Thoughts on art, reading & living well by Gary Bacon
These are core values that I follow in order to maintain happiness and well-being. My overarching mantra is: Happiness is sustained fulfillment. Fulfillment is born out of creating art. Below are the supporting core values: Create art. Be authentic. Travel and new experiences. Solid relationships. Peace where I live. Travel Much of my best reading gets done on airplanes. In my experience, zero…
These are core values that I follow in order to maintain happiness and well-being. My overarching mantra is: Happiness is sustained fulfillment. Fulfillment is born out of creating art. Below are the supporting core values: Create art. Be authentic. Travel and new experiences. Solid relationships. Peace where I live. Authenticity I believe in being 100% authentic. The person that I am at work is…
These are core values that I follow in order to maintain happiness and well-being. My overarching mantra is: Happiness is sustained fulfillment. Fulfillment is born out of creating art. Below are the supporting core values: Create art. Be authentic. Travel and new experiences. Solid relationships. Peace where I live. Keep Your Freedom. Give yourself options. Will saying yes to _______ give up my…
Isolation and the Future with AI Thinking back over the last couple of decades of being online, it got me to thinking about community. When the web was growing in the late 90s, it was a place to be expressive. Sites like GeoCities allowed folks to create and publish websites for free based on theme or interest. It was a place to share information, find connection, and enabled sites like Yahoo or…
Stumbling onto a Love of Life If you look at those who have been greatly successful in life many times it was their passions that led to their “ making it”. They didn’t actively seek it out but rather by creating their Art and doing “ The Work ” they stumbled into a life they truly love. Tyler Oakley in the interview shown below shares about his success so far, At the beginning, the first year,…
What to read? As a person that has over 900 books on his Amazon wish list, finding time to consume all the books that I want to seems daunting at times. I’m not a fast reader either. With the current list, if I stopped adding to it and read only one book a month, it would take me 75 years to read all of the books. If I read 4 a month, it would take 18 years. So, with that being said, I do have to…
Building Momentum with Tiny Wins Setting good habits sets you up for success. The more that you practice those habits the more momentum you start to build. I absolutely love how Darren Hardy refers to momentum in The Compound Effect , I’d like to introduce you to Mo, or “ Big Mo,” as I like to call it. Big Mo is, without doubt, one of the most powerful and enigmatic forces of success. You can’t…
Design Thinking for Life I was feeling overwhelmed, more accurately so “ scatterbrained”, by the many areas of life that I want to work on. As a creative person, I get so excited and want to pursue all the things . Lately, I’ve been feeling the urge to just focus . Well, how do I know what to focus on? Ideation With so much swirling in my head of what I should be doing . It was time to throw it…
The phrase “ Consistency Over Perfection” is now my mantra. This post outlines how I went from discouraged about my fitness progress to pushing through and making real progress in many areas of my life. Fitness Goals Last year, in December, I maxed out at a weight of 198 lbs. This is the most that I’ve ever weighed. Ever. Per my usual habit, I set my Fitness Goals and posted them on my…
How do you see? I’ve always disliked the phrase, “ Fake it until you make it!”. It just feels so disingenuous. Dealing with conflict shouldn’t be about denying reality, it should be more about accepting it, for what it is. Then instead of approaching conflict with a position of defense, you open up and look at it from the perspective of finding solutions — discovering opportunities hidden in plain…
Plan for Everything, Including Spontaneity Are you getting comfortable? Due to your brain loving efficiency, you are creating and relying on habits all the time. The Habit Loop. They can be good or bad. It’s great when you are building positive habits, and your brain goes on autopilot. This frees mental resources up to tackle deep work…except for when complacency sets in. Give Me That Inspiration…
Introduction to Habits Ever feel like your life is on autopilot? Feel stuck, creative block, or like everyone else is passing you by? Perhaps it’s the habits in your life. Those small efforts over time add up. Good or bad. Let’s dive into how they are formed. The Habit Loop The Power of Habit , by Charles Duhigg, describes building habits as a three-step process: First, there is a cue , a trigger…
Jolt Justin Jackson’s book Jolt: Marketing Tactics for Programmers, Designers, Freelancers, Makers, and Entrepreneurs was a great way to start off the year. It really does give you a Jolt of inspiration . This book is a great resource for marketing your new product, software, idea, book, or any project that you want to promote. It teaches you to, “ Be different, break out of the mold, and surprise…
Solving Complex Problems How’s that for a headline? Rolls right off the tongue. Let’s dive into creating solutions, getting rid of clouded thinking, and making forward progress. Artfully Frustrated, Again There are times where I find myself being Artfully Frustrated , again. I have to remind myself that others experience this, it’s a sign that I’m still growing, and to push on forward. That…
Finding What Challenges You In an interview , Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about science boosting the economy. He goes on to say, most companies and politicians don’t have the tolerance for the long term view. You don’t motivate a group of kids, saying “ Who wants to be a mechanical engineer and help improve flight efficiency by 15% compared to the airplane your father flew?” But instead, ask “ Who…
