December 2013 – The Art of Doing

Do You Have What It Takes To Be the Most Fabulous You? Simon Doonan Wants to Know

Dressing down is a crime against humanity says Simon Doonan. Advice for the holiday you and beyond.

“Why the hell wouldn’t you want to be one of the fabulous people, the life enhancers, who look interesting and smell luscious and who dare to be gorgeously more fascinating than their neighbors?” Simon Doonan asks, rhetorically of course.

Part-pixie, part-provacateur, Doonan, is Creative-Ambassador-At-Large for Barneys New York, an author, bon vivant, window dresser, fashion and style commentator with the soul of an artist and the DNA of Diana Vreeland.

Although it may be the last thing on our minds as we race out the door to our jobs or important meetings or—gasp—the office holiday party, Doonan encourages us to stop. Think. “Dressing down,” he says, “is a crime against humanity.” (What would he say to the scandalous Silicon Valley hoodie mob?)

Instead, Doonan encourages us to evolve our own brand of unique glamour. “It’s a process of self-discovery,” he told us in an interview for our book: Continue reading “Do You Have What It Takes To Be the Most Fabulous You? Simon Doonan Wants to Know”

Why Do Millions of Us Drive Ourselves Crazy Over a Crossword? Will Shortz, Puzzle Master, Has A Clue

Will Shortz, puzzle master, tells us, “With a crossword we’re challenging ourselves to create order out of chaos.”

Thinking of clues keeps Will Shortz up at night. After all as Puzzle Master at NPR and puzzle editor of The New York Times, he has to come up with 16,000 clues a year—that’s nearly 50 twisty clues a day.

“Just as I’m about to drift off to sleep I may think of a terrific clue,” says Shortz. “It’s the eternal writer’s dilemma. I have to either wake up and write it down, or think really really really hard and hope the idea will still be there in the morning.”

He opts for the latter. And the chances that he remembers? Not bad, he insists.

To say that Shortz is interested in puzzles is to call World War 2 a skirmish. Shortz has been constructing puzzles since he was 8 when his mother handed him a blank grid to occupy him while her friends came to play bridge. He sold his first puzzle at 14. And in lieu of a regular college degree, he followed an independent course of study in puzzles, graduating as the world’s first enigmatologist. Continue reading “Why Do Millions of Us Drive Ourselves Crazy Over a Crossword? Will Shortz, Puzzle Master, Has A Clue”

Giftopia: How to Innovate Your Gift-Giving

Instead of devoting all of your cognitive energy to choosing between the reindeer sweater and the iTunes gift card, why not get creative with the act of gift giving this year?

Get creative with the act of gift giving

American adults will spend on average nearly $800 on gifts this holiday season according to the Gallup poll. That’s a decent chunk of change that we shell out in cash or put on our credit cards to express our affection, gratitude or commitment to our loved ones, friends and co-workers. But in this era of technological disruption and entrepreneurial innovation why has the act of gift giving changed so little?

We might not always think of it this way, but most gifts in a market economy such as ours, are economic exchanges. Say you walk into a store or go online and find the perfect Marc Jacobs bag. And then you pay for the bag. Now you own it. And then–Happy Birthday! or Merry Christmas!–the act of giving the bag, properly wrapped and carded, transfers the ownership of the gift from you to the giftee.

But is that all there is? Why not get creative with the act of gift giving instead of devoting all of our cognitive energy to choosing between the reindeer sweater and the iTunes gift card? Continue reading “Giftopia: How to Innovate Your Gift-Giving”

Superachiever Connie Rice on Partnering with Enemy Number One

In order to fight for justice, LA’s civil rights activist/lawyer and second cousin to Condaleezza, Constance Rice believes you have to change the system from within.

How to fight for Justice

When we spoke to civil rights activist and lawyer, Connie Rice (second cousin to Condaleezza), for our book, Rice gave us a manifesto on how to fight for justice.

In her mission to serve what she calls the impoverished “invisible people” of L.A., Rice had waged war for decades against the entrenched power centers of L.A.—the city, the LAPD— with innovatively crafted lawsuits. But after time she saw that although she was winning in the courts, she was losing in the streets.

Rice told us: “If you see a need for change, you have to ask yourself, ‘Who has the power to get it done?'” Continue reading “Superachiever Connie Rice on Partnering with Enemy Number One”

Superachiever Secret Power: Humility

The very concept of humility can make us queasy. True humility is the ability to acknowledge our mistakes and limitations, have an openness to new ideas, and be able to maintain a realistic perspective of our place in the larger world. Just ask Alec Baldwin.

Illustration of Alec Baldwin, Robert Carlock and the "30 Rock" writers by Josh Gosfield — Despite his often bombastic personality, Alec Baldwin was the epitome of humility when it came to the writers of “30 Rock” Illustration by Josh Gosfield

The very concept of humility can make us queasy. In this self-promotional era of social media flaunting and positive thinking, to be humble can seem to put us at a competitive disadvantage or seem hollow. As Jane Austen put it, “Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility.”

To understand humility, it’s helpful to first take a look at its mirror image, pride. Not the kind of pride in which we maintain a healthy self-regard or feel satisfaction in a job well done, but the excessive pride of what 17-century philosopher Spinoza described as “thinking more highly of oneself than is just.”

In Christian teachings pride was condemned as one of the Seven Deadly Sins. But according to modern research, pride is the result of a dizzying array of cognitive distortions from illusory superiority to egocentrism, including a host of skewed tricks of the mind such as the confirmation bias, hindsight bias, overconfidence phenomenon and gambler’s fallacy. Numerous studies have shown that we construct and reconstruct our opinions, memories and self-worth relative to others in order to flatter ourselves. In other words, pride is our default setting, causing us to warp the raw data of reality in order to convince ourselves that we are better than we actually are. Continue reading “Superachiever Secret Power: Humility”

The Art of Spending: Don’t Spend Less, Spend Smarter

Behavioral scientists Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton want to help you spend smarter.

Our Q & A with behavioral scientists Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton

There’s no escaping the avalanche of advice from financial gurus on how to make, save and invest our money. But when it comes to spending money, you’re mostly on your own. In their book “Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending,” behavioral scientists Elizabeth Dunn of the University of British Columbia and Michael Norton of Harvard Business School set out to fill that need. With data-driven research, they give us practical advice on how, why, when and where people can spend money to help them achieve the ultimate goal of happiness. Continue reading “The Art of Spending: Don’t Spend Less, Spend Smarter”