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What We Pay Attention To
“Pay attention to what you pay attention to.” – Amy Krouse Rosenthal Attention is more valuable than ever before. Today we face a flood of distractions from billboards, shiny screens, and worldwide web of information. In the midst of a deluge of information, we scramble to focus enough time and attention on the projects, responsibilities,…
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Deep Work and Children
“Deep work” is that place where you’re free from distraction and able to fully engage in your work for a length of time. To be in a state of “flow”. I’m trying to come to terms with the current fact of my context: deep work is nearly impossible when you have small children. Any project…
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Down With the Shine
And all that comes here, it comes here to pass. – Avett Brothers, Down with the Shine I love shiny new things. Technology is amazing, and there’s nothing like buying the latest gadget, taking it home, admiring its shininess, playing with all its bells whistles. It’s magic. But a growing part of me is also…
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Logo for Arete Endurance
Logos are just an arrangement of shapes to which we, over time and experience, attach meaning. I created this bunch of shapes for my running club Arete Endurance, which over the summer came to represent one of the highlights of my week, enjoying sunrises, crazy exhausting workouts, and laughs with some great runners and friends.…
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Step Outside
Quit these four walls These glowing screens This climate-controlled castle Shaped and wired to please Step outside Into never-ending fields and skies And fireflies Feel the evening breeze Which speaks in tales and riddles The passing of the seasons In the deep streams of time Feel small Dig your toes into the soil Which sustains…
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Carving Words
When I first started public speaking, I admired other speakers who were able to “wing it”, coming up with an incredible speech on the fly, in the moment. Somehow these speeches seemed more relevant and authentic, but also more impossible for me to ever achieve. Unfortunately (so I thought), I wasn’t very good at winging…
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Whimsy
Whimsy. It’s one of my favourite words lately. Not the wedding decoration trend or all that, I mean whimsy the way Bob Goff uses it in Donald Miller’s book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. It’s that magic that happens when we dare to do something courageous, or when we notice a spark of…
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A Slow Silent Walk
Came across this 100-year-old poem, “In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations’” by Thomas Hardy, in Wendell Berry’s “The Unsettling of America”, and it struck a chord with me. The imagery in this poem runs a against the grain of modern culture – with its virtues of upward mobility, freedom from the burden of work,…
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Lean Into the Fear
Nearly fifteen years ago, in a small classroom on the edge of Santiago, Chile, I had a life-altering experience: I spoke in front of people without my knees turning to rubber. Until that day, every experience of public speaking had produced a kind of allergic reaction: my mind would go blank, I’d sweat profusely, and…
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In Praise of “Dumb” Devices
I recently got a running watch to help track my pace when I’m running. Whenever I look at it’s single-colour, pixelated display, I’m reminded of why I love “dumb” devices. Every appliance and accessory is under pressure to become “smart”. Your camera can connect to Facebook, your thermostat is connected to your phone, which is…
