The Art of Doing

Tag: the art of doing

Do You Have What It Takes to Be a Superachiever?

From dream to achievement is many steps, do you have what it takes to get there?

superacheiver-flowchart-one-page
From “The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do What They Do and How They Do It So Well” (Plume/Penguin)

For our book, “The Art of Doing,” we interviewed over three-dozen Superachievers in business, entertainment, the arts, tech, science and sports, about how they do what they do and discovered that talent is just the beginning. It’s what you do with that talent that matters. Find out if you have what it takes to be a Superachiever.

Buy “The Art of Doing” here. Signup for “The Art of Doing” free weekly e-newsletter. Follow us on Twitter. Join “The Art of Doing” Facebook Community.  If you’ve read “The Art of Doing” please take a moment to leave a review here.

David Chang: An Artist’s Interpretation

Momofuku’s David Chang has a nearly insane work ethic that rivals that of the late great Godfather of Soul.

Momofuku chef/restaurateur David Chang as illustrated by Scott Menchin

The Art of Doing Artist’s Interpretation Project is a collaboration between us and artists who depict superachievers from our book, “The Art of Doing.”

David Chang’s nearly insane work ethic rivals that of the Godfather of Soul. Working his way through some of New York City’s finest restaurant kitchens in his mid-20’s with cooks “as badass as Navy Seals,” Chang told us that he believed he’d never be a great chef—at least not in the classic sense. Instead he had to find his own voice. Every since he’d been a kid he’d been obsessed with noodles. So he quit his high-end kitchen job and went on a noodle quest, apprenticing himself to soba and ramen noodle makers in Japan. When he returned, he opened his first restaurant, Momofuku Noodle Bar, in a tiny space in the East Village no bigger than a one-car garage. His goal was to make a humble bowl of noodle soup made with 4-star chef technique. Continue reading “David Chang: An Artist’s Interpretation”

The Art of Doing is Going Back to SXSW, March 2014

We all love to read books on success. We even wrote one, “The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do What They Do and How They Do It So Well.” What we found about the successful people that we interviewed—superachievers in the arts, business, media and tech—is that they failed and failed often. And those failures were key to their success.

Sxsw failure talk vote pitch South by southwast

You voted, we got in! Join us for our talk on “Failure: The Hidden Side of Success” at SXSW Interactive 2014 March 7th—11th Austin, TX

We all love to read books on success. We even wrote one. What we found about the successful people that we interviewed—superachievers in the arts, business, media and tech—is that they failed and failed often. And those failures were key to their success.

But embracing failure isn’t always easy.

From the fear of failure that stops you from even trying, to the collapse of will when you don’t achieve the immediate success you’d imagined, cognitive attitudes to failure can destroy your ability to pursue you goals. The good news? If, like highly successful people, you perceive your setbacks as opportunities for self-education and motivation instead of events that will permanently derail you, you may surprise yourself with how far you can go.

Read Forbes Story here about our Art of Doing book talk at SXSW ’13.

To check out how this photo was taken, go here.

Buy “The Art of Doing” here. Signup for “The Art of Doing” free weekly e-newsletter. Follow us on Twitter. Join “The Art of Doing” Facebook Community.  If you’ve read “The Art of Doing” please take a moment to leave a review here.

Inside the Mind of Mark Frauenfelder:
A Blogger’s Word Cloud

A Word Cloud based on our interview with Mark Frauenfelder, co-founder and co-editor of BoingBoing, the iconoclastic blog, for a chapter in our book on “How to Create One of the World’s Most Popular Blogs.”

Markj Frauenfelder Boing Boing The Art of Doing Blog Blogger

Frequency is the currency of a word cloud. The more a word is repeated, the larger it appears in the cloud. Click here to see the interactive version.

This word cloud is based on our interview with Mark Frauenfelder, co-founder and co-editor of one of our favorite blogs (for a chapter in our book on “How to Create One of the World’s Most Popular Blogs). Frauenfelder’s iconoclastic BoingBoing (whose motto is Brain Candy for Happy Mutants) has been firing out a melange of digital innovation, DIY creations and wacked-out art for a decade and a half. (Already in blog years, several life cycles long.) What we see in Frauenfelder’s word cloud is his focus is not on market share, metrics or SEO, but on building a community of people by writing interesting and amazing posts rooted in real life that will connect with the reader.

