An Editor's Journal

Malcolm Gladwell's Definition of Good Writing

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 13:54:11 -0600

Came across this while reading What the Dog Saw this morning. It’s so great I just had to share it.

Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else’s head — even if in the end you conclude that someone else’s head is not a place you’d really like to be.

See? Told you it was great.

I read not to be persuaded, necessarily, but to open my mind to what else is out there. To discover how other people think. How boring is it to read only about stuff you totally agree with?

-JA

"What is the first and most important thing that people can do if they’re thinking about leaving a..."

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 10:41:02 -0600

“

What is the first and most important thing that people can do if they’re thinking about leaving a day job to pursue a passion full time?

Focus on how that passion is going to help other people. Focus on usefulness. Don’t think about innovation so much, but think about how you can serve people and really bring value to the world.

”

- http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/224190

Overnight Success

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 10:06:00 -0600

I was struck by this quote from a recent Fast Company article:

When companies like Pinterest and Instagram become successes overnight, our expectations for what brands can or can’t do become unhinged from reality.

While I like the basic tenant of the quote - that companies/brands/individuals have lost patience in our fast-paced digital world - I wonder how true the “overnight success” part really is.

When you think of companies like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, perhaps it only seems like their growth happened overnight. Mark Zuckerberg spent his whole life coding and programming, and was therefore able to create The Facebook literally overnight. Countless hours were spent in unknowing preparation for what Facebook would become. I am sure the same is true of Instagram and Pinterest.

The reality is that no success happens with pure luck, even though it may seem like it. Someone, somewhere, has put in thousands of hours of work that eventually led to some “overnight success”. So perhaps our issue is not one of patience, but of misunderstanding what hard work really is.

It’s our perspective that has been skewed, not necessarily just our patience.

What do you think?

-JA

One of the Craziest Stories I've Ever Seen

Thu, 03 May 2012 12:02:17 -0600

Came across this whole Sarah J. Phillips debacle yesterday, and was sucked into reading everything I could find about it. The whole thing reads like a freakin mystery novel, and even kind of falls into that Catfish vein.

The short of it: A 22-year-old freelance ESPN writer was duping the world and scamming online readers/writers/creators. This just came out into the open a couple days ago, and I’ve aggregated the articles as best as I can here for you. I did this because I had a hard time finding all the stuff and thought how it’d be nice to just aggregate it into once piece.

I know it’s a lot of reading, but I’ve never seen anything like it. Again, this is easily of the most fascinating media and journalism-related stories I’ve ever read.

So here it is in somewhat chronological order:

The original investigative report - here.
Sarah Phillips takes to Twitter, with bits and pieces of a confession - here.
Take a look at her Twitter account - here.
One guy’s first hand experience with Phillips trying to scam him - here.
A couple more scamming victims come out - here.
Yet another scamming victim gives his side of the story - here.
ESPN fires Phillips as the story comes out - here.
Turns out Phillips also acquired some of the most popular parody Twitter accounts on the web through illegal means - here.
A bit more history comes out about Phillips and her partner in the scam - here.
Phillips partner in crime emerges as the real puppet master - here.
This story has wider media ramifications, as detailed in the Huff Post - here.

Just. Freakin. Crazy.

"Carefully choose the projects you take on. Choose to leave the world better than you found it...."

Wed, 02 May 2012 09:46:06 -0600

“

Carefully choose the projects you take on. Choose to leave the world better than you found it. Improve things for people.

We have limited resources, whether natural, financial, or cognitive. Don’t contribute to people wasting them on crap.

The clients you choose to take on define you.

”

- http://jdorganizer.blogspot.com/2012/04/what-im-reading-design-is-job.html

Literally the best meal ever. Pizza has become Jane and...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:12:00 -0700

Literally the best meal ever.

Pizza has become Jane and I’s Valentine’s Day tradition. It’s usually coupled with some good beer. It’s pretty much the best tradition I could possibly imagine. (Thanks, Jane).

We went to Gusto Pizza Co. here in town last night. A few years ago, it was actually known as Frank’s Pizza over by the Drake U neighborhood, and that’s where our tradition started.

The atmosphere was perfect. The beer matched our food perfectly. And of course, the company was perfect. I could not have asked for a better Valentine’s Day date night.

The pizza:
1) Thai Kwon Dough. Includes: Chicken, peanut sauce, carrots, water chestnuts.
2) #24. Includes: Creamed corn, beef brisket, blue cheese, onions. I think it should be called the Midwesterner. Ha.

