How to be interesting (2006)
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How to be interesting (2006)
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Re: How to be interesting (2006)
#2retarded article
Re: How to be interesting (2006)
#3Come up with 10 ideas per week for a month. Next month come up with 20 ideas per week. The following month come up with 30. Continue until it becomes impractical.
As a wise professor once told me, 'creativity is a skill and you improve it by practicing'.
Re: How to be interesting (2006)
#4Don't miss the backstory:
"And it soon becomes apparent that this issue goes a lot broader. Their course is designed to churn out mini-art directors, mini-account people, mini-planners for a world that increasingly just wants creative generalists."
http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2006/11/building_c...
I was an art student at UO at the time, briefly participating in the journalism department's advertising club that brought Russell Davies to visit. So far, generalism is working out.
Re: How to be interesting (2006)
#5Come up with 10 ideas per week for a month. Next month come up with 20 ideas per week. The following month come up with 30. Continue until it becomes impractical. As a wise professor once told me, 'creativity is a skill and you improve it by practicing'.
A friend did something similar. For every programming puzzle he solved, he would try to find 5 alternative solutions.
Re: How to be interesting (2006)
#6The article doesn't actually draw any connection between business success and being "interesting". This is just taken for granted by the author, but not supported.
The article's advice isn't so much about how to be "interesting", as it is about how to "repeatedly put yourself out there in a public way".
Being able to fail publicly is a useful business skill, mind you. There was an interview on HN a while back, can't find it know, where a super-rich fellow explains that willingness to fail publicly was the key factor in him outperforming more skilled competitors. But this is distinct from being interesting.
Re: How to be interesting (2006)
#7Personally, I think the desire to 'appear' interesting vein and is futile. All of these 'tips' are just novelties. Even if you dedicate your entire life to appearing interesting, you'll just end up with party tricks, not real substance.
I quickly learned in my profession that there are two types of people: 1) those who create the perception that they matter, and 2) those that actually matter.
This list is designed to create a perception. How about just doing something you love, do it with passion, achieve success, and go from there?
Re: How to be interesting (2006)
#8I ran across this recent good advice:
> "Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say: 'How did he do it? He must be a genius!'"
"Ten Lessons I wish I had been Taught", Gian-Carlo Rota http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~cahn/life/gian-carlo-rota-10-le...
Re: How to be interesting (2006)
#9The article doesn't actually draw any connection between business success and being "interesting". This is just taken for granted by the author, but not supported. The article's advice isn't so much about how to be "interesting", as it is about how to "repeatedly put yourself out there in a public way". Being able to fail publicly is a useful business skill, mind you. There was an interview on HN a while back, can't…
was it this? http://zenhabits.net/god/
Re: How to be interesting (2006)
#10Personally, I think the desire to 'appear' interesting vein and is futile. All of these 'tips' are just novelties. Even if you dedicate your entire life to appearing interesting, you'll just end up with party tricks, not real substance. I quickly learned in my profession that there are two types of people: 1) those who create the perception that they matter, and 2) those that actually matter. This list is designed to…
It probably depends how you approach the advice. If you follow it with a view to sparking new passions and making new connections with people then it could lead you to something of substance. It's very easy to fall into a rutted existence, a little breadth can go a long way.