by Gary Mintchell | Jun 6, 2025 | Personal Development
Still in the “books I’ve read recently” mode. This is a rare business book worth reading all the way through.
Guy Kawasaki earned his reputation as the first technology evangelist promoting the original Apple Macintosh to developers back in the day. He’s been an author, entrepreneur, and lately podcaster with his Remarkable People podcast. He consolidated teaching from the many guests on his podcast into an informative and readable book, Think Remarkable: 9 paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference.
These chapter headings reveal the ideas in brief:
- Make the world a better place
- Keep on growing
- Do good shit
- Plant lots of seeds
- Raise the tide
- Trust the dots (looking back at them)
- Find your ikigai—life meaning
- Make yourself valuable & unique
- Keep at it
- Take the high road
Defining the term: Remarkable means you are making a difference and making the world a better place.
Want three key takeaways: Growth—Grit—Grace
This lesson should be our companion: Replace “why is this happening to me” with “what is this trying to teach me”.
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 5, 2025 | Personal Development
I’ve read a number of good books over the past few months, but there was too much tech news to get to them. It’s time to clear my queue before I head to Las Vegas and the Hexagon tech conference.
Oliver Burkeman composed his latest book, Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts, in the style of aphorisms. I have two other books in that style to which I refer often—The Bed of Procrustes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and The Song of Significance by Seth Godin. His column is The Imperfectionist reflecting on productivity as not trying to be perfect. The follow on book is Four Thousand Weeks. That also is a recommended books.
I’ve decided to post a bunch of aphorisms that I highlighted. The style of aphorisms does not suggest reading from front to back as in a normal book. You can pick it up and start anywhere, reading for a bit, then thinking.
Is there life before death? Anthony de Mello
Hartmut Rosa, misguided idea that reality can and should be controllable.
The greatest achievements often involve remaining open to serendipity, seizing unplanned opportunities, or riding unexpected bursts of motivation.
This book takes it as a given that you’ll never get on top of everything. Never feel fully confident about the future. Or fully understand what makes people tick.
Give up trying to do everything so that you can focus on what matters.
Ideas that get under your skin and persist.
Like the moment when you get caught in a rainstorm without an umbrella and you finally abandon your futile efforts to stay dry accepting getting soaked to the skin.
You are free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences. Consequences are not optional.
It is not information overload but filter failure.
William James—the art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
“I refuse to endorse the claim that we are human beings, not human doings.” Spend more of your time on worthwhile and life-enriching activities.
Decisions—not something that comes along, but something to go hunting for.
There is a mysterious energy in finishing things.
A true life-task will be something you can do.
We cannot change anything unless we accept it. CG Jung
Make friends with your problems.
Doing things “daily-ish”
Not everything that is more difficult is ore meritorious. Thomas Aquinas
Reverse Golden Rule—self-compassion.
On the futility of “becoming a better person.”
You can’t make something like becoming a better person happen—you have to let it happen.
Act on a generous impulse the moment it arrives.
“In my experience, generosity never leads to remorse.”
Other people’s negative emotion are their problem.
CS Lewis—What one calls interruptions are precisely one’s real life.
Fixity of attention is not our baseline. The natural state of mind is often for it to gently bounce around.
You might even argue that what makes modern digital distraction so pernicious isn’t the way it disrupts attention, but the fact that it holds it, with content algorithmically engineered to compel people for hours, thereby rendering them less available for the serendipitous and fruitful kind of distraction.
Right now is the only time that really exists.
Start now!
1. Decide who you want to be
2. Act from that identity immediately
Engage in behaviors that constitute a meaningful life—allow feelings to follow.
Deal with a backlog by isolating it.
View to-do list as a menu.
A perfectly kept house is a sign of a misspent life. Mary Randolf Carter
Mentors should not exhibit perfections but be more candid about failures and struggles.
Everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy, and scared. Anne Lamott
Good Experiences are for living, not holding on to.
Sometimes it is best to say we don’t know why. We can’t explain everything.
