Staying creative in difficult times
Seven Things — #5 — 30 May 2020
Dear Friend,
Don’t you just love a lazy Saturday morning? The smell of coffee, warm sunlight streaming in through the window, a magazine so fresh you can smell it. What a way to start the weekend! Here are Seven Things that I thought might make a nice contribution to yours. Enjoy!
I’ve been pretty active those past few weeks. So much so that I’m worried - certain - that I won’t sustain it for long. It did get me out of the pandemic-induced rut though, that feeling of having no creative energy in me that overwhelmed me just a few weeks ago. For those still suffering from it, I wrote a post about what changes I made to get my creative mojo back.
We often build tech to help people change their behaviour in some ways. This is one of the hardest feats to manage when it comes to the stubborn humans we all are, and it’s also deeply fascinating to me. The latest instalment of Product Nuggets draws on experience and research to dig into this topic. For continued reading, check out the newsletter of the Behavioural Insights Team.
WIRED magazine is making cuts. And Bruce Sterling wrote a beautiful essay about it that is almost more novel than blog post (style, not length): “My blog often had the sensibility of some midnight rookie patrolman with a flashlight, poking a night-stick into trash-heaps, watching rats and raccoons scatter. Cops know where the trouble is; they have to stay with the trouble; it’s their duty.” - That stuff gives me goosebumps.
A Dropbox article on the benefits of walking made me realise that often people really don’t need to see my face on Zoom. This opened up the wonderful and long-aspired-to world of walking meetings, using my phone instead of my laptop. If you love the practice of bipedal locomotion as much as I do, you may enjoy Erling Kagge’s book Walking: One Step at a Time, one of my better reads of yesteryear.
If you really are stuck on Zoom, you might as well have some fun doing it. The online Mystery Escape games could shake things up for you and make for a quirky team activity. Host Les is an absolute legend.
Excited about data, but depressed by what it shows you these days? Try Happy Data.
If you look at nothing else in this list, press play on this video made to teach kids about the importance of good layout in design. It’s catchy, fun, genius, and so Japanese.
Thank you for being curious with me. If you think someone else might enjoy this newsletter, please forward it to them. If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe here.
Disclaimer: Any opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of any current or previous employers.