Minutes of a Monday #3

Have a great week - Niall

Brain Food > Going Deep

“As a popular speaker Shankman spends much of his time flying. He eventually realised that 30,000 feet was an ideal environment for him to focus. As he explained in a blog post ‘Locked in a seat with nothing in front of me, nothing to distract me, nothing to set off my ‘Ooh! Shiny!’ trigger, I have nothing to do but be at one with my thoughts.’

It was sometime after this realisation that Shankman signed a book contract giving him only two weeks to finish an entire manuscript. Meeting this deadline would require incredible concentration. To achieve this state, Shankman did something unconventional. He booked a round-trip business-class ticket to Tokyo. He wrote during the whole flight to Japan, drank an espresso in the business class lounge once he arrived in Japan, then turned around and flew back, again writing the whole way – arriving in the States only 30 hours after he left with a completed manuscript in his hands.

The trip cost him $4,000 but was ‘worth every penny’.

It’s not just the change of environment or seeking quiet that enables more depth. The dominant force is the psychology of committing so seriously to the task at hand.”

Peter Shankman’s four grand life hack at shutting out the world (as described by Cal Newport in the book Deep Work).

Quick Quote

“The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.”

On the 12th of September 1962, President John F. Kennedy set the nations sights skyward toward the moon at Rice University, Texas.

Be good to your good self and take 9 minutes out of your day to listen & watch this.

Rare Air

"So you hold out this hope until it’s validated somehow. And all I needed was that message. And I think he very selflessly left it and I don’t think he left it until he knew he wasn’t coming home."

Brian David Sweeney was a passenger on Flight 175, one of the planes hijacked on 9/11 and flown into the Twin Towers in New York city. He left a voicemail for his wife Julie that day from the flight, telling her he loved her and to “go have good times.”

You can hear it here.

Appendix

I shared an article on capturing ideas last week. Here’s a video condensing a lot of those learnings.

You can check it out here.

LOL

The late Queen Elizabeth II was a decent actor. Her performance in this is flawless. (and better still she kept it a secret from her family who saw it for the first time at the opening ceremony).

You can check it out here.

My Content

I got asked last week how we made #honesty. This is how we did it.