I write about how to live deliberately, stay curious and therefore stay relevant. Author of the "Faark I Hope It's Not Too Late" newsletter
New Zealand
Joined March 2009
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Ask me what could go wrong with a plan and I'll give you a full production schedule. Ask me what could go right and I've got nothing.
Lesson two of the Small Bet Kit is ten minutes pointed the other way. generalistalan.eden.so/small…
I cancelled Netflix.
The two documentaries I most want to see this year then landed on Netflix.
The universe's comic timing remains excellent.
Netflix spends billions guessing what you'll watch.
The person on YouTube with a camera in the spare room only gets paid once you've actually watched.
One of those models needs a commissioner to pick you. The other just needs you to press publish.
1/ Television changed. Most of us who spent our careers in it took time to catch up.
I did 33 years in broadcast media. October's numbers still made me look twice.
6/ Why this matters if you're over 50 with an idea: the gatekeepers I worked alongside don't hold the keys they used to. People with no studio behind them are building real audiences on their own. The door is open, and it costs less to walk through than it ever did.
7/ That, plus a book, a podcast and two documentaries I can't watch, in October's recommendation week: faarkihopeitsnottoolate.com/…
Alan Barnes retweeted
Everyone has a CV. Nobody keeps the other list: things you did for free because you wanted to see what happened.
Mine has a documentary about New Zealanders in London. Nobody paid for it.
I'm still making things nobody commissioned.
Everyone has a CV. Nobody keeps the other list: things you did for free because you wanted to see what happened.
Mine has a documentary about New Zealanders in London. Nobody paid for it.
I'm still making things nobody commissioned.
Alan Barnes retweeted
Ken Robinson's point: lives grow like trees, branching, mostly a mess. We draw the straight line afterwards because improvisation looks bad on a profile.
Mine branched through a milking shed, a video duplication plant and unpaid music videos. Not one of those was a plan.
Ken Robinson's point: lives grow like trees, branching, mostly a mess. We draw the straight line afterwards because improvisation looks bad on a profile.
Mine branched through a milking shed, a video duplication plant and unpaid music videos. Not one of those was a plan.
Alan Barnes retweeted
People don't take the sensible job as part of a plan.
They take it because:
The mortgage.
The school fees.
It was a Thursday.
Then twenty years later LinkedIn makes it look deliberate. The job you did before you got sensible is the more interesting one.
Every big idea I've sat on had the same problem. Too big to start this afternoon.
The fix is boring. Shrink it until it's embarrassingly small, then do that bit this week.
That's the idea behind my Small Bet Kit. Free for paid subscribers. generalistalan.eden.so/small…
People don't take the sensible job as part of a plan.
They take it because:
The mortgage.
The school fees.
It was a Thursday.
Then twenty years later LinkedIn makes it look deliberate. The job you did before you got sensible is the more interesting one.
Alan Barnes retweeted
Most LinkedIn profiles are improvisation with good formatting.
Mine says Executive Producer. It leaves out the milking shed, the duplication plant and the music videos nobody paid for, which is where most of the improvising happened.