14 year old Lena Dunham fills out a Millennium survey about the year 2000. (Lessons for creatives from Lena Dunham.)

“These are all the awful parts of me”: 10 lessons for creatives from Lena Dunham.

WINKY SMILEY COPY ;)

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We are here to witness the creation and abet it. We are here to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but, especially, we notice the beautiful faces and complex natures of each other. We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are here with us. We witness our generation and our times. We watch the weather. Otherwise, creation would be playing to an empty house.

According to the second law of thermodynamics, things fall apart. Structures disintegrate. Buckminster Fuller hinted at a reason we are here: By creating things, by thinking up new combinations, we counteract this flow of entropy. We make new structures, new wholeness, so the universe comes out even. A shepherd on a hilltop who looks at a mess of stars and thinks, ‘There’s a hunter, a plow, a fish,’ is making mental connections that have as much real force in the universe as the very fires in those stars themselves.

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Annie Dillard on the meaning of life (via explore-blog)

Narcissism and personal data: a future of less sleep and more sex.

The internet IS real life!

Getting paid to take the piss out of brands.

The best of Linkness | Self help edition.

At Nextness, we believe that content doesn’t have to be new to be meaningful. So for the next few weeks, we’re going to go back through more than a year’s worth of Linkness reading round-up posts and pull some out when we think they still have relevance. The first one we’ve named “self-help.” It’s tongue-in-cheek, but as our popular side-project WHY? showed, working in communications and the creative industry can be hard. Here’s our favourite advice for how to get out of a slump.

You’re overworked.

• Bring back the 40-hour work week (it’s actually unproductive to work more than that) | Salon.com
• Are you as busy as you think? | WSJ.com
• “The things that are meant to make you feel more connected today often turn out to be insubstantial time sinks – empty, programmatic encouragements to groom and refine your personality while sitting alone at a screen.” Better | The classic essay by Merlin Mann
• The magic of doing one thing at a time | Harvard Business Review
• A resolution: saying no to crap | Canalside View

You wonder if you’re good enough.

• On doing what scares you: Show me a confident writer, and in all likelihood you will also be showing me work that falls short of originality or greatness | Dani Shapiro
• The “urge to be appealing is a terrible encumbrance to the creative spirit” | Schmutzie.com
• Declare something “finished.” | The Happiness Project
• I am ashamed of my greatest failing-but at last I am beating it | Wrestling Possums
• Leo Babauta from Zen Habits’ guide to overcoming self doubt | uncluttered white spaces
• Motivational jiu-jitsu: staying positive in the face of negativity and indifference | The 99 Percent
• There goes the fear: on feeling it, and doing it anyway | a cat in a tree

You don’t know why you do what you do.

• How to do what you love (classic post from 2006) | Paul Graham
• How to be happier at work: start something | Harvard Business Review
• How to love what you do | Ground Glass
• Create a meaningful life through meaningful work | Umair Haque, Harvard Business Review

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alexjcampbell:

 Taken on Craig Rd in Singapore a few weeks ago