Know you’re doing something that matters.
Avoid perfectionism. Move toward imperfectionism.
by Gary Mintchell | May 2, 2025 | Personal Development
Even as a youth, I had two differing interests. One was science/technology and the other philosophy/spirituality. I typically confine my philosophy/spirituality thoughts to my other blog—Faith Venture. This blog contains thoughts on industrial technology and leadership.
Sometimes the two streams come into a confluence.
Like worries about AI and creativity and spirituality.
The current month’s theme of MIT Technology Review proclaims “Muse or Machine: Defining Creativity in the Age of AI.” The lead article—Is “creativity” meaningless?
Have you read so much idle speculation about AI that you are worried? Feel the anxiety that the writers wish to provoke?
I cannot do that level of linear algebra nor program in Python. But I’ve read several academic works sent to me. I have at least a moderate level of intelligence (not artificial).
Think on this thought from Seth Godin then consider your own experience: Art is what happens when a human does something original and generous that might not work. It has little to do with paint.
I make some use of AI in my research. I’ve read many (most?) of the sermons of John Wesley. When I was trying to write a concise list of his thoughts on practices, I asked Claude.ai. Or trying to remember some thoughts from Augustine of Hippo. Claude quickly returned a nicely written summary. It then asked if I wished to explore one of the topics more deeply.
I could have abdicated to Claude publishing its response unedited.
Better was to consider the research returned, think on it all, then write an essay of my take on the subject I was pondering—spiritual disciplines.
AI, my creativity, deepening my knowledge of the life in the Spirit all at one time.
Lifting the thought from one of my boyhood heroes, Alfred E. Newman of Mad Magazine, “What, me worry?”
by Gary Mintchell | Dec 2, 2024 | Personal Development, Productivity
Have you ever watched a blacksmith or potter or glass-blower at work?
I watch with utter fascination. What a magnificent set of skill, knowledge, creativity.
When you make something from start to finish like that, there is a little piece of you in that thing. You are passing your skill and creativity along to someone else.
Karl Marx observed workers at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the early 1800s. He theorized something he called alienation. Humans had become alienated from the output of their work. As factories multiplied and grew, most of humanity was no longer involved in this combination of skill and creativity in the production of something useful or beautiful for someone else.
I thought of that today while listening to Cal Newport’s latest podcast. (https://thedeeplife.com episode 329 not posted yet, you can find on Overcast or your podcast app of choice)
He studies life in a digital world. Humans working at a computer pushing messages over digital networks are alienated from the eventual product of the organization—indeed, even if they know what it is and how it serves the market.
That thought had never really sunk into my consciousness. Of course, much of my digital work does have a direct impact. Those who work in larger organizations, though just perform a role which is one of hundreds just pushing bits through a wire.
Can we think of a better way to organize work?
by Gary Mintchell | Oct 22, 2024 | Personal Development
One day a group of consultants appeared at our shop. Equipped with clipboards and stop watches (it was 1974), they observed, timed, made notes. They must have been “real” industrial engineers. My role at the time being fresh from university included production/inventory control plus anything else required.
They left. A few bench assembly stations were rearranged. I assume they picked up a nice check. I thought, I might be new, but what they did was far from earth-shaking.
I recently picked up Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes, to leaf through. This aphorism caught my attention: “A mathematician starts with a problem and creates a solution; a consultant starts by offering a ‘solution’ and creates a problem.”
We might poke fun at consultants (often rightly so). More to the point—how does this apply to our problem solving? How often do we begin at the end?
by Gary Mintchell | Oct 15, 2024 | Personal Development
Personal productivity writer Oliver Burkeman asks of us—you’re merely the kind of person who spends your life drawing up plans for how you’re going to become a different kind of person later on. This will sometimes garner you the admiration of others, since it can look from the outside like you’re busily making improvements. But it isn’t the same at all.
This could be our personal life.
It could be our business life.
We read. We think. We make lists. We sketch out plans.
But, do we ever ship a product?
