• On simplicity, night visions & doing what you damn well please. by Alexandra Franzen, “If you have a simple dream, simply do it. f you have an un-simple dream, strip it down to one string.”
• Tender Buttons: Objects, guest post by Lisa Congdon for the Chronicle Books blog, “For Tender Buttons, concepting was an important phase since I was illustrating poems that were word play and had no central obvious theme. Brainstorming was a MUST! I needed to read each poem and then think about what words or phrases in the poem might translate into something more literal.”
• The Secret to Getting More Done in Less Time, “Since I can’t magically grant you more time in the day, let me share with you the secret to getting more done in the time that you do have: aggressively guarding your schedule.”
• Special Guest Edition: The Hawkeye Initiative IRL!, “So at our office holiday party, while our CEO was having everyone in the company sign it, I stand there grinding my teeth into tiny shards. Until, suddenly, it came to me: a vision.”
• 10 Timeframes by Paul Ford, “The only unit of time that matters is heartbeats. Even if the world were totally silent, even in a dark room covered in five layers of foam, you’d be able to count your own heartbeats.”
• Why Your Social Content Strategy Sucks (and How to Fix It) by Ted Rheingold, “People share things online for the same reason they share them at a bar or in the carpool – because they want to talk about something that matters emotionally to them. …Even better, we know why people share these items in-person – and it’s the same reason they share online. People share items with other people online because it makes them feel: Delighted, Furious, Proud, Bummed, Playful, Validate, Smart, Helpful …And that’s it.”
• The Lady Web by Rena Tom, “I like working with women, many of whom have no formal business training, because nothing is taken for granted. There’s no assumptions that things will go smoothly. There’s no sense that things will be easy. At the same time, this does mean that women will reach out to others for support and look for a little more validation and feedback that what they are doing is “right.”
• From Blog to Book – How to Turn Your Ideas Into Reality by Kate Woodrow
• How I got here by Ryan Lawler
• Watched: Star Wars Filibuster – Animation
• Chefs+Tech 5.14.2013
• Watched: Violence & Silence: Jackson Katz, Ph.D at TEDxFiDiWomen
• Come here and work on hard problems… except the ones on our doorstep. “The dissonance here is enabling: come here, earn money, live in our playground, and don’t mind the poor, they’re better off here than many places in America.”
• Angelina Jolie Removed Her Breasts to Save Her Life. Some Fans Wish She Hadn’t. “I can tell you from experience that when a person you love makes it through that surgery, they have never looked more lovely. I don’t mean that in a strictly emotional sense—it registers physically, too. The way that they look at you when they wake up. The breaths they take. Their smile. The way they move through space.”
• What to REALLY Expect When You’re Expecting by Rachel Hollis, “I chose the title for this post because all of the baby books you read and the shows you watch while pregnant tell you what to “expect.” But using the word “expect” implies that you have any clue what you’re getting yourself into. You don’t. … Oh sure, on some level you know that you’ll have tough days and sleepless nights, but no one ever sits you down and says, “Look, this is a crapshoot at best, so gird your loins!”
• My Medical Choice by Angelina Jolie, “Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much I could. I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy.”
• Vacation photos: San Francisco on A Cup of Jo
• What My Grandmother Taught Me About Loving My Body on Curvy Yoga, “So, for now, I’m left wondering: how, as women, can we separate ambition, success and body loathing/controlling? In what ways is that legacy still present for us, in what ways has it shifted, and in what ways can we take it in our own hands and make it what we want it to be?”
• The Flammable Years by Laurie Wagner, “So much of any year is flammable. Where does it go? A slide show of images out of time and in no particular order.”
• Listened: Crowd Sourcing Cold Cases – Host Dick Gordon speaks with Michelle McNamara, author of the True Crime Diary blog. She and a community of online sleuths have helped detectives take a new look at the Golden State Killer and other cold cases.
• A Very Rare Night With Lil B on Grantland
• Watched: Ron Finley: A guerilla gardener in South Central LA
• Doctor Kermit Gosnell found guilty of murdering infants in late-term abortions
• Mad Men recap: A Man with a Plan – Season 6, Episode 7
• Overcome the Complexity Within You, “Instead of cutting to the heart of an issue, they tangle it further; rather than narrowing down projects, they allow the scope to keep expanding; and instead of making decisions, they defer until there is more data and better analysis. … If this kind of pattern seems all too familiar to you, and you want to learn how to think more like a “simplifier,” here are four questions that you can ask yourself and/or discuss with your team: How much data is enough? Have we agreed on the key priorities? Do we have an efficient process for rapid review and course correction? Can we explain our plan to others? … One of the key characteristics of a simplifier is the ability to tell stories that convey the situation, the goals, and the plans — in a way that helps people understand what they need to do and how their work fits with everything else.”
• The importance of being antifragile by Bjørn Stærk, “Antifragility lights up a part of the world we often overlook: Things that grow stronger from chaos, uncertainty, resistance and stress. … In practice this means replacing the misguided quest for perfect predictions with simpler heuristics, such as favoring situations with an limited downside and an unlimited upside over those with a limited upside and an unlimited downside. … Fragility feels safe, but the fact that the upside is more probable is outweighed by the fact that the downside is so horrible. … An everyday example is that you ask someone out for a date. The worst, and most likely, outcome is that they decline, which is sad but no disaster. But the best outcome is that you will find someone to spend the rest of your life with. …Antifragility is frightening, but the fact that the downside is more probable is outweighed by the fact that the upside is so wonderful. …In an antifragile system, we must embrace randomness and stressors. …And if you avoid adversity in small things, you will be unprepared to deal with it in large things.”
• Do You Make Excuses For Yourself Based on the “One-Coin Argument”? I Do. by Gretchen Rubin, “The one-coin problem captures a paradox that’s familiar to all of us: when we consider our actions, often it’s true that any one instance of an action is almost meaningless, yet at the same time, a sum of those actions is very meaningful. Whether we focus on the single coin, or the growing heap, will shape our behavior.”
• Watch Out San Francisco, Typhoid Fever Is Back
• A Love List: What your mama really wants for Mother’s Day

