Stealing Like an Artist and Making Lives Easier
I have to say that this week’s reading and TedTalk about the book “Steal Like an Artist” has not only been my favorite reading assignment from this semester, but even just the reflection article about the book has been one of the most influential pieces I’ve read as of late. While I understand that the book was written in the context of developing new, or recycled, ideas within the business world (to an extent), I saw many of the takeaways as being applicable in the broad sense of internal goal-setting and well-being. Pretty ironic given my niche area of “expertise” huh?
The biggest takeaway I learned, which I wrote down on a sticky note which is now sitting above my desk so that I see it everyday, is the mantra that “the only way for us to improve upon our vision is to follow it” and the metaphor of wanting the same perspective as your heroes. On the more personal level, I love the idea of adapting to have the same perspective as my role models rather than just mimicking their habits. If you aren’t seeing the world with a similar mindset as them, the actions you may be replicating are in turn less authentic and truthfully probably won’t be very fulfilling. As I will discuss in my post about my interviews, a lot of my peers who are interested in female health and wellness information’s presence on social media, oftentimes influencers and those promoting certain diets or routines are often inauthentic and can lead their followers down some pretty dark paths if they aren’t careful with what they choose to share. It’s the influencers, bloggers, celebrities and what have you that show the more behind the scenes, unfiltered, raw content that gains their audience’s respect and in turn their pages are more successful both monetarily and from a mindfulness standpoint.
On the flip side, “How to Come Up With Hundreds of Business Ideas” made me have to think back and rewire how I notice inconveniences or little difficulties that are part of the day-to-day, either in terms of physical things or how we consume our media. Oftentimes you hear of inventorship stories behind why we have items that are so commonplace now, such as the bendy straw, that you forget that at one point someone had to be so bothered enough to create something new for themselves. I often worry that because of how quickly the internet and social media world changes and adapts to new platforms it can be hard to recognize its sore spots until it is too far gone. While you can argue that social media and the digitization of news on mobile devices has made people’s lives easier, it also has led to people constantly being buried on their phones and receiving notifications that draw them away from the human interactions right in front of them. This article definitely forced me to take a step back and think more of what innovative limits can we set on our notifications and digital consumption in order to make people’s lives better in the sense of their mental health and ability to interact in person?
