Merlin Mann found Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi’s secret to maintaining flow: “The only solution to achieve enduring happiness, therefore, is to keep finding new opportunities to refine one’s skills: do one’s job better or faster, or expand the tasks that comprise it; find a new set of challenges more appropriate to your stage of life. Paradoxically, the feeling of happiness is only realized after the event. To acknowledge it at the time would only serve as distraction.” This from an article in The Times called “The secrets of happiness.” Worth a read don’t you think? I have experienced intense happiness and flow …
At WorldChanging you will find a link to an amazing site of visualizations of complex networks. What is especially interesting to me about these maps is how many of them are actually hierarchical. Many of these maps show complex relationships, but they do so in a flattened way. For example, this diagram (at right) is a radial representation of an organizational map from 1924. On the face of it it looks radically different, but in fact it is a relatively well formed hierarchy with single reporting relationships and only a cursory acknowledgment of horizontal organizational structure in management. Non-hierarchical, emergent …
A couple of stories about truth and stories. Yesterday on CBC Radio’s Sounds Like Canada, Shelagh Rogers interviewed Paul Rosen. Paul Rosen is the goaltender for Canada’s Sledge Hockey team, and is getting ready to head over to Turin to compete in the Paralympics. Rosen is an amputee, having lost his leg to a persistent bacterial infection. Very early on in his new life as a one legged man he adopted a very positive outlook. His doctors were suspicious and sent him to a psychiatrist for an evaluation. At that consultation, Rosen took some water and poured it on his …
Alright, I made the switch to WordPress. Like every big move, the decision to do so was simple, the mechanics slightly harder and the final touches will take awhile. At any rate, if you are reading this in a newsreader, you won’t notice much difference. For those of you with more of an eye to template, please bear with me. Like moving to any new house, it will take a while to redecorate. Overall though, happy to be here in WordPress land.
Here’s a great story from MashUp Camp on how an Open Space Technology unconference worked. The article concludes with this quote: ‘The amazing thing about these camps, using open space methodology, is they shouldn’t work,’ said Ross Mayfield, CEO of Socialtext, which makes social software for collaboration. ‘Like a wiki, it turns out that some very simple and open rules have shockingly positive results–because people, on the whole, are good. Open events like these have become almost commonplace in the Valley. In fact, I’d say they are a key driver for the current wave of innovation. One part wiki, one …