Real, Actual Books

• A three-day read: Where’d You Go, Bernadette
• Still Going: Mauve: How one man invented a color that changed the world
• Still loving: Bird By Bird by Anne Lamontt
• Slow Going: Chroma by Derek Jarman
• Slow Going: InGenius: A Crash Course on Creativity by Tina Seelig
• Still Didn’t Really Start: Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel
• Loving: The Art of Collage by Gerald Brommer

This week: A whirling storm of disruption, upheaval, and then pleasure in doing something different. And also a ton of reading. Welcome, brave new work week! New feature alert—I’m bolding things I recommend.

• friday’s confession: we’ve got it all wrong. by Tiffany Han, “It’s about now. Right now. Thisverymoment.”
• What do people use to get stuff done? – Ann Friedman, “Though really, I make pie charts on just about anything. Backs of envelopes, cocktail napkins, receipts. I’m not particular about the pens I use. I do not draw the circles with a compass, I trace a round cardboard coaster. (Classy!)”
• For the Women Who Dread Mother’s Day
• You must remember this. A little bit about my mother and I, before we’re beyond recall. by Bronwyn Jones, “When the Alzheimer’s is looking the other way and she cracks open this shell she’s been trapped in and out pops something so funny or frustrating that I hear me in her. Not the other way around. It’s not about my being influenced by her when these things happen. It’s not about chronology, because that word loses its meaning when you lose your sense of time. It’s a circle. I am her. She is me. We are the same person, repeated, different because of our improvisations, but always reading from the same script.”
• Power Steer By Michael Pollan, “Meat-eating may have become an act riddled with moral and ethical ambiguities, but eating a steak at the end of a short, primordial food chain comprising nothing more than ruminants and grass and light is something I’m happy to do and defend.”
• 41 Signs You’re A Jaded San Franciscan
• Do Nothing Nation by Francisco Dao, “But a full life requires the experience of living. Having others provide all of our needs, including our food, our clothes, even our potential mates without any effort of our own, makes us narrow. It strips us of our taste and of the experiences of a full life.”
• Ryan Gosling won’t eat his cereal
• Amanda Palmer: Proof That Social Media Is The Future Of Business
• Cooked: A DIY Manifesto excerpt by Michael Pollan, “Specialization is undeniably a powerful social and economic force. And yet it is also debilitating. It breeds helplessness, dependence, and ignorance and, eventually, it undermines any sense of responsibility. …One problem with the division of labor in our complex economy is how it obscures the lines of connection, and therefore of responsibility, between our everyday acts and their real-world consequences.”
• Adventures in Depression on Hyperbole and a Half, “And finally – finally – after a lifetime of feelings and anxiety and more feelings, I didn’t have any feelings left. I had spent my last feeling being disappointed that I couldn’t rent Jumanji.”
• Depression Part 2 on Hyperbole and a Half, “Perhaps it was because I lacked the emotional depth necessary to panic, or maybe my predicament didn’t feel dramatic enough to make me suspicious, but I somehow managed to convince myself that everything was still under my control right up until I noticed myself wishing that nothing loved me so I wouldn’t feel obligated to keep existing.”
• Watched: Taylor Moore Teaches How to ‘Sex Your Food’ in Instructional Videos
• Watched: Reggie Watts disorients you in the most entertaining way on TED
• Listened to: OVERHEARD: Steven Soderbergh’s State of Cinema address
• Study: women undervalue themselves when working with men, “A study has shown that women repeatedly talk down their achievements and undervalue themselves when working in a successful group alongside men. Rather than take the due credit and recognition, the woman’s assumption is that kudos is due to the male team members.”
• And Off Again by Heather Armstrong, “Sorry, mom. I’m a slovenly Democrat whose website is sponsored by a butt. You really fucked it up….”
