Dispatches from the front lines of Pursuit

My brother is cooking up something interesting over at chasing Tremendous:

chasing Tremendous is an initiative founded by Mark Mulvey to celebrate depth of thought, elegant descriptions, and passionate learning, but outside of the walls of academia and with a sexier flame backlighting the pursuit. By recasting historically difficult or tedious concepts, and by discovering hidden connections between dissimilar disciplines or genres, it becomes possible to get turned on by ideas and inspired to engage in more tremendous pursuits. The idea is to avoid mediocrity and thinness of thought in favor of more adventurous topics and experiences with more grit. The potential for intensity must always be high, and the bias must always lean toward action.
He’s younger than me and smarter than me.

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Pyschology

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Your iPhone Tracks You

This isn’t really news. As far back as 2011 we’ve known iPhones keep location log files (almost all computers keep log files of some sort), but there’s now a control panel within Settings to see where you’ve been.
Note: The actual path to the maps is: Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services (very bottom) > Frequent Locations

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Information

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BLAH-GING

Zeldman on blogging and independent publishing:

Did Twitter and Facebook kill blogging? Was it withdrawal of the mainstream spotlight? Did people stop independently writing and publishing on the web because it was too much work for too little attention and gain? Or did they discover that, after all, they mostly had nothing to say?

Blogging may have been a fad, a semi-comic emblem of a time, like CB Radio and disco dancing, but independent writing and publishing is not. Sharing ideas and passions on the only free medium the world has known is not a fad or joke.
When I started Daily Exhaust (DE) in 2006, I thought I was waaaay too late to the party. At the time it seemed as though the people who were important, cool or talented in the design and technology worlds were already going strong. I decided to ignore this frustration and push forward anyway not because I felt the pressure to, but because I had shit to say and share with whoever might be listening.
DE has always been a place to put things “on paper”. Once I write a post and publish it, I can begin to understand what I understand. Other times I use it as a place to capture interesting writing I’ve found on other sites and sometimes I might even have my own thoughts on the subject. Other times, it might just be a great photograph or animated GIF that makes me smile and breaks up the large chunks of ‘serious’ writing on the site.
In his post, Zeldman mentions how much he’s always hated the word ‘blog’. I use ‘blog’ to describe Daily Exhaust in conversation, but since its inception, I’ve also always referred to it as my ‘online journal’ on the About page and in between the title tags. Semantics are important and shape the way you perceive things. Holding a fundraiser to make something feels a lot different than backing a Kickstarter project and receiving a reward in exchange for your money. I’ve never had a problem calling DE a blog, but in my head I’ve always just thought of it as a place to capture thoughts and images.
Twitter and Facebook didn’t kill blogging. It’s the last possibility Zeldman mentioned that’s the culprit: “Or did they discover that, after all, they mostly had nothing to say?”
Most people discover that they have nothing to say, and that’s ok.
The people with grit and something to say have stuck with it because I bet a lot of them don’t think of what they do as blogging. For me, writing on this site is more of compulsion than a need to be read.
Check back here in a year or two, chances are I’ll be right where you left me.

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Words

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He’s Going the Distance

Lea Winerman at the American Psychological Association explains what sets high high achievers apart from everyone else (via Lifehacker):

Grit is the disposition to pursue very long-term goals with passion and perseverance, sustained over time. So the emphasis is on stamina.

Self-control is related — we often measure self-control and grit in the same sample and find a strong correlation — but the difference is time scale. Self-control is the ability to resist momentary distractions and temptations in order to reach a goal, but the goal doesn’t have to be something that you’re pursuing for years or decades. You might have a goal of staying on an exercise routine or doing your homework that night. And if you fail to do that and instead sit on the couch or watch TV, that’s a failure of self-control. But the goal doesn’t have to be something you’re working on for years and years.
Or as Andy Warhol succinctly put it in regards to making art:
Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.
I associate my Three Don’t’s with getting shit done in life.

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Philosophy

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Artrepreneurial

My friend and studiomate Rick Kitagawa is launching a 5-week course about entrepreneurship for artists this January in San Francisco. It’s called Artrepreneurship 101:

Forged from real-world experience, psychological and sociological studies and books, finance and marketing research, and the advice from people who are making a living off their art, Artrepreneurship 101 is a class designed to teach you how to deal with the emotional aspects of being a professional art hustler as well as the actual tactics and tricks I’ve used to make it as a professional artist. Artrepreneurship 101 is unique in that it goes beyond just telling you how to market and sell art – by using a combination of exercises and group work, we’ll also tackle things like self-doubt, procrastination, and other psychological barriers that impede you from getting your important work done.
Heed to lazy asses out there:
There will be hard work ahead, so if you are looking for “Quick and EZ,” then please, walk away now. I’m not going to promise you overnight success (no one is an overnight success, and if anyone promises you that, they’re lying to you), but I will promise you will leave with the tools, knowledge, and support you’ll need to kick-start a career in the arts.

If you are willing to commit to yourself, work hard (on the things you love), and really chase after your dreams, get ready, because enrolling in this course will be the first step in your new life.
If you’re reading this and you live in the Bay Area, use the code “exhaust” to get $50 off the price of the course (good until Dec. 25).
If you’re curious what the hell makes Rick Kitagawa such a smartypants, he’s a sponsored artist for KRINK, Savoir-Faire, and Crescent and he runs his own screen printing company, The Lords of Print.

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Business

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