Simply put, as Frauenfelder told us: Continue reading “Inside the Mind of Mark Frauenfelder:
A Blogger’s Word Cloud”

Podcast: “The Art of Doing” on Boing Boing’s Gweek 087

Mark Frauenfelder, coeditor of BoingBoing and producer of Gweek podcast, interviews Camille Sweeney and Josh Gosfield about “The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do What They Do and How They Do It So Well.”

art of doing podcastWe spoke with Mark Frauenfelder, Boing Boing co-founder, DIY-Maker proponent and all-around pathologically curious Man about the Internet for his Gweek podcast about our book, secrets of success, what makes Sergio Corbucci‘s original “Django” so good and judgmental parents (as analyzed by Katie Roiphe) so bad, Josh’s fine art projects Gigi Gaston and Fathom Butterfly, Camille’s favorite movie of the last year “All About My Wife,” and a whole lot more.

Frauenfelder, who we interviewed for our book in a chapter “How to Create One of the World’s Most Popular Blogs,” told us that one of the principles he applies to all of his work is to: Appeal to the Novelty Gene. He told us:

“They say that there is a novelty-seeking gene. It causes people (like me!) to crave excitement, and to want constant hits of surprising things that don’t fit the conventional model of the way the world works….Ninety-nine percent of what’s out there is crap. Our job is to put in the hard work to find that 1 percent that’s fascinating because a lot of our community has the novelty-seeking gene, too.”

You can listen to our conversation on Gweek 087 here.

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Teen Solo Circumnavigator Jessica Watson: An Artist’s Interpretation

Artist Amy Crehore’s artistic interpretation of Teen Solo Circumnavigator Jessica Watson

The Art of Doing Artist’s Interpretation Project is a collaboration between us and artists we’ve asked to depict superachievers from our book, “The Art of Doing.”

Because of her affinity for nature and her ability to evoke the dreamlike quality of life, we asked artist Amy Crehore to capture a moment of the incredible journey of Jessica Watson. Watson, who we interviewed for our book in the chapter, “How to Sail Around the World,” first dreamed of taking her epic journey when she was only 11 years old. It took her five years, many skills to acquire and seemingly insurmountable obstacles to overcome before she set sail from Sydney Harbor on a 34-foot sailboat The Pink Lady. And once she was at sea, Watson had to endure loneliness, boredom, fear and mechanical failures. She was weeks away from help in storms that threw her boat upside down in waves that looked like “giant black mountains,” before she returned seven and a half months later, the youngest person ever to sail the world solo.

Watson told us that despite her struggles, the most important advice she got from the fellow circumnavigators she had turned to before she began her journey was to remember to take time to enjoy herself:

“I had read and reread books about solo sailing around the world but once I set off on my voyage, I began to understand their stories in a whole new way. The feeling of solitude, when all I could see in any direction was endless ocean and endless sky, made me feel connected to them, even to Joshua Slocum, who’d done the sail more than a century before me. On The Pink Lady there was only the moment. Looking out at the horizon, I felt alive and exhilarated.”

More posts on Jessica Watson here and here.

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How to Grow Killer Weed with Ed Rosenthal

The Guru of Ganja Ed Rosenthal’s 10 tips on “How to Grow Killer Weed.”

It was the Sixties, and Ed Rosenthal, who listed his future career as “plant geneticist” in his high school yearbook, had discovered pot. After college, living in an oversize apartment in the Bronx, Rosenthal decided to grow his own. The rest is marijuana history as Rosenthal went on to become “The Guru of Ganja” and a godsend to both the home growing hobbyist and the commercial grower. He has authored a dozen books on marijuana cultivation and his popular grower’s advice column Ask Ed ran in High Times for two decades and is syndicated internationally.

Here are Rosenthal’s 10 tips on “How to Grow Killer Weed,” excerpted from our book, “The Art of Doing.”

1. Know the consequences. Face it, pot isn’t legal in most places yet. There are almost a million marijuana arrests in America every year, so know your local laws, both state and county. If you get busted in Oklahoma for growing a single plant you can get two years to life. In some states a medical doctor can lose his license for cultivation. A student can lose rights to scholarships. You can even lose your driver’s license or right to vote. Ask yourself: “Is growing worth it?” The police blotter is full of stories of people who didn’t think it through. Continue reading “How to Grow Killer Weed with Ed Rosenthal”