The beer:
1) Millstream Back Road Stout.
2) Peace Tree Blonde Fatale. (Quickly becoming Jane and I’s fav beer)

(you can click the pics to make ‘em a little bigger)

Book Notes | Love at Last Sight

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:38:39 -0700

I got this book for free as part of “Blogging for Books” program. I honestly didn’t think it would be very good. I judged it by its cover and and I’m always wary of things that say “30 days to a better [insert anything]”.

I was incredibly surprised when I cracked it open and gained oodles of knowledge and insight. It is geared towards being a book on marriage, but also claims that it speaks to any relationship in your life - which is definitely true.

I would really recommend this book to anyone looking to strengthen the relationships closest to them.

A few highlights after just a few chapters:

The adventure of a lifetime is right in front of us - cleverly disguised as familiar faces.
Every relationship has the potential to be better the next time we’re together.
“We are as we love. It is love that measures our stature.” -William S. Coffin
The greatest gift you can give is your presence.
The number one problem in relationships is that they usually take place at arm’s length.
We’ve been led to believe relationships could come to us. We receive notifications throughout the day from our phone, email, social media, etc. As a result, we develop the expectation that relationships ought to be convenient and easy.
Just the effort it takes to physically show up in someone’s life speaks volumes.
We all long to know we’re worth someone’s total attention.
“Wherever you are, be all there.”
The truth is that “being all there” isn’t very efficient, but it’s crucial to the success of human relationships.

Many of these fly in the face of our social/digital world.

Be challenged by it.

Let it change the way you interact with people.

-JA

The morning fog gives way to a beautiful Iowa sunrise. Hmm,...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:08:40 -0700

The morning fog gives way to a beautiful Iowa sunrise. Hmm, haziness into clarity… There’s a metaphor in there somewhere - I’m sure of it!

-JA

Two Kinds of Losing

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:09:34 -0700

My coworkers will probably laugh at me for this post, but hopefully they’ll bear with me. I’m discovering in the last few days that there are two types of losing. The difference may seem small, but it’s actually quite a large gap - and makes a big difference in how you feel about losing.

The first way to lose is when you’ve clearly made mistakes and haven’t played your absolute best. This kind of losing isn’t all that hard to put up with, because you can clearly see that had you made all the right plays, you would have won - whether it be office ping-pong or after-hours racquetball (my two personal favorites).

The second type is much harder to deal with. This is the kind of losing where you do play your best, and you do make all the plays you are supposed to, and you still lose. This type of losing actually makes me much angrier, because I know there is absolutely nothing I could have done to win. It’s actually a little depressing.

Here is what it teaches me though: One of the hardest and greatest lessons we can learn is how to lose gracefully. As I said, I’m only really learning this the last few days, so I don’t quite know how to do it yet, but I’ll get there.

For some reason I’ve been stuck with this attitude that if I did my best, I would win at anything I tried. The reality is that this just isn’t true. There are people around me that are just better than me at certain things.

This attitude is certainly a character flaw, but one that doesn’t come out until you actually start to lose - even if it is something as seemingly insignificant as racquetball with coworkers.

Jesus teaches me to be humble in all things, to never consider myself better than others, and to be filled with grace.

Here’s to taking that to heart this week.

-JA

"He looked like peace."

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:27:27 -0700

I’m reading a phenomenal book called Hellhound On His Trail. It’s the story of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination. As a religion major in college, I read a lot of Dr. King’s own writings, but surprisingly not too much about his life.

One of the things I love most about the book is seeing the way people described Dr. King and what it was like to be with him. There is one particular telling that I hope can someday describe my own life.

This is from a young man who was part of The Invaders - a Black Power group in Memphis made up of mostly teenage and twenty-something men. Let’s just say this group wasn’t overly fond of the non-violence stance of Dr. King.

King and this young man were talking about a peaceful rally that went horribly wrong and started some riots in Memphis. Many people blamed The Invaders for inciting the unrest. So, this fella wanted to come clear the air, and had a chat with King.

This is what he said about the experience:

“When he came into the room it seemed like all of a sudden there was a real rush of wind and calm settled over everything. You could feel peace around that man. He looked like peace.“

Like I said, I want my life to be known like this. I want people to describe experiences with me in this way. And I’m a ways off, but it is something I will strive for.

How about you? Do you want to be known as a person who looks like peace?

-JA

“Most People Would Be Disturbed if They Saw Where Their iPhone Comes From”

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:34:32 -0700

This is the headline of this article. Been seeing a lot of headlines like this lately and it’s a little disturbing. It’s interesting because I haven’t seen many people in an uproar - like would probably be the case if a company they didn’t like had some moral issues behind their manufacturing.

