The most important moment in meditation is the instant you leave the cushion. When your practice session is over, you can jump up and drop the whole thing, or you can bring those skills with you into the rest of your activities.
Bhante Henepola Gunaratana – Mindfulness in Plain English.
I figured out that I wouldn’t look back as an old man and wish I had spent more time on Facebook
David Cole – Why some dissatisfied users are shunning Facebook. (via iA)
I moved to Singapore. Derek Sivers writes about why he’s going to spend his life living in various places around the world. Singapore is the first stop. Such a great idea.
I disavow the notion that technology should change our lives. Technology should improve our lives in small, meaningful ways. It should nudge, provoke, surprise, inform, and yes, connect on a grand scale. But it should not presume to know too much.
Nathan Heleine – Our Digital Ethos
A good factory is not necessarily the one that makes the most money, but the one that is most responsible for improving the quality of life for its workers and its customers. And the true function of politics is not to make people more affluent, safe, or powerful, but to let as many as possible enjoy an increasingly complex existence.
Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Attention Economy. “If everyone has everyone’s attention the value of attention is nullified.” This is why we should save, invest, and be conscientious of the attention we give things.
Your Shit, My Stuff, Goldilocks, and Making the Bed You Sleep In. If we paid more attention to fit, access, and steadfastness in the things we buy maybe we’d all be a bit happier with less. Bonus is Frank Chimero’s awesome definition of freedom:
What I mean by freedom is the ability to say no. I don’t consider this a negative way of thinking, but rather a very positive way to have permission to opt out of the things we don’t want to do. I feel we need to acknowledge the value of the freedom derived from simplifying and eliminating the useless things in our life. This means having an understanding of what’s important.
An absolutely wonderful post.
What we talk about when we talk about happiness. Our memory of happiness is determined by how we feel at the peak and the end of an experience. We should take the time to consider the broader implications happy experiences hold in our lives.
Dave Winer describes having FIOS installed in the East Village after his move:
Do you find that network installers hate to leave when the job is done? It always goes the same way at my house. When they walk in, they’re bored and don’t say much. When they finally see how my system is hooked up, they realize that I’ve got the nirvana they dream of.
The Economist recently published an article about the “cult of fun” among businesses. Kyle Baxter has a better take on it:
Here’s a much simpler solution: make the work itself interesting and rewarding for your employees so they can get satisfaction from their jobs, make the environment warm and enjoyable for people to be a part of. If you do these two things (which, admittedly, is difficult, but that is your job if you are running a company), workers will find fun things to do naturally with their colleagues.