• Strategies for the period of time immediately following your departure from a large technology company. by Matt Brown, “And then there you are, sitting outside the castle. Sans security badge, network of friends and consistent routine. You’re gloriously and terrifyingly free.”
• Looked at Jens Risoms’s Block Island Family Retreat on Dwell.com – LOVE.
• Jenny Gray from Lisa Congdon’s blog, “I very quickly fell in love with her shapes, color combinations & layers. I love graphic elements, the way she plays with hard and soft, and the obscured references to architecture and landscape. And the colors? Did I mention the colors? If I were an abstract painter, this is the kind of painter I’d like to be.”
• Lightning bolt panties, power-positions & promises kept — 30+ Confidence Vitamins to pump you UP! by Alexandra Franzen, “Here’s what I’ve learned about confidence, self-esteem & the art of liking yourself. At a certain point, you have to decide: “From this moment forward, I am choosing to believe that I’m PHENOMENALLY AWESOME. I will eat, sleep, write, speak, work, play & conduct my affairs accordingly.”
• Watched: My God, It’s Pure, Unadulterated Magic! Suspending Water Without the Cup
• Brian Lam: What I Read, “The Awl and The Hairpin have a way of tickling your mind. That’s integrity: When you give up money to do what you think is right. That’s the only test for editorial integrity.”
• The Best Author Letter Ever, “I can’t tell you what it means to an author to hear that her story has helped a young reader in some small way. This is the privilege of writing for children — the joy of connecting, through stories and humor and our best attempt to share our hearts on the page, with the best people on the planet.”
• Why Didn’t the Cops Realize Michelle Knight Had Been Kidnapped?
• Why do we care about craft? on Medium by Rena Tom, “Looking beyond trends,beyond DIY and shop local, I think people are hunting for an emotional reason to spend money. In the modern world that tells you, shows you, then sells you what ‘perfect’ is, people have a reason to rebel, and revel in imperfection.”
• Embracing the Mess on The Pastry Box Project, by Nicole Jones, “It was a Friday afternoon. I was tired. I went home and rested. But Adam got me thinking, how do we embrace the mess? Or should we?”
• Biz Ladies Profile: Christine Schmidt of Yellow Owl Workshop, “What was the best piece of business advice you were given when you were starting off? My husband, Evan, gave me this advice: “they can only say no.” The only risk is rejection. And “No” won’t kill ya”
• My Studio Mate :: Jamie Vasta by Lisa Congdon, “I was particularly impressed with how they captured Jamie’s work, her process and her materials. You see, Jamie’s materials and process are not typical! She “paints” in glitter!”
• 5 Things I Learned About “Game of Thrones” from the Show’s Writers
• On That Day from For me, For You by Kate Miss, “I learned to shed guilt and most of all, I learned through reading stories of other weddings that our day will not be a display of wealth and glitter, but as saccharine as it sounds (you have to get so used to that when planning a wedding) – our day will be a day for our friends and family to witness us promising and declaring our commitment to each other.”
• James is a girl by Jennifer Egan on NY Times, “In the fashion world, there is a feeling that models have changed. “Today, you’re not looking for perfection anymore,” says Michael Flutie, the owner of Company Management, one of several new modeling agencies that have been founded in New York in the last decade. What matters more than any particular look is a model’s attitude, her ability to project an inner life for the camera: the inner life of someone whose surface fascinates us.”
• The Scene at Adam Yauch’s Park-Naming Ceremony
• The Whole Problem Is That There Is No Housing Boom In Silicon Valley

Real, Actual Books

• Still going: Mauve: How one man invented a color that changed the world
• Still loving: Bird By Bird
• Started: Chroma by Derek Jarman
• Started: InGenius: A Crash Course on Creativity [Hardcover] by Tina Seelig
• Barely Cracked: Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel