stuff often is buried down deep and will require some effort to get to. But the good stuff is worth the effort.

That hard conversation? That creative project? The vision you have for the kind of person you truly want to be? Dig deep and conquer the resistance keeping you from the goodness buried below.

John Gruber tells the Daring Fireball story

Eric Johnson

Daring Fireball is a daily must-read for me. And John Gruber has one of the most consistently distinctive and quote-worthy takes on Apple and all things tech. I’m a fan and have a couple of Daring Fireball t-shirts I wear proudly. (I’m normally a plain-t kind of guy, so it’s a big deal for me to sport someone’s logo.)

Gruber has a great story about how he made his blog into his full-time career, and he told it on the XOXO Festival stage recently:

If you think you’ve missed the boat, that it’s too late for you to get in on the possibilities created by the internet, you are wrong. It’s still early. We are just at the edge of the frontier. But don’t wait around thinking about it. Claim your stake online now. Buy that domain name. Get started on WordPress or Squarespace or Tumblr. Make something you’re proud to share with the world. And keep doing it. And keep getting better.