It’s easy to give up clothes made in bad conditions, because we can make some cool clothes locally, too. It’s easy to give up some of those foods that people get taken advantage of to produce - because we have some good stuff here, too. But take away my iPhone? Or my iPad? That’s just too much.

Now I get it - there certainly aren’t many viable options when it comes to electronics. And most electronic companies probably have moral haziness.

Somehow, though, I think that we can creatively and collectively come up with ways to take a stand against this. Don’t you think?

-JA

Book Guilt | Thoughts From a Recovering Compulsive Book Finisher

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:25:03 -0700

Stumbled across this in a Q&A section of the Wall Street Journal and it resonated with me deeply. The original question was from a man who was struggling with “book guilt” - a syndrome that happens when you feel bad for not finishing a book that you’ve started.

I only recently was able to get over this - and it was from a realization that there are just too many great books out there for me to be reading mediocre (or bad) ones.

Some excerpts from the piece:

“Book guilt can be a grievous affliction, especially if the book you’re (I’m) not finishing has been widely praised or is considered a classic. For years I frog marched myself to the last page of every book I started, berating myself if I was bored or exasperated. Then I changed my policy: I would allow myself to stop reading if I’d given the book a fair shot, but I also had to make the effort to put into words what I didn’t like about it.”
“Nancy Pearl, who writes the excellent “Book Lust” series, recommends that people 50 years old or younger give a book about 50 pages before deciding to give it up.”
“Some readers I know stave off their guilty consciences by blaming the writer: The prose is so deplorable or the characters or plots so preposterous that it’s simply good judgment to stop reading. And sure, sometimes a book is bad. More likely, though, the book is a misfit, at least for this time and place in the reader’s life. Neither reader nor writer has failed; the two are simply mismatched.”
“In her reading memoir, ‘So Many Books, So Little Time,’ Sara Nelson calls deciding to allow yourself to stop reading a book ‘a rite of passage in a reader’s life.’ It is, she says, ‘the moment at which you can look at yourself and announce: Today I am an adult. I can make my own decisions.’”

What do you think? Do you struggle with this “affliction”? Let me know!

Facebook
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-JA

"Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal...."

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:14:59 -0700

“Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal. -Martin Luther King, Jr”

- I stumbled across this last night in a book I was reading, and it was obviously very fitting as today is MLK day. It’s hard for me to even discern what this day means, as I’m a twenty-something white dude from the midwest.

I’m thankful for his peaceful promotion of freedom. Ya know, if MLK would have advocated for violence, our country would not be where it is today. It would have turned into a war of whites vs. blacks and we would have been set back a couple hundred years. He so adamantly called for non-violence, though. He endured suffering for the purpose of showing he was above that mentality. He didn’t fight back because he knew it would only lead to more fighting. Violence just begets more violence. Martin Luther King, Jr. knew that better than anyone else, and I’m thankful for that lesson.

-Jeremy

My Favorite iPad Apps (so far)

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 15:03:00 -0700

I got my iPad about 4 months ago, and I love it. Working in digital marketing, it comes in handy at work. The games help me get my mind off things when I get home. There are all sorts of awesome things goin on with it.

With that, thought I’d share with you my favorites, broken down by the folders I have them in. I love me some folders on my iPad.

The links are right to the app store - so just view this on your iPad and you can download ‘em right there!

Reading

Kindle - This is an obvious one if you ask me. I have an actual Kindle as well, but for anything with pictures, or PDFs, this app rocks.
Bible - By YouVersion. Incorporates reading plans, highlighting, note-taking and social sharing. Easily the best Bible app out there.

News

ESPN ScoreCenter - I don’t have cable, so I use this app in the morning to get my highlight videos. Also great for keeping up with the night’s scores.
USA Today - This is a visually nice app for scanning headlines.
CNN - This is the app if you want news in video form.
News360 - This one is cool because it curates headlines from multiple major news sources and rates them into the most important news.
TIME Magazine - If you have a paper subscription, or know a friend/family member with one, you can take advantage of the free digital editions, which are BEAUTIFUL.

Reference/Random

StumbleUpon - I love stumbling.
TED - Great when you have 15-20 minutes to kill.
Wikipanion - Sometimes better than just Google for answering life’s important questions.
MyFitnessPal - Awesome for keeping track of calories and exercise. You can enter anything (Starbucks Cinnamon Scone) and it tells you the exact nutrition info (way too many calories and grams of sugar).
Evernote - Probably the best app for syncing notes across all your digital devices.
Clibe - I haven’t found a definite use yet, but it just looks really cool. Gets Moleskine notebooks on your iPad.