Say No to Yak Shaving A common theme that I see re-occurring in success stories is: “ I stuck it out. I didn’t quit early.” Weird Lucky Thing In a 1988 interview , the then 38-year-old Bill Murray said there were lots of actors that were better at “ The Second City ” who quit it before it even got to a paying status. That extra mile, that commitment, that desire, the action of pushing on when…
The wonderful thing about design concepts and patterns is that they can be reused. Whenever you hit on a core idea, it can be expanded to many different applications. Recently, Apple has introduced Force Touch or haptic feedback into their products. On the iPhone, as you press harder, you get a slight buzz on your finger and then a contextual menu pops open for a given app. As well as a feature…
Say No to Yak Shaving This one concept has meant so much to me over the years. I continue to share it with friends and family members to this day. The reaction is always the same, “ Wow. I do that!” I like Seth Godin’s version (mirror) of the story (mirror) best: Yak Shaving is the last step of a series of steps that occurs when you find something you need to do. “ I want to wax the car today.” “…
How to Survive Melancholy Anxiety tends to result in a negative feedback loop. Having anxiety on an issue, which causes more anxiety for having anxiety, and then thoughts spiral from there. In her book Big Magic , Elizabeth Gilbert says, Find something to do— anything, even a different sort of creative work altogether— just to take your mind off your anxiety and pressure. Going for a walk, taking…
Recently I completed the book Flourish , by Martin E. P. Seligman, which was recommended by a friend. The author explains what well-being really is, based on decades of study. He describes gratitude in the following manner: Gratitude can make your life happier and more satisfying. When we feel gratitude, we benefit from the pleasant memory of a positive event in our life. Also, when we express our…
Being creative and making Art is one of the most satisfying feelings that I experience. However, having to create or own a business, draft up the perfect plan, and all, just before you can “ get started” can be putting the cart before the horse. You don’t need to be an entrepreneur to be a maker. Enjoy making jewelry by hand? Great. Make it for you. Don’t feel as if you have to set up shop on Etsy…
“ Most artists are gamblers; they are impulsive people who don’t plan ahead.” This concept has been in the forefront of my mind for months now. The discovery was made in a conversation with my brother. We’ve seen this first hand in a few “ serial entrepreneurs” that we’ve known. Start an idea, run with it for a little bit, and then let it drop or die off. Repeat. I’ve done this myself. I used to…
The biggest lesson I’ve learned in my life is to be authentic, not fill the void with a sense of false self-worth. Not to say, “ Look at me. I do good things. See I’m great at what I do! Right? Tell me how wonderful I am, please.” Instead, I say: “ I’m enjoying this journey, right now. I’m putting my heart and soul into this. I take the initiative. I care.” As Seth Godin says, “ Initiative is…
The Internet has made it so much easier to find people just like us. The slightly odd, wonderful, and a taste that is as unique as our fingerprint. Before, media dictated the standard in preferences: music, fashion, culture, food, etc; People followed in step. There was an illusion of choice, but it was dictated by a few. That world tries to hang on to its heritage. The shadow of it still exists.…
Early On When I was young, my parents bought me a book about Abraham Lincoln. The intended audience was geared towards kids. I remember being impressed that Abraham Lincoln taught himself how to read and write. He had a love of reading and read whatever he could get his hands on. This impressed me so much. I thought to myself, “ If he can teach himself how to read then I can teach myself to do…
The Cult of Work You Never Meant to Join by Jason Lengstorf is a fantastic piece about working too much. These are a few bits that jumped out at me. The work is still fun, but you don’t feel the same passion anymore. Whole days slip by sometimes and you have no idea what happened; you certainly don’t have much to show for it. Your goals outside of work are on hold. You’d love to find out if the…
Really, the goals we set for New Years shouldn’t be something new altogether. They should be an incremental progression of existing goals. I categorize my goals: career, financial, and health. This year, I’m adding a new category: relationships. Each of these categories, by nature, overlap with each other. By creating the “ buckets” to hold our goals it spawns new goal ideas that we may have not…
This morning as I meditated in the shower, I kept thinking, “ Self-love isn’t selfish.” What is selfishness (mirror) ? When we expect others to give themselves up for us, we are being selfish. When we insist that others prove their love by doing what we want them to do for us: selfishness. Putting your needs first allows you to give to others fully. Taking care of yourself, allows you to focus on…
In Non-profits have a charter to be innovators , Seth Godin wrote, “ Go fail. And then fail again. […] Innovators understand that their job is to fail, repeatedly, until they don’t.” It’s interesting, I’ve had an off and on relationship with dieting and going to the gym yet I keep pursuing the goal overall. However, one misconception with working out that I used to have resulted in me being…
Wrapped up attending the ModevUX Conference today. One thing I always notice during keynotes is that presentations could be improved. No matter what the conference, these principles can be applied and are usually warranted. One of the biggest points, that I can’t stress enough is put all key information towards the top of the slide. This includes: links, twitter handles, key concepts etc. When you…
To this date, this is by far my favorite notebook. I take it with me everywhere. There are three types of paper for the Baron Fig Notebook: blank, ruled, and dot grid. I purchased both the dot grid and blank version. The latter I use for sketching and the former, I use for planning my day. For day to day planning of life and work, I’m a big fan of the Bullet Journal method . It is a great way to…