Pecha-Kucha Night

Last night I attend Pecha-Kucha Night at the Powerhouse Arts Centre/Museum in Brisbane. The basic concept is that a series of presenters discuss their topic in the format of 20 slides x 20 seconds each. Last night I saw some joyful kinetic art, the launch of the Park(ing) Space project for Brisbane, a stonemason/architect who creates modern art headstones, a furniture designer who works with bamboo, and a number of other ideas and artists that I most probably wouldn't have been exposed to.

I'm looking forward to checking out these evenings when I get back to Shanghai. Pecha-Kucha nights are held in cities all over the world, and they're a fantastic opportunity to be exposed to creative and innovative thinking and people.

Check out the ever-expanding list of cities/events at the Pecha-Kucha website.

It's weird when you wake up one morning and realize that your entire adult life is based upon the decision of a teenager.

Stew (Writer/narrator of Passing Strange)

[from a television interview on ABC News]

Death by a Thousand Cuts

Chin-Ning Chu, author of The Asian Mind Game, offers up some advice on those who'd steal your serenity in Thick Face, Black Heart.

Keep a respectful distance from those who would steal your peace and serenity.  In your daily life, you will run into this type of person around every corner.  These people are not necessarily cunning or ruthless, nor are they a real threat to your career or personal objectives, but they are eternally annoying.

They operate by thriving on their own inferiority.  Their actions and words are very cutting, even though people are nice to them.  They also are gutless.  On the one hand, they play up to the ruthless and cunning types who treat them like dirt, and yet they are mean to people who are decent and kind to them.  These serenity stealers are people to be avoided.  Life put them in a place that they resent because they feel it is beneath them.  To get even with life, they react by attacking those who are nice to them, while being very agreeable to those who abuse them.

They cannot help themselves; their actions are involuntary.  The serenity stealers steal into your heart and confidence with their sweet, charming exteriors.  But after you allow them to get close to you, they will snap at you in order to diminish you in their eyes.  They try to temporarily elevate their own inner power and feel good for a moment, but are useful remorseful afterward.  They can't help themselves, and so the pattern continues.

It is important not to interact with them in a similar manner.  If you do, they will make a lifetime career of attacking you.  These people are masters of "death by a thousand cuts."  You should always keep them at arm's length.  They will make a lifetime career of attacking you.  Then they will eternally respect you and solicit your friendship.  They will then transfer their troublesome energy to someone else.

Chu, Chin-Ning (1995)  Thick Face, Black Heart.  Allen & Unwin, St. Leonards.  p.239.

Productive Procrastination

Andrew Kibbe's wonderfully useful blog, Tools for Thought, has once again grabbed my attention with Uncommon Sense on Managing Priorities, which suggests that low-priority tasks are not necessarily tasks to be ignored. Aside from the fact that Kibbe reminds us that any task on a to-do list is worthy of attention, I particularly appreciated the idea that 'low priority' tasks can actually function as gateway tasks to get us psychologically primed (ie. motivated) to attack those looming, dreaded high priority tasks that need to be completed.

Try this experiment: the next time you find yourself procrastinating on an important task, find the easiest thing on your list that can be completed in a few minutes, do it, and see if you feel more capable of handling the important task or less. Some people call this productive procrastination. I call it productivity. After all, any action you decide to do is procrastination of everything else that, by default, you’ve decided not to do.