A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink

Design
Ponder the humble toaster. At most a person uses it less than 15 minutes/day. The remaining 1425 minutes of the day, the toaster is merely on display. 1% is devoted to utility, and 99% is devoted to significance. Why shouldn’t the toaster be beautiful? p80

Hospital rooms with ample natural light lead to less pain medication, and 21% fewer drug costs... Improving a school’s physical environment could increase test scores by 11% p82

Review Design Magazines for ideas...
Ambidexrous Design Magazine
How Design
iD Mag
Or visit http://www.ideo.com/

Good design is full of CRAP...
Contrast (if elements aren’t the same, make them very different), Repetition (repeating visual elements strengthens unity), Alignment (everything should be connected with another visual element on the page), Proximity (related items grouped together) p97

Story

StoryCorps
Listen and record the stories of your life and others around you.

Attend local story telling festivals.
Bay Area Storing Telling (Late Spring)

Read these books
Story by Robert Mckee
Stealing Fire from the Gods by James Bonnet
Beyond Bullet Points by Cliff Atkinson


Symphony
Draw portraits with only 5 lines
Keep a metaphor log
Search for problems for existing solutions
a. where else would it work
b. flip it around, change the default

Read these books
Power of 10 by Charles Eames
Dialogue: the act of thinking together by William Isaacs
Metaphor by George Lakoff
No Waste by Laboratorio de creacion Maldeojo

Empathy
Empathy Quotient
Systematizing Quotient
Spot the Fake Smiles
Mind the Eyes

Play
www.laughteryoga.org

How funny are you?

Meaning
People have enough to live, but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning. - Robert William Fogel, Nobel Laureate

But Out!
Write down some changes you want in your life, and what stops you from doing it.
I want to lose weight, but I can’t stop eating my favorite foods.
Now change the ‘but’ into ‘and... so’, rewriting the statement
I want to lose weight, and I can’t stop eating my favorite foods, so I allow myself to indulge once a week with my favorites.

Read “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl