Paula Scher's Productivity Trick

In Fast Company Scher discusses her worst jobs, her biggest challenge as a designer, and her productivity secret:

I have a productivity trick that I didn’t know I had until I heard about it on a radio program. NPR did this interview with experts about boredom. iPhones and other forms of digital media were disrupting boredom, because people can occupy themselves all the time. You don’t have any more downtime—you go on your iPhone, look at email, or you’re playing video games. The fact of the matter is, that eats up really good creative time. I realize that when I’m sitting in a taxicab in traffic, or on my way to the airport, or waiting to get on a plane, or trapped in some other boring situation, that’s when I get the best ideas, because I’ve got nothing else interfering with it. I didn’t realized until I listened to that broadcast how important boredom is to me. I have to stop reading emails or being anywhere near the internet to be able to create.

Kermit The Frog's TED Talk on Creativity

Kermit the Frog is an entertainment icon known worldwide for his appearances on The Muppet Show and Sesame Street, as well as a number of feature films. He attributes much of his success to his thirty-five year partnership with Mississippi native and entertainment visionary, Jim Henson. Kermit has received many honors and accolades for his work, including multiple Academy Award nominations, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and a commemorative stamp from the U.S. Postal Service.

Rethinking Ballet

Ballet originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century. Over the past six centuries ballet has evolved to include classical, neo-classical, and contemporary styles of movement. The versatility seen in the ballet companies of today is far different from what most people perceive ballet to be.

Timothy Young: Books Matter

Timothy Young writing in Design Observer, gives ten good reasons the book is important:  

7. A book is an object fixed in time. 
A book can tell us about its status in history. If we look through first editions of Moby Dick or Leaves of Grass, we find that they give away information not only about when they were created, but also about the worlds in which they were created, by way of advertisements, bindings, the quality of their paper, and watermarks on that paper. Such components are often not captured by scanning or are flattened out to make them of negligible use. In Nicholson Baker’s Double Fold—his saga about how libraries microfilmed runs of newspapers in the 1950s and 1960s and then discarded them—one of his chief complaints was that the filmers skipped advertising supplements and cartoons: things that had been deemed unimportant. 
 

The trolls inside

Seth Godin:

Internet trolls are the commenters begging for a fight, the anonymous critics eager to tear you down, the hateful packs of roving evil dwarves, out for amusement.

But the one in your head, that voice of insecurity and self-criticism, that's the one you need to be the most vigilant about.

Do not feed the troll.