Social

Twitter - A beautiful iPad app.
Facebook - Very nice, but waiting for Timeline to show up on the app.
LinkedIn - Using the iPhone app, actually, but it’s pretty nice. I’m hoping LinkedIn comes out with an iPad app this year.
Skype - Great for video-ing with friends and family, and the chat is nice too.
Tout - A relatively new social network, but with a pretty good app for short video sharing.
Yammer - Awesome intranet network for the workplace. Their app rocks.

Games

Angry Birds - Along with every other person on the planet, I see this as a must.
Six Towers - A fun puzzle/logic game. The $.99 upgrade is well worth it to get one million puzzles.
Harbor Master HD - I love me some line-drawing games. The app is free, along with one map, but I think it’s worth it to buy additional ones for $.99 a piece.
Farkle Deluxe - My wife and I love playing Farkle in real life. The light version of this can provide some quality entertainment.
NinJump Deluxe - The pro version is worth it. Fun if you need a few minutes to kill.
Temple Run - A really well designed game, and incredibly addicting. And it’s free.
Flight Control HD - Another great line-drawing game. It’s normally $5, but often goes on sale, so keep an eye out.
Bejeweled - This is $.99 and an iPhone app, but it rocks nonetheless.

Travel

TripAdvisor - A must. Such a great app for finding restaurants and fun things to do.
The Weather Channel - I don’t use this app a whole lot because I have it on my phone, but it’s a great one when you need it.
World Atlas - A National Geographic production. Costs a couple bucks, but it’s cool for map nerds like me.
Wi-Fi Finder - This one rocks. It’s free, and you can download to your iPad a database of places in the country with free wi-fi. And it doesn’t take much space.

Utility

TV Guide - Honestly one of my most-used apps. Is that sad?
Dropbox - Just awesome. And so easy to use. Will download PDFs right into Kindle or iBooks.
Scan - I don’t often scan QR codes with my iPad, but this comes in handy when I do.
Wells Fargo - Just an iPhone app, but it’s awesome for easy transfers on the fly and checking balances.

Entertain

Pandora - This one feels obvious.
Netflix - Very nice recent update makes searching for movies and shows super easy. I’m one of the few who is still very happy with my Netflix service.

I think that should do it for now. I’ll post more when I come across more.

What are your faves that I’m missing? Let me know here in the comments or on Twitter!

-JA

Found this today and the more I read through it, the more I like...

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 12:23:55 -0700

Found this today and the more I read through it, the more I like it.

5 Tidbits on Leadership

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 18:22:44 -0700

I started reading a book the other night called “Spirituality and Leadership”. It’s much better than I expected, quite honestly. I’d like to share some bits of it with you below:

Dynamic organizations know that their strongest assets and liabilities are people.
Effective leaders are social artists, they’re both adapters to environmental influences and culture sculptors.
Management is about maintaining and doing things right. Leadership is about progressing and doing the right things.
Leadership is not so much what is achieved, but how things are achieved.
Leaders are people who consistently recognize when leading is needed.

I’ve read quite a few books on leadership, which means I read a lot of the same thing over and over and over. These are rather unique insights, however, and things that I’ll take away from this book that I can’t said of learned before.

Love it.

11 Things to Know at 25(ish).

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 08:17:37 -0700

11 Things to Know at 25(ish). :

What you need to know to be a real adult.

____________

This is a pretty good list. Read it all the way through. Write these things in your journal. Don’t let it be just another list you see throughout your day - but let it really change you.

creativeithink: A GREAT way to look at life. ______ We...

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 10:18:07 -0700

creativeithink:

A GREAT way to look at life.

______

We usually consider distractions and detours to be an annoyance. Often times, however, they are exactly what we need. Embrace the detours.

This video was made in response to Rick Perry’s latest TV...

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 09:59:11 -0700

This video was made in response to Rick Perry’s latest TV ad. And even though this video is on a humor site, the message of it rings incredibly true.

If you haven’t seen Rick Perry’s ad, click here. To reiterate quickly, Obama is warring against religion (even though Obama is a Christian), and it’s a travesty that “gays” can openly serve in the military but kids can’t pray in school. Also, I didn’t realize until this ad that prayer only happens out loud in an organized fashion. You certainly can’t pray silently.