Category: Creativity

The Painful Truth About Art Cover

The Painful Truth About Art

Nik

On July 20th, 2017, Chester Bennington died by suicide. He was 41 years old. You may not know who Chester is, but you might recognize this picture:

It’s a bit old, here’s a more recent one with his friend Mike:

He was my friend too. Chester wasn’t the kind of friend you could call on a Thursday and grab a coffee with. No, he wasn’t like that.

But whenever you needed him, Chester would sing for you.

When I was 13, I was angry a lot. I was angry at my parents, angry at my friends, but mostly angry at myself for not knowing who I was.

I think that’s normal. I think all 13-year old boys are angry. When he sang, Chester was angry a lot too. You could hear it in his voice. And somehow, every time he was done singing, I didn’t feel so angry any more.

My friends from school were angry a lot too. Andy and Flo and Nils and Max. Whenever we’d saved some money, we’d go to the store and buy some of Chester’s CDs. I even remember the plastic bag I carried them around in.

If you still have CDs somewhere, maybe you have some of Chester’s CDs too.

A lot of people have the top left one. Chester’s band has sold more records than any other band in this century. They just released a new album and were supposed to go on world tour next week.

Today I realized that a lot of the greatest art we have the privilege to feel, breathe and live comes from a dark place.

Sometimes, the artist doesn’t make it back from that place. For more than half of my life, Chester went there so I and millions of other people wouldn’t have to.

Only this time, he didn’t find his way home.

I wish I could have just told him he didn’t have to go there any more. That it’s okay if he wanted to stay home a little longer. But that’s not how the world works.

Another great artist recently said you die twice:

“Once when they bury you in the grave and the second time is the last time that somebody mentions your name.”

I hope that’s true.

I’ll tell my children about Chester. I’ll ask him to sing for them when they’re angry. Maybe they’ll tell their children too and he won’t really die for a long time.

But today my friend Chester stopped singing and that made me sad.

How To Be Persistent Jerry Weintraub

Jerry Weintraub: How to Be Persistent in the Face of Failure

Nik

Jerry Weintraub was one of the most influential talent agents and film producers in the history of Hollywood.

You can thank him for any concert you’ve attended in a large arena, a concept he came up with in the 70s. He managed tours for Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan and Neil Diamond.

But what can the late producer of the original Karate Kid and Ocean’s 11 teach you? What if you’re not in the show biz?

Well, no matter if you’re a writer, manager or art merchant, we all need one thing. Something without which, we’ll never reach our goals:

Persistence.

Read More
Timeless Header

On The Art of Being Timeless

Nik

I’ve kept this line in my mind for a long time:

“Things of quality have no fear of time.” ~Unknown

Yesterday, I had a late dinner with one of my best friends, Matt. Matt is an architect and Munich is full of history, so when we met at Königsplatz at 9:30 PM, as usual, he had plenty stories to tell.

“King’s Square,” as you would translate it, is a huge, open space, housing several museums, one of which is the Glyptothek.

Timeless Glyptothek

Commissioned by the Bavarian King Ludwig I to house his collection of Roman and Greek sculptures, this building is a piece of art in and of itself. Like so many others in Munich, it casually rests in its place, timeless. For 200 years, many have stood awestruck before it, long before Matt and me and long after we’re gone, many a soul will.

Matt and my conversations are always very philosophical in nature and as the evening continued, so did its theme: what makes something timeless?

Read More

The Future of Work Header

The Future of Work: Hard Work, Working Hard & Being Creative

Nik

On June 1st, Jason Fried shook up the entire Medium community:

“Hard work is picking lettuce 8 hours a day in 90 degree heat. […] Rule of thumb: If it’s hard you’ll have trouble finding people who want to do it. There’s no shortage of people who want to be programmers, designers, strategists, social media consultants, entrepreneurs, investors, etc… But try finding people to work the farm. Hard work is doing the work other people don’t want to do.”

My first thought: “Do I claim to be doing hard work?” Read More

How To Learn Faster Header

How To Learn Faster In 4 Simple, But Not Easy Steps

Nik

I’m 100% done with my economics class for this semester, even though only 1o out of 24 lecture recordings have been uploaded so far. Each month, over a million people view my answers on Quora, though I started writing daily on there only on January 1st, 2017. I’m building an app with two friends on the side, yet I don’t know how to write code in Swift.

The list goes on. I’m always dabbling in at least 3–5 projects, all with varying degrees of experience and success. The one thing I refuse to let myself be guilty of is not learning fast enough so each of them won’t at least have a shot at working out.

This week, I thought about my learning process and asked myself what I could share with you about how to learn faster. I found four steps. Read More

Nobody Likes You, But Nobody Is Just 30% Of The People Cover

Nobody Likes You, But Nobody Is Just 30% Of The People

Nik

“Nobody likes you around here” is one of the nastiest weapons of negative workplace communication.

It hits right in the heart, gets you worked up and ready to lash out yourself, but worst of all, you start to wonder if they’re right.

So how do you respond to that phrase when it’s thrown right in your face?

Here’s the response I’ve come up with:

“Yeah, but nobody is just 30% of the people.”

This’ll startle them and they’ll scratch their head. In the meantime, you can go on to explain what I’m about to tell you.

There is a great story in James Altucher’s book Choose Yourself, which I will never forget.

He alludes to it on his blog as the 30/30/30 rule. James kept using images from the same woman doing yoga poses for his blog posts without giving her credit. Eventually, she messaged him and they started talking.

She told him that she found over the years, whatever she did, 30% of people loved her for it, 30% hated her for it and 30% just didn’t give a damn.

In my experience, that’s pretty accurate. So why not spend your time on those that love you?

“No matter who you are, no matter what you do, no matter who your audience is: 30 percent will love it, 30 percent will hate it, and 30 percent won’t care. Stick with the people who love you and don’t spend a single second on the rest. Life will be better that way.”

— James Altucher

And if they don’t buy this wonderful story, or point to the logical flaw of the remaining 10% missing, because we’ve used 30%, not 33%, nothing takes the wind out of their sails faster than a good old…

“Now what?”

Counterintuitive Confirmation: How To Eliminate Your Doubts

Nik

This Wednesday, I realized all my current blog post ideas would take more than a day to complete. Between The 4 Minute Folio launch, AniQuote suddenly materializing from the massive mist of ideas in my head and a new side gig I’ve taken up two weeks ago, it’s a week as busy as ever.

Hence, I decided to give myself the following constraints for this post:

  • Less than 1,000 words.
  • No more than 4 Pomodoros total.

Artificially limiting yourself is liberating. Busy weeks come with a lot of learnings, so these rules forced me to go narrow and think really hard:

What’s the biggest lesson from the past 7 days?

Read More