by Rebecca Thorman on July 30 ////
7 Comments Note: This post was originally published on my first blog, Modite, and is now archived here.
I like ideas. Others might say I need focus. So, here are some old ones cluttering my head. Ideas are free. Execution isn’t. Take my idea, let it live long and prosper in your capable hands. Tell me when you’ve brought it to fruition. I’ll be the first to promote it.
Productivity systems are incredibly personal. What works for one person might work for another… if only it was tweaked a bit. Create a platform that allows the user to pull together different modules to create their perfect to-do app.
Much in the same way bloggers add widgets to their sites, to-do app users could easily add modules like “Weekly Lists,” “Goals,” and “Next Week’s Tasks” in a proprietary editor to create their custom productivity app. One user might create an app as simple as Teux Deux or as intricate as Remember the Milk. You could allow users to share their designs and templates in a library for others as well.
Yeah? What do you think? I would totally use this. Someone create it for me, please. Right now I use a mash-up of Google Spreadsheets. It’s a clunker that works, but ain’t so pretty. How do you list to-dos?
by Rebecca Thorman on July 14 ////
Comments Note: This post was originally published on my first blog, Modite, and is now archived here.
For the 4th of July weekend, Ryan and I went to Taliesin in Spring Green, WI, which was Frank Lloyd Wright’s home during the summer months. This was my third time there. I wrote a bit about my fascination with Wright here. We weren’t allowed to take interior shots, but I took some good exterior photos using my iPhone camera.
This is Romeo and Juliet in the background.
The meandering entrance to the Taliesin home.
Back of the house.
Some of the gardens. This is looking towards Wright’s bedroom.
You get a bit of the sense of how the house is built into the hill here.
Gorgeous, calming views.
Bye, bye Mr. Wright.
Afterwords we drove back to Madison for dinner, drinks, and a cigar and new sunglasses for Ryan. Then we headed to James Madison Park for the fireworks show. It’s a day I will remember for a long time.
by Rebecca Thorman on July 13 ////
14 Comments Note: This post was originally published on my first blog, Modite, and is now archived here.
We are told to show streaks of our soul, to be original. To show irreverence. And especially, place your mark on the world. Eschew tradition. And while you should be yourself, you should also, somewhere along the line – if you’re lucky, between high school and turning thirty – find that originality is only the beginning.
Renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright is known for pioneering one of the most important movements in architecture. His mastery of the compression and exaltation of space has little to do with inspiring awe (although that it does), and much more to do with a space that is living. That shows you how to act, impresses upon you what to feel and has a conversation with you. The building has a conversation with you, not Wright.
Which was probably a great mystery to those who knew Wright while he was living since he was quite the arrogant bastard. But his architecture lacks ego. Wright matched a structure to its environment. The infamous Guggenheim intentionally looks nothing like the home of Taliesin.
In contrast, Santiago Calatrava or Frank Gehry, two of the celebrity architects of present-day, are very recognizable. No matter where you are. No matter what city you’re in. A Calatrava or Gehry building has a distinct stamp, an identifiable arrangement with their hand apparent. An impression, of themselves.
And however distinct those buildings are from each other, they are also, ultimately, more of the same. The type of sameness that dominates strip mall suburbia where big-box retailers have stamped their own identifiable arrangement with the ease of reflecting the last box onto the next, so it is the same from town to town to town.
It isn’t quite fair to compare a Walmart to a Calatrava, of course. A Calatrava is beautiful and a Walmart is most certainly not. But it is fair to compare this obsession we have to create and stamp our brand – in all of our novel and impertinent glory – across our careers, and projects and relationships.
Maybe if we all tried a little less to leave our imprint on the world, something might rise that’s a bit more meaningful than ourselves alone. We need to concentrate less on being special, and more on matching ourselves to our environment. Success isn’t about you.
Wright did this through architectural structures. You’ll do it through a lesson plan. Or diving. Or an iPhone app. Or parenthood. Whatever.
But if you say, “That’s not part of my brand,” you are missing the point. Match your skills and talents to the environment around you – those jobs, projects, affairs, and challenges that form our lives. That is change; listening to the milieu and giving it a voice.
Dilute your brand. It’s less than you think anyway. Pay attention to what’s bigger than you. Match your rhythm to what needs to be done. Respond.
